The Battle For Gotham Part 1

The Battle for Gotham.

New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs.

by Roberta Brandes Gratz.

Acknowledgments.

I have always relied on various urban thinkers and observers to inform and challenge my own observations and ideas. For this book, I am similarly indebted to a wonderfully patient and generous group who enriched the substance of this book.

Until her death, Jane Jacobs was a critical sounding board. Ron Shiffman and Richard Rabinowitz have been key in both of my earlier books as well as this one. Mary Rowe has both challenged and encouraged the details of this book in the best tradition of Jane Jacobs. Anthony Mancini has been my first reader and essential critic for this, as well as the two prior books, often saving me from myself. Thomas Schwarz, another reader of both prior works, challenged an early iteration of this one that helped me rethink its direction. Victor Navasky, as well, offered insights at an early point that clarified and changed the direction I needed to follow.

Nancy Milford, Nancy Charney, Laurie Beckelman, Stephen Goldsmith, Sandra Morris, and Margie Ziedler have been nurturing friends critical to the writing process. I am indebted to Robert Caro for opening my eyes and the world's eyes to the overarching power of Robert Moses.

I am enormously appreciative of Hamilton Fish, president of Nation Books, for being so ready and eager to publish this book and for turning me over to an extraordinary editor, Carl Bromley. Carl exemplifies the best qualities of an interested, caring, insightful, and nurturing editor whose comments and observations about all aspects of this text were most useful and constructive. I am similarly indebted to Basic Books publisher John Sherer for understanding what I planned to do and for being so interested in publishing this book. Annette Wenda, the copyeditor, Sandra Beris, the production editor, and Brent Wilc.o.x, the compositor, artfully steered this ma.n.u.script to life.

Kent Barwick, Eddie Bautista, Marcy Benstock, Mary Beth Betts, Maya Borgenicht, John Bowles, Al Butzel, Joan Byron, Sarah Carroll, Majora Carter, Carol Clark, Joan Davidson, Mort Downey, Coco Eisman, Alexi Torres Flemming, Adam Friedman, Charles Gandee, Michael Gerrard, Francis Golden, Dennis Grubb, Bill Gratz, Isabel Hill, Abbie Hurlb.u.t.t, Lynda Kaplan, Jared Knowles, Lex Lalli, Peter Laurence, Corey Mintz, Norman Mintz, Forrest Myers, William Moody, Greg O'Connell, Marianne Percival, Bruce Rosen, Michael Rosen, David Rosencrans, Gene Russianoff, Don Rypkema, James Sanders, David Sweeny, Calvin Trillin, Joshua Velez, Mike Wallace, Anthony Wood, Elizabeth Yampierre. Others are mentioned throughout the book.

Sadly, my husband, Donald Stephen Gratz, did not live to see this publication. His ideas and influence, however, are woven throughout this text. I learned from him daily for many years and always appreciated his encouragement of my efforts. The legacy of his talent is reflected herein in the story of Gratz Industries.

My daughters-Laura Beth and Rebecca Susan-fabulous mothers, teachers, environmentalists, and preservationists-have always been most important in my life and now their children-Halina, Frank, Stella, Isaac, and Danielle-are a source of great pride and joy. I have no doubt they will all grow to be caring, productive citizens. My son-in-law, Jon Piasecki, an innovative landscape architect and committed environmentalist, is an additional source of pride.

Many people have let me know the value of my first two books and, I hope, they will find similar value here. They are the ones who will initiate the regeneration process wherever they live and work.

Preface.

I was born and for the first decade of my life lived in Greenwich Village, the iconic urban neighborhood of crooked streets, historic buildings, diverse residents, and the occasional leafy, cobblestone street.

When I walked to school each day, played in Washington Square Park in the afternoon, visited my father in his dry-cleaning store, bought candy at a nearby newsstand, ran an errand for my mom, and came in from Washington Square Park for dinner when she called me from the sixth-floor window of our apartment house, my life was a page out of urbanist, author, and advocate Jane Jacobs's Death and Life of Great American Cities. Death and Life of Great American Cities.

When my father's main store on West Third Street, where all garments were cleaned and pressed, was condemned to make way for an urban renewal housing project, when our apartment house on the south side of Washington Square also was condemned for another urban renewal project, this one for a New York University library, when my father was pushed to relocate his business and the family moved to a Connecticut suburb, my life was a page from the book of master planner and builder Robert Moses, who transformed New York City and State through the twelve appointed positions he held over forty years, from the 1930s to 1970s.

Mine was a cla.s.sic city childhood of the 1940s and 1950s. New York street life was robust and vibrant, offering a feeling of total safety. I rode the double-decker bus up and down Fifth Avenue to dance cla.s.s, shopping, and an occasional outing to Central Park. I took the subway to visit friends and, somewhat foolishly, went all the way to Coney Island with two friends and no adult at the age of eight. Washington Square Park was the primary arena for play, hanging out, or roller skating, with a daily stop to say hi to my grandfather on his favorite bench.

Our move to the suburbs was a distressing one. I had trouble fitting in. The difference between city and country was dramatic back then, and it was reflected in my cla.s.smates. I stood out like a sore thumb until I caught on to fitting in. The upstate girls' college I started at was much the same, and I eagerly returned to New York midstream to complete my undergraduate studies at New York University. Even then, New York still offered a rich experience with endless choices, including city and national politics during John Kennedy's election campaign,1 until I embarked on a newspaper career at the until I embarked on a newspaper career at the New York Post. New York Post.

I reveled in covering city life and couldn't believe I was getting paid to learn something new every day. Marriage, children, and brownstone living on the Upper West Side came later, and that too revealed aspects of city life that informed my reporting. This was the 1960s and 1970s: New York was changing, incrementally, I thought, but in retrospect quite dramatically. I was part of and witness to a sea change in city life. On one level, I was oblivious to the major forces driving it. With the hindsight and experience of forty years, I understand those forces now and share that understanding in the pages that follow.

I grew up in the shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs. Their clashing urban visions shaped postwar New York both directly and indirectly. In turn, that clash of visions helped shape the nation.

But I knew of neither of these overarching New York figures until adulthood and then only vaguely until well into my career as a newspaper reporter. Most New Yorkers were and still are similarly oblivious to either Moses or Jacobs. Yet these two giants of urban philosophy had enormous influence on the shape of American cities in general and New York City in particular.

THE MOSES-JACOBS LENS.

To look at recent New York City history through the lens of the conflicting urban views of Moses and Jacobs is to gain a new understanding of the city today. This lens provides a small measure by which to evaluate the kind of big and modest projects outlined in this book. I did not have that lens either growing up or as a reporter for the New York Post New York Post from the mid-1960s until late in the 1970s covering city development issues. Eventually, I understood that in my writing I was immersing myself in the web of challenges personified in the conflict between the urban perspectives of Moses and Jacobs. from the mid-1960s until late in the 1970s covering city development issues. Eventually, I understood that in my writing I was immersing myself in the web of challenges personified in the conflict between the urban perspectives of Moses and Jacobs.

Two things helped develop that lens for me: reading Robert Caro's book The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York when it was published in 1974 and reading, meeting, and developing a lasting friendship with Jane Jacobs in 1978. My own urban vision had been shaped earlier during my fifteen years as a reporter, meeting and learning from people all over the city and watching positive and negative city policies unfold. But that urban vision was deepened and added to by that Moses-Jacobs lens and was expressed in my first book, when it was published in 1974 and reading, meeting, and developing a lasting friendship with Jane Jacobs in 1978. My own urban vision had been shaped earlier during my fifteen years as a reporter, meeting and learning from people all over the city and watching positive and negative city policies unfold. But that urban vision was deepened and added to by that Moses-Jacobs lens and was expressed in my first book, The Living City: Thinking Small in a Big Way The Living City: Thinking Small in a Big Way, first published by Simon and Schuster in 1989. Urban Husbandry Urban Husbandry was the term I coined in that book to describe a regeneration approach that reinvigorates and builds on a.s.sets already in place, adding to instead of replacing long-evolving strengths. was the term I coined in that book to describe a regeneration approach that reinvigorates and builds on a.s.sets already in place, adding to instead of replacing long-evolving strengths.

From the mid-1960s to the late 1970s, I reported for the New York Post New York Post on the impact of the great social and economic dislocations in the city. There were the urban renewal projects in Greenwich Village and the Upper West Side and, most dramatically, the opening of Co-op City that vacuumed out so many residents from the Grand Concourse and accelerated the decay of the South Bronx. I covered school decentralization battles in Ocean Hill and Brownsville and urban renewal on the Lower East Side, and I learned the fascinating evolution of Washington Heights while working on an in-depth series about newly appointed secretary of state Henry Kissinger, whose family settled there after fleeing Germany in 1938. There were public housing conflicts, landlord scandals in Times Square and on the Upper West Side, and middle-income apartment shortages. New urban renewal projects and battles to save landmarks all got my attention. But I had no knowledge of the role of Robert Moses in shaping urban renewal policies, locally and nationally, until Caro's extraordinarily well-researched and thorough opus. on the impact of the great social and economic dislocations in the city. There were the urban renewal projects in Greenwich Village and the Upper West Side and, most dramatically, the opening of Co-op City that vacuumed out so many residents from the Grand Concourse and accelerated the decay of the South Bronx. I covered school decentralization battles in Ocean Hill and Brownsville and urban renewal on the Lower East Side, and I learned the fascinating evolution of Washington Heights while working on an in-depth series about newly appointed secretary of state Henry Kissinger, whose family settled there after fleeing Germany in 1938. There were public housing conflicts, landlord scandals in Times Square and on the Upper West Side, and middle-income apartment shortages. New urban renewal projects and battles to save landmarks all got my attention. But I had no knowledge of the role of Robert Moses in shaping urban renewal policies, locally and nationally, until Caro's extraordinarily well-researched and thorough opus.2 I had heard a little about Jane Jacobs's activism in Greenwich Village, particularly fighting the West Village Urban Renewal and the Lower Manhattan Expressway projects, but I had not read The Death and Life of Great American Cities The Death and Life of Great American Cities. When I finally did read it, just before I was heading to Toronto to meet her, I discovered a way of understanding the city that I could relate to, a way that I had instinctively come to believe during years of reporting on community-based stories, an understanding that Jane believed all keen observers are capable of developing on their own. Over the years she challenged me, broadened my thinking, and encouraged me to look, observe, and understand beyond what I had already learned.

This book now looks back on the city as I first experienced it growing up and then wrote about it as a reporter. By using the Moses-Jacobs lens to examine some of the issues I wrote about in the late 1960s and 1970s, I come to a different conclusion from many experts on how the city reached the ultrasuccessful and constantly adapting condition of today-even if suddenly tempered by a colossal national economic meltdown.

The perspective of time is very useful. My time as a reporter was a trying period for the city. Bankruptcy loomed. Crime hit its peak. The infrastructure was crumbling. Vast swaths of neighborhoods lay abandoned. People were leaving. Fear was pervasive.

PAST IS PROLOGUE.

For many, the memory of the depth of the city's troubles back then has dimmed over time. Through the lens of a newspaper reporter I observed this period firsthand. Many of the stories I wrote reflected both the trends of the day and hints of the future. Some directly mirrored my personal experience.

As a native New Yorker, my life and the life of the city are one. I have watched the changes in the Greenwich Village of my birth, lived the ascent of the Upper West Side with my husband and children, felt the impact of dubious city economic policies through the ups and downs of my husband's family-owned manufacturing business. All these experiences informed my observations and reporting and add focus to today's debates. Many of the issues I covered were of the moment-historic preservation, planning, community rebirth, the Westway fight. Most people have forgotten our recent history; some have never learned it. Looking back offers an interesting picture of the period and helps recapture that lost memory. I draw from those stories herein, in part, to look at where we were and how we evolved from that negative era, how New York City "repaired" itself, to borrow Jane Jacobs's word.

We know the past informs and shapes the present. But the past is not often defined as the recent past. The city's recent past, as revealed in this book, will surprise many. It is my contention that the Moses policies were largely responsible for the torn-apart, fallen city that brought the city to its worst condition in the 1970s;3 Moses's fall from power and the end of his policies-both because of his excesses and because of the drying up of federal funding-brought the city back from the depths of urban despair. It is also my contention that the modern city of today, which some would give Moses credit for, evolved despite the damage he wrought. Moses's fall from power and the end of his policies-both because of his excesses and because of the drying up of federal funding-brought the city back from the depths of urban despair. It is also my contention that the modern city of today, which some would give Moses credit for, evolved despite the damage he wrought.

It is ridiculous to think that we could not have built roads, constructed public housing, or created parks without Moses. Europe rebuilt whole cities after World War II without destroying the urbanism that had been bombed away. Alternatives to Moses's plans were always available that did not erase neighborhoods, undermine social capital, and wipe out longstanding economic investment. Once he was gone, alternative options had a chance. For good reasons, the rebound of the city as a magnet for talent and improved neighborhoods all occurred after Moses's departure.

Observation tells us that the most successful areas of the city today are those Moses didn't eviscerate; the most troublesome are the ones he did. I am not ready to let the rehabilitation of Robert Moses go unchallenged. The worst of his legacy lives on.

The fall of Moses allowed the city to meaningfully regenerate. And while I don't think the urban philosophy of Jane Jacobs has prevailed to the degree many observers contend, I do recognize it as the driving force-the foundation, if you will-of the opposition to favored, repet.i.tive Moses-style development policies. It is also the defining force-articulated as such or not-of some of the most innovative current citizen-based initiatives. Fortunately for the city, for all cities in fact, the Jacobs legacy lives on.

This book tells the tale of two cities reflected in two very different and competing urban views, as represented by Moses and Jacobs. Moses's view was antiurban; the city needed to be reshaped, thinned out, controlled. Jacobs's view was the opposite; she found in the city a dynamic energy, a vitality from the absence of control, the ability of so many positive things made possible exactly because of people's ability to self-organize for civic, economic, or social purposes.

I lived, observed, and wrote about things shaped by both of those city views. No single vision can guide a city; by its very nature, a city embodies multiple visions. This book explores their world and mine and, in the process, offers another particular view of what can be seen.

INTRODUCTION.

A Clash of Visions-Then and Now.

Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody only because and only when they are created by everybody.[image]JANE JACOBS Robert Moses started in the 1920s, Jane Jacobs in the late 1950s and early '60s. While they were of different periods, they overlapped in the 1960s, and their clashing visions have had unending impacts from then to now.

Moses's influence came through the nearly unlimited power he exercised in the administrations of six governors and five mayors; Jacobs's came through the insightful and popular observations of urban life that she penned in seven books, starting with The Death and Life of Great American Cities The Death and Life of Great American Cities in 1961 and her leadership in New York battles against Moses projects during the 1960s. in 1961 and her leadership in New York battles against Moses projects during the 1960s.1 Moses also directly helped shape projects in other cities; Jacobs inspired resistance to them. The impact of both personalities stretched across the country and beyond. Moses also directly helped shape projects in other cities; Jacobs inspired resistance to them. The impact of both personalities stretched across the country and beyond.

Moses started in state government in the 1920s as a reformer, but by the end of World War II, he held several positions in New York City that put him in charge of almost all public housing, public works projects, and highway construction. He learned to use the system he helped to reform in order to ama.s.s power on a scale never seen before or since. Eventually, his autocratic approach to ma.s.sive highway building, park creation, and large-scale public housing construction led to urban policies that were elitist, top down, efficiency based, expert dependent, technocratic, and anti-democratic. The policies Moses initiated were totally dependent on large government subsidies under national and local programs he helped create.

Moses and Jacobs were not really adversaries, as is too often suggested, although she directly and successfully opposed specific projects he promoted. Adversaries Adversaries implies equal status. In fact, Jacobs was not a peer of Moses, and she was often either dismissed or berated as "just a housewife." Make no mistake: Moses had unlimited power "to get things done"; Jacobs had none. implies equal status. In fact, Jacobs was not a peer of Moses, and she was often either dismissed or berated as "just a housewife." Make no mistake: Moses had unlimited power "to get things done"; Jacobs had none.

Moses, as the urban renewal and highway building czar, by way of his vision of how he thought things should should be, shaped the physical city and in consequence the social and economic life of its inhabitants. Jacobs, however, the activist and urbanist, paid attention to how cities work on the ground, what a city actually be, shaped the physical city and in consequence the social and economic life of its inhabitants. Jacobs, however, the activist and urbanist, paid attention to how cities work on the ground, what a city actually is is and how it functions. In the process of paying attention to how things work, she framed vehement opposition to Moses's and other big sweeping projects, advocated on behalf of an organic process of how a city truly evolves, and helped give voice to a strong civic sentiment. and how it functions. In the process of paying attention to how things work, she framed vehement opposition to Moses's and other big sweeping projects, advocated on behalf of an organic process of how a city truly evolves, and helped give voice to a strong civic sentiment.

Moses came out of the Progressive reform tradition. Antagonistic to politics, he learned to use the embedded patronage tradition of the powerful Democratic Party to advance his agenda and a.s.sume more control. Jacobs came out of a community-based radical sensibility, antagonistic to both patronage and centralized control, and directly confronted elected officials supportive of Moses.

Moses's vision derived from the popular urban design theory of the day promoted by French architect Le Corbusier in his 1925 Plan Voisin for Paris.2 Le Corbusier's Plan called for both the demolition of the historic core of Paris and its replacement by high-rise towers-in-the-park. As urban design professor Robert Fishman notes, the Plan "announced modernism's ruthless att.i.tude toward the past and its demand for a revolutionary redesign of the city." Le Corbusier's Plan called for both the demolition of the historic core of Paris and its replacement by high-rise towers-in-the-park. As urban design professor Robert Fishman notes, the Plan "announced modernism's ruthless att.i.tude toward the past and its demand for a revolutionary redesign of the city."3 COMPETING VIEWPOINTS.

Jacobs saw value and logic in the sometimes messy traditional neighborhoods where work, play, residence, industry, retail, and education lived cheek by jowl in a variety of building styles, ages, and scale-what she termed "mixed use." Moses, however, saw sprawling chaos that needed replacement with functions spatially separated from each other.

He was about ideology, she about observation. He posited; she watched. He was power; she was common sense. Moses saw static form; she saw process.

Jacobs celebrated the complexity of the urban fabric, recognizing it as a web of interconnections and interdependencies; Moses called for cleaning it up and imposing efficiency and order.

Jacobs advocated interventions in scale with what exists; Moses planned interventions as replacements for that time-woven fabric.

Jacobs saw wisdom in the observations and proposals for change from the local residents and businesspeople whom Moses disdained.

The pedestrian was central in Jacobs's view, the car in Moses's.

Jacobs saw regenerative potential in well-worn, solid neighborhoods; Moses saw blight and prospects for clearance and new projects.

Jacobs viewed social and economic problems as needing social and economic solutions, identifying what positive elements could be added to alter the negative dynamic; Moses promulgated the illusion that spending money on the physical plant solves social and economic problems.

Jacobs defined economic development as new work added to older work; Moses defined it as building new buildings for economic activity not yet identified. "You can't build the ovens and expect the loaves to jump in," Jacobs said of Moses's definition of economic development, a definition that is officially still with us today. Jacobs focused on the yeast and loaves, Moses on the ovens.

Moses advocated an efficiency of scale; Jacobs said small is not necessarily beautiful but economies of scale are a myth.

Moses's projects depended on big government financing of one sort or another; Jacobs abhorred big government underwriting. "Loans, grants, and subsidies are golden eggs which, being only gold, don't hatch goslings."

Such intellectual overlays to public policy and events take a long time to articulate. And although the 1950s and '60s were when some of the specific project battles took place, the penetration of the broader society and public discussion seemed to come to a head in the late 1960s and 1970s.

CONVENTIONAL THINKING CHALLENGED.

The Jacobs ethos emerged, even before her name was attached to it, in reaction to the Moses philosophy and policies. Resistance to ma.s.sive clearance, appreciation of street-level neighborhood life, suspicion of expertise, advocacy of investment in ma.s.s transit equal to highway building, opposition to large-scale displacement, and recognition of the physical and social strengths of existing low-income neighborhoods too easily designated slums were all present before Jacobs's first book and her emergence as a spokesman for the anti-Moses viewpoint. But her writing and activism validated and expanded that civic energy and provided the vocabulary for coming civic battles. Before I knew of Jacobs or had read her works, I was drawn to the stories in the city reflecting that resistance. They formed the core of my reporting at the New York Post New York Post.

Moses's power collapsed in the late 1960s due to his own overreaching and the intensity of the growing opposition to his projects.4 He couldn't sustain such a monopoly on power. The physical and human cost of the ma.s.sive dislocation of residents and businesses all over the city became too high. So while he fell due to political overreaching, the Jacobs voice gained strength because it was populist, antipolitical (or at least antiparty politics), citizen based instead of "expert" reliant. He couldn't sustain such a monopoly on power. The physical and human cost of the ma.s.sive dislocation of residents and businesses all over the city became too high. So while he fell due to political overreaching, the Jacobs voice gained strength because it was populist, antipolitical (or at least antiparty politics), citizen based instead of "expert" reliant.

Both shortly before and after the Moses-Jacobs clash in the larger arena of intellectual life, a.s.sorted voices challenged prevailing authority. The humane world challenged the machine world, a biological view of the built environment versus a physical one, human ecology versus the machine. The primacy of the physical sciences was giving way to the rise of the social sciences.

Marine biologist Rachel Carson would soon jump-start the environmental conservation movement with Silent Spring Silent Spring (1962). (1962).5 Carson's critique was broad in specifics and impact because she brought attention to "the interconnectedness and fragility of the natural world," whether on land or sea, threats posed by the "quest for profits, government policies and by reckless human intervention." She saw the threats to urban oases, parks, and nature by six-lane highways, the threat to nature of suburban development, and then the threats to the whole environment posed by pesticides and herbicides. She saw the "destruction of beauty and the suppression of human ident.i.ty in the hundreds of suburban real estate developments where the first action is to cut down all the trees and next to build infinitude of little houses, each like its neighbor." Carson's critique was broad in specifics and impact because she brought attention to "the interconnectedness and fragility of the natural world," whether on land or sea, threats posed by the "quest for profits, government policies and by reckless human intervention." She saw the threats to urban oases, parks, and nature by six-lane highways, the threat to nature of suburban development, and then the threats to the whole environment posed by pesticides and herbicides. She saw the "destruction of beauty and the suppression of human ident.i.ty in the hundreds of suburban real estate developments where the first action is to cut down all the trees and next to build infinitude of little houses, each like its neighbor."6 Carson brought attention to the wholeness of nature the way Jacobs focused on the web of connections that add up to an urban organism. The concept of interdependency contradicted the idea that elements of nature or the world could be studied and understood separately. Carson brought attention to the wholeness of nature the way Jacobs focused on the web of connections that add up to an urban organism. The concept of interdependency contradicted the idea that elements of nature or the world could be studied and understood separately.

Not long before Jacobs's rise to prominence, in the late 1950s humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow focused on real people and real lives over statistical a.n.a.lyses and scientific tests. Psychologist Rollo May also emphasized the humanist reality over conventional techniques, a view resonating in the 1960s when people tired of the mechanistic measurements and methods of the behaviorists. Margaret Mead, of course, had brought a whole new human dimension to the study of culture through her pathbreaking observations of primitive peoples, challenging accepted thought about gender, race, and habitat. Canadian educator and communications theorist Marshall McLuhan had already been stirring the media field with his prediction of the emerging "global village," the term he coined for the coming electronic age.7 And Betty Friedan's And Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique Feminine Mystique, published in 1963, launched the women's movement.

Sociologists, journalists, and other nonacademics in the 1950s and '60s were challenging the conventional wisdom dominated by academics in different fields, questioning prevailing theories and societal behavior, exposing wrongdoings and injustice. They challenged the status quo and wrote books that were accessible, not abstract or scholarly. Those books set the terms of national public discussion, shaped movements, and gave birth to policy modifications.

David Riesman opened the 1950s with an examination of the American character with The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (with Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney). William H. Whyte's (with Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney). William H. Whyte's Organization Man Organization Man (1956) defined corporate conformity in white-collar suburbs and observed the loss of individualism. Vance Packard's (1956) defined corporate conformity in white-collar suburbs and observed the loss of individualism. Vance Packard's Hidden Persuaders Hidden Persuaders (1957) critically dissected the advertising profession and its manipulation of consumers. John Kenneth Galbraith's (1957) critically dissected the advertising profession and its manipulation of consumers. John Kenneth Galbraith's Affluent Society Affluent Society (1958) challenged conventional thought, addressing economic inequality and coining the terms (1958) challenged conventional thought, addressing economic inequality and coining the terms affluent society affluent society and and conventional wisdom conventional wisdom. Galbraith demystified economics by treating it as an aspect of society and culture rather than an arcane discipline and forced the country to reexamine its values, labeling America a "democracy of the fortunate." Ralph Nader took aim at the automobile industry, the backbone of the country's postwar back-to-work economy, first in a 1959 article in the Nation Nation, "The Safe Car You Can't Buy," and then in 1965 in his book Unsafe at Any Speed Unsafe at Any Speed. Michael Harrington exposed the country's deep poverty in The Other America: Poverty in the U.S. The Other America: Poverty in the U.S. (1962). These were transformative books of immense power and resonance that defined a moment. Perhaps most or all of these books gave the public license to reject the prevailing dogmas in any field, and to think for itself, surely a basic Jacobs theme. (1962). These were transformative books of immense power and resonance that defined a moment. Perhaps most or all of these books gave the public license to reject the prevailing dogmas in any field, and to think for itself, surely a basic Jacobs theme.

Another dimension must be studied as well. What is considered the conventional thinking of the postwar era evolved logically. World War II proved the effectiveness of large-scale planning and the role of expertise. The war built the prestige of a certain kind of mindset of thinking big and the effective role of government in a top-down command economy. During the war, neighborhoods and downtowns deteriorated with no new investment. After the war, the industrial model was applied to domestic and environmental challenges. The cost of dislocation was not of great concern. After all, that industrial model gave rise to the agribusiness food industry we wrestle with today. The quant.i.ty of people that could now be fed amazed everyone. This is what Carson was reacting to.

Moses had the prestige to apply this model to the problems of cities. Liberal support was strong for big government programs to address various problems. The prestige of government was strong. The authorities who had done miracles in many areas earned the public's respect. Opposition was minimal.

NEW WAYS OF SEEING.

An echo of all this was found in the design and planning fields, where new voices were being heard. The Exploding Metropolis The Exploding Metropolis (1958), written mostly by editors of (1958), written mostly by editors of Fortune Fortune and edited by William H. Whyte Jr., directly challenged the idea of the Le Corbusier "skysc.r.a.per city" and the growing dominance of the car. Jacobs contributed a chapter, "Downtown Is for People," while Whyte, in his introduction to the book, extolled the virtues of the vitality of "messy," complex urban districts versus the sterility of efficiently planned ones. and edited by William H. Whyte Jr., directly challenged the idea of the Le Corbusier "skysc.r.a.per city" and the growing dominance of the car. Jacobs contributed a chapter, "Downtown Is for People," while Whyte, in his introduction to the book, extolled the virtues of the vitality of "messy," complex urban districts versus the sterility of efficiently planned ones.

Housing advocate Charles Abrams published Forbidden Neighbors: A Study of Prejudice in Housing Forbidden Neighbors: A Study of Prejudice in Housing (1956), calling attention to discrimination in public housing and the social upheaval of slum clearance. Herb Gans would publish (1956), calling attention to discrimination in public housing and the social upheaval of slum clearance. Herb Gans would publish The Urban Villagers The Urban Villagers (1962) a year after Jacobs's (1962) a year after Jacobs's Death and Life Death and Life, reb.u.t.ting prevailing notions of what was a slum by focusing on the destruction of an Italian community in the West End of Boston. Gans's book resonates as much today as it did then in its depiction of community ties and networks that provide social and economic strength.

Architectural critic Lewis Mumford had already published in 1953 The Highway and the City The Highway and the City, lambasting the impact that new highways were having on still-viable cities. Mumford was also a sharp critic of the public housing towers, although his solution-in contrast to Jacobs-was a low-density, quasi-suburban form of Garden City, bringing more country into the city. And while Mumford encouraged Jacobs to write Death and Life Death and Life (they had met in 1958 at a Harvard symposium), he was horrified at its final publication with its contrast to his own views of urban life and wrote a scathing review of her book for the (they had met in 1958 at a Harvard symposium), he was horrified at its final publication with its contrast to his own views of urban life and wrote a scathing review of her book for the New Yorker New Yorker. "Mother Jacobs' Home Remedies" was the headline, reflecting the condescending tone of his review.8 Paul Davidoff's 1965 article "Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning," following shortly after Jacobs's book, accelerated the emergence of the advocacy planning movement. Advocacy planning takes a totally different approach to planning than most of the profession. Advocacy planners listen and hear what people on the ground have to say, recognizing that people in the neighborhoods and in area businesses are better able to understand conditions and contribute solutions. Advocacy planners learn what the real problems are, take seriously locally promulgated solutions, and provide technical expertise to the implementation of locally developed plans. Advocacy planning grew out of both civil rights and urban renewal struggles. Davidoff, considered the father of the advocacy planning movement, was greatly influenced by Jacobs.

This was an intellectually rich era "when book publishers sought books that could change thinking and the political agenda," observes University of Ma.s.sachusetts history professor Daniel Horowitz.9 This broad group of authors gave the public license to come to their own conclusions and to be skeptical about inst.i.tutions. This broad group of authors gave the public license to come to their own conclusions and to be skeptical about inst.i.tutions.

BOOKS CAN CHANGE THE WORLD.

Thus, challenges to the highly planned, mechanistic strategies of building that Moses epitomized were in the air. Jacobs's writing paralleled this humanistic trend. The city was not a machine for living, as architect Le Corbusier had p.r.o.nounced. Urban life could not be reduced to engineering models for traffic, housing, entertainment, and employment, Jacobs argued. Ultimately, the world is too complicated for such simplistic approaches to the complex web of urban issues.

Jane Jacobs challenged the emperor's new clothes when she said quite simply that things don't happen the way the experts say they do or should; observation proves otherwise. She exposed the falsehood of expert predictions: If you move people out of tenements into high-rise housing blocks, crime will drop. If you build more roads, traffic will ease. If you direct the arts into cultural islands, the arts will be enriched. If you wipe out the messy mix of small and large companies, incubators and corporations, the city will grow. If you provide efficient new facilities in separate districts, the economy will improve. Jacobs's observations of real city life showed these predictions were not true. Crime doesn't decrease if you move people out of tenements. Traffic doesn't get better if you build more roads. Artistic life isn't richer if you create malls for the arts. The economy doesn't improve by separating uses, trying to make the city efficient and wiping out the organically evolved diversity of businesses.

Jacobs challenged economists to think in new ways and to observe how things really work, not project how they should. She understood early the issues of urbanism and sustainability in both economic and environmental terms, but not until her later books did she focus directly on them. The complex underpinnings of society defied reengineering by experts, she argued. Universities and other intellectual inst.i.tutions deceive the public into thinking urban issues are distinct and separate. Observe, observe, observe, and listen, Jacobs challenged the experts with the publication of her first book.

On the ground, people were doing what she wrote about. They were doing it intuitively, and she observed and learned from them, distilling the essence of what they did and validating both their observations and their strategies. Early in the introduction to Death and Life Death and Life, for example, Jacobs cites her visits to public housing projects in East Harlem where Union Settlement social workers Ed Kirk and Ellen Lurie opened her eyes to the failures of public housing design and development. She listened to them, observed what they were seeing, and learned from them. The extraordinary impact on her thinking is clear. This excerpt about East Harlem speaks volumes: There is a housing project with a conspicuous rectangular lawn which became an object of hatred to the project tenants. A social worker frequently at the project was astonished by how often the subject of the lawn came up, usually gratuitously . . . and how much the tenants despised it and urged that it be done away with. When she asked why, the usual answer was, "What good is it?" or "Who wants it?" Finally a tenant more articulate than the others made this p.r.o.nouncement: "n.o.body cared what we wanted when they built this place. They threw our houses down and pushed us here and pushed our friends somewhere else. We don't have a place around here to get a cup of coffee or a newspaper even, or borrow fifty cents. n.o.body cared what we need. But the big men come and look at that gra.s.s and say, 'Isn't it wonderful! Now the poor have everything.'"10 On the one hand, Jacobs gave voice to popular sentiments. On the other hand, she was too sophisticated and complicated a thinker to be just a voice. Even today, her teachings are the stuff of lively intellectual discourse, often invoked inappropriately to gain acceptance of a new development proposal.

Recent New York history is incomprehensible without some awareness and understanding of the clashing visions of these two seminal figures. Through the Moses-Jacobs lens, one recognizes the distinctions between genuine examples of regeneration and those that are only label deep. Genuine regeneration's critical value to the city's economy and social and physical framework becomes clear. Equally important, the wrongheadedness of some current Moses-style projects reveals itself as well.

EXAMINING THE PAST AND THE PRESENT.

The Moses-Jacobs lens is as helpful in a.s.sessing what is happening today as it is relevant to understanding broad urban change in the second half of the last century in New York and other cities. The scale of clearance and displacement may be less than the heyday of urban renewal, but the destructive worship of bigness is no less now than it was then. What Jacobs identified as "the belief in bigness as a solution" is still central to official planning and development policies in New York City and elsewhere. But as Jacobs also observed, "More is not more if it is not right. People have been corrupted into thinking that the most important thing about anything is its size instead of the substance of what is happening." 11 11 When you hear the oft-repeated quote of Daniel Burnham, "Make no little plans," you know something big and probably too big is about to be unveiled. When you hear the oft-repeated quote of Daniel Burnham, "Make no little plans," you know something big and probably too big is about to be unveiled.12 Scale, however, is not the only issue today through which the Moses-Jacobs lens is useful. Considerable development is overplanned based on a simplistic interpretation of mixed use. Mixed use is much more complex than a combination of residential, commercial, and retail. The spontaneity and innovation of a true urban place can be just as stifled in a development of this combination as in a single-use project. The authentic urban fabric cannot be replicated whole cloth. As Jacobs shows, an all-new mixed-use project attracts only a limited variety of users, users suited to expensive new s.p.a.ce. The real diversity of users in a vibrant city requires a mix of old and new buildings of different styles and scale, an authentic urban mix.

The impact and philosophies of Moses and Jacobs permeate New York controversies surrounding such recent and current city projects as Westway, the defeated proposal to expand and rebuild the West Side Highway along the Hudson River; the excessive investments of public funds in stadia instead of more critical city needs; and the upzoning (increasing what developers can build) of more than one hundred areas, including industrial and waterfront neighborhoods. Upzoning has had an enormous impact, pricing out middle-income tenants, new creative enterprises, and small manufacturing, all vital components of the city's economy.13 Enormous projects are promoted as beneficial for the city's future, while businesses and residents are pushed out of the targeted gritty, mixed-use districts. These megaprojects struggle even in good economic times due to their own internal weaknesses, and they undermine the creative resident community and local manufacturing that offer enduring social and economic value to the city. Worse, such projects erase early precursors of regeneration that, if allowed to evolve, can bring authentic, positive urban change, and they require enormous public funding.

The big projects never fulfill expectations; small ones always exceed theirs.

BIG IS EVEN BIGGER.

The four-billion-dollar Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, in a twenty-two-acre campuslike setting, has stumbled along since 2003 and has already sacrificed a viable taxpaying community, productive jobs, occupied residences, and worthy historic buildings. This follows a long-discredited Moses tradition, as will be shown later in this book.

Columbia University pushes forward aggressively its new seventeen-acre campus in Harlem, displacing 400 families, 1,600 jobs, and countless businesses, home owners, and property owners, whereas a worthy expansion of Columbia could have been accommodated without this sacrifice. This, too, will be shown to be a Moses clone.

Willets Point, sixty-one highway-encircled, pothole-filled acres in Queens adjacent to Shea Stadium (now Citi Field), with its 250 known businesses-and more than 1,500 workers-is the target for total demolition in order to build yet another ma.s.sive copycat mixed-use development. This area has never had sanitation, sewers, streetlights, or paved roads but survived a Moses scheme with the help of a young unknown Queens lawyer and future governor, Mario Cuomo. Now, it is a Moses vision revived. Willets Point is a dramatic example, as will be detailed later, of how to do the wrong thing, Moses style, with ma.s.sive public subsidy. And here again the city is prepared to confiscate the land of staunch resisters under eminent domain at great expense and then turn it over to new private owners with tax breaks and other incentives.

These are only a few Moses-style projects being promoted as the next best "regenerative" plan (as discussed in the conclusion). These projects rely heavily on the strength of the real estate market, adding a vulnerability that over the years has seen much cleared land sit untouched and unproductive for decades after clearance is completed. The promise is always of jobs, taxes, and, these days, affordable housing, but no one calculates the jobs, taxes, and affordable commercial and residential units lost in the process. Demolition sweeps away uncalculated numbers of jobs, housing units, and other uses in a diverse urban district.

Moses relied on real estate and government funding; Jacobs looked to the energy, innovation, and commitment of citizens. For too long, developers and corporations either threaten to leave or promise Oz-like goodies will come of their projects. New York's long-standing policy of giving them subsidies and tax incentives is unrelenting.

ENDURING CHANGE STARTS SMALLER.

At the same time that these big projects are promoted and fought, escalate in costs, and, for the most part, fail, modest but meaningful things are actually happening, bringing positive change and showing the ongoing potential of big change achieved incrementally. The opportunity to nurture and build on such successes is lost because they are officially undervalued, sometimes hardly recognized, and too often stymied. Small upgrades are happening in every conceivable neighborhood, not because of any helpful official policy but because the appeal of urban life has accelerated in recent years and the opportunities to enjoy city life have expanded. In fact, independent of public policies, new areas of economic activity are occurring where civic resourcefulness, ingenuity, and improvisation are not interrupted. Occasionally, smart public policy follows these bottom-up initiatives.