Submitted by Michael Vann, Mar 7, 2008 01:15

This is a great editorial, one with the courage to say what many neighborhood activists don't want to hear. Thinking about issues of building placement, congestion, green space, etc. is excellent and necessary. Reflexively condeming a project for being "too tall" is mindless obstructionism, and antithetical to the entrepreneurial spirit that made New York what it is. Solow wants to make a profit (nothing wrong in that, that's in fact why NYC exists in the first place) so he's going to build a certain amount of square footage on the site. That can go in a few tall towers, or in a lot of short, fat Chicago Merchandise Marts. What happens with the latter is that the adjacent street grid is cast into perpetual darkness. A properly designed tall tower, one which is slender, will MITIGATE the impact of its shadow. The reason is that the sun is not a static phenomenon, and neither are the shadows it casts. The crucial dimension is the width of the building. A squat tower will have an appreciably larger foootprint, which will create a wall along the street and cast pretty much everything which is across the street into shadow. It won't cast a shadow as far, but it will cast one much wider. A tall thin building will cast a shadow further, but it will be much thinner, and as the sun moves, it will stay on any one building for much less time. And if it's green space you want, the less the block is taken up by the tower's footprint A) the taller it is, B) the more distance can be put between the towers and the FDR or the waterfront and C) the more space is left over for greening. Since these are residential towers, they can get pretty thin. And its not as if a taller neighbor is going to lessen the importance of the UN building. Trump Millennium is nearly 400 feet taller, and I have no trouble finding the UN. In fact, I use Trump Millennium as a benchmark for that.

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