Dual Cities: as reviewed by Keith Engel, AIA, LEED AP, CHPC, Associate Principal, and project director for many of our supportive, affordable, and shelter housing projects.
This new book provides a compelling exploration of two global cities grappling with shared challenges that surround housing as a product, as a policy, and as a right: an affordability crisis impacting low-income households, concerted efforts to shore up critical supplies of public housing stock, and a landscape of underfunding from decades of government divestment. Highlighting the intertwined conversations on design, sustainability, planning, and policy with an inclusive eye toward the past, present, and future, Dual Cities underscores the value of global exchange in addressing the housing crisis facing both cities through the development of long term, equitable solutions.
Dual Cities features twenty-two noteworthy case studies in London and New York City drawn from established housing practitioners, with each case study building upon the discourse surrounding public, social, and affordable housing. Dattner Architects is thrilled to have three of our housing projects – Via Verde, 175 Delancey Street, and Caesura – featured. As a mission-driven firm that creates engaging, impactful, and essential architecture, Dattner Architects has proudly centered our housing practice in socially responsible and community-centric work, with projects that provide housing in support of the most vulnerable New Yorkers. This is exemplified in the work that I do at Dattner Architects, from large-scale, highly sustainable, and deeply affordable housing projects, to emergency shelters for homeless women facing mental health or substance abuse challenges, and to supportive housing projects that provide residents the necessary continuum of care to exit the cycle of homelessness.
New York City is on the brink of an exciting new mayorship, with the twin housing affordability and record homelessness crises having been centered in public discourse in the lead-up to the election. Within this dialogue, informed by the mayor-elect’s proposed bold housing policy measures, our current context includes: the outgoing administration heralding a city-wide amendment of the zoning code and several large-scale neighborhood rezonings, and the passage of a slate of controversial housing-related measures that unfurl the red tape and politics around how and where housing is produced to ensure that all New York City districts are doing their fair share. All of that to say, is this enough? It is estimated that New York City will need several-hundred thousand additional homes to move us beyond the housing crisis. It is in this context – and in this present time – that Dual Cities is a valuable text to discover what can be possible, and to provoke the necessary conversations to imagine comprehensive, strategic, and visionary solutions to this crisis –a crisis that we should not let go to waste.