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This
is a Trip that I've been postponing for a while, because it's a tough one.
New York City is, undoubtedly, the world's primary example of the Heroic Materialist
style in City Design, in the pre-World War II format. I've been calling this
19th Century Hypertrophism.
The
Heroic Materialist era began with the Industrial Revolution, around 1780 or
so. This also coincides exactly with the beginning of the United States, in
1776 (Declaration of Independence) or 1789 (Constitution), depending on how
you want to count it. Thus, the United States is also overwhelmingly
dominated by the Heroic Materialist style in all things, whether the earlier
version that we are calling 19th Century Hypertrophism, or the later version,
20th Century Hypertrophism.
Like
all things Heroic Materialist, the 19th Century Hypertrophic City exemplifies
certain repetitive thought processes. At some point, I'll have to have a
separate piece on Heroic Materialism. However, we can begin by summarizing
some of the basic attributes.
To
make things very simple, Heroic Materialism is the basic aesthetic of a
mechanical or civil engineer. First, it is an aesthetic. It is not actually practical, it
is a sort of artistic
style. However, it is the artistic
style of an engineer -- a gearhead guy who likes machines. For
example, let's say you wanted to show up at a party and make a big
impression. A mechanical engineer would probably want to show up in something
like this:
Vroom Vroom!
However,
a mechanical engineer probably wouldn't even think about showing up on
something like this -- a thoroughbred stallion. It's not that he doesn't like
it, it just isn't something that crosses his mind.
And
this? Just plain weird to a mechanical engineer.
Only a
euro-poofter would want to show up to a party in a gondola.
Of
course, it doesn't really matter what you show up in to a party. There is no
actual need we are fulfilling here. It's all just fun and games. That's why I
call it an aesthetic. The Heroic Materialist aesthetic is an aesthetic of
practicality, while actually being often absurdly impractical. I mentioned
the Rolex watch. It represents an aesthetic
of practcality -- "it helps you get to the top of
Everest" -- but actually, it is expensive, breaks easily, is heavy
(mountaineers are nuts about weight), and doesn't have the digital alarm that
wakes you up at 3am so you can start your trip to the top of Everest.
(Digital alarms are very important to mountaineers who need to get up early.)
This aesthetic
stems largely from the realities of industrialization itself. The fact of the
matter is, the mechanical engineers, and those that employed them, were
getting rich! The thoroughbred stallion represents landed gentry, the
aesthetic of the aristocrats who gained their wealth from the land. The
gondola represents Old Europe, centuries of tradition and artistic subtlely
and handmade craft, all quaintly anachronistic and increasingly irrelevant in
a world then powered by coal and made by machines and out of steel.
Thus,
we see that the Heroic Materialist style is very masculine. There's little in
the way of feminine attributes. Things that are soft, comfortable, colorful,
decorative. Where are the flowers and kitty cats? Luxe? Calme? Volupte? Gone, gone, all
gone. The Heroic Materialist style, in City Design, looks a lot like our
mechanical engineer's bachelor apartment. In other words, it looks like shit.
(Naturally, our young engineer is completely oblivious.)
Like
this. Practical. Utilitarian. Not a teeny whiff of decoration, or anything
soft, living, gentle.
Jean
Honore Fragonard, The
Swing, 1766.
This
painting is often used as a representation of the ideals of the 18th century,
which were replaced by Heroic Materialism. See what I mean? Can you see how
this expresses a
different aesthetic? We are in nature -- and not a managed,
controlled, dominated nature; a mechanical engineer's version of nature, like
a cornfield -- but nature that is wild and mysterious. The nature of
unicorns, devas and fairies. We see that everyone is dressed, not in
workmans' overalls, or miner's clothes (jeans and a t-shirt), but the most
fanciful and impractical clothing you could imagine. Along with nature, we
have a sculpture, the addition of a beautiful (and completely useless)
human-made thing to mesh harmoniously with the natural beauty of the forest.
The people here have lots of leisure time, with nothing to do except enjoy
the process of life in all of its splendor, which, in this case, means
looking up a young woman's skirt.
We'll
dwell on Heroic Materialism more at a later date. What I want to consider now
is how this Heroic Materialist style was translated into City Design.
The
primary characteristic of 19th Century Hyptertrophism is that it is
hypertrophic. That's a fancy word that means big, really big. Big big big.
Everything is goddamn big. Is there any reason for things to be so much
bigger? No. Humans are the same size as always. But, BIG BIG BIG is one of
the core themes (i.e., repetitive thought processes) of Heroic Materialism.
Bigger houses. Bigger TVs. Bigger cars. Bigger hamburgers. Bigger boobs.
Big it
up baby!
Since
cities are mostly made of streets and buildings, we find that the 19th
Century Hypertrophic City has really big streets, and really big buildings.
Manhattan.
19th Century Hypertrophism at its most Hypertrophic.
Siena,
Italy. The Traditional City, in the normal scale that cities around the world
were built in before they all became Hypertrophied.
OK,
you are probably thinking: "hmmmm, looks kinda similar to me."
I did
that on purpose.
Look a
little more closely. How wide is the street in Manhattan? We see a pretty
wide sidewalk, of perhaps ten feet on either side of the street. Then,
there's a roadway in the middle, with a row of cars parked on either side.
Then, there's at least one lane of traffic in the middle of the street. All
in all, the Manhattan street is about forty or fifty feet wide. Considering
that this is about the
narrowest that streets get in Manhattan, that is pretty wide! We
saw earlier that Traditional City streets all around the world are often
12-16 feet wide.
November 15, 2009: Let's Kick Around Carfree.com
Here's
a busy commercial street in Venice, a wonderful Traditional City. This is not
some tiny back alley, or even an unusually narrow street for Venice. However,
it is only one-third
the width of our Manhattan street! The Hypertrophic City's street are not
just "a little" larger, they are three times larger, or more than
three times! If we were to take a bustling commercial street in Manhattan,
like Madison Avenue, how wide is that?
Madison Avenue.
Madison Avenue.
Madison
Avenue.
Here
we have five lanes of traffic, and 12-15 foot sidewalks on either side. Just one sidewalk on
Madison Avenue is as wide as the whole street in Venice!
I
suppose you could say: "OK, but Madison Avenue has to be wide because of
all the cars."
But
Madison Avenue was created 100 years before cars!
What
actually happened, was that we
needed to create cars to have something to fill up Madison Avenue.
This
is a large commercial street in Lisbon, Portugal. Lisbon is a major European
capital. Portugal used to have an empire that spanned the globe. Can you see
the difference in scale between the Hypertrophic City and the Traditional
City? Note that there are no cars here, even today. That's because there isn't a big space in the
middle devoted to cars. Get it?
The
second Hypertrophic thing you should notice, from our first picture of
Manhattan, is that the buildings are much taller. The buildings are about fifteen
stories high. That is much taller than the Traditional City, which tends to
top out around six stories, the limits of practical use without elevators.
Look at the buildings in Siena again. They are about 4-5 stories tall. So,
along with a street that is about three times wider, we have buildings that
are about three times taller. Everything is three times bigger! That's why
the Manhattan photo and the Siena photo looked similar at first glance. The
relationship between width and height was about the same. In the case of
Madison Avenue, the street is more like five times wider, and the buildings
more like five or eight times taller.
Of
course, nobody started with the idea of "let's make a city, but, just
for fun, let's make everything three times bigger." It didn't work like
that at all. Actually, they made the Hypertrophic Streets first. Only much
later did they get around to making some Really Tall Buildings to go with the
Really Wide Streets. The first "skyscraper" in Manhattan was of
course the Flatiron Building:
See
the 3-7 story Traditional City style buildings all around the base? Also, we
can see what the streets of Manhattan looked like in 1902, before cars.
Real
empty.
See
the guy walking right in the middle of the street? He doesn't even have to
wait for a traffic light (not yet invented) because there's no traffic.
No
murderous machinery in the middle of people's living spaces. Yet.
There
are some more people in the middle of the street on the left.
The
Flatiron building was completed in 1902. It is 22 stories high.
This
period image gives an idea of what kind of impression the Flatiron Building
made when it was completed.
Woo
hoo! Finally, after a
hundred years, we now have some super-big buildings to go with
our super-big streets!
Actually,
I like Manhattan. The funny thing is, it is OK (not that great, but OK)
because the big buildings and the big streets match, to a certain degree. The
19th Century Hypertrophic City is, strangely enough, worse when it is only
sort-of-Hypertrophic. Remember
this picture?
This
is the main street in Norwich, New York. It is a small town of about 7,000
people, and never had too much more than that. The town was established in
1793, so the street width we're looking at here comes from the very earliest
days of 19th Century Hypertrophism.
As we
can see, it is just about the same width as Madison Avenue. However, Madison
Avenue is fun because the super-big street also comes with some super-big
buildings, and all the excitement and big business implied by that. Here we
have the Really Big Street, but some rather modest Traditional City-style
buildings. There's absolutely no
reason for this at all. No benefit, either. It would be much
better to have proper Traditional City-type avenue, like the one in Lisbon.
Unfortunately,
there's only one Manhattan. Pretty much all the cities built in the U.S.
during the 19th century -- and also most of New York City outside of Midtown
-- look much more like Norwich. This includes, for example, Chicago, San
Francisco, and Philadelphia.
Thus,
when I talk about the Traditional City, I absolutely
do not mean what is often taken as "traditional" in the
United States. It doesn't exist here. It only exists in Europe and Asia.
Actually,
the Traditional Cty does
exist in the United States, but only in the oldest parts of the oldest
cities, which were built in the Colonial period before the advent of Heroic
Materialism around 1780. Places like the oldest, Colonial-era bits of Lower
Manhattan, Boston, Philadelphia, and Newport, Rhode Island.
Look,
it's a Really Narrow
Street!
In the
United States!
And no cars!
Newport,
Rhode Island.
So, we
see that there was a change in City Design even
in the United States, from the Traditional City to 19th Century
Hypertrophism, around 1780.
Nathan
Lewis
Nathan
Lewis was formerly the chief international economist of a leading economic
forecasting firm. He now works in asset management. Lewis has written for the
Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal Asia, the Japan Times, Pravda, and
other publications. He has appeared on financial television in the United
States, Japan, and the Middle East. About the Book: Gold: The Once and Future
Money (Wiley, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-470-04766-8, $27.95) is available at
bookstores nationwide, from all major online booksellers, and direct from the
publisher at www.wileyfinance.com or 800-225-5945. In Canada, call
800-567-4797.
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