Lax and the City (Part 1)

A Broadway and “urban”-inspired depiction of my ambivalence – the celebration of city life and the frustration at the blatant laxity displayed by those who had the power and authority to define my city experience.

I am pretty much a city boy. Except for my occasional craving for a detour to exotic places (think islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean), picturesque countryside (think British Columbia), or places of profound cultural and historical significance like North Korea or Egypt, I am ready to spend most of my life in the middle of a city, pampering myself with the amenities and the hustle bustle of city life.

When I was younger, I made “lists”. One of them is a long list of my favourite cities that I want to live in for at least a month. It comprised of New York, Paris, Vienna, Hong Kong, Dubai, Florence, Chicago and San Francisco. As a grew older, I discarded a few from my list.

Dubai, as I’ve discovered since becoming an architecture freak lately, is a place where people want to erect as many things as possible in the shortest period of time from the ground up to the sky. The buildings, while bizarre and creative, lacked the “soul” and identity that add to the coherence of the city of Dubai. It shouldn’t be surprising, though, as I suspect when you try to build everything, simultaneously, there are little buildings that are already physically in place that can be the references and guides to the architects handling new projects. I am looking forward to see a picture of the Dubai’s skyline 10 years from now. But for now, Dubai is out.

Then there are Paris, Florence, and Vienna. While the renaissance and baroque architecture and the french art nouveau is nostalgic, timeless, texture-rich, historical, and aesthetically pleasing, my personal preference is something more modern (think glass and steel), something that gives me a “move on” feel. Perhaps a renaissance style building or two, right in the middle of the city would be good for me to reminisce their heritage and the past, but an entire city with buildings like this is like a city stuck in the past.

So, only Hong Kong, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco are left.

Lately, I have been watching Sex and the City and checking out some of the websites of top design schools in the US (Cooper Union, Pratt and Parsons – all of which are located in New York City). One thing led to another and I was getting so passionate about New York City that I went on several virtual tours. I have never been to NYC to begin with, but I have detailed every part of NYC as though I am typing this in a million dollar penthouse in Midtown Manhattan. (Ooh, that was wild. The fantasy, that is)

I especially like the Manhattan borough, which is very well regarded as the epicenter of New York City. The best jazz bars are in Greenwich Village, which is in lower Manhattan, which is also where the World Trade Center was located. Wall Street and the NYSE are also there, while the Statue of Liberty is just around the corner. Upper East Side is the setting of the notoriously scandalous and “everyone-slept-with-everyone” Gossip Girls which had failed to sustain my interest after the pilot, while West Side Manhattan is where the gay neighbourhoods gaybourhoods like Chelsea is located.

Midtown Manhattan is literally my ideal urban space. I like the “feeling of insignificance” where larger than life skyscrapers surround me and cast their ginormous shadows on me at the street level. Trivia aside, the reason New York gets mentioned in this post about city is that it aptly explains why I heart city life.

Firstly on physiological needs (Yes, I am going on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) it has the basic amenities that I need to survive. Restaurants and shops are everywhere (although they can get really expensive). There are also plenty of green spaces in the city, which I think is important to inject fresh air to the city. Wikipedia says there are about 1,700 parks in New York city. And navigation system is good. (Mobility is important to me).

Next comes safety needs. Post 911, New York has emerged as one of the safest cities in US, although I do think personal safety is a personal responsibility. In terms of social needs, there are plenty of urban spaces that encourages interaction between people. Public squares, city parks, as well as pedestrian streets are social playground for the people. Next is the esteem needs. More opportunities are available in the big city like this, if you take advantage of them. After all, in the words of Frank Sinatra, if you can make it there (New York) you can make it anywhere.

But the real clincher, however, was the opportunity to fulfill my self-actualization needs, which really means the need to “become what you are capable of becoming”. Due to the nature of my ambition, I want to be at a place where arts is celebrated, creativity is appreciated, and entrepreneurship thrives. New York has all that. It has a huge bohemian and gay population (which is really why the Chelsea neighborhood was mentioned). What’s with bohemian and gay population? See Richard Florida’s work in here and here. New York is also the place where modern architecture are such a pleasure to ogle at (I called those “eye candies”).

This logo says it all

As much as I love New York, my affection for the big apple is very likely to originate from pure admiration. In terms of “emotional connection”, aka the very affection that originates from the heart, I heart my city, Kuala Lumpur.

This logo, more aptly, says it all

Because I heart my city, I want my city to be great. I want my city to thrive and progress, where people enjoy living and working here without any hassle. I want it to be respected like other great cities, where people around the world come to visit and admire its architecture. I want the residents to feel proud of the city, where they would take ownership in adorning and beautifying the city, like what the guys at Florence did to their city during the Renaissance period. I want my city to be featured in pop culture – Come on, Hollywood, bring a monster to destroy KL! Or write a song about it, a la “New York, New York” by Frank Sinatra. I want my city to have a sense of identity of its own where people around the world would only have to say “KL”, and not “KL, Malaysia”, pretty much like how we refer today to New York and Paris by their names, not “New York, USA” and “Paris, France”.

I simply want to live in a great city, but really, it is mortifying to make a comparison between my city and other revered cities in the world. In spite of several great buildings in this city, KL just look like a total mess. Rubbish is everywhere. Roads are planned dangerously. Simply put it, there isn’t any area in the city of world class characteristic. More depressingly, the morass of political activities at the city hall’s office convinced me that the city’s conundrum is likely to persist for quite a while. As far as I am concerned, the KL City Hall is a moribund organization, which had lost all its credibility for its failure to turn this city around (they even took 20+ years to draft a plan for the city, I heard).

I don’t get these people. I hate laxity. When you have the chance to manage and turn a city around, you gotta be kidding me when you dread going to your office on Monday mornings and get away doing nothing under the pretense of circumspection. Heck, if I have your job I’ll even spend my Saturday nights in the office burying myself under the books of Richard Florida.

Much as these things have became my preoccupation of late, I felt so helpless. Well, I can try keeping rubbish in my pockets until I find a bin and by abstaining from drawing on the walls (I didn’t, by the way). But what else can I do?

[To be continued]

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