Hudson Yards Is Terrible

It’s been about 18 months since it opened, but I think it’s fair to acknowledge that a verdict that has already been rendered: Hudson Yards is terrible. It was terrible before the pandemic that killed our city, and it is even more terrible now. It isn’t just the Vessel. The whole thing sucks.

Well, not Mercado Little Spain. That’s great. Tapas, gin and tonics, wine and genuine Spanish atmosphere.

But this city within a city sucks. Why not start with the public plaza that hosts the Vessel. It’s designer, Thomas Heatherwick, created one of my favorite things, the New Routemaster bus for London (TFL). But the Vessel is easily one of the worst things in New York. It’s an anti-social, $200 Million dollar vanity project for a pro-Trump billionaire developer. It’s pointless. And it’s not New York. Well, actually, it is. New York happily allows parts of itself itself to be destroyed for projects like this. The Vessel is like the middle finger to both the city and state governments which sold the site for too little, spent too much to assist the construction, and gave-up too much in future tax revenues to allow the site to be built. In addition, Hudson Yards sits at the northern end of the High Line, a sunny open space that, while enjoyable on weekdays, is really a device designed to inflate land values and make luxury condo developers more rich. It’s a neat private park, built from wisely-preserved infrastructure, designed to promote real estate appreciation, for 11 years and counting.

But back to the public outdoor space at Hudson Yards, which is still incomplete. Does Mayor Bill de Blasio remember saying that it “will be one of the great public squares of New York City”? Does anyone? It’s a car passenger pickup/drop-off point and a pointless sculpture. How full of shit can a New York mayor -and this city- be? I used to think that Los Angeles was full of shit. But I’ve seen recent scholarly works, mainly by Mike Davis, that make the case the our nation’s second largest city should be taken seriously.

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It’s a driveway. They have their place, like hospitals and Vegas resorts. But it’s a driveway to a mall and a vanity sculpture.

Theses and books can and will be written about Hudson Yards, the Billioaire’s city within a city that was enjoyed for just over a year before our economy and our city collapsed. I will not write a book here. But I want to repeat a key argument that is at the heart of the failure that is Hudson Yards: it’s not for us locals. It’s for billionaires. One of the first things people noticed about the shopping mall inside Hudson Yards was that it is devoid of places to sit and has a woeful lack of public restrooms, aside from those inside the upscale restaurants. If you visited its architectural sibling, The Shops at Columbus Circle, before the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, you would see restrooms on all three upper levels, plus renovated outdoor seating inside Columbus Circle. Both The Shops at Columbus Circle and The Shops And Restaurants at Hudson Yards were designed by Boston based Elkus Manfredi Architects. It’s not the most welcoming place, but it has places to sit. Not so with Hudson Yards.

It only gets worse from there. The people who over-payed for luxury condos in Hudson Yards mainly don’t live in New York. Retired Chinese tennis player Li Na was the final example I could find before the economy collapsed, and she most definitely over-paid.

The residential real estate at Hudson Yards is cynical in my view. These are investment properties, not a practical place to live and work -not anymore. I could see myself living there, sure. I could walk to my Midtown East office from there. With no children, I wouldn’t have to worry about the lack of schools in that area. Being a West Sider, I would continue to reply on the 1 and A trains to get to other parts of the city I frequent. But the fact remains, these properties are not for us locals. A wealthy New Yorker would probably look at Long Island City, Greenpoint, Williamsburg or downtown Brooklyn before seriously considering Hudson Yards.

It amazes me that we are not easily impressed anymore by engineering or architectural feats that were radical 50 or even 30 years ago. Slurry walls? A “bathtub” of concrete? Massive steel plates to support tall buildings over hollow spaces? A hidden network of service tunnels? Pneumatic garbage chutes and underground garbage collection? A full fiber-optic network? Hudson Yards has all of those. These engineering feats got some attention, but overall, they didn’t generate excitement.

Hudson Yards hoped to be welcomed the way we were in awe with the original World Trade Center. But instead, it’s been greeted by locals with a shrug. And now it is dying, like this rest of this once-great city.

New York Needed Congestion Pricing 10 Years Ago

There is no doubt New York City needs congestion pricing. It it is to remain a World City, like London, it must. But we can see that this proposal will fail. There is too much resistance from the counties outside the city. Just one more reason for this city to be its own Federalized district, like DC. New York is too important to this country to be ruled by Westchester, Long Island and Albany. Paris, London and Tokyo are national capitals. They don’t have this chronic political problem that New York has. Let’s fix it. New York is the economic capital of the United States. And it can’t have people driving into midtown who don’t NEED to.

The USA Missed Its Chance To Make Room For High Speed Rail

High speed rail is not coming to the US in any sustained system, except perhaps in California.

Why? The USA missed its chance after World War II, when it had the capital and its rail corridors could have gotten the width they needed for freight and passenger trains on their own tracks. If the US tried to make room for high speed rail on the west and east coasts today, it would cost hundreds of billions. Of course, the US is still spending $2 Billion a week in Afghanistan. So I guess we can't afford it. 

In France, Germany Japan and China, where four of the world class train systems are found, the high speed passenger services were built from scratch, not piggybacked on an old, existing, mostly freight rail system. A world war helped, and that included a lot of bombing by the US and UK. But I don't think that's any excuse. The USA remained a wealthy nation through the space age. Just look at what happened to Penn Station. The French National Rail Corporation would die laughing if it ever got a good look at Penn Station and Amtrak. After all, France is a first world country, while the United States barely qualifies as a banana republic. And I wrote these words before news came out that the state of New York is considering yet another private company to manage the crumbling Penn Station.

This ties into the bigger, more obvious issue that mass transit in the US is generally terrible. The underlying reason is the same: the best chance for planning and funding was in the last century (either before the 1920 crash, or just after WWII). In my father's day, New York City took care of it's essential infrastructure. The automobile had not yet become the dominant means of transportation, and Robert Moses had not yet rearranged the city to accommodate millions of cars. Now, after decades of neglect, the bill is coming due. I hope the city gets the help it needs, because it's approaching a dangerous tipping point.

A Quick Note About Reflective High Profile Buildings

Architects and their sponsors have often been guilty of allowing their ambitions to overwhelm their common sense. But these days, technology and ego have combined to produce buildings that approach lethality.

Why, one wonders, does a designer simply ignore the likely consequences of using highly polished surfaces in dense, urban environments? Why does he create a building which cannot ever be watertight, or creates wind tunnels which propell hurricane force winds down pedestrian packed streets?  Why not, if it brings fame and huge fees!

Update, September 6, 16:50: "We'll take care of it."