Skyscrapers and Skylines (pt 2): Unhealthy and Overbearing

This is a continuation of Part 1 and will now need at least a pt. 3.
----- 

I am generally a proponent of tried-and-true best practices rather than the latest technology or symbol of 'progress'. I am in favour of doing what we should do rather than what we can do.

Case in point: The seminal architecture, design, and planning text A Pattern Language offers a comprehensive guide to traditional architecture and planning -- rooted in centuries of trial-and-error approaches to human settlements and conventional wisdom(s) -- whose central focus is the welfare of its inhabitants, which cannot really be said for modern(ist) architecture.

 Contrasting priorities.

That said, this post uses A Pattern Language as the primary source for a case against tall buildings. Many other sources corroborate what is presented; yet, I am sticking to one source for brevity and ease.

From 'Pattern 21: 4-Story Limit' in A Pattern Language:

High buildings have no genuine advantages, except in speculative gains for banks and land owners. 

They are not cheaper, they do not help create open space, they destroy the townscape, they destroy social life, they promote crime, they make life difficult for children, they are expensive to maintain, they wreck the open spaces near them, and they damage light and air and view. 

But quite apart from all of this, which shows that they aren't very sensible, empirical evidence shows that they can actually damage people's minds and feelings.

.... [Research] shows a direct correlation between incidence of mental disorder and the height of people's apartments. The higher people live off the ground, the more likely are they to suffer mental illness.

A simple mechanism may explain this: high-rise living takes people away from the ground, and away from the casual, everyday society that occurs on the sidewalks and streets and on the gardens and porches. It leaves them alone in their apartments. The decision to go out for some public life becomes formal and awkward; and unless there is some specific task which brings people out in the world, the tendency is to stay home, alone.

Sounds familiar!

The chapter goes on to present studies showing the lack of peer interaction and unaccompanied play of higher floor vs. lower floor children (drastic difference), as well as increased (double) crime rates for high-rise projects vs. adjacent walk-up projects. And...

Mothers are more anxious about their very young ones, when they can't see them in the street below, from a convenient kitchen window

There is higher passivity in the high-rise because of the barriers to active outlets on the ground; such barriers as elevators, corridors; and generally there is a time lapse and an effort in negotiating the vertical journey.

TV watching is extended in the high-rise. This affects probably most adversely the old who need kinesia and activity, in proportion, as much as the very young do.

Two [studied, adjacent NYC] projects ha[d] the same overall density, and their inhabitants roughly the same income. But Newman found that the crime rate in the high-rise was roughly twice that in the walk-ups.

In sum, A Pattern Language promotes a 4-story limit for urban buildings with the occasional exception -- but never for human habitation. That said, I agree with the authors in that it is "the spirit of the pattern which is most essential" -- not the hard rule. (Slightly) taller buildings, when done well, can accommodate dwellings. 

A favourite example of a city (similar in size to Victoria) that I have visited and that embodies this rule is Erfurt, (East) Germany.

Skyline:

Four-story Limit:

Occasional high places:

All human-scaled:

Before you say it does: Age has nothing to do with our draw to or the creation of such human-scaled environments. Well, it does a little, in that the historical built environment did not use synthetic materials, which are generally needed beyond app. 6 stories. Therefore, with the advent of such materials, an era of engineers and architects saying 'look what I can do' with no thought for the people inside was ushered in.


Anyways... we'll leave off with two more quotes.

First, urbanist and architect Constantine Doxiades in Peter Blake's Form Follow Fiasco:

My greatest crime was the construction of high-rise buildings.

[H]igh-rise buildings work against nature...

High-rise buildings work against man himself, because they isolate him from others.

High-rise buildings work against society because they prevent the units of social importance -- the family, the neighborhood, etc. -- from functioning as naturally and as normally as before.

And, an old Scottish children's song::

To fling a "piece," a slice of bread and jam, from a window down to a child in the street below has been a recognised custom in Glasgow's tenement housing....

The Jeely Piece Song
by Adam McNaughton 

I'm a skyscraper wean, I live on the nineteenth flair, 
On' I'm no' gaun oot tae play ony mair,
For since we moved tae oor new hoose I'm wastin' away,
'Cos I'm gettin' wan less meal every day,
Refrain
Oh, ye canny fling pieces oot a twenty-storey flat,
Seven hundred hungry weans will testify tae that,
If it's butter, cheese or jeely, if the breid is plain or pan,
The odds against it reachin' us is ninety-nine tae wan.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
We've wrote away tae Oxfam tae try an' get some aid,
We've a' joined tegither an' formed a "piece" brigade,
We're gonny march tae London tae demand oor Civil Rights,
Like "Nae mair hooses ower piece flingin' heights."

Pt. 3 will explore what I intended to here, including the case for wayfinding and the human 'need' for high places.