Vertical Village: Living in the Sky

Essay, expanding design practices, High Density, ODA, Patricia Gortari, Territory and mobility, Unboxing New York

Architect’s role, Architecture, Built environment, Cities, Community, Context, Cultural agitator, Density, Essay, Future cities, History, Industrial revolution, Infrastructure, Megacities & High Density, Metropolis, Residential, Skyscrapers, Slums, Suburbs, Technology, Transportation, Urban planning

This essay is an excerpt of "Unboxing New York" by ODA, published by Actar Publishers -- https://lccn.loc.gov/2017956616

History has seen many iterations of vertical living, but the real pursuit for cities today should be interconnected living in the sky.
There are many more examples throughout history that show how fragmented, organic communities like these were created to meet the needs of a specific time and people, spanning outdoor spaces and communal landscapes that look much different from the urban silos we see across cities today. It’s not that we’re blind to history’s teachings, but the development we’ve enjoyed over the past 200 years or so, since the dawn of the Industrial Revo­lution, is but a fraction of the extended, centuries-long, slow growth these historic sites saw. Where rural flight once accounted for a 20 percent increase in urban populations, today that number exceeds 50 percent. Considering the global population is seven times larger than it was at the turn of the nineteenth century, the magnitude of the issue of density can seem daunting. That said, it’s important to remember that we haven’t had much time to adapt to our new condition and, as such, we’ve been reactive rather than proactive.