Rybczynski: “This green thing.” | Nov 7th at 11:54pm
The evening plenary, Getting the Message Out: Urban Design and 21st Century Media, was of obvious interest to me as a journalist—which also meant I walked in with my biases. (Joke.) I’ve been having a conversation in my head with Witold Rybczynski ever since reading his wonderful book, City Life, a decade ago. But if one of the things I’ve been tossing around over the course of today is how relevant the old (local) way of thinking about cities is to the new set of (global) problems, then I’m obligated to call out Rybczynski on a few things.
He showed his hand with his first words, when he referred to the topic of the day as “this green thing”—a phraseology that seemed the urban design equivalent of McCain’s “that one.” I was struck by his skepticism about the situation—not that the planet is warming, but rather that cities are inextricably linked with its future—and therefore the realm of architecture and urbanism critics. This doesn’t seem to me a matter of journalistic restraint, but rather a seismic shift in our beat—in what we cover when we cover cities. At one point, Inga Saffron, architecture critic at the Philadelphia Inquirer and moderator of the panel, asked Rybczynski if he believed critics will one day feel obliged to consider a building’s green credentials in its evaluation. “I think it is quite possible, and I think we’re probably getting there,” he responded, a bit unconvincingly.
It’s not clear to me why we’re not there already—if not for sanctimonious reasons, then for journalistic ones. Those of us who write about architecture and cities are sitting on the story of the century. Buildings and cities are relevant in new ways. They have political and scientific consequences that capital-A architecture—and its critics—are only slowly coming to terms with.
Not that these are easy stories to tell. On the same panel, New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin explained the challenge of covering something happening so slowly and amorphously. “Global science is all someday somewhere. Newspapers are about today,” he said. “These issues are the antithesis of the stuff we’ve been calling news for the last 150 years.”
Andrew Blum writes about architecture, urbanism and technology from Brooklyn, NY. A contributing editor at Metropolis and Wired magazines, his work can also be read at andrewblum.net.
