VIRTUAL: Livable Cities – New York

Abstract

In April 2020, many residents left the city. Would they return? Was NYC dying? Or in a necessary moment of pause? Those were real questions at the time. Today in 2023, the Chelsea Hotel has reopened, years of scaffolding and sheds dismantled and removed from site. The famed El Quijote Restaurant is ready for springtime diners at the sidewalk café. Subways and commuter trains are full, sidewalks brimming, cultural and educational institutions have reopened, and the construction boom continues. Who would have thought? Life wills to live. Our bodies and spirit will to live. Nature wills to live. Some, but not all cities will to live. Those cities which have a will to live are the Super Cities of today, NYC being one of them. But what specifically makes for a Super City? According to Arthur Schopenhauer, “Will” is a mindless, aimless, non-rational impulse at the foundation of our instinctual drives, and at the foundational being of everything. There needs to be the challenge for the ambitious, the opportunity, the resources and support, the density and critical mass, the happenstance, the history, and the urban space and form. There needs to be a stage for the struggle, the experience, the joy to play out, and the victory to be had, or not. The pins need to be set and ready for a full strike, or at least a spare. This paper will look at our current post-COVID world and its impacts on our built environments and its effects on our physical, emotional, mental, psychological, physiological, and sociological wellbeing. We will also explore the seven-foot ceiling: the concept of the effects of spatial qualities and conditions on our spiritual and holistic health.