Part 12 (2/2)

So, since its announcement in December 2003, where does the project stand? In light of the current economic crisis, this is hard to say. Ratner tried and failed to get a bailout from the stimulus package to build the

10.3 Dean Street loft co-ops on the Atlantic Yards site, formerly fully occupied. The building has been empty since 2005 and is scheduled for demolition. Tracy Collins Tracy Collins.

arena. Mayor Bloomberg has denied any increase in city funds. Court challenges continue. In September 2009, Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov agreed to buy 80 percent of the money-losing basketball team and to invest in the larger project. The details remain unclear. One cannot predict what will finally emerge from this overblown proposal. Cynics could easily observe that building the arena for his own team, the Nets, was Ratner's goal to begin with, the rest being window dressing. If anyone really thought that the Gehry-designed development had a chance of evolving as presented for state and public approval, well, then, I have a bridge to sell them.

Ratner would have undoubtedly sold off parcels to other developers to design as they saw fit within the zoning. He still can. Wrote New York Times New York Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, who had high praise for Gehry's design: ”New York has had a terrible track record with large-scale planning in recent years. Look at Battery Park City. The MetroTech Center. critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, who had high praise for Gehry's design: ”New York has had a terrible track record with large-scale planning in recent years. Look at Battery Park City. The MetroTech Center.22 Donald Trump's Riverside South. All are blots on the urban environment, as blandly h.o.m.ogeneous in their own way as the Modernist superblocks they were intended to improve on.” Donald Trump's Riverside South. All are blots on the urban environment, as blandly h.o.m.ogeneous in their own way as the Modernist superblocks they were intended to improve on.”23 Ouroussoff points to Rockefeller Center as a prime and glorious example of what this city was once capable of producing. Yet Rockefeller Center evolved. It started as a planned site for an opera house, changed with the times, was designed by thirteen different architects, connected seamlessly to the existing grid (even adding a street), is totally geared to pedestrians and ma.s.s transit, not cars, and did not overwhelm the airs.p.a.ce of its site. Ouroussoff points to Rockefeller Center as a prime and glorious example of what this city was once capable of producing. Yet Rockefeller Center evolved. It started as a planned site for an opera house, changed with the times, was designed by thirteen different architects, connected seamlessly to the existing grid (even adding a street), is totally geared to pedestrians and ma.s.s transit, not cars, and did not overwhelm the airs.p.a.ce of its site.

The alternative to Ratner's proposal had smaller and more manageable components and relied on more than one developer. This could have produced some notable new buildings. The most critically acclaimed buildings designed and built around the city in recent years are on single infill sites, mostly in historic neighborhoods. The scale of the alternative would be more compatible with the existing urban fabric, even including reasonably tall buildings. The surrounding neighborhoods thus would not be overwhelmed. Viable buildings would not be lost nor current residents and businesses displaced. Development and new growth could have continued as they had in the prior decade, step by step, in modest doses. Transportation and pedestrian connections to its surroundings and to the downtown core would be more reasonable. All of this would add up to the kind of development in small or modest doses that leads to big but appropriate change. The alternative design would have had a better chance of genuine public approval and of getting off the ground. What a missed opportunity.

In fact, one of two Dean Street resident architects who offered alternative plans suggested razing the Atlantic Center mall, a much maligned suburban-style enclosed shopping complex built in the 1990s by Ratner just north of the arena site. (A few government agencies occupy s.p.a.ce here. This is a typical way government helps economically challenged developer projects.) ”If Mr. Ratner were willing to condemn his own property, he would be able to build his arena without displacing anyone from their homes,” architect Karla Rothstein, a Dean Street resident who worked on an alternative development, told Times Times reporter Bagli. ”It would be an improvement on the existing mall,” she added. reporter Bagli. ”It would be an improvement on the existing mall,” she added.

Another important consequence of the alternative should be noted. The city would not lose the taxes, residences, businesses, and jobs of the site for the decades that most of this land will lie fallow, just like so many earlier Robert Moses clearance projects did. The losses on these sites is never calculated, just the promises of the new taxes and jobs to come eventually. Those jobs may not even materialize as promised. Seldom does the city or anyone go back after a project is finished to see if promises have been met. And in how many projects have we seen fewer jobs created than promised and then seen those jobs disappear within a short time after completion? The tax incentives that came with those promises are rarely removed.

Measuring the taxes and jobs is fundamentally the wrong way to evaluate a plan, in any case. One must consider how it affects a wide area, including the whole city, and not just the site. Otherwise, everything will continually be suitable for replacement, no matter how well the site still functions. ”Just replacing a dime store with a larger five and ten doesn't benefit the city in the long run,” notes Ron s.h.i.+ffman. ”Rather, the point is to enable those facilities, like the dime store, to improve themselves. One is a replacement strategy; the other is how an economy grows by nurturing from within.”

What Would Jane Jacobs Say?

Jacobs's name was reportedly invoked in the early presentations of the Atlantic Yards proposal. Apparently, the Jacobs qualities included a web of streets and sidewalks, although winding suburban style and not connected to the city's existing grid; ground-floor retail for some of the towers, something every developer now does because it is good business but is also used to claim a Jacobs imprimatur; and, of course, mixed use, which, as shown earlier in this book, is not the Jacobs definition of mixed use but contrasts with Moses's separation of uses. Since her name was involved, it is appropriate to examine the project against her writing.

First, let's dispose of the idea that Jacobs was against change or against big buildings or, indeed, a sentimentalist. First, go back to her letter to Mayor Bloomberg about Greenpoint-Williamsburg. That is a ringing endors.e.m.e.nt for change, just a different kind of change than what the city was proposing. In addition, one can look at her enthusiastic championing of the planning and zoning changes in the old garment center of Toronto known as the King-Spadina area. Toronto city officials consulted with her and followed many of her suggestions there, today considered that city's SoHo equivalent. New innovative uses occupy both old and new buildings. New buildings coexist comfortably with old. Once empty or underused old buildings are now full. This is change in a big way. That Toronto district was in no better shape than our city's so-called derelict old neighborhoods.

And, of course, a true reading of Jacobs's books versus a pseudounderstanding would indicate her disapproval of everything about Atlantic Yards but also her expectation for continued change and growth, just not Ratner's idea of change and growth, any more than a Moses plan. A basic Jacobs precept is complexity: no complexity is possible in a monolithic development of this scale by one developer and designed by one architect.

Another basic Jacobs precept is opposition to ”cataclysmic” money and development. Surely, this project qualifies as cataclysmic change. The proposal is so inimical to the character of the district and, in fact, the whole borough of Brooklyn that it is off any chart of Jacobs's principles.

Trying to show how Atlantic Yards contradicts every Jacobs principle can be tiresome. And, in fact, she was too unpredictable for such an exercise. Furthermore, Jacobs was never about how to develop develop or or design design as much as how to as much as how to think think about development, how to about development, how to observe observe and and understand understand what works, how to what works, how to respect respect what exists, how to what exists, how to scrutinize scrutinize plans skeptically, how to plans skeptically, how to nurture nurture innovation, new growth, and resilience. That says it all. innovation, new growth, and resilience. That says it all.

As it happens, I had a brief conversation with Jane about Atlantic Yards in one of my last visits with her before her death. The development had only recently been proposed, and she agreed that it was right out of the pages of old, discarded development models derivative of Moses. There was not much to discuss. She shook her head and said, ”What a shame.”

On to Columbia University Atlantic Yards may be the poster child for current Moses-style development in New York, but it is not alone. Columbia University on the Upper West Side gained city approval for a second campus north of its historic 110th Street site that would provide 6.8 million square feet in eighteen new academic and research buildings on seventeen acres in West Harlem and an underground network six stories deep for tunnels, two power plants, parking, garbage collection, and loading docks. The site encompa.s.ses more than eight blocks north of 125th Street between the phenomenal architectural structures of two elevated trestles for Riverside Drive and the Broadway IRT subway. Though lacking in gates or fences, this second campus will feel separated and segregated from the neighboring city. Under single owners.h.i.+p and patrolled by a private security force, this academic island will undoubtedly feel isolated, even if connected to the actual grid and planned skillfully by an accomplished city planning team under the leaders.h.i.+p of Marilyn Taylor of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill.

Like Atlantic Yards, Columbia targeted a semi-industrial, seemingly derelict neighborhood that to the contrary combined regenerative precursors interspersed with opportunities for infill development of varying scale. And like Atlantic Yards, both Columbia's purchase and emptying of properties along with the threat of eminent domain blighted the area, although new businesses, especially restaurants, kept opening in the neighborhood, despite their location under and within sound impact of both viaducts. In fact, enough new restaurants have opened in reclaimed warehouses along Twelfth Avenue to be dubbed ”restaurant row” and ”a culinary hot spot” for West Harlem.

Unlike Atlantic Yards, however, Columbia could have achieved 85 percent, if not all, the expansion that it says it needs (predicting future needs is always a guessing game) in the next thirty years without erasing a Harlem neighborhood, once known as Manhattanville. That expansion, however, just would not have happened in the same form, with the same design, and according to the same plan as Columbia insisted on.

Forest City Ratner, a private-sector ent.i.ty with the purpose of making money, is best known in Brooklyn for its two large suburban-style projects, the Metro Tech office park and the Atlantic Center Mall. That is Ratner's style of development, not an urban vision reflecting a real understanding of how a city-its neighborhoods, economy, and public s.p.a.ces-really works. But from Columbia University, one of the most prestigious in the country, something different was to be expected. Columbia should not behave like a private developer with a suburban view of the city. This 254-year old inst.i.tution is home to a highly respected planning program, the first historic preservation program at any university in the country, and an impressive roster of urban experts, such as Mindy Fullilove, mentioned earlier, a professor of clinical psychiatry and public health who has written so extensively about the impacts of the ruptured social bonds in communities decimated by urban renewal.

So when Columbia unveiled its proposed new academic enclave necessitating the total clearance of a neighborhood, Moses style, urbanists were correct to be stunned. The individual gla.s.s-covered, almost transparent buildings were designed by the world-renowned architect Renzio Piano. The pattern of enlisting ”starchitects” merely for the purpose of advancing otherwise troublesome plans had become familiar in recent decades. Both Atlantic Yards and the Columbia plan are perfect examples of this trend.

Expansion Idea Not Disputed It is very important to understand that no one was denying Columbia the right to expand. No one was denying that its expansion could be good for the city. No one was even questioning if Columbia would really need eight million additional square feet of s.p.a.ce in the next thirty years, although such projections are tricky at best. And no one was opposing change. Once again, quite simply, it was the form of the change that was legitimately challenged, not change itself.

Columbia's well-ill.u.s.trated material presents the proposal as ”a new hub of education and economic opportunity, culture and community-weaving together the urban fabric of West Harlem with a revitalized Hudson River waterfront.” Ironically, by the way, the revitalized waterfront is something the community has been fighting for for years. It is finally happening without Columbia. Three new piers along the waterfront have been built by the city and state. Sadly, however, the community that fought for and achieved this will not remain to enjoy it or will have to come from afar to visit. Notes the brochure: ”The plan would transform what is now a largely isolated, underutilized streetscape of garage openings, empty ground floors, roll-down metal gates, and chain-link fences in the blocks from West 125th to 133rd Streets into a cohesive, reanimated center for educational, commercial, and community life.” These are the conditions Columbia fostered and now wants to repair.

Like Ratner at Atlantic Yards, Columbia started buying property in the area and removing tenants well before the announced proposal, again causing much of the blight it decries. Anyone reading the above description would think the proposal is entirely beneficial. No mention is made of the displacement of 400 residents occupying affordable units, including 160 low-income families, 70-odd businesses, and 1,200 jobs. While areas in the city available for blue-collar work dwindle, it is difficult to estimate how many of the displaced businesses will survive in New York or at all. And considering, as well, the shortage of affordable housing, the relocation of low-income families from here, years before new units are built, only puts more strain on the citywide supply. Columbia's description of the site also fails to mention the removal of 150 artists and their studios, a window manufacturer, several film editing studios for cable TV, a wholesale bakery, a catering business, a pharmacy, a furniture restorer, one framing and gilding business, a stone fabricator, a boilermaker, several electricians and plumbers, a.s.sorted restaurants, an architectural ornament fabricator, Tools for Schools (an electronics repair and reuse operation), a few construction companies, moving and storage facilities, auto-body businesses, and two gas stations. Six sizable family-owned businesses were included in this mix.

One family-owned business, Hudson Moving and Storage, housed dozens of small businesses in two buildings, from a woodworker to an electrician to a refinisher. Hudson's multiple interior s.p.a.ces functioned as an incubator for new and growing businesses. Until Columbia started buying up occupied buildings, the area was home to a veritable agglomeration of small businesses that were both part of the citywide economy and servicing it. The value of this network is beyond measurement. Individually and collectively, they add up to hidden links in the city's supply chain and are almost totally ignored and undervalued.

10.4 Hudson Moving and Storage, on the Columbia site and purchased by Columbia under threat of eminent domain, had been converted into an a.s.sortment of creative small businesses.

Ron s.h.i.+ffman.

The diversity of businesses present in this ”blighted” area is not quite what Columbia would like the public to believe. Of course, many of these uses began disappearing when Columbia started buying properties.

It is worth repeating: Columbia University's expansion needs are real. No one disputes that. Expansion would be a good thing for the city as a whole. Elements of the proposed design are appealing. One could never judge the architectural plans, however, because the only sure thing about them is that they will change dramatically as the project moves forward. But whatever its design, it could all happen without erasing, Moses style, a viable piece of the city that would have revived economically, socially, and physically if not demolished.

The fundamental flaw preventing a compatible Columbia expansion was the university's insistence on the six-story underground s.p.a.ce covering the whole site, known as the bathtub. This enormous, really enormous, underground s.p.a.ce will take approximately seven to ten years to build and requires an estimated ninety-eight thousand or more truck trips in and out of the neighborhood, transporting debris to landfills. Underground tunnels, parking, loading, and power plants will fill this s.p.a.ce. Its creation requires demolition of everything above it on the street level-except, of course, a few buildings Columbia has chosen to retain for its own use.

Serious technical questions were raised, especially by disaster experts, concerning the environmental safety of this ”bathtub.” The site is located on a fault line and in an evacuation zone for hurricane surges, and it will include labs that work with biohazards. Experts, including some on the Columbia campus, questioned whether the bathtub s.p.a.ce could be constructed with adequate safeguards.

The environmental and economic costs were never clearly addressed. But the point here is not to take issue with a very challenging engineering issue; the point is to indicate, yet again, how an alternative was available. Rockefeller Center, for example, brilliantly created a vast underground s.p.a.ce in the 1930s that would permit the requisite underground uses24 and connections without requiring the same underground scale. The university totally rejected the idea without serious consideration. ”Cities are bound to change, you have to accept it,” the architect, Renzio Piano, was quoted as saying in one news story. ”This area is going to change, and should change in significant ways. You can't embalm a city,” Columbia president Lee Bollinger was quoted as saying. Neither comment reflects the reality that, yet again, it was not about stopping change or embalming a city but about what kind of change is appropriate. and connections without requiring the same underground scale. The university totally rejected the idea without serious consideration. ”Cities are bound to change, you have to accept it,” the architect, Renzio Piano, was quoted as saying in one news story. ”This area is going to change, and should change in significant ways. You can't embalm a city,” Columbia president Lee Bollinger was quoted as saying. Neither comment reflects the reality that, yet again, it was not about stopping change or embalming a city but about what kind of change is appropriate. Embalm Embalm is a favorite word used in recent years by people whose proposals met stiff public resistance. One had to wonder what city-or, indeed, what planet-they were talking about. New York City, for sure, has been in an almost permanent state of construction and change for years, the most dramatic transformation in decades. is a favorite word used in recent years by people whose proposals met stiff public resistance. One had to wonder what city-or, indeed, what planet-they were talking about. New York City, for sure, has been in an almost permanent state of construction and change for years, the most dramatic transformation in decades.

It should be noted that Columbia's plan, even if a Moses-style, nonintegrative, demolition-only one, is a better one than Atlantic Yards in terms of street layout, connections to the surrounding grid, and central open s.p.a.ce. Nevertheless, it destroys viable urban a.s.sets instead of building on them, claims a green building philosophy while erasing environmentally viable existing buildings, replaces instead of enriches an existing neighborhood, and boasts a community involvement process that permitted tinkerings, not meaningful impact.25 In both places, the critical web of social and economic relations.h.i.+ps that reach beyond the immediate borders is shattered. The upheaval in many cases is causing irreparable harm. And like Atlantic Yards, the specter and willingness of Columbia to abuse the potential for eminent domain resulted in a totally undemocratic process. In both places, the critical web of social and economic relations.h.i.+ps that reach beyond the immediate borders is shattered. The upheaval in many cases is causing irreparable harm. And like Atlantic Yards, the specter and willingness of Columbia to abuse the potential for eminent domain resulted in a totally undemocratic process.26 Moses would be pleased. Moses would be pleased.

10.5 Willets Point. Not the view officials want to see when they go to Citi Field. Norman Mintz Norman Mintz.

Willets Point Willets Point is probably the most challenging site to demonstrate both the existence of regenerative precursors and an alternative to a Moses-style clearance strategy. Bleak Bleak is a mild term for the appearance of this desolate and isolated thirteen-block triangle directly across from the Shea Stadium replacement, Citi Field, in Queens. Its worst sin, in fact, is that it is a visual offense to city officials who deem it imperative to clean up and sanitize the site directly in the eye path of visiting sports fans. The idea of a view of gritty economic life is apparently unacceptable. is a mild term for the appearance of this desolate and isolated thirteen-block triangle directly across from the Shea Stadium replacement, Citi Field, in Queens. Its worst sin, in fact, is that it is a visual offense to city officials who deem it imperative to clean up and sanitize the site directly in the eye path of visiting sports fans. The idea of a view of gritty economic life is apparently unacceptable.

This sixty-one-acre site at the geographic center of the city is surrounded by two highways and a subway line. The area is literally bereft of most city services. No basic infrastructure exists here. No sidewalks, no sewer lines, no paved streets, and no street lights are to be found. Pond-size potholes are everywhere. Huge oil-slick puddles collect after a rainfall. Dust rises from the unpaved roads running past and between the waste transfer stations and recycling facilities. And to add insult to injury, police give tickets for parking on sidewalks even where there are no sidewalks. Many of the ramshackle structures are built in unconventional ways, mostly of corrugated aluminum. They are interspersed with reused manufacturing and warehouse buildings and empty lots. A more dismal piece of New York City real estate is hard to find. A pile of ”toxic filth that is the result of the government's failure to provide adequate infrastructure in the first place,” wrote economist Sanford Ikeda on his blog critiquing the city demolition plan.

So when the city Economic Development Administration announced in 2006 a plan in which the city would buy out all the property owners to clear the site for future development, one can understand why there was a more muted off-site voice in opposition than for either Atlantic Yards or Columbia's new campus. But this is a real case of more than meets the eye.

The miracle is how anything exists on Willets Point at all! The curious must ask why. What can be observed and learned here? Actually, quite a bit.

A Moses Survivor Ironically, this was the site of an earlier, rare successful battle against Robert Moses. In the 1960s Moses wanted the site for parkland. A then little-known lawyer but future governor, Mario Cuomo, successfully represented the land and business owners to resist this takeover. A later Donald Trump effort to redevelop the area also failed.

But even as a takeover target for decades, with probably the worst physical conditions of any city site, Willets Point is home to 260 businesses and 1,700 to 1,800 jobs.27 Little vacant or unused land can be found. Property values are comparable to values in other industrial areas of Brooklyn and Queens. Willets Point businesses-mostly auto parts and recycling related-paid approximately $1.1 million in city real estate taxes in 2005. Little vacant or unused land can be found. Property values are comparable to values in other industrial areas of Brooklyn and Queens. Willets Point businesses-mostly auto parts and recycling related-paid approximately $1.1 million in city real estate taxes in 2005.

Twenty businesses are run by landowners, many second- and third-generation family owned. More than 80 percent of the businesses are renters. Most have been in business more than five years at the same location, an indication of long-term stability. Statistics for Willets Point are more revealing and relevant than in many places because it is so difficult for the average eye to observe true economic and urban value here.

But consider carefully what economist Sanford Ikeda also wrote on his blog, in January 2008: Old, worn-out buildings (or garages) are often good places to incubate ideas, but you can't build old buildings. Places like Willets Point (and Dharavi in India) offer cheap s.p.a.ce for poor entrepreneurs who tend in turn, at least initially, to serve poor patrons. Willets Point is a good, though perhaps not perfect, example of an ”unslumming” commercial slum, that is, a slum that is bootstrapping its way to economic development. Okay, it doesn't appear on the surface to be all that innovative. But in among the mostly grungy auto shops are a few s.h.i.+nier and larger establishments. So, the most successful either leave for less-toxic pastures or, if they stay, help to unslum the slum.

The Dharavi reference is an interesting one. Mumbai's sprawling Dharavi is the primary so-called slum depicted in Slumdog Millionaire Slumdog Millionaire that actually patched together scenes from various slums in that city for the film. Like Willets Point, the reality of Dharavi contradicts the perception. While the largest slum in Mumbai, ”Dharavi is probably the most active and lively part of an incredibly industrious city . . . including having set up a highly functional recycling industry that serves the whole city,” wrote Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava, community activists affiliated with PUKAR, that actually patched together scenes from various slums in that city for the film. Like Willets Point, the reality of Dharavi contradicts the perception. While the largest slum in Mumbai, ”Dharavi is probably the most active and lively part of an incredibly industrious city . . . including having set up a highly functional recycling industry that serves the whole city,” wrote Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava, community activists affiliated with PUKAR,28 in a in a New York Times New York Times op-ed piece. Dharavi, they noted, ”is all about resourcefulness. Over 60 years ago, it started off as a small village in the marshlands and grew, with no governmental support, to become a million-dollar economic miracle providing food to Mumbai and exporting crafts and manufactured goods to places as far away as Sweden.” op-ed piece. Dharavi, they noted, ”is all about resourcefulness. Over 60 years ago, it started off as a small village in the marshlands and grew, with no governmental support, to become a million-dollar economic miracle providing food to Mumbai and exporting crafts and manufactured goods to places as far away as Sweden.”29 Estimates of the number of informal businesses and cottage industries are 5,000 to 15,000, with revenues totaling tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars a year. Estimates of the number of informal businesses and cottage industries are 5,000 to 15,000, with revenues totaling tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars a year.

Economist Edward L. Glaeser agrees. ”The defining characteristic of Mumbai is not crime or Bollywood, but entrepreneurs.h.i.+p even in the city's slums,” he wrote in the New York Times New York Times Economix Blog, on May 26, 2009. Dharavi, he noted, ”is a place of remarkable economic energy where poor people are managing to eke out a living as entrepreneurs.” Economix Blog, on May 26, 2009. Dharavi, he noted, ”is a place of remarkable economic energy where poor people are managing to eke out a living as entrepreneurs.”

Willets Point is also all about resourcefulness. It looks like sheer chaos but has its own economic rationale. And like Willets Point, the Indian government is preparing to flatten Dharavi and build high-rise towers and business parks, a la Robert Moses, in the mistaken notion that building an economy on real estate instead of entrepreneurs.h.i.+p works.

10.6 Rahul and Matias loved the license plate. Rahul Srivastava Rahul Srivastava.

On their trip to New York last year, I took Matias and Rahul to Willets Point. They were stunned at the similarities with Dharavi, the big difference being that in Dharavi, people live where they work as well. The same lack of infrastructure exists, as does the creative patching together of small buildings with corrugated tin and other materials. Residents role up their mattresses each morning and get to work.

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