Text: Smooth City by René Boer (2023)

Guides: Nathan & Quinn

Place: Hudson Yards

Critic René Boer has serious misgivings about our shiny new urban spaces. His book proposes that the model of the so-called Smooth City (homogenized, commercialized, predictable, and surveilled) has become the reigning development pattern for cities across the world. He contrasts this design paradigm with the Porous City (surprising, egalitarian, democratic, and amenable to plurality).
We'll begin our study at Hudson Yards (the "Smoothest" part of NYC) and proceed to the High Line (a confusing mishmash of Smooth and Porous). What benefits does the Smooth City promise? What does it actually deliver? And what does it cost us?

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