Roberta Brandes Gratz 2013-05-25T04:17:37-04:00 Roberta Brandes Gratz http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=roberta-brandes-gratz Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Roberta Brandes Gratz Good old fashioned elbow grease. Walking the Walk With Jane tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1462104 2012-04-30T14:55:14-04:00 2012-06-30T05:12:02-04:00 Roberta Brandes Gratz http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roberta-brandes-gratz/
A look at the U.S. map on JaneJacobsWalk.org illustrates how far and wide these walks are. But "Unicycling For Change" in Bozeman, Mont., has to take the prize. Sure, walkers, two-wheeled cyclists, wheelchairs and all mode of mobility are apparently welcome, but the underlying theme here seems to be change of a broad sort. Without going to Bozeman, it is difficult to know what "change" the organizers have in mind but one can assume that at least a concern for transportation choices will be central here.

One might wonder if residents of Charlotte, N.C., know what diversity enriches their city but they can surely discover by way of their stomach. The "Charlotte Munching Tour" will focus on the Vietnamese, Salvadoran and Somali offerings put forth by these immigrant communities, one small reflection of the diverse richness that Jane celebrated and that she early pointed out comes with the cultural and entrepreneurial spirit such newcomers bring.

And how clever they are in Sacramento, Calif., where the "Seersucker Ride" will follow a former streetcar route and invite participants to feel free to dress of the period to view local Victorian landmarks and the routes of the onetime assortment of public transit options that all cities once had. The need for a robust public transit system, Jacobs emphasized, was a basic requirement of well-functioning cities. Sacramento's six tours, in fact, touch on a number of fundamental concerns of Jacobs: basic infrastructure, mixed-use business and residential district, appealing parks, culture -- in this case an early rock 'n' roll history, and, of course, the State Capitol and its surrounding neighborhood. Jacobs would surely appreciate how this selection reflects many of her multiple concerns.

Jacobs, of course, was the 20th century's most articulate voice on behalf of the interconnectedness of urban functions, the idea that every city is like a fabric woven of many different threads all of which depend on each other for the strength of the whole. The Center For the Living City, of which Jane Jacobs Walks are an important program, was founded before her death to build on those fundamental ideas and on her multi-faceted legacy.

Jacobs was a staunch opponent of any kind of centralized control and a great proponent of what has come to be identified as self-organized action, of which the Walks are a great example. Not only are the walks a great example of just the self-organization Jacobs celebrated, but it is run exclusively by dedicated volunteers whose commitment to the Jacobs precepts brings them together in a totally organic way. Led by Nate Currey under the direction of Center Executive Director Stephen Goldsmith at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, the volunteer team both manages the walks and are available to advise and assist walk leaders from everywhere. With a grant from the Google Non-Profits Grant Program, Currey has made the program's website accessible in new and interesting ways and developed technically rich content.

The interesting array of walks focus heavily on neighborhoods of one kind or another. Participants would do well, either before or after the Walk, to reread her chapter, "The Uses of City Neighbor-hoods." As with all of her writing, her insightful observations offer good food for thought. For example:

To hunt for city neighborhood touchstones of success in high standards of physical facilities, or in supposedly competent and non-problem populations, or in nostalgic memories of town life, is a waste of time. It evades the meat of the question, which is the problem of what city neighborhoods do, if anything, that may be socially and economically useful in cities themselves, and how they do it.



Jane Jacobs Walks USA are not limited to the first week-end of May to mark her birthday. East Austin, Texas, wasn't waiting and already held its neighborhood tour in mid-April focusing on the impact of Urban Renewal and other forces altered that community, what Jacobs called "cataclysmic change." On May 10, Seattle walkers will stroll the Pike/Pine Corridor to explore old and new development and and missed opportunities. Burlington, Vt., will hold two walks the week-end of May 12, also focusing on the negative impact of Urban Renewal, mainly the displacement of a vibrant Italian community. Apparently, former residents of that community will be on hand to share memories of what was lost. But also the walk will focus on a wide downtown street now targeted for redesign and the goal here is to gather observations and ideas from participants related to ongoing plans.

Several of the walks seem to focus on the unfortunate remnants of Urban Renewal and the positive efforts to rebuild such areas. This is great for the healing process. Some emphasize mobility and sustainability issues, others the unique appeal and hard-to-measure value of heritage areas whose historic appeal have retained a segment of the urban population that once fled cities. And others highlight the positive and negative effects of recent change. New Orleans has several walks focusing on the positive change occurring in areas of the city visitors never see and New York City has an overwhelming assortment of choices and not all just on the May 5th weekend.

How could Jane not be overwhelmed by the variety of tours that zero in on so many of the things she wrote about so eloquently? Significantly, walks that emphasize the positive at a time of such difficult change are even occurring in such challenged cities as Detroit, Hartford and Oakland. For example, the Rocky Ridge tour in Youngstown, Ohio, will be led by residents who view their neighborhood as the city's "hidden gem" and will share how the community helped shape the place and the place shaped the community despite the hard times this post-industrial city has and still is experiencing.

But surely Jane would chuckle over the "Ugly Houses Tour" in Karlskrona, Sweden. Any why not? No better way exists to awaken a public interest in positive change than to examine the negative to reveal possible remedies.]]> Walk, Observe, Discuss tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1414648 2012-04-10T14:43:29-04:00 2012-06-10T05:12:01-04:00 Roberta Brandes Gratz http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roberta-brandes-gratz/ Death and Life of Great American Cities, she helped us see the multiple and diverse elements that make up the fine-grained texture that is a real urban place. She empowered everyone to have confidence in their own judgment about what works and what doesn't work in their community. In fact, it was better, she said, if you were not a trained expert. Theories don't work; observation does. It is better to understand, she taught us, as the user, the observer, the resident, the local business person and, yes, the walker. Professionals best follow the wisdom of the local.

In the opening of Death and Life, she wrote: "The scenes that illustrate this book are all about us. For illustrations, please look closely at real cities. While you are looking, you might as well also listen, linger and think about what you see."

No better way exists to understand what Jane was saying than to get out and walk, observe, ponder and think or talk about what is seen. That is the idea behind Jane Jacobs Walks, more than 70(?) local, self-organized walks taking place all over the United State, from Anchorage to New York City and dozens of places in between.

But let me explain.

For several years before her death, during my visits with her in Toronto, I would talk to Jane about starting something that would build on her legacy. She was very cautious about anything done in her name. Jane encouraged innovative thinking and bold action, clearly her own original path. She also considered self-organized and decentralized efforts the most effective path to enduring change. Whatever we did was meant to empower all kinds of people to address the needs and challenges of their community.

In 2004, two years before her death, I brought my friend and colleague Stephen Goldsmith to meet Jane. Stephen is an artist-turned-urban-change-maker from Salt Lake City who needed an affordable place to live and work years ago and wound up transforming the warehouse district in Salt Lake into a mini-SoHo with hundreds of affordable live/work spaces and incubator space for other non-profit and commercial businesses. He then became the Planning Director of that challenged city during the 2002 Winter Olympics. Jane admired his work and saw it as a perfect example of how the local resident was the most effective and knowledgeable change-maker. Stephen, who soon become the University Professor for Campus Sustainability at the University of Utah, agreed to be the executive director of what Jane suggested be called The Center For the Living City.

We spent hours over several visits talking about things the Center could do, including establishing a Jacobs Fellowship Program, for which the Center would raise funds to support innovative ways to advance positive urban change. She loved that idea the most and that turned out to be one of the first things the Center did before she died in the Spring of 2006.

Right after Hurricane Katrina, the first Jacobs Fellow, sponsored by the Center and funded by Deutsche Bank, was a young architect in New Orleans whose task was to work with low-income residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed in the storm. This exactly fit Jane's principle not to do for a place but to enable people to do for themselves. Two additional Jacobs Fellows are currently in the works.

The Center also produced a book, published by New Village Press, titled What We See: Advancing the Ideas of Jane Jacobs, a collection of 30 pieces contributed by a diverse group of people influenced by Jane or who influenced her. Like her own work, this book covered the gamut of the ecology of cities, reflecting her principle that everything is connected. The urban fabric, she made clear, is made up of a vast assortment of interdependent threads that cannot and should not be looked at or dealt with independently.

With an assortment of place-based non-profit organizations working to engage citizens in improving their places, the Center collaborated on a conference titled Toward a Just Metropolis. This event held at UC Berkeley in collaboration with the NGO's Planner's Network and Architects, Designers and Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR),is collaborating with The Association for Community Design (ACD) on an upcoming conference in June 7-9 in Salt Lake City.

In a totally different direction, the Center collaborated on a program to encourage local, self-organized walks that would bring people together to observe, discuss, understand and, perhaps, change the world around them on a micro-scale. The Center's program was modeled after one started earlier in Toronto by the Center For City Ecology (CCE) that had formed with a similar mission to build on Jane's work. The Toronto program, called Jane's Walks and scheduled for the first weekend in May to celebrate Jane's birthday, eventually became independent of the CCE and today sponsors walks all over Canada and overseas.

The U.S.-focused Jane Jacobs Walks, on the other hand, expanded the walk idea to year-round and to include "rolls" by bike, wheelchair or public transit. (See JaneJacobsWalk.org).

It is fascinating to observe the evolution of Jane Jacobs Walks along exactly the kind of decentralized, spontaneous and self-organized way that Jane encouraged. Run by a very skillful graduate student under Stephen's supervision, Nate Currey, and worked on by a group of volunteer student interns, Jane Jacobs Walks has embraced the newest technology and was recently selected to be a Grantee for Non-Profits Program.

Jane is probably the most influential and quoted urban thinker of our time. Many claim to apply her principles and, in the process, actually reinterpret her thinking. Misinterpreting her thinking is most difficult when you are observing on the ground; that is where real urban life unfolds. So if you take a Jane Jacobs Walk or organize a Jane Jacobs Walk, you will be honoring Jane's legacy in the most honest and sincere way.
]]> A Lost Game but Not a Lost Gain tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1209054 2012-01-16T15:51:50-05:00 2012-03-17T05:12:01-04:00 Roberta Brandes Gratz http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roberta-brandes-gratz/
Sure, there are a lot of crestfallen fans who, even up to the last minute, were sure the Saints would pull it off. But it was a great game to end a season of great games that, like this city, show over and over again that it was never just about coming back but about coming back stronger.

In that way, the Saints are a metaphor for New Orleans. Sure, maybe the city overdoses on football and maybe the government policies that seem ready to sacrifice buildings for more tailgating space that creates an urban void between games is a rather thoughtless way to rebuild a city.

But the Saints themselves are revered for being more than just a team. "They are much admired," says one diehard New Orleanian, "not just for their physical prowess. Since before the storms when they might just have been the worst team, they showed they are smart, innovative, determined and resilient."

Just like the city.

Drew Brees, my loyal Saints fan adds, "epitomizes it all. He's not only smart but he gives back to the city in many charitable ways, as does his wife. Same thing for Jimmy Graham and many of them."

Another New Orleanian remembers when you couldn't give away a ticket to a Saints game and when few people knew the names of players or much about them. Now, one feels incorrectly dressed if not with some kind of Saints garment -- hat, tee-shirt, jacket and more. All the better if your garment has the name and number of your favorite player.

This is a city that embraces frayed -- even decayed -- elegance. This works in the fierce attachment to an extraordinary architectural heritage so rich that it is taken for granted in many government policies that threaten that richness. But in other areas like sports, a strong instinct to get stuck in the past led to a complacency and absence of belief that things could change.

"When the Saints were the worst," my loyal fan said, "we figured that was how it had to be but we could party no matter what."

Now, they are the comeback kid, the community booster, the tenacity to overcome adversity and to "not just rebuild but to rebuild better," all rolled up in one black and gold package.

The evidence of the rebuilding better is everywhere.

Home renovations are visible on almost every block, including in some of the most troubled neighborhoods. Governmental and institutional impediments, not the will of people, has dictated the incremental pace.

The absurdly slow flow of government and insurance money to homeowners was compounded by the official evaluation of damaged homes based on pre-Katrina value, not the cost of reconstruction. One needs a lot of money to make up that difference to rebuild.

Road Home, the federal disaster relief program, offered no compensation for a second, third or fourth property. Since many longtime New Orleanians often built or bought additional homes for family or income, this was a particularly cruel twist. And without compensation for rental properties, the quantity of rental properties plummeted and rents skyrocketed.

Another great sign is that endless numbers of local businesses are visible everywhere. This is a rare city in which the useful tradition of the corner store has not been lost. More restaurants exist than before the storm and the music scene is as rich as ever. The same growing interest in local food seen around the country is definitely here as well. Farmers Markets keep multiplying. Gardens seem to proliferate as well, even in schoolyards. The Edible Schoolyard, first started in Berkeley, California, by Alice Waters has an exemplary model here that changes the way kids eat, learn and live and sends their new found knowledge, taste and food awareness into their home kitchens. The Hollygrove Market and Farm has inspired the creation of community gardens all around the city.

Both the widespread home improvement trend and community garden momentum feed into the larger, growing "can do" spirit noticeable citywide. Neighborhood associations are more numerous and energized than ever before the storms, attracting young and old, longtime residents and new.

After Katrina, experts predicted no more than half the population would return. Six and a half years later it is estimated at three quarters and growing.

You know the resilience of the Saints and the resilience of the city are intertwined when you come across the following scene. On one block, someone contrived a huge outdoor screen and placed it in the middle of the street. Neighbors brought out chairs and someone somehow streamed the game onto that giant screen and everyone shared both the excitement and the pain.

Only in New Orleans.]]> Thanksgiving Parade: An Urban Phenomenon tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1119550 2011-11-30T12:56:59-05:00 2012-01-30T05:12:02-05:00 Roberta Brandes Gratz http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roberta-brandes-gratz/
Let me explain.

I live on the second floor of an apartment house overlooking Central Park and the parade route and have been having a festive parade party for the 39 years since my family moved in. I hear voices, nothing loud, emanating from the street starting at around 5 a.m. when people start gathering to get a curbside spot. Sometimes they bring chaises to doze on until daylight.

When I awake, needing to prepare for my sometimes 50-60 guests of all ages, I look out to a sea of happy faces. Strangers are talking to strangers. Conviviality reigns. No one is pepper spraying to get a choicer position. Racial variations are as endless as in the city itself. I lose track of how many different languages I hear when I open my window. In all these years, I've never witnessed an angry moment. I can't remember even hearing or reading any reports of ill will.

Who cannot love seeing the familiar and not-so-familiar balloons and the occasional entertainer who those of us older than 16 have never heard of. Fortunately, I have several grandchildren plus dozens of other guest children to bring me up to date.

I like to say that I raised a whole generation of New York kids -- I have two daughters and lots of their friends -- who used to think I gave the parade. Now they come back with their kids. Isn't that what Thanksgiving is about?

What is so remarkable is that this is Macy's parade. It is as commercial as can be and it doesn't feel one bit so. I see the Macy's name on all the drums of those fabulous high school bands that go marching by, coming from far away places most of us have never heard of. What a thrill it must be for those kids to have the honor of marching on this special day. The smiles on their faces tells the story. The Macy's name is in several places but it is never over-conspicuous. Promotions of shows, stars, wannabe-stars, and God knows what else are all over the place and not one bit of it offends the sensibility.

Macy's deserves every bit of potential profit it can earn from this effort. Let it be recognized, that when so many city-born department stores were abandoning their birthplace for the suburbs, Macy's never abandoned its historic home (nor did Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylor or Bergdorf Goodman's). It stayed with us through the bad times and is still here for the good. May it always flourish for that.

New York City used to be filled with elaborate, creative, joyful holiday windows, now mostly a thing of the past. All stores have either cut back or cut out such holiday investments -- or, the stores themselves have disappeared. But Macy's doesn't hold back or cut corners. The parade remains as robust and fun-filled as ever.

When I was a little girl growing up in Greenwich Village, my parents, my sister and I would take the Fifth Avenue bus UP (yes Fifth Avenue went two ways and should be again) to 59th Street. Starting at Bergdorf Goodman, we would walk down Fifth taking in all the windows as if we were art gallery hopping. No more.

Lord & Taylor is still pretty reliable but dramatically diminished. Their windows used to be worth a good hour of serious observation. One had to look hard at all the intricate tableaux with moving parts, delicately decorated houses, charming miniature people in elaborate holiday outfits, reflecting themes of international or local traditions. I took my grandchildren this year in great anticipation. Delightful as always but disappointingly diminished.

Nearby, however, a new city tradition has been added with an ice-skating rink in Bryant Park, the once dead but now exuberantly alive city park that changed our understanding of city parks with its transformation 30 years ago. Watching skaters at a public rink is always entertaining -- a great opportunity to laugh at someone else's expense.

This year, the glow of this joyful day was extinguished around midnight. I had collapsed in bed exhausted around 11 p.m. I feel right asleep but was awakened sometime before midnight by the sound of voices, as I usually hear around 5 a.m. before the parade. I thought I was dreaming. I got up to look out the window and couldn't believe all the people lined up across the street, a line snaking down to Columbus Circle three blocks away. It must have been 1,000 people or more lined up for Best Buy around the corner, opening at Midnight. What a damper on the spirit of a most extraordinary day.
]]> When Is a Landmark A Landmark? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.908457 2011-07-30T13:23:21-04:00 2011-09-29T05:12:01-04:00 Roberta Brandes Gratz http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roberta-brandes-gratz/
Ever since the battle over the future of 2 Columbus Circle, these questions have taken on greater significance. The refusal of the Landmarks Preservation Commission to consider landmark status for the 1964 12-story museum designed by Edward Durell Stone is considered by preservationists as the "Penn Station of Modernist Preservation." Appreciation for the enduring value of mid-century modern architecture has been growing ever since and the number of advocates for preservation of that not-too-distant era has increased as well.
Now comes the case involving the 1954 Manufacturers Hanover Trust Bank at 43rd Street and Fifth Avenue, designed by one of the 20th century's most notable architects, Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

No more iconic building represents the Modernist era in New York City than this five-story glass box. Some are bigger and taller, others more famous, but none are more transparent or important. This little jewel speaks as well as any of them to the famed era of Mies Van der Rohe when "less is more" was the design rule of the day and Bunshaft was the city's leading practitioner.

Not anymore. Both the interior and exterior have been effectively destroyed, with the approval of the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Just designating a lot of buildings is not a great accomplishment if honoring that designation does not follow.

This Landmarks Commission does not designate interiors lightly and rarely without an owner's consent. But recently the Commission designated the bank's interior with the consent of the new owner, Vornado, who is converting it to a big box retail store. Is yet another ho-hum big box retail store more important than a singular landmark, even if owned by one of the city's most powerful developers?

In its designation report, the commission cited as important the very elements it then permitted to be irrevocably altered, rendering the designation meaningless. The interior sits completely gutted -- totally taken apart, apparently with the commission's approval, raising the obvious question: when is a landmark really a landmark?

A state Supreme Court judge last week halted at least temporarily the renovation of this landmark, raising anew all these questions, especially how much alteration is permissible before a designation is rendered meaningless.

Only the exterior of the five-story, transparent, all-glass 1954 bank -- originally Manufacturers Hanover Trust and then Chase Manhattan -- was designated an exterior landmark in 1997, even though, as Ada Louise Huxtable has noted, "the exterior and interior were conceived as one thing, unified and inseparable, to be seen and understood as a continuous visual, spatial and aesthetic experience."

What could be the justification for destroying the unique interior features singled out in the Commission's own designation report? The celebrated stainless steel vault door designed by Henry Dreyfuss and its black granite exterior are gone with only the vault door and sliver of granite to be reinstalled; the Fifth Avenue façade, an "uninterrupted expanse of clear glass" so notable for its pure expression of modernism, will now be destroyed by two planned entrances inserted to replace the discreet 43rd Street entrance; the "twin escalators" running north/south, paralleling the avenue and giving pedestrians a view of people seemingly floating up and down will be replaced by escalators running east/west to service two separate stores divided by a previously non-existent wall undermining further the open, airy, minimalist interior. The mixed-metal 70-foot by 16-foot screen by famed modernist designer Harry Bertoia is gone as well. The exterior is fundamentally altered by the rearrangement inside. Transparency from the street meant everything.

What will be left? It is hard to tell. Final working drawings apparently have not yet been submitted. But the "luminous ceiling" is due to be restored with all sorts of new insertions. The eight marble-clad piers that held the mezzanine in a floating-like position are being strengthened along with the mezzanine, providing the ability (not yet requested but expected eventually) to build a tower over this diminutive gem.

By the commission's own standard alterations to a landmark should be reversible, but it is a challenge to see how that would be possible. Ironically, this building interior survived undesignated with few incursions until designation opened the floodgate to major alterations. No such dramatic adjustments would even be attempted for such eminent bank interiors as Central Savings Bank at 72nd and Broadway or the Williamsburgh Savings Bank in Brooklyn. And for other modernist interiors, such as Seagrams and Time Life, or for the Art Deco Empire State Building, commissioners hardly let a concierge desk be changed without fierce attention to the integrity of the building.

This celebrated masterpiece could have been so creatively adapted to distinguish any new retail space from yet another ordinary big box container. The historic bank vaults, now restaurants, at Cipriani's Wall Street, Trinity Place or Bobby Van's Broad Street are successful models. Traditionally, New York department stores had notable eateries drawing customers to their space.

Stripping a landmark of the character that makes it special or letting one serve as a pedestal for a new tower contradicts both the spirit and substance of New York's Landmarks Law, once a model for the country. This is tantamount to de-designation.

Roberta Brandes Gratz is a former New York City Landmarks Commissioner and author of the recently published, The Battle For Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs (Nation Books).
]]> Stockholm Leads the Way tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.900655 2011-07-17T20:27:18-04:00 2011-09-16T05:12:01-04:00 Roberta Brandes Gratz http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roberta-brandes-gratz/
Biogas from the sewage-treatment plant fuel public buses, cars and taxis. Sludge from the same plant is clean enough to be used for agriculture and has been transported up north to cover a used copper mine and reconstruct nature. One large new building at the train station captures the body heat of the 250,000 people passing through it for building heat. In a newly constructed neighborhood, 100 percent of the household waste is converted into heat and electricity. A traffic congestion charge introduced in 2007 helped reduce traffic by 20-25 percent and emissions by 10-14 percent. Bicycles are considered a "mode of transport" to be expanded with new lanes and parking opportunities.

And, as Stafan Tillander, Climate Change Ambassador of the Ministry of Environment, points out, Stockholm has shown that it can grow its economy -- 50 percent growth since the 1990s -- and still cut emissions by 10 percent. "The EU wants to cut emissions by 20 percent by 2020, but we have set a target of 40 percent," he says.

The Green Capital initiative was launched in 2005 and participated in by 40 European cities all interested in spotlighting cities that are leading the way in broad-
based environmental innovations and that can serve as role models for other cities. In the first year, 35 cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants from 17 countries applied.

Stockholm's unique geography gives it an environmental advantage to start but it is clear that the city not only values that advantage, it seeks to protect and advance it. The character and charm of the city seem to be defined by water and green spaces with the 1,000 large and small green areas adding up to 30% of the city and various bodies of water totaling another 30%. Nearly every resident lives within 300 meters of a green area and not much further from one of 12 small lakes. Water makes up more than 10 percent of the city. The more developed urban areas are spread out like fingers, interspersed with protected green areas.

Sometimes referred to as the "Venice of the North," Stockholm is located on 14 islands on the south-central east coast of Sweden. Lake Maelaren is a freshwater lake feeding into the Baltic Sea. A locke has connected these two bodies of water since the mid-17th century and is critical for the prevention of flooding by the lake.

The tight grid of narrow streets holds remnants of its medieval beginnings but feels more like the late 19th century city so prevalent in European capitals. Like its "sister" capitals on the Baltic Sea, Stockholm's trade and transportation history is sea-based whereas most other European capitals are on major rivers.

The priorities and deepest values of a city are, perhaps, best reflected in the development that emerges in different ways. Three sizable areas are in various stages and while they are totally different in nature, they have certain things in common. None has a dominant large-scale building and, in fact, they are each in keeping with the mid-size scale of the city. Stockholm's population of 800,000 is expected to reach one million by 2030 but the growth will be spread around so no one area is overwhelmed.

All three projects have had extensive public input and each is a model of environmental advances in water, waste, transport and construction technologies. The most centrally located project is Slussen in the city's historic core where Lake Maeleren meets the Baltic Sea. Here, the primarily concrete developments of the 1950s are giving way to parkland and recreational sites. Two vehicular bridges are giving way to one with less room for cars and more for bicycles and public transit. And plans for new buildings have been cut back by public demand. (See "Stockholm Model: Planning Yields Dramatic Results," Roberta Brandes Gratz, Citiwire.net, June 23, 201l).

The Stockholm Royal Seaport, the site of a former container port and oil and gas storage facilities, and Hammerby Sjostad, an old industrial and harbor area, are two entirely new urban districts that are effectively expanding the city proper.

Planning for Hammerby Sjostad started in the 1980s and will eventually have an estimated 36,000 people living and working there. Completion is set for 2018 but it is already considerably built and occupied and feels like a fully developed district. Taking full advantage of its varied waterfronts, Hammerby Sjostad is marked by parks, quays, walkways and marshes providing a diverse assortment of architectural opportunities taking advantage of waterfront views and facilities. No one architect dominates so the range of styles is impressive, even if they all fit within a framework that sets the bulk and height of all buildings.

This emerging urban district is a model of environmental advances in energy production (energy from waste, biofuels for heating and electricity, biogas extracted from sewage sludge and food waste), full scope recycling and water and sewage systems that take full advantage of rainwater. Although the plans boast of mixed uses, the primary commercial uses seem to be clustered rather than interspersed. Street life appeared limited on a recent visit. My host, Michael Skoglund from the Swedish Institute, observes, "we are an indoors people." But that doesn't fully explain the scarcity of street life on a clear, sunny day of mild temperature.

The Stockholm Royal Seaport is a totally different kind of new district and is still in the planning stage. But what makes it unique is its strong emphasis on historic preservation as the centerpiece around which a new mixed-use area will be built.

One newly developed building over the rail yards at Central Station, embodies a wide range of environmental innovations. Jernhusen, the state-owned real estate company that manages and develops properties throughout the Swedish Railway System, recently completed the 14-story 40,000 square meter building that includes a small hotel, restaurant and office space.

"We wanted modern proven technology but didn't want to be the first to try anything new," said Klas Johnasson, head of Jernhusen's environmental division. "Happily we would be second."

First they deconstructed an existing building that no one wanted to save, he says, even though "Stockholm rarely permits demolition of existing buildings and prefers rebuilding and expanding." They sold 2,000 tons of concrete to be reused in highway construction. Rebar was sold and melted by a steel company and the windows were sold to Estonia for the cost of transporting them. Furniture was donated to Doctors Without Borders. The money earned was absorbed by the extra time that went into careful deconstruction but 95 percent of the original building was recovered and reused.

From day one, energy considerations were the priority. For the new building design, Jernhusen approached four architectural firms to provide concepts for the new building, insisting that they make their energy calculations before they design the building not afterwards which is the way it is usually done. Three refused, insisting this is done after. Only the Dutch architect, Oma (Office of Metropolitan Architecture), responded accordingly and got the job.

Car parking space is limited to 100 but bike accommodation is double that and includes male and female locker rooms with showers. An electro-magnetic elevator creates electricity and in Jernhusen's own two-story office suite, the stairwell walls are filled with huge photographs of the outdoors to encourage walking. Special inoperable windows helps maintain inside temperature and doors to terraces provide fresh air opportunities. All lighting systems automatically shut off when a room is empty.

All sorts of additional features add to the building's energy efficiency but, perhaps, the most interesting is what supplements a thermal heating system -- the body heat of 250,000 people passing through Central Station below on a daily basis. "They do a lot of activity," notes Johnasson. "They buy coffee, food, newspapers, books. All this activity generates an enormous amount of heat. If we don't use it, it will just be ventilated out." Heat exchangers in the station's ventilation system convert the heat to hot water that is then pumped into the nearby building. This lowers the energy costs of the office block by 25 percent.

"This is an old technology," Johnasson adds. "We're surprised that more people don't do it."]]> Landmarking Urban Change in New York tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.829790 2011-03-02T16:50:27-05:00 2011-05-25T18:35:25-04:00 Roberta Brandes Gratz http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roberta-brandes-gratz/
There has been plenty of that too. New York City in the decade before the bust had been transformed by new construction in every borough. But the most transformative and enduring change -- the kind that spreads economic benefits citywide and affects more than corporate high rises and the new luxury condos their employees occupy -- has come both through the upgrading of existing buildings and new infill located in diverse neighborhoods.

Some of the most celebrated new buildings designed by star architects, like Jean Nouvel and Herzog + de Meuron, are in historic districts, adding residential density to neighborhoods that once had none. In fact, it is primarily in historic districts where one can observe the variety of layers of urban change over time.

As one of the eleven Landmarks Commissioners, I was both a witness to and participant in this change. I had written about and been active in the preservation movement since the 1970s when many in the development industry aggressively sought to demolish some of the very buildings they are now profitably restoring, buildings standing today because preservationists won some battles over demolition.

I resisted joining the commission at first, thinking that the outside observer/critic should never cross over. I was mistaken. I learned much from inside the process. Most significantly, I observed close hand the sea change that has occurred in attitudes toward historic preservation. In the 1970s, one could not even get an Art Deco building designated. Now, pressure to designate even Modernist buildings is strong, particularly since the animated public discussion over the alteration of 2 Columbus Circle, Edward Durell Stone's iconic 1960s museum design.

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2 Columbus Circle, before and after. Photos by Renate O'Flaherty and Beyond My Ken.


Appreciation for historic buildings is intense. But the enormous economic contribution of preservation is rarely recognized.

Weekly, the Landmarks Commission approves expansions and renovations in the more than 100 historic districts and 1,200 individually designated buildings that represent an enormous investment of jobs and money into the local economy. Upgrades of storefronts, rooftop or backyard additions, extensive alterations, new buildings comfortably fitting in among the old are only part of the varied projects reviewed. The layers of history are protected and appropriately contributed to, adding density in an incremental but significant way.

Critics of historic preservation make the egregious error of assuming that landmarking stops change, growth and other categories of "progress." They also mistakenly assume that it is the designation of these neighborhoods that make them increasingly expensive, forgetting that New York City has become a city for the rich and the poor for national and local economic reasons that have nothing to do with preservation.

Let's understand that not all historic districts are low-rise (Upper West Side, East Side, etc.) and that even some of the predominantly low-rise neighborhoods (Greenwich Village, Brooklyn Heights) have high-rise apartment houses. Most of the historic districts are already the densest in the city.

It is quite surprising these days that some commentators assume tall buildings define density. Most tall buildings built in recent years have contained luxury condos, big condos, in fact, that don't add up to the density observers think. Even when subsidized -- and too many of the towers are -- they are predominantly luxury prices. Moreover, all those high-rise low and middle-income housing towers that Robert Moses and others built and that observers assume represent "density" actually diminished density.

The demolished neighborhoods were a dense assortment of small, large, short and tall buildings -- rarely the irredeemable slum Moses proclaimed. The residential had been mixed in with commercial, institutional, industrial and retail. Their replacements neither had the same number of units nor the diversity. In the end, Moses built far fewer units than he demolished. The trade-off was acres of green space, now most often fenced off or converted to parking lots and, occasionally, playgrounds.

For most of the 20th century, in fact until only recently, the planning and policy mantra has mistakenly been that de-densifying cities fights crime and poverty. Finally, recognition that the reverse is true is being recognized. De-concentrating poverty is not the same thing as de-densifying neighborhoods. Only the latter has long been happening with the new construction.

It is indeed true, as preservation naysayers love to point out, that historic districts have become expensive but it is not because new excessively tall skyscrapers are not allowed; it is because these areas -- and many undesignated ones like them -- are considered the most desirable neighborhoods to live in.

The desired quality of urban life these days is found in old neighborhoods. Old-fashioned supply and demand -- the market -- has increased prices. And when new buildings are built in historic districts, they come in at high prices, many even more expensive than historic buildings. The old trickle down theory of real estate economics has never proven true on the ground. It only works when there is an overheated construction period and subsequent oversupply, which is what recently happened in NYC at the same time as the economy collapsed.

Luxury skyscrapers may be barred from historic districts but they grow like weeds on the periphery of those districts, a perverse testament to the value of historic neighborhoods. Just look at lower Manhattan, from Gansvoort to NoHo, Upper West Side or the assortment of Brooklyn neighborhoods now so popular. New luxury towers capitalize on the appeal of the historic district but add nothing to it.

No, the most interesting, productive and economically enduring urban change and the increased density it often brings is actually visible in historic districts. One just has to know how to recognize it. The problem is that this change comes in small increments -- sometimes as small as one storefront upgrade that transforms a block -- scattered all over town, seldom concentrated in one neighborhood.

This is clearly evidenced by the weekly calendar of the Landmarks Commission that reflects mostly positive change all over the city. But little attention is paid to this three-days-a-month process unless some blockbuster proposal appears on the calendar. The more significant and meaningful changes remain below the radar but are constant and numerous. It is easier to celebrate, photograph or write about one big new building than the many different and significant alterations occurring to old ones.

Limited awareness also exists of the contribution of building renovations -- designated landmarks or not -- to advancing sustainable development. Reusing existing buildings employs more local people and uses more local resources than new construction, minimizes additions to landfill and the truck trips to them, and avoids waste of valuable irreplaceable materials. Sustainability starts with existing assets.

One of the things I grew to appreciate more than anything in the almost eight years on the Commission is the value commissioners genuinely give to public testimony. I don't know of another agency where the public input has as good a chance of influencing a commission's decision. This, of course, is to the credit of the individual commissioners who are an alert, dedicated and caring lot.

Above all, public testimony at the Landmarks Commission makes clear that historic preservation does more than anything else to keep the character of the city's individual and distinct neighborhoods in tact and vibrant. The pride of place exhibited weekly in public testimony is extraordinary. New York is stronger than most cities because so much of its authentic fabric survives. Without the Landmarks Preservation Commission -- about which and on which I have offered my share of criticism -- this would not be true.

Roberta Brandes Gratz, author of The Battle For Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, and other books, served almost eight years on the Landmarks Preservation Commission and was recently appointed by Mayor Bloomberg to the Sustainability Advisory Board.]]> Times Square Development Completed tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.803619 2011-01-04T12:25:21-05:00 2011-05-25T18:20:30-04:00 Roberta Brandes Gratz http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roberta-brandes-gratz/
With the completion of this transformative project, one can anticipate much self-congratulations from different quarters of the city; all kinds of good things will be attributed to this Times Square replacement.

Credit will be given to it for bringing down crime (forgetting crime is down everywhere in the city where mega-projects aren't), for showing the strength of the free market (forgetting the inestimably valuable zoning changes, tax incentives and city capital contributions), for displaying the strength of retailing (make that chain stores, please), for bringing the tourists (spare the illusion that tourists ever stopped coming to Times Square, even at its worst) and for bringing corporate towers to the area (is this really a characteristic that Times Square needed?).

And then there are the lights, action, billboards and advertisements. Here's where history is not only being forgotten, it is being totally distorted. Developers had to be brought kicking and screaming to accept the tradition of billboards and lights in the rezoning of the 1980s. I remember it well and not only wrote about it in my first book (The Living City: Thinking Small in a Big Way) but I was part of the obstreperous group of New Yorkers fighting to save the 33 historic theaters which remained - finally landmarked after an intense civic battle - as the heart of what is left of the authentic Theater District/Times Square. The civic warriors, by the way, were without support from any of the traditional civic organizations.

Recent history is easily forgotten or erroneously remembered in the highly successful New York City of today. The Times Square/Theater District had reached the same lowest point in the city's history as the city itself had in the 1970s. Only big mega-projects were thought to offer salvation for an injured city.

Over the years, and until the area became ripe for development schemes (and there were several before the current incarnation), the illusion of this storied place sustained the district. It never really needed defending from itself; the same ills that plagued Times Square plagued many areas of the city to different degrees.

By the 1980s, however, the Theater District was one of the last Manhattan neighborhoods not yet under a development siege. No area exhibiting this neighborhood's vehicular congestion, clogged mass-transit facilities and pedestrian traffic despite its high crime can be labeled under-developed. When city officials labeled the area under-developed in the early 1980s, however, they meant that not as many large office towers had yet been built there as in other areas of midtown and city officials were willing to make generous concessions to developers willing to build them.

The Theater District became the new frontier for development.

For the first time, it needed protection. Twenty-one legitimate theaters had been demolished since the 1940s. Theaters had become an endangered species. Whole blockfronts were assembled for new mega-projects.

Varying accounts of Times Square history reveal that speculators - conventionally called "investors" - bought Theater District land in the 1950s and 1960s in anticipation of a series of master plans sponsored by the city for the area. The name of the game was "Wait to see what happens." Planners' blight - the deterioration that follows the rumor or announcement of a new city plan - took hold.

Deliberate neglect was discovered on the part of some unscrupulous developers who boarded up windows, let paint peel and buildings deteriorate into "eyesores." Under these circumstances, the district never had a chance to regenerate naturally. Some impending Plan was always in the wings to set things right. Despite this planning brinkmanship, scores of positive small things happened: new restaurants, building conversions, upgraded retail stores that served the entertainment industry and its audiences. There had long been room for something large, but not overwhelming, to complete a balanced equation of change.
Real-estate and political leaders promoted the misguided notion that only large-scale new building plans bring significant renewal. In New York, economic health is erroneously measured by the level of new construction, not just new construction but "big" new construction. (Nationally too, we only hear in the news about "new housing starts" that are up or down). The contribution to the office and residential market of conversions and additions to existing buildings never seems to get counted.

The drama began to unfold here long before it caught the public eye, culminating in the soon to be completed 42nd Street Redevelopment Plan. Ironically, without many other big plans, the city itself regenerated around it.

Now Times Square suffers from tourist congestion. Piles of garbage bags from the abundance of highrise towers crowd out pedestrians. The distinction between density and congestion is ignored. Relief comes primarily from the new Times Square Plaza, resulting from the closed Broadway created by the city's innovative Department of Transportation. But, alas, Times Square is no longer where most New Yorkers choose to gather for the authentic New York experience. Many avoid it entirely, except to go to the theater. For locals and tourists alike, New York now offers many wonderfully regenerated public spaces all over town, in keeping with the rejuvenation of the larger city itself. For many, however, the old song, "Give My Regards to Broadway," now has a soulful ring.

Roberta Brandes Gratz is the author of the recently published The Battle For Gotham: New York In the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs (Nation Books, 2010). For the full history of the Times Square/Theater District that you won't read elsewhere, check out both earlier books: The Living City: Thinking Small in a Big Way (1989) and Cities Back From the Edge: New Life for Downtown (1998).]]> Westway Changed Transportation History tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.760329 2010-10-13T14:15:53-04:00 2011-05-25T18:00:30-04:00 Roberta Brandes Gratz http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roberta-brandes-gratz/
Today, the focus of that nationwide debate is on taking down sections of the elevated roadways that had demolished whole neighborhoods and divided cities. Cities like Milwaukee, San Francisco and New Orleans (in one small neighborhood), have done it with spectacular urban rebirth as the result. Many additional ones - New Orleans, Buffalo, Seattle and others - plan to follow suit. Boulevards that carry multiple forms of traffic - vehicular, transit, bicycles, pedestrians - with park amenities are the goal.

But at the time of the Westway debate, building highways, devaluing transit and ignoring needs of pedestrians was the rule of the day. Additionally, that debate focused a spotlight on the parkland potential of urban waterfronts. Until then, waterfronts were mostly the site of messy, often noxious industrial and shipping activity.

At its simplest, Westway was a 12-lane highway proposed to be built on landfill in the Hudson River along the West Side of Manhattan. One section would have been built in a tunnel under the 200 acres of new landfill that was planned to be half park and half new high rise development.

But Westway was more than a highway; it reflected a national mindset. First proposed in the 1970s, Westway reflected post-war thinking that highways were the most important transportation investment. Mass transit funding diminished -- one might say was starved -- to fund roads. The deterioration of public transit and its disappearance in many places around the country is legendary.

Westway was also more than a national debate about a highway or even the larger transportation issues. It drew out differences over how cities function and how they are reinvigorated. In the broadest sense, the battle over Westway should have been the final chapter -- a postscript -- in the long-standing clash of urban strategies defined by the battles in the 1950s and 60s between Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, best known by the fight over the Lower Manhattan Expressway. The Jacobs-led opponents won that battle; the birth of SoHo and Tribeca -- areas designated for demolition for the road -- was the result.

By the time the Westway fight was engaged, the highway resistance, inspired by Jacobs' victory with the Lower Manhattan Expressway, had strength. The opposition consisted of a loose alliance: environmentalists, local legislators, transit advocates, community boards, preservationists, fiscal conservatives, and liberals aided by some transportation and environmental officials inside government agencies. This was an unusual alliance. Until then, representatives of those same disciplines had not recognized the connectivity of their interests.

The battle raged during the 1970s and into the 80s until Mayor Ed Koch and Governor Hugh Carey opted to trade in the federal highway funds in 1985 for a combination of transit and highway investments just as the opportunity for all the states to trade in such funding was about to expire. The debate was a plebiscite on mass transit or highways. It crystallized the issue and strengthened the resolve of transit advocates.

This was the beginning of the end of the automobile fixation. Westway expanded the debate. People realized that transit, pedestrian-friendly streets and policies to contain auto traffic were the lifeline of the city, any city. Today this understanding is almost universal.

But the positive fallout from the defeat goes way beyond the transit vs. car debate, in many ways still unrecognized. First there exists now the best kind of redeveloped waterfront and rebuilt boulevard-like surface highway and second, the reinvestment in transit delivered benefits never recognized as possible. The infusion of trade-in funds was a catalyst for more transit funding from the state legislature.

With improved transit, neighborhoods around the city experienced tremendous infusions of new residents, lured, in part, by vastly improved transit service. A stronger awareness of an interest in the full 575 miles of city waterfront evolved or was accelerated after the intense focus on this 5-mile stretch and that interest spread to waterfronts in other cities. And, perhaps least understood, more local jobs all over New York State were created with the transit investment than would have come with the highway, so dependent on far-off sites for cement, steel and other road building supplies.

Westway proponents had vigorously argued that the landfill and highway development were absolutely necessary to spur the revival of this stretch of the West Side. Without Westway, the area was "doomed," experts said. They were wrong. The area was certainly "ramshackle," to say the least. The condition was not debatable; the cause of it was. And Westway as a cure was a joke.

Grand plans -- for highways, urban renewal, stadia and the like -- actually work as impediments to authentic regeneration. Their defeat makes regeneration possible. That is what happened on Manhattan's far West Side, now containing some of the wealthiest zip codes in the country.

Without the death threat hanging over the properties, both ordinary and distinctive buildings got renovated and upgraded. New ones were built on vacant lots. Some old buildings, both the ordinary and the architecturally notable, were torn down and replaced.

The rebirth followed precisely the SoHo pattern following the defeat of the Lower Manhattan Expressway. In fact, the same pattern is more recently visible in cities across the country tearing down elevated highways or converting surface highways to boulevards.

The reconfigured and rebuilt six-lane West Side Highway that was built instead, it should be noticed, handles traffic just fine. Without the landfill, the largest and most interesting new park since construction of Central Park has been built along the Hudson waterfront, an interesting combination of passive and active spaces all connected by a well-used bikeway.

Twenty-five years in the evolution of a city is not such a long time. But in the case of Westway's demise, that event was transformative. And while the positive impacts are many, diverse and often small in scale, the overall scale of change is huge.

Roberta Brandes Gratz is an urban critic and author of the recently published "The Battle For Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs," Nation Books.]]> Saving Shrinking Cities tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.670389 2010-08-04T12:10:02-04:00 2011-05-25T17:15:21-04:00 Roberta Brandes Gratz http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roberta-brandes-gratz/
Then came the highways through the cities, piggybacking on the massive clearance of urban renewal, this time demolishing whole neighborhoods. Thousands of industrial and small businesses and the jobs that came with them were lost, along with countless housing units.

Then came "planned shrinkage," the idea that cities should close down failing neighborhoods, shut off the infrastructure built to accommodate density and concentrate investment in neighborhoods still worthy of middle income investment. Places like the South Bronx were left to burn.

Then came the endless number of parking lots to accommodate all the cars driven by the commuters who fled the urban wreckage for the suburbs and were now driving on the highways that drew them out of the city. Countless recyclable buildings of all periods and architectural styles - not to mention historic structures - were lost.

Then came Hope VI which has destroyed more low-income public housing units than it has replaced, all in the name of creating economically integrated projects instead of warehouses for the poor. Invariably, however, a smaller number of low-income units replaced what was demolished. The displaced families not rehoused in the new units were sent with Section 8 vouchers to already marginal neighborhoods guaranteed to create the next blighted neighborhood worthy of "replacement."

Then came urban agriculture which -- although a good idea for backyards, empty lots and modest-scale community gardens -- suddenly scaled up to whole neighborhoods whose remnants are often old houses which even in their deteriorated condition are built more solidly than any of the flimsy new structures replacing them today.

Now comes the 'theory' that the salvation of distressed cities is to once again 'shrink,' as if shrinking had been tried before and succeeded somewhere but who knows where.

Can anyone point to one city, just one, where any of these 'renewal' schemes have worked to regenerate, rather than further erode, a city? Just one. No theory please; just real on the ground success.

When does a city become a "non-city," in fact a town or a village?

Conventional wisdom today clearly notes that a key to a successful city is density. New small businesses, old big businesses, innovative start-ups, street life, public transit, walkability, community connections, diversity and appealing indoor and outdoor entertainment attractions only emerge from or follow density.

Yet, the 'theory' that troubled cities need to face reality and 'plan' for 'shrinkage' proliferate.

The question is why.

Endless examples of success - not theory - of the opposite strategy DO exist, from the dollar houses Baltimore initiated in the '70s and the regeneration of the South Bronx by the community efforts that successfully fought 'planned shrinkage' to the current efforts from Buffalo to New Orleans to Houston to Portland. All these efforts represent innovative strategies to bring people back, to regenerate instead of shrink, to build on observable successes instead of following simplistic theory.

Reasonable sounding rhetoric seems to accompany the "creative shrinkage" (hard to know what is "creative" here) theorists. But let's look at some of the actual implementation differences between following the demolition path and the regeneration path. Clues to the real motives become apparent.

Demolition money is easy to come by, often CDBG money provided by the federal government. Demolition contracts are easy, often big and, of course, given to the familiar cast of eager characters who also often represent big political campaign contributors.

In contrast, money for stabilization and/or renovation has to be patched together from multiple sources. Lenders don't like the look of dilapidated old buildings, even if they are historic and architecturally beautiful. They do, however, understand demolition and formula building projects.

Bureaucrats have little or no experience handling such rescue and regeneration projects. Renovation doesn't easily conform to today's building codes and building inspectors don't have enough experience to understand how to deal with this. Money doesn't exist for just cleaning out, stabilizing, securing and landbanking worthy structures.

And, sadly, remaining residents are under the misunderstanding that demolition of the next door vacant nuisance solves crime, cleans up neighborhoods and improves the community.

Instead of improvement, the land lies fallow for ages and eventually, if suddenly the idea of "shrinking" is not being promoted, a developer comes along to build a very surburban-like community of garage-front, look-alike dwellings with a smaller number of occupants than could ever be characterized as urban. Without the density, no public transit is viable, no local stores and community-serving businesses develop, more car-dependant shopping malls and business centers perhaps get built and thus is created a non-urban enclave detached from the remaining city adding no strength to the existing urban fabric.

Despite the obstacles - and there are certainly many - - to regeneration, tried-and-true strategies for regeneration exist, sometimes in the same cities where shrinkage by demolition is occurring. But the successful efforts share a common characteristic. In each case, something positive is being added; nothing is being taken away. Even in the neighborhoods where vacant lots are offered to remaining resident next door for a garden, an extension or something else, something new gets added. In some community-led efforts where non-profits retrieve and renovate, or help a new occupant renovate, an abandoned structure, new investments small and large become visible.

Areas where artists are moving into cheap or free spaces seem to be the most noticed successes, where the positive is achieved instead of the negative. The addition instead of the subtraction.

If one looks at the history of some of our cities' most desirable neighborhoods today and recognizes what a staggering number of them were once miserable, deteriorated slums, then a truly "creative" path reveals itself. Clearance was never the key but rebirth was the result.

Roberta Brandes Gratz is an urban critic and author of the newly published The Battle For Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, Nation Books.]]>