※ [本文转录自 spacedunce5 信箱] 作者: [email protected] ([email protected]) 标题: [优文] Witold Rybczynski, Makeshift Metropolis 时间: Wed Jun 1 18:33:32 2011 作者: spacedunce5 (显示为单身) 看板: defenestrate 标题: [优文] Witold Rybczynski, Makeshift Metropolis 时间: Sun May 29 22:46:05 2011 p103 Ungainly and crude, the lowly shopping cart has remained unaltered for seventy years, making up in practicality what it lacks in elegance. Big-box stores [大润发, Costco, IKEA, etc.] proved so successful that they spawned a new kind of suburban shopping place, the power center. A power center consists of several big boxes (as few as three, as many as a dozen) arranged around a large parking lot. Unlike a shopping mall, a power center has no small shops, the entrances to the big boxes are far apart, and if you have to go to more that one store, you drive. There are no enclosed common areas---- shoppers are not directed, or even encouraged, to visit more than one store; if you want a flat-screen television, you drive to one box; if it's toilet paper you're after, you drive to another. The economic rationale for a power center is nearby highway access and a shared parking lot; sociability, that staple of traditional shopping places----even malls----is entirely absent. p179 There isn't a single answer to the question "What kind of cities do we want?" because different people want so many different things. While the majority of us appear to prefer dispersed small cities, a significant minority want to live in concentrated big cities, and a tiny fraction is prepared to pay the price of living in the very center of things. Most of us want lively downtowns, at least to visit if not to live in. Nor is it simply a question of individual preferences; we want different things at different times: an exciting big city when we are young, beginning a career, and looking for a mate; a dispersed small city close to nature when we are raising a family; a culture-rich downtown when we are empty nesters; and a walkable small city in a warm climate when we retire. If cities are shaped by popular demand, one can expect them to exhibit a variety that is no less rich and diverse than the variety of Americans themselves. p199 [The temptation of] an opportunity to replace demand-side urbanism with supply- side planning . . . must be resisted. The urban lessons of the last hundred years should not go unheeded. Small is not always beautiful, but piecemeal urbanism has a long and proven track record. Effective planning should recognize that while the market is not always right, an aggregation of individual decisions is generally closer to the mark than the plans of willful urban visionaries, however exciting those plans appear on paper. . . . History does not always have all the answers----new problems do sometimes require new solutions----but it behooves us to keep one eye on the past as we venture into the future. . . . [F]reedom from history is no freedom at all. The next city will include much that is new, but to succeed it cannot ignore what came before. Linking the past with the present, and seeing the old anew, has always been part of our improvised urban condition. --

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※ 发信站: 批踢踢实业坊(ptt.cc) ◆ From: 122.124.102.102 ※ 编辑: spacedunce5 来自: 122.124.102.102 (06/01 18:40)