The Battle for Gotham (61 page)

6
Paul Goldberger, “West Side Fixer-Upper: New Ideas for Lincoln Center That Don’t Involve Dynamite.”

7
Martin Filler, “After 50 Years, Lincoln Center Still Offers Plenty to Criticize,” 37.

8
Ibid.

CHAPTER 8

1
That book was completed under editors Jane Isay and Bob Bender at Simon & Schuster.

2
John Oakes of the
New York Times
wrote occasional brilliant op-ed pieces, as did Sidney Schanberg, but they were lonely voices. Peter Freiberg reported regularly on the battle for the
New York Post
.

3
I am enormously grateful to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for support of transcribing those tapes.

4
That was Marshall McLuhan’s term for the automobile.

5
In May 1968 new regulations went into effect that required more stringent studies of highways before they were adopted.

6
For the argument that the federal government was paying the bill, see the next chapter.

7
For an analysis of Starr’s Planned Shrinkage policy, see my book
The Living City
, 176-177.

CHAPTER 9

1
Contributing federal funds would have run out, as will be shown.

2
In 1971, Mayor John V. Lindsay and Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller signed an agreement to develop a new highway.

3
Jerry Nachman, “Eye on Westway.”

4
Caro,
Power Broker
, 932.

5
I am indebted to Gene Russianoff, head of the Straphangers Campaign, for his help in gathering transit statistics.

6
See “The SoHo Syndrome,” chap. 13 in my book,
Cities Back from the Edge
.

7
“A Ghost of Westway Rises Along the Hudson: An Old Idea for the Waterfront, Pared Down, Still Provokes Passions,”
New York Times
, March 3, 2002.

8
Historically, most carriage or car owners early in the century owned carriage houses separate from their houses.

9
“As City Gains Housing for Poor, Market Takes It Away,”
New York Times
, October 15, 2009.

10
In the spirit of full disclosure, the West Side opposition to Trump’s original horrific plan started at my dining room table in the mid-1980s. The current development, no longer owned by Trump but originally negotiated by him, is a totally reconfigured plan that emerged through a complicated negotiated process in which a very large segment of the West Side was involved.

CONCLUSION

1
Michael Pollan,
Omnivore’s Dilemma
.

2
Mostly these are small-scale efforts. Some cities are trying to justify demolishing whole sparsely populated neighborhoods, turning them into parks and gardens. Thinning out a city is an invitation to only more of the same. Only a reversal, like in the South Bronx, leads to rebirth.

3
Lisa McLaughlin reported in
Time
(August 4, 2008) that six hundred small-scale farms (which are often large-scale vegetable gardens) exist in New York City.

4
For the full story of Food from the Hood’s formation, see my book,
Cities Back from the Edge
, 226-229.

5
A slowdown in the real estate market in the 1990s also prompted many to turn to preservation.

6
Jacobs,
Death and Life
, 349.

7
This is why the first thing to improve a downtown can be to undo what the traffic engineers of that era did.

8
Ibid., 363.

9
Also, she favored big public school systems, libraries, health facilities, and water, sewer, and utility systems.

10
Bradford Snell, “American Ground Transport.”

11
Stephen B. Goddard,
Getting There: The Epic Struggle Between Road and Rail in the American Century
, 126.

12
Ibid., 135.

13
The same principle works for pedestrians with short blocks, Jacobs showed in
Death and Life
.

14
Forest City Ratner is the corporate name.

15
Michael Shapiro’s book
The Last Good Season: Brooklyn, the Dodgers, and Their Final Pennant Race Together
details this sorry chapter of Moses history. Moses wanted O’Malley to build in far-out, less accessible Brooklyn. O’Malley pleaded for this site and finally left town, a major crush for the borough.

16
The influx of white residents should not be interpreted as a necessary ingredient for neighborhood stability.

17
Charles V. Bagli, “Residents Guarding Their Homes Against the Bulldozer,”
New York Times
, January 23, 2004.

18
Sam Goldsmith, “City: Ward’s Bakery Is Not a Landmark,”
Brooklyn Paper
, March 7, 2007.

19
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

20
First coined by architect Carl Olifant.

21
Chris Smith, “Mr. Ratner’s Neighborhood.”

22
Also a Ratner project in downtown Brooklyn.

23
Nicolai Ouroussoff, “What Will Be Left of Gehry’s Vision for Brooklyn?”
New York Times
, March 21, 2008.

24
Truck deliveries, garbage removal, building infrastructure, parking.

25
Community-impact packages, offering benefits to the area, are put forth while the basic plan remains unchanged.

26
The New York State Court of Appeals ruled in December 2009 that the state could not use eminent domain on behalf of Columbia’s expansion plan. The blight designation was “mere sophistry” about a neighborhood already undergoing organic rejuvenation, the court found. “Even a cursory examination of the study reveals the idiocy of considering things like unpainted block walls or loose awning supports as evidence of a blighted neighborhood,” the opinion noted. The state hired the same consultant as Columbia for its determination of blight. Also, both city and state agencies, the court found, erroneously claimed a public purpose for the rezoning that paved the way for Columbia to annex the area for an obviously private development. The clear message that no civic purpose was being served by the use of eminent domain could influence future attempts to use this power to condemn and take over private property.

27
I am indebted to Dr. Tom Angotti and his Hunter College research team for their excellent, thorough Willets Point Land Use Study, April 2006. Much of the statistical information included here is drawn from that study that included a door-to-door survey of the site. Research assistants included Diana Marcela Perez and Joan April Suwalsky.

28
PUKAR stands for Partners for Urban Knowledge and Research.

29
Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava, “Taking the Slum Out of ‘Slumdog,’”
New York Times
, February 21, 2009.

30
The idea that Jane might advocate for a six-story building to be built adjacent to my twenty-one-story apartment house or elsewhere in my neighborhood of twenty- to thirty-story buildings is ludicrous.

EPILOGUE

1
That long-standing saga is detailed in both of my earlier books.

2
A smaller sanctuary.

3
We had three early benefactors: the late Joy Ungerleider Mayerson, who had led the rejuvenation of the Jewish Museum uptown; Joan K. Davidson, then head of the J. M. Kaplan Fund; and the late Brook Astor, head of the Astor Foundation. Davidson and Astor were the most reliable funders of new, innovative New York City cultural projects, the venture capitalists of NYC philanthropy. Many of today’s organizations were nurtured by them. Mayerson was passionately committed to Jewish and cultural programs.

4
Years after she began this job, Jill joined in partnership with Walter Sedvic. Together, they have been leaders of the now popular techniques of green preservation.

5
Our owner’s rep, architect Diane Kaese, and project manager, Terry Higgins, were immensely helpful.

6
Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.

7
The EPA has noted that demolition and construction debris constitutes around a third of all waste generated in this country, and has projected that more than 27 percent of existing buildings will be replaced between 2000 and 2030. In New York City, 60 percent of the waste stream is demolition and construction debris.

8
Bryan Walsh, “Greening This Old House: Saving Money and the Planet by Upgrading Older Homes.”

9
For a fuller discussion of this issue, see my chapter “Jane Jacobs: Environmental Preservationist, Preservation Environmentalist,” in
What We See
.

10
Malkin is president of Wien & Malkin, supervisor of the building on behalf of the owners, the Malkin family and the Helmsley estate.

11
Public policy often works against doing the right thing. In New York State, for example, state grants are available to low-income property owners for window
replacement
but not window repair, weatherization, or storm-window installation.

12
Remarks delivered at Michigan Historic Preservation Network, Grand Rapids, May 15, 2009.

Bibliography

Abrams, Charles.
The City Is the Frontier.
New York: Harper and Row, 1965.

———.
Forbidden Neighbors.
New York: Harper and Brothers, 1955.

Anderson, Martin.
The Federal Bulldozer: A Critical Analysis of Urban Renewal, 1949- 1962.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1964.

Ballon, Hillary, and Kenneth T. Jackson, ed.
Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York.
New York: W. W. Norton, 2007.

Baumbach, Richard O., Jr., and William E. Borah.
The Second Battle of New Orleans: A History of the Vieux Carre Riverfront-Expressway Controversy
. Washington, DC: Preservation Press, 1981.

Berman, Marshall.
All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity
. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982.

Brown, Mary Elizabeth.
The Italians of the South Village.
Edited by Rafaele Fierro. New York: Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, 2007.

Caro, Robert.
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974.

Committee on Governmental Operations, Hon. Bill Perkins, Chair.
Forty Years of New York City Landmarks Preservation: An Opportunity to Review, Reflect, and Reform.
New York: Council of the City of New York, 2005.

Cusker, Joseph P. “The World of Tomorrow: Science, Culture, and Commentary at the New York World’s Fair.” In
Dawn of a New Day: The New York World’s Fair, 1930- 40
, edited by Helen A Harrison. New York: New York University Press, 1980.

Echanove, Matias, and Rahul Srivastava.
What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs
. New York: New Village Press, 2010.

Epstein, Jason. “Way Uptown.”
New York Times Magazine
, April 11, 2004.

Fainstein, Susan S.
The City Builders: Property, Politics, and Planning in London and New York.
Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995.

Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans
. Serendipity Films, 2008.

Filler, Martin. “After 50 Years, Lincoln Center Still Offers Plenty to Criticize.”
Architectural Record
(June 2009).

Fishman, Robert. “Rethinking Public Housing.”
Places
16, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 26-33.

Fitch, Robert. “Explaining New York City’s Aberrant Economy.”
New Left Review
(October 1994).

Florida, Richard.
The Rise of the Creative Class—and How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community, and Everyday Life.
New York: Basic Books, 2002.

Frieden, Bernard J., and Lynne B. Sagalyn.
Downtown, Inc.: How America Rebuilds Cities.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989.

Fullilove, Mindy Thompson, M.D.
The House of Joshua.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

———.
Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It
. New York: One World/Ballantine Books, 2004.

Gans, Herbert J.
The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans.
New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1962.

Garretson, Sara P. “The Changing Face of Manufacturing in New York City.”
Livable City
18, no. 2 (Fall 1994).

Goddard, Stephen B.
Getting There: The Epic Struggle Between Road and Rail in the American Century
. New York: Basic Books, 1994.

Goldberger, Paul. “West Side Fixer-Upper: New Ideas for Lincoln Center That Don’t Involve Dynamite.”
New Yorker
, July 7, 2003.

Goodman, Robert.
After the Planners
. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971.

Gratz, Roberta Brandes.
The Living City: Thinking Small in a Big Way
. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1989.

———.
What We See
. New York: New Village Press, 2010.

Gratz, Roberta Brandes, with Norman Mintz.
Cities Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtown
. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1989.

Hammett, Jerilou, and Kingsley Hammett, eds.
The Suburbanization of New York.
New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007.

Harrison, Helen A. “The World of Tomorrow: Science, Culture, and Commentary at the New York World’s Fair.” In
Dawn of a New Day: The New York World’s Fair, 1930-40,
edited by Helen A Harrison. New York: New York University Press, 1980.

Hinkle, Loren. “Closing Summary.” In
The Effect of the Man-Made Environment on Health and Behavior
, edited by L. Hinkle and W. Loring. DHEW, Publication no. 77-8318. Washington, DC: Centers for Disease Control, 1977.