Should Historic Cities Prohibit Skyscrapers?

[10023]

Historic neighborhoods should generally prohibit skyscrapers, yes. Whole neighborhoods should not be re-zoned to allow them, because the development pressures would be too great for the historic fabric to survive.

Perhaps there can be exceptions, where there is postwar or totally unremarkable building stock (e.g., a disused postwar electric substation can be redeveloped with a high rise).

But those highrises need to have a footprint that is in keeping with the neighbourhood, no parking whatsoever.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Moses did have his way, unfortunately. NYC had epic urban renewal. There are around 600k New Yorkers living in public housing, and probably an equal amount living in income-restricted middle income housing, most of it built under Moses. Then there are the expressways, parkways, hundreds of parks, something like 700 playgrounds, beaches, etc.

NYC may seem less affected, but only because it has the largest prewar fabric of any city on earth, and a lot of the urban renewal is relatively high density. But NYC went crazy on urban renewal, given its wealth and Moses' power.

Yeah, basically anywhere you see "towers in the park" as a typology (with the exception of places like Co-op City) it replaced traditional urban fabric. The Lower East Side in particular was gutted.

[mthd]

for all the terrible things about its planning and entitlement process, san francisco actually does a very good job preserving historic buildings and the districts they form together. there are a number of places in the city where tall buildings are woven into the fabric, in many cases supporting or enabling preservation that would otherwise be more financially difficult.

like new york, there are also ways to transfer air rights (TDRs here) which in essence compensate and the owners of historic buildings for the un-developability of their land.



it's most successful in the way that the high rises around union square, yerba buena gardens, and the western edge of the financial district blend into the very dense, bustling shopping and eating/drinking which is mostly accomodated in older mid-rise buildings. you also see it in smaller preservation districts throughout the city.

there are some important policy moves which allow this. the base floor area ratio of most downtown sites is actually fairly low. to increase it to skyscraper levels requires transferring development rights. there are exceptions, but generally no development rights can ever be transferred to a lot which contains or once contained a historic structure. even the newer districts which don't limit maximum floor area ratio generally preserve this basic method for increasing density beyond the mid-rise base.

[10023]

^ Actual density is increased mostly by reducing the amount of land given over to cars, not by building taller buildings. Most historic cities are far denser than modern ones.