Word: urbane
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Urban thinker William H. Whyte has read endless obituaries of the American city. He has heard it called everything from "an ecological smear" to a "behavioral sink." The future, he has been told, is elsewhere: in the suburbs, the country, anywhere but the city. Nonsense, says Whyte. "The core of the city has held. It has not gone to hell." What is more, he argues, "the city remains a magnificent place to do business, and that is part of the rediscovery of the center. While we are losing a lot of functions that we used to enjoy, we are intensifying...
...conventional wisdom about cities for more than 20 years. He started making waves in 1956 with his bestseller The Organization Man, one of the first exposes of the emptiness of corporate life. In 1974 the National Geographic Society awarded him its first domestic expedition grant to pursue his urban sleuthing...
...latest book, City, Whyte continues to challenge orthodox urban planning. For one thing, he likes free-floating city congestion. He maintains that gentrification gets a bum rap and that the corporate exodus to the suburbs is stupid. He advocates narrower streets for cars and wider sidewalks for people. Forget exits, he says, it's time to make better doors. The revolving ones at the bottom of most office towers may save energy, but they are hopelessly inefficient at moving people. Cram as many stores as possible along the streets to bring them alive. Do away with skywalks, abolish sunken plazas...
Whyte puts his faith in something he calls "the impulse of the center," which animates his vision of the teeming urban core. "You see it at cocktail parties," he says, "the phenomenon where people move toward the center. It is an instinct to be in a position of maximum choice...
...into town, we're much more careful, and we schedule ourselves much more efficiently than otherwise would be the case.' He proceeded to sketch out a formula for cutting yourself off from any unplanned encounter." And the unplanned encounter, Whyte concludes, is one of the joys of urban life: "You hear the point you didn't expect to hear...