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I don't understand how that's different than a regular park in the middle of a city. Why would having a skyscraper in the middle of a park instead of beside it

I don't understand how that's different than a regular park in the middle of a city. Why would having a skyscraper in the middle of a park instead of beside it result in higher crime?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
tsunamifury 2y ago
People pass between small buildings and generally do things outside for practical reasons. A giant tower in a park just encapsulates everyone and leaves the park empty. Easily observable and any why the campus model took root.
- njarboe 2y ago
  Put this tower in the middle of central park and it would probably have the most expensive apartments on Earth.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    No it wouldn't - too far to get to anything else. It would be expensive just because it is still NYC and a high demand area, but it wouldn't be the most expensive because while it is close to one great thing about NYC it is far from all the others.
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    Because Central Park is literally surrounded by skyscrapers that don’t have parks in neighborhoods with below average park coverage other than Central Park. It’s the exception that proves the rule. It’s also not that safe and requires its own police precinct.
- DidYaWipe 2y ago
  How does it "encapsulate" anyone?
  - gertrunde 2y ago
    I think the encapsulation probably refers to the 'city in a building' aspect, i.e. residents have most needs satisfied within the building, and rarely need to leave the building itself. cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    With these tower in a park style developments you generally must walk through the park to get to any public street or further mode of transportation.
etrautmann 2y ago
Look up the history of Le Corbusiers’s housing developments. Huge gap between theoretically awesome and how they were used in practice.
bluGill 2y ago
A city is about what you can do. The skyscrapper in a park is less useful because you cannot walk to stores, work, or other things. As such people living there become used to driving everywhere. Even if they want to go to a park they will - out of habit - get in the car, and drive - at this point the local park is no better than any other. All those cars in fact imply a large parking lot and so the park isn't in walking distance of the door so it is reasonable to drive across the parking lot if you do want to visit that park. In short the park is too large compared to everything else and so it isn't enough of a draw for locals to keep out the rif-raf. Note that I said drive, not take transit above. Although the density might be there, the sky scrapper in the park ends up acting like a cul-de-sac: all transit has to make long detours to get to each one and so the effective speed of transit is unacceptably slow for any trip thus forcing people to drive just to get a reasonable trip time.
bobthepanda 2y ago
Regular parks are generally a lot smaller, so it’s easier to keep them busy and above the desolate threshold. The thing about the tower in the park ethos was that every building should be surrounded by park and the neighborhood should be more park than city. That’s way too low of a density to keep parks safe.
jordanb 2y ago
The problem is when the park exists just as negative space between the buildings, as a way to provide seperation. Towers surrounding a park, like Central Park in New York (or any decent size park in Manhattan) works well. Towers as a city wall like Grant Park in Chicago also work well. In both cases the park is a focal point of the urban form which puts all attention on the communal area it represents. The purpose of "towers in a park" was to break up the urban form, and have density without urbanism. One big problem they were trying to avoid is rooms where the "view" out the window was of a ventilation shaft between buildings. They wanted towers with "no such thing as a bad view" by positioning them in a staggered layout and with substantial setbacks. This creates a bunch of awkward negative spaces in the layout and the architect just stamps "park" on all the vacant areas. The result might be good views from inside the buildings but the no-man's-land between them becomes an alienating place with broken sight lines and blind corners. Toss in a criminal element and you end up with some really unpleasant spaces.
- thatcat 2y ago
  was this ever actually tried?
  - wahern 2y ago
    Yes, in just about every large city across the world, including Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, especially in cities, and newer parts of older cities, that were developed since the 1950s. It still influences contemporary architecture and city layout, though today maybe it's less deliberate (i.e. artistic, conceptual) and more a consequence of car culture and not wanting to crowd tall skyscrapers. So you just turn all the empty space between skyscrapers into "park", which almost invariably becomes desolate green space. It's the status quo even though the original concept has become largely discredited (or at least lacking for advocates) among the urban planning crowd and, to a lesser extent, architects (the effect frames their buildings as monoliths, easier to be admired as signature pieces). It originates with Le Corbusier and his Radiant City concept from the 1930s. See https://99percentinvisible.org/article/ville-radieuse-le-corbusiers-functionalist-plan-utopian-radiant-city/ https://99percentinvisible.org/article/ville-radieuse-le-cor.... The influences quickly spread through Europe and North America before exploding everywhere post WWII. There are several Wikipedia pages about Le Corbusiers, including https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ville_Radieuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ville_Radieuse but in a simple search I couldn't find one that gives a good overview of how influential it actually was. A lot academic urban planning literature discusses it. OTOH, the idea of less crowding long predated Le Corbusiers, and his vision may have been inevitable, but it was Le Corbusiers who packaged it up into a comprehensive concept, which helped the practice to spread much more rapidly and uniformly around the world.
WrongAssumption 2y ago
In Chicago they close the parks at night. You can't close a park if people need to get to and from a building in the middle of it.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  This is it. There are many regular city parks I wouldn't walk through at night even if they weren't closed. I walk around them not through them. I live in the park it becomes a problem.

I don't understand how that's different than a regular park in the middle of a city. Why would having a skyscraper in the middle of a park instead of beside it result in higher crime?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

tsunamifury 2y ago

People pass between small buildings and generally do things outside for practical reasons. A giant tower in a park just encapsulates everyone and leaves the park empty. Easily observable and any why the campus model took root.

njarboe 2y ago
Put this tower in the middle of central park and it would probably have the most expensive apartments on Earth.
- bluGill 2y ago
  No it wouldn't - too far to get to anything else. It would be expensive just because it is still NYC and a high demand area, but it wouldn't be the most expensive because while it is close to one great thing about NYC it is far from all the others.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  Because Central Park is literally surrounded by skyscrapers that don’t have parks in neighborhoods with below average park coverage other than Central Park. It’s the exception that proves the rule. It’s also not that safe and requires its own police precinct.
DidYaWipe 2y ago
How does it "encapsulate" anyone?
- gertrunde 2y ago
  I think the encapsulation probably refers to the 'city in a building' aspect, i.e. residents have most needs satisfied within the building, and rarely need to leave the building itself. cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  With these tower in a park style developments you generally must walk through the park to get to any public street or further mode of transportation.

etrautmann 2y ago

Look up the history of Le Corbusiers’s housing developments. Huge gap between theoretically awesome and how they were used in practice.

bluGill 2y ago

A city is about what you can do. The skyscrapper in a park is less useful because you cannot walk to stores, work, or other things. As such people living there become used to driving everywhere. Even if they want to go to a park they will - out of habit - get in the car, and drive - at this point the local park is no better than any other. All those cars in fact imply a large parking lot and so the park isn't in walking distance of the door so it is reasonable to drive across the parking lot if you do want to visit that park. In short the park is too large compared to everything else and so it isn't enough of a draw for locals to keep out the rif-raf. Note that I said drive, not take transit above. Although the density might be there, the sky scrapper in the park ends up acting like a cul-de-sac: all transit has to make long detours to get to each one and so the effective speed of transit is unacceptably slow for any trip thus forcing people to drive just to get a reasonable trip time.

bobthepanda 2y ago

Regular parks are generally a lot smaller, so it’s easier to keep them busy and above the desolate threshold. The thing about the tower in the park ethos was that every building should be surrounded by park and the neighborhood should be more park than city. That’s way too low of a density to keep parks safe.

jordanb 2y ago

The problem is when the park exists just as negative space between the buildings, as a way to provide seperation. Towers surrounding a park, like Central Park in New York (or any decent size park in Manhattan) works well. Towers as a city wall like Grant Park in Chicago also work well. In both cases the park is a focal point of the urban form which puts all attention on the communal area it represents. The purpose of "towers in a park" was to break up the urban form, and have density without urbanism. One big problem they were trying to avoid is rooms where the "view" out the window was of a ventilation shaft between buildings. They wanted towers with "no such thing as a bad view" by positioning them in a staggered layout and with substantial setbacks. This creates a bunch of awkward negative spaces in the layout and the architect just stamps "park" on all the vacant areas. The result might be good views from inside the buildings but the no-man's-land between them becomes an alienating place with broken sight lines and blind corners. Toss in a criminal element and you end up with some really unpleasant spaces.

thatcat 2y ago
was this ever actually tried?
- wahern 2y ago
  Yes, in just about every large city across the world, including Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, especially in cities, and newer parts of older cities, that were developed since the 1950s. It still influences contemporary architecture and city layout, though today maybe it's less deliberate (i.e. artistic, conceptual) and more a consequence of car culture and not wanting to crowd tall skyscrapers. So you just turn all the empty space between skyscrapers into "park", which almost invariably becomes desolate green space. It's the status quo even though the original concept has become largely discredited (or at least lacking for advocates) among the urban planning crowd and, to a lesser extent, architects (the effect frames their buildings as monoliths, easier to be admired as signature pieces). It originates with Le Corbusier and his Radiant City concept from the 1930s. See https://99percentinvisible.org/article/ville-radieuse-le-corbusiers-functionalist-plan-utopian-radiant-city/ https://99percentinvisible.org/article/ville-radieuse-le-cor.... The influences quickly spread through Europe and North America before exploding everywhere post WWII. There are several Wikipedia pages about Le Corbusiers, including https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ville_Radieuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ville_Radieuse but in a simple search I couldn't find one that gives a good overview of how influential it actually was. A lot academic urban planning literature discusses it. OTOH, the idea of less crowding long predated Le Corbusiers, and his vision may have been inevitable, but it was Le Corbusiers who packaged it up into a comprehensive concept, which helped the practice to spread much more rapidly and uniformly around the world.

WrongAssumption 2y ago

In Chicago they close the parks at night. You can't close a park if people need to get to and from a building in the middle of it.

lupusreal 2y ago
This is it. There are many regular city parks I wouldn't walk through at night even if they weren't closed. I walk around them not through them. I live in the park it becomes a problem.