Word: antiurban
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...even 33 years old, but it seems a relic of some distant age, when vast, impractical artistic hubris could persuade and triumph. Wright was a fabulous caricature of the genius artiste, difficult and grand, and so the Guggenheim was a caricature of 20th century genius architecture -- bizarre, ahistorical, antiurban. These days, there are still plenty of arrogant, solipsistic architects around, but self-confidence -- and talent -- on the scale of Wright's no longer exists...
With the proliferation of postwar suburbs, which sucked millions of families out of the cities, downtowns quickly lost their old pizazz. Then the redevelopment binge of the '50s and '60s came disastrously close to indulging the American antiurban instinct to the point of no return. Political pressure to build new housing for the inner-city poor was intense. Urban renewal, a well-intended and wrongheaded federal mission, in those days meant tearing down quirky, densely interwoven neighborhoods of 19th and early 20th century low-rise buildings and putting up expensive, charmless clots of high-rises. Or, even worse, leaving empty...
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