[chris08876]

Interesting read, to long to post hence the {...}

=======================

The neighborhood on Manhattan’s far west side represents a vision of the city’s future—but will New Yorkers buy into it?

It’s nearly impossible to talk about Hudson Yards over the phone—or at least, that’s what I’m told by the people who are behind the megaproject. It’s not so much a development, a number of urban planners will explain, as it is an effort in city building.

Hudson Yards is the largest private real estate development in the United States, spanning 28 acres and accommodating upward of 18 million square feet of office, retail, and residential space. It will eventually hold 14 acres of public space, anchored by a public plaza with Thomas Heatherwick’s 150-foot-tall, painted steel “stairway to nowhere” as its centerpiece. There will be more than a dozen buildings, including a number of glassy supertall skyscrapers (one with the city’s highest open-air observation deck). And the whole thing is being constructed on a platform atop the sprawling, still-operating West Side rail yards, with trains passing beneath it every day.

With that in mind, I’m encouraged to ditch a telephone conversation and instead visit the Midtown offices of Kohn Pedersen Fox, the architecture firm that master planned the development, where I can better envision the whole thing. There, KPF design director Marianne Kwok, who has collaborated on the design of Hudson Yards, is ready with a PowerPoint presentation and model of the Eastern Yard, the first phase of the megaproject. She points out nuances in the design of each skyscraper, the well-thought-out entry points from the megaproject to the rest of the city, and where the neighborhood integrates with the High Line. Just outside the conference room where we meet, photographs and renderings plaster the walls of the open office, as if reminding the architects they’re designing an entire neighborhood, not just one or two buildings.

I have to admit: It’s strange looking upon the planning of an entire neighborhood from afar, the grand task of envisioning a piece of the city out of nothing. As the first phase gets closer to completion, Related Companies and Oxford Properties Group, the megaproject’s developers, are making the case to New York they’re building an important—they would also argue authentic—extension of Manhattan. But the question remains: Will New York buy it?

[...]

==========================
CBNY