As one who cares about the city --- I thought you might find the two attached articles of interest. I know almost all of you - there is a handful where we haven’t met.

Many of you have been supportive verbally and financially of the Urban Culture Project and the Charlotte Street Foundation - a small grass roots effort to help artists and the central core of the city, for which all involved in the project are grateful. After a year of organization and then another year launching the project, I thought I might pass along some thoughts from the participants - though I certainly do not speak for all.

There has been plenty of major good news for downtown KC of late. The commitment of H&R Block to downtown is huge - in real and psychological terms. And the steady drumbeat of housing announcements is equally important. From the earliest success of the Hall Family Foundation and others in bringing in McCormick Baron to do old and new housing for Quality Hill twenty years ago to the present day downtown housing mini-boom....to the downtown Library...there is plenty to celebrate and congratulate those responsible.

However, we in the arts community and at the grassroots level think there is both an imbalance and a portion of the plans that are misdirected.

In the friendliest tone possible - and with greatest respect for all you and your organizations do to make this a better place - there is an imbalance given the seemingly primary if not sole focus on all the huge projects - from the arenas to the performing arts center to the "entertainment district" to enlarging the convention center to... And there is misdirection in that we believe plans for an "Entertainment District" are the wrong means to the end.

These two articles below perhaps can best be summed up as ---- "Coffee shops are as important - if not more important - than convention centers. Then we need real coffee shops, not brand new ones in made-up environments."

I hope you will take a moment to read and give some consideration to what is being said. There is a huge disconnect in this town because essentially everyone I know at a grass roots level believes in the premises and ideas in these articles --- and I would say the civic leadership is acting on a program in the opposite direction.

"Be hip and they will come" is the motto of a new movement in second-tier cities that have lost their best and brightest to more urbane centers such as San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Atlanta, Washington and Boston. Wooing young people has never been high on cities' economic development agendas. Until now.

Cities spent decades dangling tax breaks and other financial sweeteners to attract big business. They poured billions of dollars into new stadiums, convention centers and aquariums. But their populations continued to shrink and to age. Two-thirds of the 50 largest metropolitan areas had fewer young adults in 2000 than in 1990, according to the Census. These cities now realize that they've done little to appeal to the labor force that will shape their economic future: educated 25- to 34-year-olds.

"They're going to go after young people the way cities went after IBM," says Carol Coletta, host of the public radio show Smart City and a Memphis consultant.

"Chambers of commerce have traditionally focused on older men who make decisions about where businesses will be located," she says. "City governments are focused on homeowners, mom 'n' pop with two kids who have to send their kids to schools. The revelation is this young group."

Cities are suddenly convinced that without them, their brain drain will continue. Employers will flock to hipper cities to attract this young labor force. Even worse, the dynamic businesses that young people create will start elsewhere.

"We built the stadiums. We built the hotels. We built the convention center. We still lost people. And the '90s were a phenomenal decade," says Bruce Katz, director of the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. "There's an implicit recognition that the big-ticket items didn't quite do the trick."

"Most don't live to work but work to live. They play in bands and sports leagues. They like to go out but not just with people from the office. They're more interested in parks and bike trails than fancy sports arenas."

And from the New York Times dated 12/11/03 "On a Hunt for a way to Put Sex in the City:""

In a 2001 paper, Mr. Florida and Gary Gates, a researcher at the Urban Institute in Washington, found that these geek clusters did not form in a vacuum. The cities with the most high-paying high-tech jobs also had high populations of bohemians, immigrants and gays and lesbians.

Without suggesting that one caused the other, the authors concluded that tolerant, funky, hip, diverse cities were also rich ones. "The losers are the cities that don't let these people organize and be themselves and express their energy," Mr. Florida said in a telephone interview. "A city that allowed a gay community to emerge 10 or 20 years ago, set up its own retail stores and clubs, a city that allowed a music scene to happen, a city that allowed an arts community to emerge — there's something in the ecosystem of that community that allows individuals to get there, to be themselves and to mobilize resources. That of course is the same thing that high-tech entrepreneurs do."

We are lucky that we do have a good music scene, an enviable jazz history, a thriving arts community, an energetic gay community, etc - that have been sustained over the years. So we have a great base...which Florida has documented.

In term or the imbalance between large and small development downtown, we are a broken record on this ---- but we hear almost NO mention of any fostering and encouraging of this smaller side of the development equation from the leadership. And what we do hear is minimal --- and then no action or support mechanisms. What we do hear is trickle down - the performing arts center, arenas etc will create coffee shops and help street life. Here again we beg to differ. At least based on our past record with large projects.

We hear almost no real dialogue on the merits of any large development (Will there be any discussion beyond boosterism about Kansas City Live?) or destruction of old buildings; if there is dissent, it is written off as fringe elements as opposed to a rational and alternative approach to development. We hear little to no discussion amongst the leadership itself; it is almost as if leadership decides - or enough of the leadership decides - and then just proceeds to sell the decision to the public after listening closely to focus groups to determine what aspects of their decision will sell best. There is no real grassroots input.

Richard Florida has provided the first forums for alternative development that may have gotten a little attention in some local leadership circles.

The longer we wait to change our old thinking and incorporate these newer approaches and ideas, the further behind we will be. Grassroots thinking is ahead of general leadership thinking and more cutting edge. We wish - just once - that this city would lead a trend rather than follow it by decades. Until we listen to grassroots thinking, this will never happen. (Sasaki, for example, though a fine firm, represents decades-old thinking in urban development.)

As mentioned earlier, there have been great accomplishments. Leaders from Jonathan Kemper, John Laney, Phil Kirk (The Library) to Shirley Helzberg (Webster House) and from Margaret Silva (Grand Arts) to DST (the West Side) and all those involved in downtown housing clearly understand the importance of preservation and smaller, organic development, real environments - vs fake entertainment districts - and street life. These are very forward thinking undertakings.

But with the recent announcement of a developer for the "Entertainment District," here we go again in creating a made-up, fake environment with lots of tax incentives - that we don’t believe will work or is called for. How about treating the whole loop area as the entertainment district - weaving bars, clubs, cafes into the EXISTING old structures - creating an interesting urban labyrinth? How many more Union Station, Crown Center, 18th and Vine, 1970s River Market failed attempts at malls are we going to build and then struggle to keep alive? There are reasons that the Plaza, Westport, 39th Street, the West Side, Crossroads and current River Market work and our large retail projects have not worked. 1). They all started small and were nurtured over time. 2). There were multiple developers and small businesses and not just one single developer. Will we never learn?

Large retail projects are just inherently impossibly difficult to do. We can build large projects and then spend the next generation fixing them - if indeed they are fixable and ultimately worth fixing. Or we can start small, bob and weave as times change, and let development happen organically...building the audiences along the way. The former way is high risk and high cost (tax breaks anyone?). The latter way is lower risk, less costly and ultimately more likely to succeed...not to mention more interesting. But there is less perceived action initially and less ego involved; it is more subtle. And there is less hype for the politicians.

Think about it. You hire 1 developer you hope answers your dreams. Up front, city leaders always claim it will be a cool, world-class entertainment destination. Instead, it ends up being a third rate, homogeneous, you-could-be-anywhere kind of place. (Kansas City Live brings you Planet Hollywood! Wow. If Planet Hollywood was ever cool, it was years ago.) We don’t mean to be negative just to be negative - but how many times have we heard this scenario? When has it EVER turned out as promised (see the list above)? The emperor has no clothes.

And no offense - but when you think about it - why would we expect most corporate and city leaders to be good at creating street level activity anyway? They are hopefully good at running their company or city department. Coffee shops are not part of their job description. And they are not exactly plugged into what the twenty-somethings are doing. So the national consultants come in and do essentially the same thing they have executed elsewhere. We lose our uniqueness and any chance of cool.

We are being critical but we hope it is constructive criticism - because we do have ideas to explore that might lead to both a better balance of small and large projects and more successful large projects. We also think our ideas would create some cool, ahead-of the-trend environments and activities...which are partially referenced in the articles below.

In a nutshell, leadership needs to invite young and older members of the local creative community into the planning of these projects and activities - on a real and equal footing.

There are unbelievably talented artistic entrepreneurs - both artists and small business people - in the creative community here who have been making things happen at a retail and street level for years - and very successfully. I have met many of them in the course of starting up the Urban Culture Project recently and over the years in the arts community. They want to help and are dying for more vibrancy in the city. They are excited to be here; their friends from Chicago and London would consider moving here NOT because of the large projects but because of the vibrancy of the grassroots scene here.

A partnership between the business community and the grassroots creative community - it could be revolutionary in creating cool environments and a cool image for the city. And it would be an incredible boost for the arts community. Neither side has all the answers -- but together it could be lethal. But the leadership needs to be honest about past failures and more realistic about its capabilities (the city and business community cannot create anything cool/trendy here - let’s face it)... and more thoughtful about a different process going forward.

Ultimately, artists and CEO/civic leaders are more similar than one would think - if successful, they are both innovators and thoughtful agents of change, though in vastly different environments. Neither is lacking in opinions or ego...and both are passionate about what they are doing. Many civic leaders I know enjoy being with artists - but this has never translated into their involvement in development efforts - that I am aware of. (Though BNIM Architects and el dorado architects have both involved artists in projects, for example.)

Again, this message is meant to be friendly to a group of people who care and have given generously of their time and money. We in the grassroots community would like to challenge your thinking and work with you if you so choose. We’re all in this together. But you need to invite them to the tables.

If you can stand more....and I hope you can, here are the articles. I would be very interested in your reactions. Many thanks for your time and best wishes for the holidays and new year.

David Hughes

It's the hippest crowd this sedate, wood-paneled room has ever seen. Even the older CEOs are loosening up. There's the head of consumer products giant Procter & Gamble, tieless, playing host. University and chamber presidents, the newspaper publisher, bankers and executives bounce from table to table for informal chats.

What's going on? Why would Cincinnati's powers-that-be court people half their age? For the same reason Pittsburgh, Richmond, Memphis, Tampa, Indianapolis, Baton Rouge, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Tallahassee, Fla., and Fresno, Calif., are launching Web sites, organizing summits, staging arts and music festivals and investing in glitzy promotions: to lure young professionals.

"Be hip and they will come" is the motto of a new movement in second-tier cities that have lost their best and brightest to more urbane centers such as San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Atlanta, Washington and Boston. Wooing young people has never been high on cities' economic development agendas. Until now.

Cities spent decades dangling tax breaks and other financial sweeteners to attract big business. They poured billions of dollars into new stadiums, convention centers and aquariums. But their populations continued to shrink and to age. Two-thirds of the 50 largest metropolitan areas had fewer young adults in 2000 than in 1990, according to the Census. These cities now realize that they've done little to appeal to the labor force that will shape their economic future: educated 25- to 34-year-olds.

"They're going to go after young people the way cities went after IBM," says Carol Coletta, host of the public radio show Smart City and a Memphis consultant.

Coletta co-hosted the Memphis Manifesto, a summit that brought representatives from 40 cities to Tennessee's largest city last spring to cook up youthful strategies.

"Chambers of commerce have traditionally focused on older men who make decisions about where businesses will be located," she says. "City governments are focused on homeowners, mom 'n' pop with two kids who have to send their kids to schools. The revelation is this young group."

Cities are suddenly convinced that without them, their brain drain will continue. Employers will flock to hipper cities to attract this young labor force. Even worse, the dynamic businesses that young people create will start elsewhere.

"Bill Gates is pushing 50," says Joe Cortright, head of Impresa Inc., an economic consulting firm in Portland, Ore. "The next big companies that get started will probably not get started by baby boomers."

Choice demographic shrinks

"We built the stadiums. We built the hotels. We built the convention center. We still lost people. And the '90s were a phenomenal decade," says Bruce Katz, director of the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. "There's an implicit recognition that the big-ticket items didn't quite do the trick."

In their hunger to find ways to revive their cities, urban leaders are embracing young professionals who have money to spend and time to spend it. Better yet, this generation does not strain public services such as public schools and health care because they're largely childless and healthy. Research shows that these people will play an important role in the economic future of cities because of:

* Demographics. The nation's 78 million baby boomers are aging. The youngest are 39, an age when even boomers begin to settle down and start families. The oldest, who turn 57 this year, are starting to retire.

Filling their slots are just 40 million people ages 25 to 34. Cities are competing for this smaller pool of people who are deciding where to live and work. They are especially going after the 23 million college-educated young, a group 10% smaller than 10 years ago. Less than a quarter of Americans live in nuclear families, and about 25% are single.

* Mobility. Young adults are twice as likely to move to other states as middle-age people. That's why cities are rushing to get them now, before they establish roots somewhere else.

Young professionals have been leaving the cities that are now struggling to attract them. More than 7,200 people born between 1966 and 1975 left Cincinnati's Hamilton County in the 1990s, a 6% loss, according to an analysis of Census data by The Cincinnati Enquirer. Hamilton lost more than any other urban county in the Midwest.

* Knowledge economy. In the technological age, the importance of the educated and creative to the economy is magnified. If they flock to only a handful of cities, other cities risk falling behind.

Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, struck a chord with his theory that thriving cities attract culturally and ethnically diverse people -- artists, gays, people who are physically fit and open-minded and anyone who thinks and creates for a living.

"I didn't invent this," says Florida, professor at the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "I've just become a spokesman."

The youth message is getting through in cities where women and younger people have broken through leadership ranks. Young professionals are finding that they can be a big fish in a small pond -- especially now that the old establishment is starting to take them seriously. Examples:

* In Fresno, the heart of California's agricultural Central Valley, the talk is shifting from crops to arts because of Councilman Henry Perea, 26. Perea flew to Memphis and Tampa this year to attend "creative class" summits.

"Fresno has a reputation that I certainly would like to change," he says. "Out of 10 friends in college, I'm the only one who stayed."

In the year since he was elected, the city has passed a public art ordinance and is considering changing zoning to allow artists to live and work in the same buildings.

* In Cincinnati, five of the nine city council members are younger than 40, and four are under 35. Nicholas Spencer, 25 and a native, is running for the council. He's the founder of Cincinnati Tomorrow, a non-profit group that wrote a plan to make the city cooler, including helping black musicians record their work. He wants to repeal a city ban on laws that forbid discrimination based on sexual orientation.

* Tampa was shaken up by new leadership this year. Pam Iorio, 44, was elected mayor. Deanne Roberts, 50, head of a Tampa ad agency, chairs the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce -- the second woman to hold the post.

The chamber launched Emerge Tampa to engage young people. The campaign is backed by an unexpected constituency: Mothers whose kids have moved away.

"These are successful women saying, 'I've made it. I'm happy with my career. But for me to have a really full life, I want my kids and grandkids back,' " Roberts says.

The mayor even created a new city position: manager of creative industries. A musician and former journalist, Paul Wilborn, was hired. Among his goals: Make Tampa a film center (The Punisher, starring John Travolta, is being filmed there); and review city regulations that discourage creative businesses from opening.

Don't call them Yuppies. That's too '80s. Too reminiscent of an obsession with upward mobility. They're simply YPs -- "young professionals." They care more about quality of life than the corporate rat race. They're not into climbing the ladder because many of the companies they want to work for don't have much of a ladder. They like start-ups, small consulting firms or research labs. They pick a city they like and then worry about finding a job.

Most don't live to work but work to live. They play in bands and sports leagues. They like to go out but not just with people from the office. They're more interested in parks and bike trails than fancy sports arenas.

They want fun neighborhoods, art galleries, coffeehouses, nightlife and diversity in everything from race and sexual orientation to music and hairstyles. They're more likely to work for a company that offers benefits to same-sex partners, even if they're not gay themselves. In short, they crave cities that are tolerant of all lifestyles.

Florida says participants in his focus groups "blanched at the very idea of a 9-to-5 schedule or a standard dress code."

Mark Twain is supposed to have said: "When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it's always 20 years behind the times."

It's a tough reputation to overcome. The pig sculptures that adorn downtown recall Cincinnati's golden era as a pork-processing center. Today, the city is more famous for its three-way chili, sports teams and Procter & Gamble.

Not bad, except for race riots in 2001, the arrest of a museum director for exhibiting photos by artist Robert Mapplethorpe, bigoted comments by former Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott and the gambling scandals of baseball hero Pete Rose. "Cincinnati has not defined its image," says lawyer Sean Rhiney, 32. "It let others do it."

YPs such as Rhiney want to be part of the city's makeover. He and Bill Donabedian, 36, who designs content for classes on the Web, play in bands. They hang out at Allyn's, an eclectic Cajun-Mexican food and music joint, to hear local bands.

They know Cincinnati's music is hot, but does anyone else?

They decided to showcase the city's musical heritage by organizing the MidPoint Music Festival last year. About 10,000 people showed up. The chamber of commerce, which recently launched YPCincy, and the city helped fund it this year; 25,000 came.

"Five years ago, the chamber would never have sponsored a music festival," Rhiney says. "It's a sizable leap of faith."

P&G and other businesses have joined the YP movement. Mayor Charlie Luken is making it a priority. Condos and townhouses are being built downtown. Give Back Cincinnati is tapping YP's spirit of volunteerism and has garnered the support of 275 companies. The arts community is reaching out with discounts to people under 30. The Contemporary Arts Center, designed by renowned architect Zaha Hadid, opened this year. Its provocative exhibits appeal more to hipsters than dowagers.

As a young black woman who grew up in Boston, Najoh Tita-Reid was mortified when P&G offered her a job at its Cincinnati headquarters. She was 25.

"The reputation was that it was conservative, not diverse, not progressive and that if you were single, you'd be single forever," she says. She agreed to try it for two years. She's been here five.

Tita-Reid became a mentor and founded the Cincinnati Partnership to keep YPs of color in Cincinnati. Her fiance moved from New York. His company, which recruits minority teachers, has gone national. They bought a house in a historic neighborhood.

"This generation is not consumed with money and power but quality of life," she says.

Experts caution that efforts to lure YP's will fail if they're too gimmicky. Vibrant neighborhoods like New York's Greenwich Village or San Francisco's North Beach were not marketed. They evolved naturally into bohemian enclaves.

"It's not enough to hold a music festival on the waterfront three times a year," says Brookings' Katz. Cities' long-term survival depend on the basics, he says: "Quality of our educational system, quality of life, tax rates, poverty."

Joff Moine, 30, found quality of life in Cincinnati. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio, went to the University of Cincinnati and lived in Chicago for five years. He came back and founded the Cincinnati Sports Leagues for young professionals.

"We don't live next to the ocean, we don't live next to the mountains, but there is a good homegrown community of people," Moine says.

"I'm in love with the town."

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Articles below are for your consideration - not right or wrong - but to think and talk...

As we’ve said before...there is little to no talking in this town - outside leadership circles - about what we need and don’t need, about what we can afford and cannot afford and about how best to execute large undertakings. The Mayor has frequently said "We can do it all." That is a silly statement. We obviously cannot do it all. We must ***prioritize and focus like a laser*** on what will work and what won’t work and what is the ***most cost-effective, high probability*** means to a vibrant core. (Why, for example, when economists and urban planners continually question the value and economic return of arenas and sports stadiums do we have leaders that overemphasize public investments in sports???) At a time when we are facing the consequences of poor planning and execution of large projects from Union Station/Science City to 18th and Vine - it is questionable to be pushing too many large projects on the city.

And many at the grassroots level think that what we should be doing anyway is a *combination* of large and small projects; we should not just be devoting city (meaning both the public and private sector) thinking and resources to every large project that a special group wants. Jazz district. Science museum. Stadiums. Arena. Performing Arts Center. Kansas City Live! The proposal for an aquarium, just watch, will be back. (That sucking sound you hear is not Ross Perot and jobs moving south - remember? - it is the sound of large projects and their ill-considered aftermath...)

A more ***focused*** approach to the key large projects (ie, let’s just say 1/2 the number we are being sold today) combined with a *proactive* approach to cultivating smaller grassroots projects is the key. And then finding a way to start small with some of the larger projects if possible...for example, the 18th and Vine district might be in better shape today - like the Crossroads - if it had started small and the city had fostered smaller entrepreneurs and artists. Too much money thrown at projects can doom them. The city’s crisis reaction to the alcohol problem in the Crossroads was exemplary - but what if the city spent 25% of the time and thought it spends on large projects - to proactively fostering these smaller grassroots activities? The returns would be huge.

For those of you business types - you know this is what venture capitalists do. They spread their small bets over hundreds and hundreds of small start-up companies. They absolutely do not place big bets on just a few companies. If the city were a venture capitalist, it would have been bankrupt long, long ago - with its failed, concentrated portfolio - and with vulture capitalists hovering to scoop up city assets at bargain-basement prices. The tax payers have been patient - or asleep.

Too often proposals for large projects are made by interested parties and then there is no public discussion - except perhaps behind closed doors of the leadership. We desperately need more dialogue between the leadership (who can make things happen) and the grassroots community (who knows at least as well if not better what we need and how to best do it). No single group of leaders can make these decisions correctly...as can be seen from the current state of the urban core. (At what point will leaders be held accountable for the plethora of tax-supported failures to date?)

We must not only tolerate dissent, we must encourage it. Yessir and Yes ma’am reactions do us no good. The Mayor stated in an email a couple months ago that there has been too much negativity in reaction to various downtown proposals. I do not know if that is true or not - but we ***need*** alternative, constructive opinions. Leaders need to have the confidence to debate and back up their opinions. Rather than just hide behind boosterism. Capable and confident leaders reach out and want to learn all sides of issues - they know there are smarter people out there they can learn from. And we have alot of smart, younger and older creative folks who could add immensely to the dialogue. They could propel this city in ways we cannot imagine. The leadership needs to engage them or our city will continue to look like every other boring American city.

The "Star’s" recent editorial headline "Pull Union Station out of Mediocrity" should have read "Pull Kansas City out of Mediocrity." In fact, one trustee of a fairly major foundation in town once wondered aloud to me why most everything we do in this town is so mediocre. We are soooooo mediocre (despite out continual, and annoying claim to world-class status on whatever project we are doing...we are only fooling ourselves) because leadership is well-intentioned but does not have enough of a clue. Grassroots people are cutting edge (and know cutting edge and expert people in other communities - instead of the tired experts the leadership engages as consultants) and can lead us out of mediocrity...but the leadership must listen and engage the creative community. Leadership would need to temper the creative community perhaps...but, together, it could be a lethal combination.

There are signs of emerging dialogue between the leadership and some grassroots members...from the Downtown Council to the Urban Core Committee of the Civic Council. Certainly the Greater KC Community Foundation is well into the planning - after engaging outside experts and consulting many local leaders and grassroots organizations --- and early execution of a prioritized list of needs to focus on. The Arts Council of Metropolitan KC is addressing the property tax issue in the Crossroads - with no guarantees. But hey - we need more leaders like this - people who GET it...or are beginning to. If only each board member of civic organizations and foundations or the top 3 officers of each large company could have a beer once a month with 5 members of the real real grassroots community...can you imagine if leaders actually became sensitized to the ideas and energy at the grassroots level...this city would be worth living in...ah well, back to reality...

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The first article below is from the Harvard News Office; it describes the critical need for more density within our cities. It is THE answer - but do we really want that? (Thanks to Kevin Klinkenberg - architect/urbanist/thinker - for the article. He is an example of someone the leadership should not only be listening to - but taking notes on.)

One good quote from the article..."A wise old man once told me, if you're looking for someone to have sex with, you live in the city; if you've got someone to have sex with, you live in the suburbs. Sometimes I think it may be as simple as that."

Hmmm.

The second article (Downtown: Theme Park for the Arts) is an even-handed look at performing arts centers from the NY Times six years ago. It discusses many unforseen aspects of performing arts centers - especially on the arts organizations themselves. Has any of this even been mentioned, much less discussed, given the state of unforseen aspects of many of the larger "completed" projects?

The third brief article (Marooned on Culture Island) is an Op-Ed piece from the Times just 8 months ago or so - as Lincoln Center’s problems were coming to light with the NY Philharmonic. While out of date on these details, its strong opinions from a noted urbanist about the assumed benefits of these centers are worthy of discussion...again, have we talked about this?

The last piece (from the Times) is about Oren Safdie - son of none other than Moshe, architect of our own performing arts center - and his hilarious take as a playwright on the "Hollywoodization" of architecture and the "me too-ism" that has swept the American architectural landscape. It rings true...when will our leaders ever have original thoughts? (Hint: they most likely won’t; that is what the grassroots community is good for!)

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What makes a city thrive?

People, lots of 'em, really, really close

By Ken Gewertz

Harvard News Office

The population density of Paris is about three times that of Boston. Does this mean Paris is three times as much fun as Boston, or that if Boston's population were compounded by three, it would become another Paris?

These questions are not as silly as they may sound - that is, if you start from the premise, shared by many architects, urban designers, planners, and others, that density is the secret to creating healthier urban environments - with safer streets, better schools, more vibrant cultural and commercial activity, more efficient public transportation, nicer parks, and a less degraded environment.

On Jan. 28, the Kennedy School's Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston in cooperation with the Boston Society of Architects (BSA) held a forum at Harvard to examine the concept of density and to look at ways it could be achieved. The forum was a follow-up to an earlier conference held by the BSA in September 2003.

While most of those who attended the event viewed density as a cure for the city's ills, that attitude is by no means shared by all who take an interest in the welfare of America's towns and cities. The forum's title reflected that ambivalence: "The 'D' Word: What it Takes to Build Dense Communities in Greater Boston." In certain ways, the debate between density and its opposite - sprawl - has been going on for the past half-century, said Charles Euchner, the executive director of the Rappaport Institute, who moderated and helped organize the event.

"There's been an ongoing struggle to strengthen the city core, but not always to increase urban density. What's new, I think, is that we're realizing cities are really about people. The more people you bring in, the more vibrant the city will become," Euchner said.

While it might not quite stack up to Paris, it can hardly be said that Boston is lacking in vibrancy. And yet, if present trends continue, there may be trouble ahead. Over the past 40 years, Boston's population has gone from 800,000 to 600,000. The drop would have been even sharper if it were not for an increase in immigration since 1965.

According to the pro-density argument, urban institutions require a certain threshold population to support them. If not enough people want to shop or eat out, there won't be many good stores or restaurants. If the audience for music, theater, or art is small, these activities will not flourish. If the tax base is scanty, schools and municipal services will be substandard. Even parks need people to use them, and if the parks are deserted, they will not receive the upkeep they need to remain attractive.

Density is also considered good for the environment because it is easier and cheaper to provide heating, electricity, sewerage, and other services to people living in concentrated groups than to those in single-family homes in suburban areas. As a result, the impact of dense populations on the surrounding environment is less harmful.

If density is such a good thing, why haven't more people gotten the message? The first panel took up this question. David Parrish, who described himself as a "recovering architect," now a senior vice president at the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston, brought up the point that whether people want to take advantage of the social and cultural advantages of the city or seek the sprawling suburbs depends on where they are in the life cycle.

"A wise old man once told me, if you're looking for someone to have sex with, you live in the city; if you've got someone to have sex with, you live in the suburbs. Sometimes I think it may be as simple as that."

Others spoke about the stigma associated with density.

"Density used to be associated with poverty," said BSA President David Dixon. "We are part of that baby boom generation whose parents moved away from poverty by moving away from the city. The core reason for the stigma is a historical artifact."

Hubert Murray, a Boston-based architect and urban planner, spoke about the visual images that the word "density" brings to many people's minds.

"It's the turn-of-the-century photographs that Jacob Riis took of the slums on the Lower East Side, it's the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis that had to be torn down in the 1970s. It's the image of the huddled masses, of disease, crime, congestion. But the statistics show that density is not a leading factor for these conditions. For example, the TB statistics show that the key elements are new immigrants and poverty. Similarly, it's poverty and the lack of job opportunities that drive crime and not density, per se." Alfred Wojciechowski, a principal in a Boston design firm, said that for density to work, people have to feel comfortable moving out into the public realm.

"It's very much about walkability. Goods and services have to be immediately available. You have to be able to walk to them."

Wojciechowski quoted design theorist Christopher Alexander, who called the ineffable combination of factors that make a neighborhood pleasant the "quality without a name," sometimes abbreviated by designers as "QWAN."

Developer Roger Cassin agreed. "A five-minute walk in a neighborhood where you feel uncomfortable is too far."

In many cases, achieving greater density means building taller

buildings, something that often proves unpopular, especially in the Boston area. "We're an awfully conservative city when it comes to high buildings," said David Lee, a partner in a Boston architectural firm and an adjunct professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. "Anything over three stories and people come out and rebel against it. We're still stuck in the 19th century. We haven't even made it into the 20th."

"The dominant religion has always been the religion of short buildings," said Dixon. "I challenge anyone to claim that their lives have been harmed by a tall building."

The second panel concentrated on how public policy could be used to achieve greater density. Stephanie Pollock of the Conservation Law Foundation said that the debate over density needed to be reframed.

"Public policy is the art of solving problems, but density is not a problem that anyone wants to solve. In order to inject density into the public policy debate, we must propose it as a solution to other problems."

Edward Moscovich, an independent economist and consultant, identified one such problem.

"In the commonwealth as a whole, most public officials know that development should take place someplace else. If residential development is proposed, their job is to stop it. Why? Because it costs about $6,000 per year to educate a child, and they know the real estate taxes on a $300,000 home won't cover it." The result of this reluctance to build housing results in housing shortages, which results in higher housing costs, which tends to reduce density. Some members of the panel spoke about using incentives to counter this tendency.

Barry Bluestone, an economist who directs the Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University, suggested that the state government offer cities a $2,000-$3,000 density bonus for each unit of housing built to help cover the cost of schools and other services.

What chance is there that Boston and other communities will begin to see density as the solution to the problems they face? Euchner believes that conferences like this one may help to move decision makers in the right direction.

"Communities are constantly debating the level of development they should allow. I think forums like this one create greater literacy and awareness about this subject, and when people can talk intelligently, it can have an enormous impact on the debate. I think people are more open to density than they were a couple of years ago."

LATE at night, along Main Street in Louisville, the Kentucky Center for the Arts sits in desolate silence across from the office building of a major financial supporter, the Humana Foundation. Restaurants are barely visible in the corners of office towers on deserted streets. A few pedestrians turn up, walking with purposeful strides. Cars pull into lots beneath the center.

One evening not long ago, the scene inside was almost as surreal. In a packed theater, a three-hour tribute to the mandolin was in progress, featuring a folk musician playing bluegrass mandolin, a Russian virtuoso known as ''the Paganini of the Dorma'' and a stage full of mandolinists modeling themselves on ensembles that thrived in the Midwest 70 years ago.

This collection of high, low and in between, of classical, jazz, country and bluegrass, set in the middle of a darkened, urban street of empty towers, seemed strange to a visitor used to the more frenetic exteriors and less eclectic interiors of New York, but the odd mix is not unusual in American arts centers. These multipurpose, multicultural, multihalled institutions now dominate the cultural scene, often in ways that have barely been recognized. They are becoming as common as city halls, cost anywhere from $30 million to $200 million, and promise cultural rebirth and economic vitality.

The development of these centers may mark the most dramatic change in the American performing arts landscape since concert halls were built in the 19th century. And just as concert halls transformed the nature of classical music, arts centers are having a profound, unexpected and largely unexamined impact on the arts.

The centers, which range from converted movie theaters to Lincoln Center-style complexes, were originally meant to provide homes for classical performing arts groups like orchestras and ballet companies. But they have become something else entirely. The buildings don't just house culture; they alter it.

They have, in their shape and design, actually created an ''arts center culture.'' And the newest centers -- like the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, or the Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth -- already take it for granted. Arts-center style leans toward the classical performing arts but celebrates populist variety; it boasts an elite character but celebrates a democratic view of culture.

Bass Hall in Texas, for example, was built with $65 million from private and foundation sources, with orchestra, ballet and musical theater in mind. But its current inaugural season also offers Milton Berle, Judy Collins, the Flying Karamazov Brothers and the ballet ''Romeo and Juliet'' danced on ice. And all across the country, high-grossing and popular Broadway road shows are often displacing classical groups from their center homes, sometimes for months.

Why have classical arts tended to become less important in institutions supposedly designed for their nurture, and why has a more eclectic arts-center style emerged? Several reasons became evident during visits to a number of arts centers, including three vastly different types in Tulsa, Okla., Minneapolis and Louisville.

* The urban goals of the arts center -- to rebuild downtown areas, increase foot traffic and invite large attendance -- often conflict with the nonprofit artistic goals that the arts center is supposed to embrace. If an artistic event does not attract sufficient popular attention, it becomes a burden to the center rather than an asset.

* Because many centers were also designed as grand civic statements meant to transform declining downtowns, their main halls are often too large for their communities, guaranteeing swaths of empty seats for the more demanding arts -- a vacuum that many centers have come to abhor.

* The high overhead of their new homes and increased competition from the arts centers' own programming add to the classical groups' woes, aggravating their already growing sense of marginality in American culture.

* In an unexpected way, the arts center directors, with the mandate to reach far beyond the classical performing arts for programming, have become the dominant cultural impresarios in many locales, supplanting the artistic directors of orchestras, ballet companies and opera houses. The inevitable result: eclectic strains in American performing arts are strengthened, while classical strains are weakened. Arts that turn a profit compete with those that rely on patronage.

The arts center's creation hinged on one set of premises; its success hinges on another. In 1966, when Lincoln Center was still incomplete, its first president, the composer William Schuman, predicted that its model of a ''cultural center'' would become ''the new establishment.'' It has, but not in a way that Schuman could have imagined.

THE concept of the arts center developed in the decade beginning in the mid-50's: classical arts were secure in their prestigious positions in cultural life, and the National Endowment for the Arts was conceived. At the same time, attention was ever more focused on the racial and economic problems of American cities. Lincoln Center -- still the archetype -- combined these concerns, beginning with an idea from Robert Moses's Committee on Slum Clearance in 1955 to redevelop New York's West Side.

As the concept spread to other cities, it brought the hope of civic rebirth to abandoned downtowns. More than two-thirds of this country's performing spaces have been built since Lincoln Center was begun, with many of these thousands of buildings being called not concert halls or theaters but arts centers.

Typically, but not always, arts centers are products of financial patchwork quilts. A state or city donates or leases the land to a nonprofit organization. Private and foundation money is used for construction, sometimes with public matching funds. Classical arts groups are often given priority access, sometimes renting at a discount and contributing to the center's overhead. Other rentals are solicited. And the center often puts together its own presentations as well.

Complexes range from the gargantuan Wortham Center in Houston to more humble examples like the Myrna Loy Center in Helena, Mont., housed in a renovated former county jail. Some are mainly concert halls, like the $118 million Benaroya Hall that opened in Seattle this fall. Others, like the $187 million New Jersey Performing Arts Center, are multihalled variations on the Lincoln Center model. Some centers rent out their spaces for body-building competitions and wedding receptions; others have more refined standards. Some compete against other auditoriums; others don't.

But the emphasis on urban renewal is fairly consistent. The buildings do not evolve from their surroundings but are seemingly inserted into them. This can create an eerie quality (one that even Lincoln Center had in its earlier years), in which arts centers seem in a place, but not of it, often rising out of dark, deserted streets and reachable mainly by car. A new urban logic is created: the arts don't grow out of the city; the city will grow out of the arts -- or rather, out of the upper-income demographics associated with them.

This urban ambition is one reason so many arts centers -- including Lincoln Center -- are overbuilt, as if preparing for the hoped-for multitudes. But size can create problems. An opera house with 2,500 seats must often satisfy a symphony orchestra that attracts an audience of less than two-thirds that number (as is the case in Tulsa); the ballet may fill even fewer seats (as has sometimes been the case in Louisville).

Size also affects content. Stars are hired to fill halls; pop presentations are courted for their drawing power. And great chunks of repertory are slighted. Lincoln Center's offerings, for example, are hampered by the lack of a chamber opera theater; its organizations must also scale their productions to fill large spaces. Chamber music and vocal recitals may have a harder time on the national circuit partly because they are unsuitable for many centers. Some arts complexes offer small halls, but even then, operas, ballets and orchestral concerts tend to be placed in arenas too large for their audiences.

The problems with the arts-center model are not just physical; an unexpected tension has arisen between centers and the classical groups that inspired their construction. The groups need and want a supportive home; the centers, though, aspire to more events, more money, more artistic possibilities. And while a center can help arts groups by easing promotional costs, interests often conflict.

This competition has been most fierce outside the largest cities, a situation aggravated by -- and aggravating -- the increasing marginalization of the classical arts. In the 1950's and early 60's, the Louisville Orchestra (which had an important national presence with its recordings of new music) had no home; neither did the local opera or ballet. They leased a local legitimate theater, but the landlord planned to replace it with a parking garage. The conflict ended up in court; finally, after 17 years of wrangling, negotiation and fund raising, the Kentucky Center for the Arts opened in 1983 to provide a lasting home.

But in recent years, the Louisville Orchestra, which has been struggling, has had to seek other performance spaces when the center wanted to make room for touring Broadway shows. The Kentucky Opera, experiencing a drop in subscriptions, cut back its seasonal offerings from five to three. There has been contentiousness over how much responsibility lies with the companies and how much with the center. The orchestra is about to announce that next season it will move its classical series from the main arts-center building to an off-site 1,400-seat theater managed by the center.

Richard Van Kleeck, a classically trained musician who is programming director of the Kentucky Center for the Arts, said in a recent interview, ''Classical music continues to be the toughest sell; it's tough to get audiences to come out.'' But the center, he said, has recently examined its mission and will ''continue to keep a schedule'' of classical events -- though they have become more marginal than the center's founders originally planned.

In fact, the immense success of touring Broadway shows has caused serious conflicts in cities with limited performing spaces, forcing many opera companies and orchestras to relocate temporarily. Next February, in Louisville, the Disney musical ''Beauty and the Beast'' will take over the main theater of the Kentucky Center for the Arts for a month, forcing the Louisville Orchestra to play at a renovated movie theater. And last season, the Florida Orchestra could obtain only 3 of its desired 21 dates in the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center because of touring shows.

In an interview, Judith Lisi, the president of the Tampa center, acknowledged that the potential conflicts might even force classical groups to reconsider their place in the very halls that had been built for them.

''At some point,'' Ms. Lisi said, ''the orchestras may have to deal with the problem and may have to build dedicated halls.''

IN place of the steady diets of classical fare originally anticipated at many centers, what is being offered there now? Here politics can be as influential as taste. At the Kentucky Center, the board is appointed by the state's governor; in Tulsa, the facility is overseen by the city government; in Hartford, the Bushnell Theater is completely private and nonprofit. But municipalities always stand in judgment, and these pressures -- unlike those from private donors -- tend to push in a populist direction.

This has helped create the arts-center style. The emphasis is on serving disparate communities, which in some cases leads to diverse excellence and in others to pandering variety. Performances for children are plentiful. So are performances that try to create links with local ethnic and racial groups. In Louisville, country fiddling and jazz have found their way into subscription series. In Los Angeles, the opera company has appealed to Hispanic communities with zarzuelas. The California Center of the Arts in Escondido also courts multiple audiences, scheduling, during the next two months, ''The Hanukkah Story'' narrated by Leonard Nimoy, a mariachi band, ''A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,'' Argentine tangos and the violinist Itzhak Perlman.

The particular balance partly depends on the vision of the arts center director, who, in city after city, has emerged as a dominant cultural force. Ms. Lisi, for example, may be the most important performing arts presenter in South Florida, booking about 100 different performances a year and running an education program for about 100,000 schoolchildren.

In Louisville, Mr. Van Kleeck's programming may be creating a stronger profile than that of the classical arts groups. Last season, the local premiere of ''Les Enfants Terribles'' by Philip Glass attracted just a few hundred people, but Mr. Van Kleeck believes the performance was important to his artistic mission.

More commercially successful is Mr. Van Kleeck's regular subscription series, ''Lonesome Pine,'' which last season included the mandolin celebration and this winter offers the bluegrass of John Cowan, the African rock vocals of Salif Keita, the Celtic music of Anam and a Hawaiian slack-key guitar festival.

The eclecticism can take on different characteristics in different cities. During an intermission in Verdi's ''Aida'' at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center last season, a 13-foot boa constrictor was wrapped around the neck of an ''Egyptian.'' It was held out to daring donors who were offered Polaroid photo-ops. In Tulsa, which was celebrating its centennial origins as an American Indian settlement and is proud of its close connections to the Midwestern wilderness, the snake seemed a reminder of how arts centers adapt to their surroundings.

Tulsa's character -- its conservative taste and entrepreneurial spirit -- is evident even in the nature of the arts organizations that perform at the center. The Tulsa Ballet owns rehearsal studios in an outdoor strip mall, where store rents are used to support it. Theater Tulsa lost many of is resources during the 1980's oil depression, but continues as a thriving amateur group at the center.

The situation is far different in Minneapolis, which is a more cosmopolitan university city; the Walker Art Center can even specialize in a playful, often political avant-gardism that would never last in Tulsa.

Once last season, the Sun Ra Arkestra entered the auditorium of the Walker, clapping, chanting and wearing glittering outfits and headgear -- a style set by the jazz orchestra's late founder, Sun Ra, who liked to claim he was a visitor from outer space. But when the group started to play ''When You Wish Upon a Star,'' peppering the familiar tune with shrieking riffs and dissonant improvisations, the audience -- at least half children -- looked as if it had been abandoned by Jiminy Cricket. Undeterred adults filled the hall for more serious intergalactic jazz that evening.

This was not an atypical event for the Walker, a museum spiced with performances. Its self-consciously post-modern presentations of conceptual art, performance art and film easily find audiences in a cultivated city that has the classical bases well covered. (The Brooklyn Academy of Music under Harvey Lichtenstein has defined a similar vision in New York City.) The Walker's director of musical performance, Philip Bither, puts the museum's spirit of rambunctious and contentious play in audible form, including, this season, a cross-cultural band of Afro-Hispanic pop (Radio Tarifa), an afternoon of interactive electronic music making (''Sonic Circuits''), and ''A Prelude to Faust,'' in which the stories of Faust and Job are intertwined and performed by a local puppeteer and performance artist, Michael Sommers, and his troupe.

DESPITE its variations, the overall arts-center style is still unmistakable, tapping into contemporary America's preoccupation with democratization of the arts and taste: a refusal to make many distinctions, a preference for events that provide the greatest pleasure to the greatest number, a distrust of all elite claims.

The clearest portrait of arts-center style was actually suggested by an exhibition at the Walker last year, a show now at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York: ''The Architecture of Reassurance.''

This exhibit, about the design of Disney theme parks, shows maps of various Tomorrowlands and Frontierlands, their grand vistas and exotic possibilities extending outward from a quaint Main Street in a stylized American town. That town hardly exists today (if it ever did), but its remnants can be seen in the surreal street signs like Market Street in bare, downtown Louisville, or in the suspended corridors called skyways in downtown Minneapolis, which bridge office buildings for the convenience of pedestrians in winter.

At the artificial heart of these post-urban Main Streets, the arts center is creating its own architecture of reassurance, a kind of eclectic Disneyesque dream image rising out of the cityscape. The towering office buildings and abandoned streets of many a downtown lead to a cultural temple filled with fantastical offerings. The bustle of the streets may be gone, but remnants of the streets -- snakes and mandolins and mariachi bands -- find a home even if classical arts languish. That home is a comfortable well-lighted mall, with a series of amusements high and low, rides for the daring, icons for the devoted, entertainment for the bored and, on occasion perhaps, a kind of enlightenment.

CAPTIONS: Photo: The Kentucky Center for the Arts rises from Louisville's empty nighttime streets. (Kentucky Center for the Arts)(pg. 45)

Drawing (Nicholas Gaetano)(pg. 1)

Like the acoustics of Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center has never really worked. This island of culture stands apart from the city like a fortress, with an elevated plaza on the east offering a lukewarm welcome to one segment of society while concrete walls shut off the less fortunate segment represented by the public housing to the west. Centers like this deaden urban street life, bringing a rush of traffic and human activity all at one time and then lying almost dormant the rest of the day, like a stadium without a game.

So it seems almost inevitable that the New York Philharmonic would leave Avery Fisher to return to its ancestral home, Carnegie Hall, declared an anachronism in the era of urban renewal. The alleged outdatedness of Carnegie Hall was part of the rationale for Lincoln Center's construction in the 1960's. In fact, it is Lincoln Center that is outdated, even though 70 years newer.

The Philharmonic's departure should not be a surprise. The wonder is that it took so long. Fifteen years ago, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra abandoned its 1950's urban renewal hall with nightmarish acoustics but a good address -- and moved back to its former home, the 1919 Orchestra Hall that the cellist Pablo Casals called ''an acoustical marvel, a gem among the world's concert halls.'' Hardly anyone noticed. But the Philharmonic's move is like a shot heard around the world. This could begin the undoing of the country's islands of culture -- some with streets, some without -- from Miami to Dallas to Washington that sit in isolated glory, strangers in their own neighborhoods.

While the Philharmonic's decision may have mostly to do with the cost of redoing Avery Fisher Hall yet again, the move has an even greater urban significance. The tension between the arts institutions of Lincoln Center reflects their unnatural combination. Arts institutions are inherently independent -- they have different audiences and conflicting needs. They should be as physically separate as they already are artistically.

Further, a cultural institution works best as a seamless part of the street life that changes in character during the day. Segregating culture from the urban fabric was a popular idea of the 1950's and 60's, a now discredited era of city planning. The idea was that civic, shopping and cultural centers, like Lincoln Center, would mend torn pieces of the urban fabric. They don't.

Instead, they destroy what exists. They are credited with revitalization attributes they don't deserve. While Lincoln Center did renew public interest in the West Side, the area's revival did not reflect the center's presence but the renewed interest in the undervalued brownstones and row houses that remained, an interest that has reinvigorated neighborhoods nationwide, from Brooklyn to Pittsburgh to San Francisco. The diversity and street life that draw residents and tourists to thriving urban neighborhoods is exactly what gets erased by singular centers of activity.

Few remember and probably fewer care that Lincoln Center replaced 1,647 families and 383 businesses in 188 buildings, many of them brownstones for which people today would pay extraordinary sums to buy and renovate. What was declared a slum 50 years ago could have been today's newest rejuvenation star.

But at the time, Lincoln Center was a trendsetter of enormous influence, the leader among marbleized entertainment centers (despite much popular criticism). It was supposed to doom the 1891 Carnegie Hall, which was saved from the wrecker's ball only through the efforts of the violinist Isaac Stern and the philanthropist Jack Kaplan.

Today Carnegie Hall is the epitome of the cultural anchor that strengthens its neighborhood without overwhelming it. Rescued, restored and then restored and upgraded again, Carnegie has not only withstood the test of time, it stands like a beacon of hope for the country's underappreciated landmarks prematurely consigned to the garbage heap of history. As for Lincoln Center, it must wrestle with the double challenge of losing a major anchor and overcoming a fundamentally flawed design.

BLAME Bilbao. Frank Gehry's extravagant design for the Spanish outpost of the Guggenheim Museum was an impressive architectural achievement, but it also started an insidious trend, argues Oren Safdie, author of ''Private Jokes, Public Places,'' a Shavian satire of contemporary architecture that opened last Wednesday at the Theater at the Center for Architecture in Greenwich Village.

''Now every city looking to attract tourists goes shopping for the most famous, most up-to-date architect who gets carte blanche to do whatever he or she wants,'' Mr. Safdie said recently, sitting in a diner in Park Slope, Brooklyn. ''It's the Hollywoodization of architecture.''

Mr. Safdie, who criticizes architecture in the same disappointed yet loving way that an aging producer complains about Broadway, is the son of the eminent architect Moshe Safdie and has been around architects all his life (his sister also works in the field). The younger Mr. Safdie, who is 39, even attended the Columbia University School of Architecture, an attempt, he explains, ''to get closer to my dad.'' But he didn't have the drive to actually join the profession. In his final semester at Columbia, he took a playwriting course for which he wrote a 10-minute scene that would eventually become ''Private Jokes.'' The one-act, which involved three ego-driven architects and one student, was based on his experience at Columbia presenting a design to a jury of critics.

''My discovery of writing took me out of architecture,'' Mr. Safdie said. He has written a few plays (''Jews and Jesus,'' ''Hyper-Allergenic'') and a screenplay (''You Can Thank Me Later'') that received little attention. In 2001, his Off Off Broadway update of ''Fiddler on the Roof,'' called ''Fiddler Sub-Terrain,'' was panned by critics. ''Getting that response reminded me of standing up with my model and having a jury critique it,'' he said. It also inspired him to return to the scene he wrote in class, expanding it into a full-length play.

''Private Jokes'' centers on a plucky Korean-American student named Margaret, played by Mr. Safdie's wife, M. J. Kang, whose project, based on one that Mr. Safdie designed in school, is a public pool in which swimmers can enter the water from the locker room so as to avoid being seen in a bathing suit in public. In this excerpt, Margaret clashes with two middle-aged architects on her jury.

--JASON ZINOMAN

ERHARDT: This is a classroom, a place to let your imagination run wild -- a luxury you won't have when you're out in the real world.
MARGARET: But that's exactly how it all gets started.
ERHARDT: What gets started?
MARGARET [getting worked up]: You ask us to come up with these abstract ideas that aren't even meant to be built, but then before you know it, someone publishes it in some shee-shee poo-poo New York magazine, and then all of a sudden there's a show at MoMA, and then pretty soon after that, it gets built, and then others get built, cheap knock-offs start showing up in office buildings, shopping malls, hospitals . . . and all from what? Some narcissistic attempt to stand out from the rest . . . I mean, at least with the Modernists, despite being a complete failure, their intentions were motivated by a sense of social purpose.
COLIN [antennas up]: The Modernists? You criticized the Modernists. Which ones are you referring to?
MARGARET [not as confident now]: No one architect in particular, I'm referring more to the failure of the Movement.
COLIN: Am I missing something? Is this an established fact?
MARGARET: Not really, but----
COLIN: So you find the work of Le Corbusier a failure?
MARGARET: No, I admire Le Corbusier.
COLIN: Adolf Loos?
MARGARET: No.
COLIN: Walter Gropius? Louis Sullivan? Mies Van Der Rohe?
MARGARET: Well, actually----
COLIN: Who are you to make these sweeping statements? Attacking these great men of history?
MARGARET: What I mean to say is that even though the Modern Movement produced some very important buildings, and continues to fulfill a need, it was also responsible for some of the worst failures in architectural history, which continue to plague our inner cities today. Sure, Modernism works when it's applied to a luxury apartment building on Lake Michigan, or a glass house in the middle of the Connecticut woods . . . but what has it done for the people -- the real people -- living in public housing projects in the Bronx, Chicago, Paris and every other slum in the Western world? You think it's a coincidence that there are skyrocketing crime rates? Battered wives? Teenage pregnancy? The buildings look like they were designed for mice, not people.