The
proposed redevelopment of the Javits site into a new urban neighborhood offers
an
opportunity to place New York City at the forefront of sustainable
urban
design, with a dense, mixed-use, pedestrian friendly neighborhood,
which would
also integrate solar energy efficiently and effectively.
The current
“towers in the park” project for the Hudson Yards is not the ideal model. And
neither is Battery Park City which lacks in diversity and is deserted by
pedestrians, with its purely residential areas separated by a group of office
towers.
Let’s have:
- a dense
grid of vibrant streets, typical of NYC, instead of car oriented super
blocks
- a real
city park instead of left
over “green
space” between towers
- passive
solar design at an urban scale instead of some token photovoltaic
panels
affixed on a Platinum LEED certified building as we saw in Battery Park
City:
they were not facing the sun and the architect explained that they were
there
merely as a “statement”, not really to harvest the
sun.
Passive
solar’s efficiency is 100%, whereas“Active
solar” photovoltaic panels’
efficiency is of 15 to 16% of the energy received from the sun.
With the
present major challenges to energy management (climate change + danger
inherent
to nuclear plants + instability in the oil producing middle-east + the
Gulf oil
spill, etc..etc....) it is essential
to
develop sustainable neighborhoods which will be:
-
specifically designed so as to integrate
efficient passive solar concepts, for affordability in the long run
(housing
will not remain affordable if it does not integrate free solar energy),
and to
protect the environment,
- and truly
walkable, pedestrian friendly, urban diversity and vibrant streets, for
economic and cultural development and for social integration.
New Sustainable Urban Forms are needed.
We
therefore have worked on this preliminary sketch of a sustainable urban
form
scheme for the Javits area.
It
comprises a dense grid of vibrant streets, a central urban park, two
wide piazzas,
a variety of urban functions on ground floor, like businesses, shops,
services,
leisures, theaters, etc…
