The Sun Also Hides Behind Skyscrapers

Emily Badger writes that the collection of high-rises forthcoming in New York's Midtown "are changing more than the city’s famous skyline… They will also transform New York far below, further darkening city streets and casting long shadows that will sweep across Central Park."

Badger sums up the issue and its political complications:

"For cities, shadows present both a technical challenge — one that can be modeled in 3-D and measured in 'theoretical annual sunlight hours' lost — and an ethereal one. They change the feel of space and the value of property in ways that are hard to define. They’re a stark reminder that the new growth needed in healthy cities can come at the expense of people already living there. And in some ways, shadows even turn light into another medium of inequality — a resource that can be bought by the wealthy, eclipsed from the poor."

The coverage digs specifically into the New York example, with a shadow study of Central Park with the proposed construction in place, insights from the Municipal Art Society of new York, which is one of the local organizations most vocally opposing the new residential development, and also linking to a recent story by Dan Rubinstein about a March 2015 action by the New York City Council to create a task force to study the impacts of skyscraper shade on the city's parks.

Badger also notes that controversies like those embroiling New York City as a new "Billionaires' Row" of high-rise residential is built near Central Park can also be found in cities like San Francisco and Toronto. The article, for instance, includes an example of the 3D modeling software that allows developers to track shadows in San Francisco in accordance with that city's 1984 "sunlight ordinance," which was just updated last year [pdf].