In January 2007, I aired some of the ideas that appear in this book in a public lecture given at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., on the occasion of receiving a prize named in honor of the distinguished architectural historian Vincent Scully. I want to thank both Scully, whose writing on architecture and urbanism has been an inspiration over the years, and Chase Rynd, director of the National Building Museum. I returned to the museum in 2008 to deliver the Charles Atherton Memorial Lecture, speaking on the vertical dimension of the city, a subject dear to Washingtonians’ hearts since the capital is the last American city to have preserved a building-height limit.
Much of my writing on cities first saw the light of day in the biannual Wharton Real Estate Review, which I cofounded with my friend Peter Linneman. I want to acknowledge his insightful advice, as well as the stimulating work of many urban scholars and real estate professionals whose work has appeared in the pages of the review over the last decade, including Jonathan Barnett, Eugenie L. Birch, Robert Bruegmann, David De Long, Anthony Downs, Andres Duany, Douglas Frantz, Charles E. Fraser, Joel Garreau, Edward L. Glaeser, Jacques N. Gordon, William Grigsby, Joseph Gyourko, Joel Kotkin, John Landis, Robert C. Larson, Anne Vernez Moudon, Randall O’Toole, Georgette Phillips, Harvey Rabinowitz, Albert B. Rattner, William Rawn, Kenneth T. Rosen, Saskia Sassen, Andrejs Skaburskis, Robert A. M. Stern, David Sucher, Anita Summers, Kerry Vandell, and Susan Wachter. Thanks to Joe Gyourko, director of the Zell-Lurie Real Estate Center, for his continued support of the review. My Wharton colleague Robert Inman provided an opportunity to contribute a chapter on urban space to Making Cities Work: Prospects and Policies for Urban America, which allowed me to explore the subject of chapter 9. The late Lloyd Rodwin invited me to give a seminar at the department of city planning in MIT (later published in The Profession of City Planning: Changes, Images and Challenges: 1950–2000), which helped to clarify my ideas on the declining influence of city planners on the physical form of cities. Thanks also to Nathan Glazer for his recollections of Jane Jacobs.
This is a book about places as well as ideas. My appreciation to Michael Van Valkenburgh and Matt Urbanski, who explained Brooklyn Bridge Park to me; to David Bagnoli, who accompanied me to Reston Town Center; to Deborah Ratner Salzberg, Kirsten A. Brinker, and David R. Smith of Forest City Washington, and Dan McCabe of Urban Atlantic, who provided useful information about the Yards; and to Robert A. M. Stern, whose writing introduced me to Forest Hills Gardens. Alex Cooper and Jaquelin T. Robertson shared their early proposal for Ground Zero. In Israel, my appreciation to my old friend Moshe Safdie for inviting me to visit Modi’in, to Miron Cohen for his friendly assistance, and to David Azrieli for his generous support. At Scribner, Nan Graham pushed me to rewrite and expand parts of this book, and my thanks to Paul Whitlatch, a fine editor, whose suggestions improved the text, and to Steve Boldt for insightful copyediting. My agent, Andrew Wylie, offered useful advice and formidable support. My wife, Shirley Hallam, was by turns patient and critical, as the need arose.
W.R.
The Icehouse