Cities are alive, organic, vibrant with motion on the streets, pulsing with citizens crowding the sidewalks. They grow, and decline, and sometimes die. They evolve, transforming at the pace of nature, not fashion, changing in response to changes of both their constituent populace and the broader social environment. At their worst, cities are overwhelming; at their best, cities are stimulating. Quite often, they're both, and more.
Photographer Douglas Levere has chronicled the evolution of what many consider the paradigmatic city: New York. In his new book New York Changing,
The result is a frozen-in-time version of the "Century Cam" project film director Sam Raimi has proposed -- a network of cameras documenting urban evolution. While the Century Cam remains unbuilt, the still image analog remains possible. Levere's book isn't the conclusion to Berenice Abbott's beginning; it's simply another page. Photographers could -- and should -- revisit these locations again and again, building in a slow, measured pace the visual record of change. And the documentation of urban transformation shouldn't be limited to New York: cities from San Francisco to Shanghai, Mumbai to Munich, Rio to Rome, should be documented in this same way.
Successful cities are crucial to a successful bright green future. When they work, the dense environment is far more efficient than suburban and exurban sprawl, and the cultural churn is a trigger for innovation and creativity. Far from an environmental menace, cities can be very green. Cities are learning to be sustainable.
In 1994, Stewart Brand wrote How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built,
(Via IDFuel, the Industrial Design weblog)
