Michael Kimmelman discusses his series ?Changing Climate, Changing Cities? New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman has always taken a wide-angle view of just what the building beat can entail.
Just as the impact of a single skyscraper can only be fully explained by exploring its economic significance, environmental footprint, and connections to the wider real estate and regulatory worlds, architecture is woven into broad social and political issues. A building means nothing without its street, its neighborhood, and the city in which it stands.
That systematic storytelling approach served Kimmelman well when he launched ?Changing Climate, Changing Cities? earlier this year, an ambitious examination of how environmental change has started to tug at the economic and social fabric holding global cities together. Beyond rising water, this shift threatens to be a ?spark in the tinder? with deep repercussions. In wide-ranging stories on the water crisis and social strains in Mexico City, China?s Pearl River Delta, where rapid development is in a head-on crash with a changing climate, and Rotterdam, where the Dutch focus on turning rising seas into a business opportunity, Kimmelman looks beyond places with immediate challenges, such as Miami, to show how climate change is a universal issue with vexing local political challenges.
Curbed spoke with Kimmelman about why an architecture critic offers a unique perspective on a ubiquitous issue, how cities need to be...