I have a thing for old books that give snapshots of how architects and urban planners thought in a previous time. This book – more of a pamphlet, really – documents an exhibition at MoMA under director Arthur Drexler, in which four schools of architecture (Cornell, Columbia, MIT, and Princeton) and their faculty were invited to propose planning solutions for four sites in New York. These sites are located on the cover, all fairly close to each other above 96th Street.

Colin Rowe and the gang at Cornell modified the grid plan north of Central Park to mix traditional city blocks with "city in the park" areas. The group from Columbia proposed a megastructure over the railroad tracks along Park Avenue with a pedestrian boulevard between the linear buildings. Peter Eisenman and Michael Graves from Princeton tackled the Hudson River waterfront, proposing an aquarium, stadium, convention and other large buildings right along the water. Lastly, the team from MIT proposed connecting Randall and Ward Islands to Manhattan through landfill to creates sites of development and amenities.

These ambitious proposals are vestiges of the Moses-era of big plans, on the cusp of postmodern architecture and its small-scale urbanism. Regardless, I can't help but wonder how much the plans would have differed if the teams worked together or were aware of each other's proposal (a model or graphic combining them is not in the book); what if MoMA treated the proposals as existing together in some alternative reality future? Stubborn as architects are, perhaps the schemes wouldn't have changed at all. But the proposals existing in a vacuum from each other is unfortunate, especially given the cover's promise of seeing simultaneous visions for these adjacent areas. ( )