Mr. Olin should be appreciated for what he is: part of the newly embedded technocratic elite whose ideology is disguised as good taste, competence and, most subversive, reasonableness. His firm can be understood as the Skidmore, Owens & Merrill of landscape architecture. Good, solid, reliable working spaces perfectly attuned to corporate sensibility.

My only problem with Mr. Olin is his arrogance and his ambition. On the one hand he believes he knows better than most and thus is unmoved by his critics. And, on the other, he is happy in his role as servant to the rich and powerful. And, why not, as his submissive nature not only guarantees a stream of new work but also gives him ample opportunity to perform for his masters.

I suspect that Mr. Olin is a man frightened by many things and so, in response to his fears, has constructed an aesthetic and practice predicated on careful management of time and space. For those who see the potential for chaos at any moment, Mr. Olin's designs are very reassuring. For those of us who think chance and contingency have much to do with the joy and excitement of city, Mr. Olin's designs are potentially dystopian.

Of course, the difficult question in urban planning is how to balance our need for control and reliability with our desire for spontaneity and happy accidents. Mr. Olin has many admirable qualities, but I don’t think he’s the man to resolve this riddle. If he were, Ratner wouldn’t have hired him in the first place.