Sunday, October 18, 2009

Protecting the Skyline

If there's one thing our city is known for, it our skyline. A most beautiful, distinctive thing, the New York City skyline is a masterpiece of architectural imagination and skill. Needless to say, whoever controls the shape of our skyline is a very important person indeed. So who is that exactly?

Meet Amanda Burden. As head of the city's Department of City Planning and chairwoman of the City Planning Commission, she has immense power over what gets built (or not) in this town, and over what buildings get the honor of joining NYC's skyline. She determines what proposed buildings get to "break" the skyline and if they are in character with the neighborhood. And if she don't like, it don't get built.

This easily makes this daughter of Old New York society one of the most powerful people in town.

Considering the number of glass box apartment buildings and office complexes we've seen built in recent years, you'd think Ms. Burden thinks bigger is better. Its seems like there's no building project too big for her to approve. But as this lengthy article in the New York Observer points out, there's been some projects that were even too big for her out sized tastes! It's scary to think what monstrosities might be going up if she didn't have such a good sense for city planning.

In many ways, Ms. Burden has one of the toughest jobs in the whole city government, mainly saying "No" to developers who just look at the skyline and see dollars falling out of it. Ms. Burden is protecting New York from turning into one giant skyscraper that would just destroy the character of our neighborhoods and the flavor of our city. Let's hope she keeps up the good work.

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