Two Architects Give NYC a Makeover

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How many times have you heard anyone say,

Let's meet for a drink at Penn Station?

Right, it just doesn't happen

'cause no one wants to be there.

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The first thing that you do is

you build a larger network of parks.

I mean, you know, Gramercy Park and Washington Square Park,

these are tiny little pocket parks.

If I were the master planner in 1750, let's just say,

I don't know if I would have done a single Central Park.

I might have thought of it as two parks,

like an East Side Park and a West Side Park,

then you add manufacturing on the edges

and then living and working in the middle.

We have a great subway system in a lot of ways,

but the big problem with them is

they were developed privately by independent companies.

And so, you had some companies

that built express lines, for instance.

We're one of the few major cities, actually,

probably the only major city in the world

that has express trains, which is an amazing thing,

but it's not spread in a way that it's even

and what that does is it creates very, very expensive places

where those subways go and very inaccessible places

where those subways don't.

[Gregg] I think there are two major things

that the subway system missed.

We needed a way to get from the Lower West Side

to the Upper East Side.

I also think there needs to be more cross-town connections.

It's how do you make this sort of more of an even grid

in, again, the way sort of London's Metro is

or Paris' Metro or, especially, Tokyo's which is

an extraordinarily robust citywide system.

I would get rid of all privately owned cars.

I mean, why is there free parking on the streets

for private automobiles?

You know how much land is dedicated to cars and trucks?

[Gregg] So let's just start

with your typical New York City cross street,

two thirds of it is filled with people parking their cars

that they use only a couple times a week.

If we just got rid of free parking on the streets,

you immediately increase the capacity of the city by 40%.

All of the sudden, you could imagine

these incredible greenways with bikes and parks.

New York City's biggest mistake was the demolition

of Penn Station, not just because we lost a beautiful,

beautiful train station; it really, in my mind, was

the beginning of our disinvestment in infrastructure

and the only way to solve the problem is to move

what the New York Times called the manhole cover

of Madison Square Garden off of the station;

build a new arena nearby somewhere, a beautiful new arena;

and bring light and air back to the station.

I mean, it was designed for,

what, 120,000? That's right,

for 120,00 people.

120,000 people a day and it gets over 600,000

a day, right now. Right.

Think about that.

When it comes to investment and building and infrastructure,

it's city of can't and a city that's falling behind.

Generally, our transportation systems are substandard

and I think we're, now, just getting around to the idea

of ferries and bicycles and other modes of transportation

that can actually move us around more easily.

I mean, the fact that we have not built a single bridge

in this city in 50 years is an embarrassment.

If we don't straighten this out,

we are going to fall behind.

I think what the city still does right is

that we're still this city of opportunity.

We ar still a place where, you know,

a CEO from a company and a custodian from a company

take the same subway to work every day.

It's always been a city of inclusiveness.

We are constantly running into each other.

That kind of friction is really

the sort of beauty of the city.

It's constantly inspiring.

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