The Battle for Gotham (60 page)

7
The Battery Park City School and the Spruce Street School.

CHAPTER 3

1
For a full story of the Greenmarket’s founding and significance, see “To Market, to Market,” chap. 9 of
Cities Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtown
, by Roberta Brandes Gratz with Norman Mintz.

2
Landscape architect and Village resident Robert Nichols was the chief designer.

3
Conversation with the author, 1978.

4
A British study in 1998, for example, found that closing roads actually cuts driving trips. The research team analyzed sixty cases around the globe where roads were closed or capacity reduced. On average, 20 percent of the traffic just vanished, and in some cases the reduction was even more dramatic.

5
Charles Grutzner, “Strategy Revamped on Washington Sq.,”
New York Times
, March 30, 1958, 58.

6
The terms
blight
and
slum
varied according to the appraiser and local definitions. There were point systems that might include the “lack of community facilities nearby” (undefined), point systems that deducted points for lack of closets, insufficient hot water, dirty toilets and yards, pests, and other problems curable without demolition.

7
Eisner alerted them to slum-clearance standards, such as square footage, number of occupants, kitchen and bathroom facilities, and rent levels. The West Village Committee’s own survey showed that by these standards Greenwich Village was not a slum.

8
The corner stores were designed to be either a residential unit or a store, depending on the market, such a basically smart idea, fundamental flexibility.

9
The details and full significance of this community success story are told in
The Living City
, 168-174.

10
As Jacobs scholar Peter Laurence reports in “The Death and Life of Urban Design: Jane Jacobs, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the New Research in Urbanism, 1955-1965,” this Moses project in partnership with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company displaced thirty-one hundred families (eleven thousand people), five hundred viable stores and small factories, three churches, three schools, two theaters, plus a series of gas tanks for which the “Gas Light District” was named. Actually, the gas tanks were long gone by the time this demolition took place, having taken place more than a decade before.

CHAPTER 4

1
Bridge Apartments, four high-rises lined up like dominos over the Cross Bronx Expressway, with four thousand residents.

2
Her complete description of the event and the details of her arrest appear in the appendix and on the Web site
centerforthelivingcity.org
.

3
Mayor Lindsay declared it “dead for all time” on July 16, 1969. In 1971 Governor Rockefeller removed it from the list of proposals eligible for federal highway funding.

4
For a full treatment of how SoHo’s history changed the course of American urban history, see “The SoHo Syndrome,” chap. 13 in my book,
Cities Back from the Edge
.

5
Chester Rapkin,
The South Houston Industrial Area
, 282. A plaque honoring Rapkin can be found on a building in SoHo between Prince and Spring Streets.

6
As always when I refer to the planning profession, exceptions existed especially among the progressive advocacy planners. This is true even if I don’t specifically call attention to this fact.

7
I labeled this process the SoHo Syndrome in the final chapter of
Cities Back from the Edge
.

CHAPTER 5

1
Robert Caro’s meticulously researched book
The Power Broker
outlines in detail both the positive and the negative views of Moses.

2
A visit to some public housing sites today reveals a very interesting social phenomenon. Residents bring their own chairs and
sit in front of the fence
on the sidewalk, often at a point where green grass behind the fence could easily accommodate a bench and the fence be removed.

3
Rogers started her work with the Central Park Task Force in 1975, was appointed Central Park administrator in 1980, founded the Central Park Conservancy with the assistance of parks commissioner Gordon Davis in 1980, and left as president at the end of 1995.

4
Betsy Barlow Rogers, “Robert Moses and the Transformation of Central Park.”

5
See “The Mess We Have Made,” chap. 2 in my book,
Cities Back from the Edge
.

6
Caro,
Power Broker
, 560.

7
It was recently made into a park.

8
Ibid., 707.

9
Joel Schwartz,
The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and Redevelopment of the Inner City
, 31.

10
The 1949 Housing Act was an umbrella for several programs, including FHA mortgage insurance, rural home finance, and Title III for public housing. Title I, probably the best known, created a write-down program for residential redevelopment that amounted to a onetime capital grant to which the federal government contributed two-thirds. It required prompt disposal of redevelopment tracks to private sponsors, helping Taft claim that it was written to subsidize private, middle-rent housing, as distinguished from public housing (ibid., 132).

11
Joseph D. McGoldrick, former Columbia University government professor, city comptroller, and slum-clearance advocate, “as early as 1944, had observed that slum clearance projects were not doing what was expected of them,” writing, “Such projects have had no regenerative effect on the areas in which they are in place,” notes Peter L. Laurence (“Death and Life of Urban Design”).

12
Over twelve years New York got seventy million dollars. Chicago came in second with thirty million dollars.

13
Schwartz,
New York Approach
, 295-296.

14
Gay Talese, “Anger Lingering As Bridge Goes Up,”
New York Times
, June 19, 1964.

15
Schwartz,
New York Approach
, 294.

16
Policies were eventually developed to fight arson but not to fight fires when they were occurring.

17
The Wallaces quote a 1976 BBC-TV special,
The Bronx Is Burning
, during which a fire chief notes that forty-four thousand people were covered per engine company in the South Bronx as compared to seventeen thousand on Staten Island.

18
See
The Living City
, in which I deal with “Planned Shrinkage” at length.

19
Loren Hinkle, “Closing Summary.”

20
The expressway was built between 1948 and 1963.

21
This was only one mile out of the 130 that went through the city between 1948 and 1963 and destroyed twenty-seven neighborhoods.

22
Caro,
Power Broker
, 1080.

23
Ibid., 218.

24
Eventually, Mumford was a very strong critic of Moses’s highway building.

25
Quoted in Joseph P. Cusker, “The World of Tomorrow: Science, Culture, and Commentary at the New York World’s Fair,” 4.

26
Walter Lippmann, “Today and Tomorrow,” 51.

27
Caro,
Power Broker
.

28
Jason Epstein, “Way Uptown,” 53.

29
Caro,
Power Broker
, 706.

30
Richard O. Baumbach Jr. and William E. Borah,
The Second Battle of New Orleans: A History of the Vieux Carre Riverfront-Expressway Controversy
.

31
Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans
.

32
Bob Young, “Highway to Hell,”
Willamette Week
, March 9, 2005.

33
Lisa Schreibman, “Looking for Land? Try Tearing Down a Highway,” 10.

34
Caro,
Power Broker
, 940.

35
Lewis Mumford,
The Highway and the City
, 220; Schwartz,
New York Approach
, xvii.

36
Isaacs tried to ban discrimination in housing and advocated giving neighborhoods a voice in local improvements.

37
Caro,
Power Broker
, 15.

38
Ten subway lines and the Long Island Railroad converge here.

39
Robert Goodman,
After the Planners
, 28.

40
Jacobs,
Death and Life
, 209.

41
This continues nationwide under the Federal Hope VI program that replaces low-income public housing units with a smaller total number of mixed-income units, resulting in an even smaller number of replacement units for the lost public housing.

42
Marshall Berman,
All That Is Solid Melts into Air
.

43
Mindy Thompson Fullilove, M.D.,
Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It
, 224.

CHAPTER 6

1
The full name did not always fit the width of the
New York Post
column size, so for single-column stories it was Roberta B. Gratz.

2
Ninety-six percent of New York City manufacturers are locally owned small businesses that employ fewer than one hundred people.

3
Donald’s father retired in 1976, and his older brother, Bill, who had joined the business five years after Donald, retired in 1995.

4
The study was conducted by the Planning Center of the Municipal Art Society in collaboration with the Industrial Technology Assistance Corporation.

5
I am indebted to Stephen Zacks for his excellent article, “Made in the USA.”

6
“In Professor’s Model, Diversity = Productivity,”
Science Times
, January 8, 2008, F2.

7
Sara P. Garretson, “The Changing Face of Manufacturing in New York City,” 2.

8
John A. Loomis, “Manufacturing Communities—Learning from Mixed Use,” 4.

9
In the 5-4 decision, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor dissented, bemoaning the possibility of “replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.”

10
I am indebted to the New York Industrial Retention Network for the basic manufacturing and Long Island City information in this chapter.

11
Catherine Rampell, “How Industries Survive Change, If They Do,”
New York Times
, November 15, 2008.

12
Adam Friedman, “Rezone Long Island City to Save Jobs,”
Newsday
, January 5, 2001.

13
Robert Fitch, “Explaining New York City’s Aberrant Economy,” 110.

14
Edgar M. Hoover and Louise P. Lerdau,
One-Tenth of a Nation
.

15
A 2008 report of the city’s Economic Development Corporation revealed that more than 100 businesses slashed 4,111 local jobs despite getting more than $91 million in tax breaks and incentives from the city. More than 500 companies received assistance since 1998 “to support investment, job retention and growth,” of which 35 required a minimum job-creation requirement. Eight of the 35 failed to create the jobs, but only one company lost any benefits.

16
Jacobs,
The Economy of Cities
, 88-89.

17
Ibid., 50-51.

18
Sandy Ikeda,
What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs
.

19
Jacobs,
The Economy of Cities
, 63.

20
William Yardley wrote a very insightful article, “In Portland, Cultivating a Culture of Two Wheels,” in the
New York Times
, November 5, 2007, detailing the growth of this “new work.”

21
See the Greenpoint Manufacturing story in my book,
Cities Back from the Edge
, 52.

22
A Chicago study showed that local individual businesses produce bigger economic benefits, 70 percent more of a local economic impact per square foot than chain stores.

23
A 2008 report issued by the office of Manhattan Borough president Scott Stringer indicated that property tax breaks meant to stem an exodus of high-paying jobs to suburbia three decades ago have gone mostly to fast-food restaurants, gas stations, and national chain stores.

24
A 1992 Waterfront Plan adopted by the Planning Commission and a community-developed plan assisted by the Planning Department forbid big box stores in the protected harbor.

25
“Ikea a Mixed Blessing for Red Hook,”
Crain’s New York Business
, 5.

26
A study released at the same time Ikea opened indicates the city needs at least seven more like the one lost to stay competitive as a port. “Industry experts say it would cost about $1 billion just to replace the 730-foot-long former graving dock that was converted into a parking lot,” the
New York Post
reported (“Idea Berth Pangs,” June 23, 2008). The
Post
also noted that the study estimates the port will lose $50 million to $150 million in revenues to competitive ports over the next five years because it doesn’t have enough docks to meet repair and maintenance needs.

CHAPTER 7

1
Recent new owners have totally restored the building, even putting back a brownstone stoop that had been removed before we owned it. At that time, the idea of restoring a stoop was unthinkable. The skills were hardly available.

2
White and Willensky,
AIA Guide
, 367.

3
“Brownstoning—the How-To,”
New York Post Magazine
, 6.

4
Morris Brothers closed in 2008.

5
Caro,
Power Broker
, 1014.