繽紛曼哈頓: 紐約之美 不在規劃

The Financial Times reader visiting New York might typically stay or shop in midtown and speed to Wall Street by car or subway. With a few hours to spare, I chose to wander in the area in between, with no particular destination in mind. Greenwich Village, Chelsea, the Bowery and the Lower East Side are full of quirky buildings, eccentric shops and charming cafés, and layer upon layer of American social history.

通常，造訪紐約的英國《金融時報》讀者們可能會在曼哈頓中城區停留或購物，然後驅車或乘地鐵迅速前往華爾街。我有幾小時空閒時間，於是選擇在兩者之間的區域漫無目的地閒逛。在格林威治村(Greenwich Village)、切爾西街(Chelsea)、包釐街(Bowery)以及下東區(Lower East Side)，隨處可見造型奇特的建築、奇奇怪怪的商店以及迷人的咖啡館。除此之外，還可以看到層層沉澱下來的美國社會史的印記。

This is hardly an original observation. It was made to brilliant effect 50 years ago by Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. That book was the product of her campaign to stop Robert Moses, the city and state public works executive, building the Lower Manhattan Expressway, an elevated highway that would have enabled motorists to speed directly from Queens to New Jersey via the Williamsburg Bridge and the Holland Tunnel. In the process, it would have destroyed the character of the area through which it passed.

這種看法很難說是我的原創。50年前，簡•雅各布斯(Jane Jacobs)在她的《美國大城市的死與生》(The Death and Life of Great American Cities)一書中已經將這種看法闡述得淋漓盡致。雅各布斯參與了阻止羅伯特•摩西（Robert Moses，主管紐約市和紐約州一些市政工作）修建曼哈頓下城高速路(Lower Manhattan Expressway)的運動，撰寫此書也是爲了給運動造勢。曼哈頓下城高速路是一條高架高速路，能讓駕車者從紐約皇后區(Queens)通過威廉斯堡大橋(Williamsburg Bridge)和荷蘭隧道(Holland Tunnel)直接快速抵達新澤西州。在修建過程中，這條路可能會破壞所經地區的風貌。

Jacobs explained, through meticulous observation, how the life of cities is the product of multiple, unplanned social interactions. The density of urban living, far from being an evil, is the source of its vitality. Short streets divided into many blocks lead residents and visitors to take a multiplicity of routes and acquire a variety of experiences. Jacobs explained why the planned cities of the world such as Canberra, Brasília, Chandigarh and Letchworth Garden City are so boring. And her readers were told how the expressways Moses had built had damaged the life of the outer boroughs of New York.

通過細緻入微的觀察，雅各布斯解釋了爲何城市生活是許多未經規劃的社會交往的產物。城市人口的密集遠非壞事，而是城市的活力之源。分成許多段的短街讓居民和遊客能夠選擇各種路線，獲得各種不同體驗。雅各布斯還解釋了，爲何在世界各地，那些規劃出來的城市如此乏味，比如澳大利亞的堪培拉、巴西的巴西利亞、印度的昌迪加爾和英國的萊奇沃思花園城。雅各布斯還告訴讀者，摩西過去主持修建的一些高速路是如何破壞了紐約周邊的市鎮生活。

Jacobs won her battle – the Lower Manhattan Expressway was abandoned. But she also won a much larger war. Moses, perhaps the most powerful man in New York for half a century, was finally ousted in 1968. The bulldozers that razed Penn Station were halted before they reached Grand Central. The ramifications extended far beyond that city. Within a decade, the era of modernist architecture was over. Town planning became more modest in conception and incremental in execution.

雅各布斯打贏了這場戰鬥——修建曼哈頓下城高速路的計劃被放棄了。但不僅如此，她還打贏了一場大得多的戰爭。半個世紀以來，摩西在紐約或許可說一直能呼風喚雨，而在1968年，他最終被趕下了“神壇”。推土機曾將紐約賓州車站(Penn Station)夷爲了平地，但在抵達紐約中央車站(Grand Central Terminal)之前就被叫停。雅各布斯行動的影響範圍遠遠超出了紐約市。在不到十年之後，現代主義建築的時代宣告終結。城鎮規劃在構想上變得更爲謹慎，在執行中採取了更爲循序漸進的方式。

If unplanned social interactions are the key to a vibrant city, they are also the key to a vibrant organisation. I do not suppose Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer ever met Jane Jacobs, and the technology executive might have found little in common with the community activist. But there are clear analogies between Yahoo’s retreat from home teleworking and Jacobs’ rout of the town planners.

如果說未經規劃的社會交往是城市獲得活力的關鍵，那麼它也是機構獲得活力的關鍵。我並不認爲雅虎(Yahoo)的梅里莎•梅爾(Marissa Mayer)曾見過簡•雅各布斯，前者是執掌一家技術企業的經理人，而雅各布斯是一位社區活動家，兩人可能沒有多少共同點。但雅虎不再允許員工在家遠程工作的原因，與雅各布斯用以擊敗城鎮規劃者的邏輯有明顯的共通之處。

The enthusiasts for the virtual organisation, like the designers of the planned city, seek to impose a structure of rational organisation on a system they understand only imperfectly. Teleworking is the equivalent in cyber space of the corridor of offices, each with its own closed door. Modern office architects have abandoned the corridor in favour of open spaces where communication does not require the deliberation involved in opening an office door, picking up a telephone or sending email. “Communications and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side” – the memo is Yahoo’s, the sentiment is Jacobs’.

與人造城市的規劃者一樣，虛擬化辦公的熱情支持者試圖把一種合理組織結構強加到一個他們並沒有完全理解的體系之上。遠程工作等價於網絡版的辦公室走廊，走廊邊每間辦公室都有一扇屬於自己的緊閉的大門。現代辦公室設計已拋棄了走廊，代之以開放空間，在開放空間中，與他人交流不需要刻意打開辦公室門、提起電話或發送電子郵件。“交流與合作將十分重要，因此我們需要同在一處工作。”——這句話出自雅虎的備忘錄，不過其中的理念卻與雅各布斯的如出一轍。

Jacobs aroused the ire of town planners, who thought their schemes would usher in a rational world populated by the happy faces seen in architects’ drawings. Yahoo faces similar criticism from technophiles who find it difficult to distinguish a Facebook friendship from a hug. People such as Roy Kurzweil, the inventor of optical character recognition and speech-to-text processing. His latest book, How to Create a Mind, carries in its subtitle the immodest promise of “the secret of human thought revealed”.

雅各布斯當年惹惱了那些城鎮規劃者，他們認爲自己的設計會帶來一個合理的世界，在這個世界裏，建築藍圖上那種典型的幸福臉孔將隨處可見。雅虎也面臨類似的批評，批評者是那些難以區分Facebook上的虛擬友誼與一個真實擁抱的技術狂人，比如，光學字符識別(OCR)系統及語音轉文字(speech-to-text processing)系統的發明者羅伊•庫日韋爾(Roy Kurzweil)。他在最新著作《如何創造智慧》(How to Create a Mind)的副標題中作出了一個極爲自負的承諾：本書將揭示“人類思維的奧祕”。

Mr Kurzweil argues that human thought is based on recognition of a finite number of patterns. It follows that machines can – and soon will, in 2029 to be precise – replace human intelligence. All that is required is a suitably large encyclopedia of recognisable patterns. Town planners similarly thought they could list the functions required for a city and fit each in well-ordered places. Like Moses, Mr Kurzweil has some insight into human thinking and the requirements of modern life, but not enough. Jacobs’ approach was more finely tuned to the nuances of everyday behaviour. A walk around the parts of downtown Manhattan where she lived and which she loved reveals the failures of imagination of the planners of yesterday and today.

庫日韋爾認爲，人類思維的基礎是對有限數量模式的識別。從這一點可以得出結論，機器智能可以取代人類智能，並且這一天很快就會到來，準確地說，就在2029年。爲此，機器需要的只是一本包含足夠多可識別模式的大百科全書。城鎮規劃者的想法與此類似，他們認爲自己可以列出城市需要的所有功能，並通過良好的規劃讓每一種功能都得到滿足。與摩西類似，庫日韋爾確實發現了人類思想和現代生活需求的部分本質，但是他的認識遠遠不夠。雅各布斯的方式能夠更好地適應人們日常行爲的各種微妙差異。漫步於曼哈頓下城那些雅各布斯生活過和熱愛的地方，能讓人體會到，無論是過去還是現在，城鎮規劃者們的想象力是何等貧乏。