The battle for gotham: new york in the shadow of robert moses and jane jacobs by Roberta Brandes Gratz

Author:Roberta Brandes Gratz [Roberta Brandes Gratz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Histoire
ISBN: 9781568584386
Published: 2010-05-01T07:00:00+00:00

URBAN RENEWAL INTERFERES

Manufacturers, like any business, experience many ups and downs but survive if they can change with market demand. But undisturbed was not to be for Gratz Industries. The story of Gratz Industries should not be viewed as unique. Similar tales are found in all cities.

In the early 1960s, the entire Thirty-second Street block—a mixture of small apartment houses, industrial lofts, and six-story tenements—was condemned for urban renewal to make way for a post office. Because emptying some of the buildings on the site, especially one apartment house around the corner, was a politically hot topic, Senator James Buckley opposed the project. That killed it but not before most of the properties had been condemned as blighted, businesses and residents displaced, and then properties demolished.

The block had exhibited traditional urban vitality, regardless of its worn look. No vacancies existed. In each building, a new tenant appeared when one moved out. Pedestrians filled the street. Shopping and other uses drew them nearby. But, by law, to be an official “Urban Renewal” site, the block had to be declared “blighted.” Blighted, in this case, as with so many others, simply means the property is wanted for a different purpose from the one for which it is currently used:• That the Thirty-second Street buildings were filled with economically viable uses was irrelevant.

• That the buildings were merely neglected by owners waiting for a lucrative government buyout was irrelevant.

• That the buildings could have been economically renovated and upgraded, like thousands of similar surviving properties around the city have since, was irrelevant.

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