(Caution, long entry ahead – if you don’t have time, stop and come back when you do! )

Last weekend Alex and I took a nice long walk around the 6.1-mile “Big Loop” of Central Park. Now, I’ve been to CP quite a few times since moving to NYC, but not walked around the whole thing. Mostly I’ve just gone here or there for a brief stroll or bit of pretend exercise. This was a serious walk, which felt wonderful, but more importantly made me see CP in a little bit of a new light.

See, I think New York is ugly. There are some great things about it, but for me it’s just too much human boxes and pavement, and too little nature, too little life, too little “other.” I’m no fan of suburban sprawl, but at least in your average suburb you probably have a yard with some grass. So I’ve always thought NYC would be better with more small parks spread throughout, and not just one big park in the center. I mean, OK, you got this one gigantic park rectangle in the middle (CP itself), you got the almost as impressive North Manhattan Parks and Riverside Park; and sure, you get your smaller multi-block parks like Battery Park and specks of green dotted throughout. But it just seems too centralized, too separate, too much “Here’s the people, and here’s the park, and never the ‘twain shall meet.” I hate the connotation of nature as not part of life, but an escape that you go to when you need or want it. The way we componentize our lives – work vs. play, real vs. nature, “what matters” vs. “recreation”. OK, I don’t hate it, but it bugs me. I want a bit of nature in everyday life – a bit of wonder, a bit of color and curves and patience and passion.

So in the past I thought, looking at a map, CP is just this big block in the middle, cordoned off from the rest of the city – it would be better to take that huge chunk of green and split it up, spreading it out into the city and thereby also breaking up the monotony of the city blocks. There should be a nice medium-sized park every few blocks. Wide malls and no-car streets… open spaces & green shade. A more pedestrian city.

Yet last weekend’s circumscription of the park helped me see it in a new light and appreciate it’s size. First off, it’s not so big – in fact, it’s easy to walk around, while still encompassing “The Ramble”, an area in the middle of the park where you can manage to feel lost, if not actually get lost. Second, if you got rid of CP you’d lose a place to do such exercise. The big loop is a big asset, allowing thousands of people to walk, bike, rollerblade, etc. I value that now, having used it.

OK, so CP is a great thing and I wouldn’t want to lose it. But I still think NYC is ugly and not really the kind of city I wish people would build. I see now that it’s not just a matter of park distribution – we need big parks, and CP is located centrally which allows it to be relatively equidistant for everyone in Manhattan, though it’s easier to get to for people on the upper east and west sides. So what could be done to fix how I feel about New York, if distributing more, smaller parks through the city is not the answer?

As usual, it’s a matter of design. Our living/working spaces influence our view of the world, and our view of the world influences our spaces. NYC is a city of bankers, mostly. Bankers & corporate headquarters. And landlords. A city of money and a ruthless, spartan aesthetic of necessity, and therefore of soulless, passionless architecture and planning that matches. (I know I’m being simplistic and disingenuous with respect to the reasons for current NYC design & planning, but stay with me…) Chances are, even if there were a good-sized park every few blocks, I’d still find NYC ugly, because the architecture, streets, and engineering of the city are so devoid of nature.

I want an architecture and engineering of building and cities that pays homage to nature, that acknowledges our place in it instead of representing our insane drive to separate ourselves from it at all costs. I want to live in a new urban city, with swooping architecture, playful streets, open spaces and habitat-conscious engineering. As Viridian Design founder Bruce Sterling said in reply to a question about “conscientious consumerism,” “No, no, you’re not getting it yet — you’ve got to go deeper than that. If you have to be “conscientious” about it, that means that the system is malfunctioning. Being ‘conscientious’ is just another term for letting morons with crap products steal your valuable attention. You are co-dependent with bad design when you’re ‘conscientious.’ Piece-of-junk twentieth century technologies like coal-fired power plants shouldn’t even exist.”

I agree. Faceless, souless design like the endless gray city blocks of NYC shouldn’t even exist, in my opinion. We should love where we live. Granted, some people love NYC just the way it is. I still think they’d love it even more if it were designed better.

Do I have anything specific in mind? Not as such; I’m not an architect or city planner. But I find the growing New Urbanism movement in city design fascinating and encouraging. That last link is especially cool – Metropolis Magazine has this section of their site devoted to issues of design ethics & sustainability.

But even better, I wanted to link to arcology and Arcosanti. From the first link: “An Arcology is based on Paolo Soleri’s concept of the development of compact 3-D alternatives to existing urban sprawls, combining more efficient use of land and resources.” That’s what I mean when I refer to better engineering: a more conscious, efficient, yet beautiful effort. I just find exciting the very idea that out there, somewhere, are people stalwartly working on experimental building and design for everyday living. I mean, dammit, when I was growing up I had a subscription to World Magazine and I remember fondly the articles about people who built houses made from clay and old soda cans, or advanced polymer bubbles, or whatever. Where is the fun, the experimenting, the beauty and efficiency, the desire for living with the earth instead of just on her? It’s over there.

Well, I’m sure we’ll get there somehow, and I know there are always the practical matters of money and time and space to hold us back. What it comes down to is – I will always be willing to spend a little more for better quality, especially in building and city design, hoping that I will thereby be giving something better and more lasting to future generations. This is not to judge past generations who didn’t have the same level of science and social equality to even begin to see these options. We know we can do better now, though, and we should try. And I like Central Park.