… a Greyhound-bus parking depot, a Sanitation Department refueling station, and several vacant lots. rail yard, which is hidden behind concrete walls. Javits Convention Center, which blocks access to the river … and the Manhattan tow pound. The Port Authority Bus Terminal, the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, the cavernous Jacob K. A decade ago, The New Yorker’s John Cassidy described the neighborhood’s “notable architectural features”: It’s a major transformation for the grim streetscape of the Far West Side. The new subway stop is already in business (and has already sprung a few leaks) an extension of the 7 train line connects the diverse, middle-class neighborhood of Flushing, Queens, with this emerging island of oligarchs. The first office tower, Kohn Pedersen Fox’s 10 Hudson Yards, opens next month, with direct access to the High Line. 2 But you don’t have to wait that long to see where this is headed. Over the next decade, the $20 billion project - spanning seven blocks from 30th to 34th Street, between 10th and 12th Avenues - will add 17 million square feet of commercial, residential, and civic space, much of it housed in signature architecture by the likes of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Bjarke Ingels Group. 1 Hudson Yards will be the nation’s first ‘quantified community,’ a testing ground for applied urban data science. This is Hudson Yards, the largest private real-estate development in United States history and the test ground for the world’s most ambitious experiment in “smart city” urbanism. Amid the highway ramps and industrial hash of far-west Manhattan, a herd of cranes hoists I-beams into the sky. If you want to see the future of New York, walk north along the High Line, round the curve at the rail yards, and turn your back to the river. The observation deck won’t be finished for a few years yet. View east from the High Line across the West Rail Yard, Manhattan. The first tower at Hudson Yards opens in May 2016, with Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs as a premier tenant. Should we worry that New York City is becoming an experimental lab? The world’s most ambitious “smart city” project is here. Instrumental City: The View from Hudson Yards, circa 2019

Central hudson test