Architecture

The current generation of urban designers may like to complain about NIMBYs, but urban designers and NIMBYs can be counted on to agree on one thing:  Elevated transportation infrastructure is a bad thing in an urban setting.  Urban design today focuses on activating the ground plane and maintaining its visual connection to the sky.  Even pedestrian bridges are out of fashion, while a new continuous elevated structure would be hard sell in the urban core of almost any major city.  The Seattle Monorail Project (1996-2005) proposed a very thin elevated structure, but even this was a flashpoint of controversy when it got close to existing buildings.

It may be true that we don’t know how to build viaducts anymore and that the freeway era has traumatized a whole generation into reacting badly to absolutely anything new up in the air.  And I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, but …

But before we decide for sure, take a walk with me along Berlin’s Stadtbahn.

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Earlier this year, Berlin’s U-Bahn opened its newest segment of subway, a 1.1 mile three-station line connecting the main rail station to the Brandenburg Gate.  It’s temporarily called the U55, but it will ultimately become part of the expanded U5 (see network map here).  From the Gate, the line will continue east under Unter den Linden, Berlin’s main processional boulevard, to Alexanderplatz, the former East Berlin downtown and one of Berlin’s most important hubs.  (From there it will continue to the eastern suburbs as the U5 that already exists.)  This is such an important segment for Berlin, both practically and symbolically, that it´s remarkable it´s only now being built.  (The Transport Politic reviewed the political history here.)

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