Urban development author: ‘Skyscrapers are over’ 

Posted: 6:48 pm Tue, March 23, 2010
By Liz Farmer
Daily Record Business Writer

Skyscrapers are old news, green spaces are useless and building parking lots is a waste of time — that was just part of a message the keynote speaker delivered to a roomful of businesspeople for Tuesday morning’s release of the annual State of Downtown Baltimore report.

But urban development author James Howard Kunstler also said that Baltimore is one of the “lucky” cities poised to adapt to the urban future. That’s good news for a crowd that had just finished flipping through a report commissioned by the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore showing that jobs, population and commercial real estate rentals and development were all down in 2009.

“Big cities are going to continue to retract,” said Kunstler, who has written several books, including “World Made By Hand” and “The City in Mind.” “But the lucky ones will redensify at their centers, their cores. I think Baltimore’s one of them.”

It was a sprinkling of encouragement after Kunstler spent 30 minutes telling more than 400 developers, architects, lawyers and city officials exactly why everything they had worked for was about to change.

“Skyscrapers are over — they’re only possible with cheap energy,” said Kunstler as he flashed a slide with a picture of the former Legg Mason headquarters tower, where Tuesday morning’s event was held.

Along with the picture, the text read “future liability — not an answer.”

Nervous chuckles filled the room. But Kunstler wasn’t done.

“We’re not going to renovate these skyscrapers; there’s no capital, and the materials are becoming impractical,” he said, because many of the synthetic materials needed are petroleum-based. “And I warn you about getting so-called green skyscraper projects. … That should send up a red flag for you. Don’t get interested in it.”

The tower, renamed 100 Light Street, is undergoing renovations, including a greenscaping, that are expected to be finished by the fall.

Depleted oil resources, most notably in Mexico, the United States’ second-largest supplier, could have a major impact here within three to four years, Kunstler said. The oil crisis directly affects industrial growth, he added, and slowed growth makes it harder to repay debt.

Some in the commercial real estate industry say it’s a valid point, but they aren’t buying it hook, line and sinker.

“I don’t think you have to completely demolish a whole city and start all over again,” said Terri Harrington, vice president of MacKenzie Commercial Real Estate Services. “You can be creative and not as extreme as he proposes. There are still replacements for some office structures. If a building can’t be replaced, you tear down the building and put something up in that place that does work for you in that generation.”

While taking jabs at everyone from architects (“Their purpose is to mystify the public”) to Walmart (“Think the big box stores will go on forever? Forget about it”), Kunstler emphasized that the depletion of the world’s oil supply is changing the roadmap for cities’ future survival.

“You should cease making any future investment in parking structures or anything that has to do with motoring, because we’re done,” he said. “And we don’t even know it yet.”

There should be a return to investment in railroads to connect American cities, and better public transportation within metro areas, he said. Farmland will replace many suburbs while people move back into cities. Kunstler pointed to European cities as models for their dense population while retaining a commitment to Old World architecture versus skyscrapers.

“Keep it modest,” he said. “We’re not going to be building mega structures anymore.”

It’s for those reasons Kunstler said Baltimore is a “poster child” for future American cities, saying that it already has many of his required elements, including early 20th-century buildings waiting to be renovated.

“You’re lucky you have so much fabric left from the … pre-auto age,” he said.

He predicted a population explosion for Baltimore if the city continues to work within its existing infrastructure and grows organically. Meanwhile, “overbuilt” cities like New York could struggle with no means of keeping up their modern skyscrapers.

Think it’s too far-fetched? Kunstler points to history.

“No one walking around Hadrian’s Rome [in the 2nd century A.D.] thought there would be grazing sheep in the Temple of Jupiter 800 years later,” he said.