Image Courtesy of CityRealty

从中央公园的上空向南眺望“亿万富翁大道”楼群，我们可以看到近处城中的各类高层，多样的金融中心，及远处布鲁克林市区的高层。       最近几年，大量的单薄高挑的超高层塔楼在曼哈顿涌现，这似乎成了不可避免的趋势。所有人都知道这些单体建筑：派克大街432号，One57，诺德斯特姆大楼，MoMA大楼等。但当城市地产公布了预测的纽约2018年天际线的渲染图时，市民才首次被迫去思考这些新的大楼所产生的综合效应。类似观点的文章《纽约摩天大楼的繁荣和涓滴都市生活的失败》，最先在《大都市杂志》上刊登。文章中，Joshua K Leon认为如果一个城市只为少部分人服务是无法立足大众的。       富豪之城将会是什么样的呢？       城市地产（CityRealty）新的效果图给我们部分的展示了曼哈顿2018年的样子。未来都市的形态将会是各种瘦高的摩天大楼林立，使整个天际线就像是后现代主义的盒子、奇怪的石笋、乱七八糟的注射器。这些塔楼共同的特点就是绝对纯粹的体量以及一群绝不妥协的富豪客户们。       令人沮丧的是，这张渲染图还向我们展现了一种未来建筑项目的必然趋势，而这种趋势是我们本应该避免的。这不仅仅是指一个或者两个这样奢侈的塔楼，而是指所有这些塔楼。其中的一些塔楼对天际线的危害甚至会持续好几个时代。One57 的设计原本希望是像一个瀑布，但是完全失败。矗立在西57街上的诺德斯特姆大楼平平无奇的外观与其同名的租户的乡村购物中心的气质完全吻合。格林威治125号大楼则展现了另外一种高、瘦、锋利的风格。无区域特色且尺度过大的哈德森综合体被赋予“哈德森小香港”的名号。       公平的说，其他的设计不算糟糕。比较不错的建筑包括：Raphael Viñoly设计的派克大街432号大楼，是它由无数直角组成大楼立面；位于53大街，由让·努维尔操刀设计的引人注目的MoMA大厦有一个非稳定的锥形形体。这个建筑的底部将将作为现代艺术博物馆的展馆，这使得这个奢侈建筑同时也给非精英人士带来了欢乐。       有一部分评论者支持这类规模的建筑，认为这有助于重振城市过去的繁荣气象。《大西洋杂志》的Kriston Capps断言纽约将会——引用奥罗索夫的话——再次成为“资本主义的大本营”，就像是迪拜、新加坡、北京那样。（难道资本主义的大本营就必须独裁专制吗？）       新开发的城市气象将会被人们自豪的印在明信片上，但是却没有生气。事实上很多高端买家很少居住在城市里，导致城市里有许多死气沉沉的街区。 View above Central Park looking south towards “Billionaire’s Row” towers, with Midtown towers in background and various Financial District and Downtown Brooklyn Towers in far background. In recent years, it’s been difficult to miss the spate of super tall, super-thin towers on the rise in Manhattan. Everyone knows the individual projects: 432 Park Avenue, One57, the Nordstrom Tower, the MoMA Tower. But, when a real estate company released renders of the New York skyline in 2018, it forced New Yorkers to consider for the first time the combined effect of all this new real estate. In this opinion article, originally published by Metropolis Magazine as “On New York’s Skyscraper Boom and the Failure of Trickle-Down Urbanism,” Joshua K Leon argues that the case for a city of the one percent doesn’t stand up under scrutiny. What would a city owned by the one-percent look like? New renderings for CityRealty get us part way there, illustrating how Manhattan may appear in 2018. The defining feature will be a bumper crop of especially tall, slender skyscrapers piercing the skyline like postmodern boxes, odd stalagmites, and upside-down syringes. What they share in common is sheer unadulterated scale and a core clientele of uncompromising plutocrats. The renderings instill a depressing sense of inevitability toward projects that should have been fought off. I don’t just mean one or two of these luxury towers, but all of them. Some of these designs threaten to mar the skyline for generations. One 57 is supposed to look like a waterfall, altogether failing. The “Nordstrom Tower” emerging on West 57th Street is plain enough to complement the suburban mall ethos of its eponymous tenant. 125 Greenwich offers another variant on tall, thin, and bland. The placeless, over-scaled Hudson Yards complex earned itself the label “Hong Kong on the Hudson.” To be fair, other designs aren’t so bad. Among the best: Raphael Viñoly’s 432 Park Avenue cuts a distinguished profile comprised of seemingly countless right angles. Jean Nouvel’s eye-catching MoMA Tower on 53rd Street has a slightly off-kilter pyramidal form. Its lower floors will feature Museum of Modern Art exhibits, making it the rare luxury building capable of fostering joyful moments for the non-elite. Some observers praise the sheer scale of this construction for helping the city recover its purported bygone virility. The Atlantic’s Kriston Capps asserts that New York can—quoting Nicolai Ouroussoff—once again be a “great citadel of capitalism” like Dubai, Singapore, and Beijing. (Must capitalism’s great citadels all be authoritarian?). That newfound urban vitality will register proudly in postcards but flatline up close. The fact that many top-end buyers seldom live in the city promises some pretty dead blocks.

从长岛看向联合大厦及曼哈顿市中心。Image Courtesy of CityRealty

涓滴都市生活形态证明这种城市结构的无限制性。我们昔日的市长Michael Bloomberg对此解释说：“如果我们可以让世界上很多亿万富豪都搬到这里，就再好不过了”，他认为，“因为那里的税收可以照顾到其他人。       但是我们是否真的需要像Bloomberg坚持认为的那样，打造一个建筑环境来逢迎富人？这样的说法显然忽略了整个城市的社会资源也是流向高端，更多地为精英住宅和奢华工作空间买单这样一个现实。就像是《纽约时报》所说，这些豪宅的购买者为当地带来了大量的税收。而开发商也从这些摩天大楼的高需求中获利。       大量的公共资金也集中在这些兴兴向荣的企业经济里。这其中包括了这个城市里所修建的摩天大楼。例如世界贸易中心，美国银行大楼，高盛投资公司总部大楼等都是市场和政治结合的产物。（它们的独家收益被Good Jobs New York大范围记录在关于城市补贴的报道中）。 An ideology of trickle-down urbanism justifies the immoderate scope of this construction.”Our erstwhile mayor explains it best: “If we can find a bunch of billionaires around the world to move here, that would be a godsend,” argued Michael Bloomberg. “Because that’s where the revenue comes to take care of everybody else.” But do we absolutely need, as Bloomberg insisted, a built environment that caters first and foremost to the absurdly rich? The argument ignores the fusillade of social supports flowing upward, paying for elite home and work lives. As the New York Times explains, buyers of ultra luxury units get massive tax breaks. Developers take advantage of heightened demand for these safety deposit boxes in the sky. Vast public sums also underwrite the corporate economy upon which the highest strata thrive. This includes skyscraper construction around the city. For example, the World Trade Center, Bank of America Tower, and Goldman Sachs headquarters are creatures of state as well as market. (Their exclusive benefits are extensively documented by Good Jobs New York’s useful reportage on city subsidies).

从东区上方看向城市南面。Image Courtesy of CityRealty

我认为奢侈城市是政府可以调控的，而不仅仅是自由市场所主导，这里肯定会有其他的解决途径。公众住宅存在着大量积压的基础维修问题，为何不将稀缺的城市消费能力集中在这些事情上呢？      涓滴的都市生活的支持者依旧认为奢侈的建筑可以作为社会资源，并认为可以通过增加总体数量的方式来解决住房短缺问题。这忽略了住房市场的断层问题。通过修建豪华公寓来解决住房危机犹如制造宾利车来解决汽车短缺一样不切实际。若不加干预，自由市场将会催生出更加奇怪的住宅。       尽管建筑的总体供应量很重要，这些奢侈的公寓大楼依然不能够有效的解决问题。派克大街432号是曼哈顿西部地区最高的住宅楼，只有104户。在格林威治街道125号，由Viñoly设计的相似建筑有1358英尺高，却只有128户。One57大楼1000多英尺高却只有对于城市住宅来说微不足道的92户。相比于这些高楼，1957年修建于上东区只有13层的小楼房却能容纳119户居民。       这里就存在一个巨大的矛盾，城市不断建造大量的房子来满足销售的需求，却甚少基于使用的考虑。那些被认为应该为纽约市民创造实际生活空间的纽约开发商是否真的该进行这样的财富储备？       当面对这些极少数全球顶级富豪们的投资需求时，政府津贴是没有意义的，建筑高度限制和销售记录根本无法阻止他们。那些倾向于涓滴式城市发展的规划师们是否拥有同样大胆的抱负来直面社会的挑战？这些建筑所真正表现的是这个时代拙劣的政治眼光。他们将向我们的子孙后代证明我们是怎么强化社会阶级秩序。 My point here is that the luxury city is a policy choice rather than free market inevitability, and there are always alternatives. Public housing faces vast backlogs in basic repairs. Why not place scarce municipal spending power there instead? Proponents of trickle-down urbanism still hold up luxury construction as a social good, promising to alleviate housing scarcity by increasing overall supply. This ignores segmentations in the housing market.Solving a housing crisis by building penthouses would be like trying to solve an automobile shortage by manufacturing Bentleys. Left to its own devices, the “free market” is producing the wrong kind of housing. Even if the overall supply mattered, luxury condo buildings are still wonders of inefficiency. 432 Park, the tallest residential skyscraper in the Western hemisphere, will have only 104 units. A similar design by  at 125 Greenwich Street, which will be 1,358 feet tall, plans just 128 units. One57, which peaks at more than 1,000 feet, adds a paltry 92 units to the city’s housing stock. By comparison my relatively small thirteen-story building, built in 1957 on the Upper East Side, has 119 apartments. The massive contradiction here is that the city is building so much to sell, yet so little to use. Should New York City developers—whom you’d think would be obliged to produce actual living spaces—be in the business of wealth storage? When it comes to the investment demands of the global one-percent, no subsidy is too conspicuous, no height or sales records are safe. Could trickle-down urbanists ever advocate meeting social challenges with equally bold ambition? What these buildings really reflect is the impoverished political imagination of the times. They will tell posterity how we reinforced steep social hierarchy.

作者介绍：Joshua K. Leon是爱纳大学政治学和国际关系研究方向的副教授。他关于城市的文章发表在《Metropolis》、《Dissent》、《Foreign Policy in Focus》等多家杂志。他的著作《全球健康的提升：有效集体行为的进化 》将在明年春季发表。他居住于曼哈顿。 Joshua K. Leon is an assistant professor of political science and international studies at Iona College. His writing on cities appears in publications including Metropolis, Dissent, and Foreign Policy in Focus. His book The Rise of Global Health: The Evolution of Effective Collective Action is due out next spring. He lives in Manhattan.

出处：本文译自www.archdaily.com/，转载请注明出处。 编辑：Vigo，范偲慧，卢荣姝