A questionnaire for mayors and tower developers
For more than 30 years now Israeli cities have been inundated with mainly a single building type – residential point blocks, free-standing towers ,most with four apartments surrounding an elevator core. This phenomenon, still not understood by many today, will have the most serious consequences for the Israeli way of life.
The people who build these projects on an ever-larger scale (some, incredibly, claiming to be Zionists), build them with the full support of hundreds of mayors, ignorant in these matters, who are de facto, the chief urban designers of their cities.
It is well known that most business leaders focus on their own agendas rather than considering the wider society and that the leaders of these companies have no ambition whatever beyond making more money.
As for mayors, we have all often witnessed their backing ever-larger major building projects close to election time.
Needless to say, any position of leadership, makes you responsible to the people who have entrusted some part of their destiny to you. But responsibility doesn’t seem to be uppermost in their minds.
Following is a brief questionnaire for Mayors and tall building developers which we know the answers to beforehand, even if left unanswered by them.
1. Have you any education in architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and city planning?
2. Do you know anything of the factors that make for a lively public realm – our streets and squares?
3. Are you concerned at all regarding the impacts these buildings may have on their neighbors and surrounding area?
4. Have you any understanding of how the physical and natural environment can make or break communities?
5. Do you care at all about how these building projects affect the people living in them, young families with children, for example, and the psychological harm to old residents displaced as a result of urban renewal?
6. Is the preservation of historic areas and buildings important to you?
7. Are aesthetic considerations included in you criteria?
8. Are you concerned regarding the negative impacts these building projects may have on future generations?
9. Are you aware of the fact that your choice of architects has moral implications?
10. Do you require of your architects to develop alternatives to tall buildings?
Or, is your personal profit in the short-term or is being re-elected Mayor your only goal?
If only we could paint a prettier picture of where these critically important matters stand today.