urbanitis

My New Job

2007-08-06T18:52:00.000-07:00

On July 2, I started my new job as the Assitant District Manager with Manhattan Community Board 4. Community Board 4 serves the Chelsea and Clinton/Hell's Kitchen neighborhoods, from 14th up to 59th Streets, and the Hudson River to 8th Avenue north and 6th Avenue south of 26th Street.

In this part of Manhattan some of the city's most exciting new developments are taking shape: the redevelopment of the MTA rail yards, a project also known as Hudson Yards, the extension of the Javits Convention Center, the transformation of the High Line into an elevated park, the rebuilding of Penn Station and Madison Square Garden, and the completion of Hudson River Park.

See for more info: www.manhattancb4.org

Sunny Sunday Afternoon

2007-05-22T10:50:00.000-07:00

When Brian read that the Maison Tropicale, a metal kit house designed by the French designer/architect Jean Prouvé, was on display in Queens, he organized a family outing, and off we went through the wilds of Long Island City. I was going to write something really smart and witty about it, but Brian beat me to it. Besides, his pictures are much better than mine.

So, please visit http://www.brianrose.com/journal.htm 'New York/Long Island City' posted Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Rem's Tower of Jersey City

2007-04-28T09:13:00.000-07:00

Demolition of the old tobacco factory on First Street in the Powerhouse Arts District, Jersey City. April 26, 2007

On this site a tower designed by Rem Koolhaas’ OMA will be built. A mega project: 52 stories tall, 1.2 million square feet, 330 apartments, 252 hotel rooms, 40 loft apartments, and 120 artist live/work spaces.

An article in the New York Times, April 12, raised my curiousity. It featured a “kind of wild” new tower designed by Rem Koolhaas to be built in Jersey City. Why on earth would Rem Koolhaas, somebody I associate with hip and happening in architecture and urban design, be interested in Jersey City?

The rapidly changing skyline of Jersey City across the Hudson is the backdrop of my West Village home base. I see it every day, but never had a reason to actually go there. Even though the PATH train –it takes less than 10 minutes—stops right at my doorstep.

So, I went and checked it out. And, of course, Rem is right. Jersey City is very much happening.

Construction going on everywhere you look. A total mishmosh of buildings. Old and new, up and down scale, high and low architecture. The gloomy carcass of the Victorian-era power house at Washington Street. A chain hotel like the ones planted along the highway all over the US. Old factories and warehouses that house local artists. A newly constructed “loft building” with totally out of place dark mirror glass windows. Another generic Trump Tower going up right next to the proposed “hanging tower” of Rem Koolhaas.

Jersey City is happening. But is it hip as well? That remains to be seen.

Rem’s tower will replace the abandoned tobacco factory that was home to hunderds of artists. One can only hope that the remaining old factories and warehouses will be saved and that the couleur locale is not completely lost. The proposed conversion of the power plant into an arts center and creation of a sculpture garden is a critical piece for insuring Remthe survival of the Powerhouse Arts District in the midst of the Jersey City building frenzy.

The Wars of The Moses

2007-04-12T11:55:00.000-07:00

Civic Talk, April 4, 2007
Museum of the City of New York

I went to another of the discussions held in conjunction with the several Robert Moses exhibitions being shown simultaneously around town. The title promised a heated debate. It turned out to be far from heated, nevertheless interesting, but rather incoherent. An impression.

Timothy Mennel, author of Everything Must Go: A Novel of Robert Moses’ New York, a semi-fictional revisitation of the development of New York written as a Ph.D. dissertation in geography at the University of Minnesota, was asked to give his perspective on Moses.

I am interested in the unknown Robert Moses. Biographical infomation was completely left out of the exhibitions. Probably by choice, because it was felt that Robert Caro’s book was too personal. We don’t learn anything about Moses as an individual. The consensus seems to be that ‘first he was good, than he was bad’. What was it like to be Robert Moses? What are the places that shaped him?

Mennel is convinced that places shape people.

Early in his career Moses lived and worked on Hog Island, in the 1920s the largest shipyard in the world, now home to Philadelphia International Airport. As part of the World War I effort, the US government contracted American International Shipbuilding to built ships and a shipyard at Hog Island. That is when Moses saw how public funds could be used to direct the private sector. He lived most of his life next to Carl Schurz Park on the Upper East Side. The FDR Drive passes underneath the park in a half-tunnnel that leaves the roadway exposed only on the side facing the East River—and Moses did not actually hear the traffic noise. It explains why the idea that highways are intrusive, did not register with him.

Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, founder and first president of the Central Park Conservancy, talked about Moses as a son of the reform movement.

In the late 1900s parks were places to enjoy the scenery, and beauty really counted. Early 20th century the city no longer took a protective attitude, it was a period in which stewardship went down and vision was lacking. In the 1920s the park was in very bad repair. When Moses became Parks Commissioner in 1934 all that changed. He believed parks should provide opportunities for recreation and started out to build swimming pools, playgrounds and tennis courts. He created new park and beaches. The boldness of it all, the earth movements, it was immense. By the 1950s Moses had become a major fundraiser for Central Park and he set out to improve it. But none was really done with respect for what was already there. There was no respect for the beauty of it all. Even though the original park design had been accomodating to changes as well, and it would have allowed for the cultural transformation.

Herbert London, president of Hudson Institute, a conservative public policy research organization that promotes global security, prosperity and freedom, admitted that he was not an expert on Robert Moses. He feels that Moses was treated unfairly.

Moses saw cars as chance to provide people with the opportunity to get out of the congestion, to go to beaches and rural areas. Think of what he did to make Long Island accessible. He invited New Yorkers to the beauty of Long Island and Jones Beach. He did not get nearly enough credit for the architectual wonders he created, such as the parkway to the Niagara Falls.

The discussion that followed focused on the fact that Moses at least got things done. Nowadays community groups are fighting every proposed plan to a point where nothing gets done anymore.

Barlow sighed.

There is this thing that ‘you’ve gotta stop them’ and now the Parks Conservancy has become one of ‘them’. Even repaving broken pathways has become an issue, with people trying to stop us because we are not only trying to fix it, but actually trying to improve the look and feel of the paths. That makes us trying to change things, and therefore we have to be stopped.

The discussion was moderated by Henry Stern, a veteran in public and civic life. He served 9 years elected to City Council as member-at-large from Manhattan and was appointed commissioner of Parks and Recreation where he served for 15 years. He is now the president of NYCivic, a watchdog that takes an active role in outlining and defining public and civic matters.

Stern wrapped it up.

Community groups are in a way as bad as Moses was. It is a preservation cult. We had NIMBY, now we have BANANA; built absolutely nothing, anything near anybody!

Breaking Eggs

2007-04-09T12:20:00.000-07:00

I attended a gallery talk in conjunction with the exhibition Robert Moses and the Modern City, Slum Clearance and the Superblock Solution at Columbia University, March 23, 2007. Moderator was Hillary Ballon, curator of the exhibition and author of the book Robert Moses and the Modern City, the Transformation of New York.

This is a rough account of what went on at the gallery talk, a meeting of three men who were there at the time: Philip Schorr, relocation manager, Harris L. Present, activist and housing advocate, and Eugene Morris, attorney. They were all directly involved in the relocation of residents, shopkeepers and others, clearing the slums to replace them with superblocks, and in the implementation of the Lincoln Square Renewal Plan with Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts as its centerpiece. They had not seen each other for 50 years, but this reunion brought everything back to life again.

Philip Schorr worked as a relocation manager at the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) before joining the private sector.

"Under the Title 1 program exciting, glamorous things were about to happen. I wanted to be part of that. It presented an enormous challenge because the places where the new housing was going to be built were bustling with humanity. We had two things going for us, Robert Moses and eminent domain. The sponsors did not want to be associated with bad displacement practices, so we were taking a different road. We were not going to be combative, we were going to be cooperative. We had a legal weapon, the administrative tools and the financial support to do it."

His encounters with Robert Moses were impersonal and limited.

"In 1953 I met Robert Moses at a ribbon cutting. I was wearing my blue suit. Robert Moses noticed me and asked ‘who is the bar mitzvah boy?’ That was the first time he insulted me. The second time was at the groundbreaking of Lincoln Center. That is where Moses made the remark that ‘you can’t make an omelette, without breaking eggs.’ I felt personally insulted. All that I had worked for was degraded in one snippet. That was a very bad metaphor, it was uncalled for."

In 1949, when the Title 1 measure was passed, Harris Present was absolutely in favor of it.

"It called for partnership with the private industry, to improve conditions of poor people and secure decent, safe and sanitary housing commensurate with the ability to pay."

He was member of a city-wide committee to seek solutions for housing relocation problems, and an advocate for minority groups, especially Puerto Ricans.

"I ended up opposing everything the Lincoln Square plan was about. That happened to be the largest plan of all, and it was about to displace an integrated, vibrant community. I firmly believed, and still do, that government should asked itself ‘how can we improve the quality of life for the people that live in these so-called slums,’ and not ‘what do we want to put here, and how are we going to get rid of them?’ You should build for the people first, and then you can clear the slums. The relocation program did in fact not solve the problem, it just moved the problem away. If a person got relocated, he would end up in the next slum, to be relocated again. It was slum transferrence instead of slum clearance."

He, too, never met Robert Moses.

"I only know that he knew who I was, because I was told that he supported me in denouncing a particular sponsor with a bad reputation during a meeting at the mayor's office."

Morris headed up a group of lawyers preparing plans for developers.

"We were the legal people. If an obstacle appeared , we found a way to get around it. We looked to see how things could get done. We became specialists at it. Other lawyers did not know how to do it, or did not want to do it. It was considered risky business, because if the plan did not get approved, no money could be made. So you always needed someone willing to pay up front."

Morris dealt with Robert Moses' top aides, but did not meet with Moses in person.

"Moses had no staff to work on urban redevopment. He came up with the concept, and then he would find the people to work out the details. He would find the right architects and the developers that could do the job. As long as they were competent, he would get them the work."

Despite the fight put up by Present, Lincoln Square got built. He feels like he won in the end, though.

"You just do not see projects like that anymore. You just do not come in and bulldoze an area. There is much greater recognition of the interests of existing communities, and the tenants, shopkeepers and business people's rights."

After the fight over Lincoln Square, Present went on to support the Cooper Square Committee, a neighborhood group on the Lower East Side, that opposed Moses' Cooper Square renewal plan. With his help they created an alternate plan that was adopted by the city, and, eventually, led to a more diversified urban development.

Both Schorr and Morris rejected Present's implication that the relocation process was mishandled and led to unneccesary human suffering. Schorr replied:

"We did everything we could to make sure that people were relocated to decent, safe and affordable housing. I will not deny that there were individual problems, but in the end everybody benefitted. It was all for the greater good."

Morris however refused to respond to the allegations made by Present.

"I am too mad. He is [still] talking crap."

Island at the Center of the World

2007-03-30T16:30:00.000-07:00

The epic story of Dutch Manhattan and the forgotten colony that shaped America, by Russell Shorto

On January 1, 2007, I arrived In New York. I, and my eight-year-old son Brendan have relocated to New York to be full time with my husband, Brian Rose, a photographer based in the city. It seemed appropriate to start off my blog with a reference to the history of my new hometown, so closely related to my own roots, coming from Amsterdam in the Netherlands. I read Shorto's book in the first weeks after my arrival. I was quite taken by it, and think it is a great book, but I am not going to review it. There is, however, a point I would like to make.

It is widely known--ever since the murder of Theo van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali took off to the US--that the Netherlands is struggling with immigration matters, issues of identity and nationality. Complex problems are being simplified, and proposed solutions are unsubstantiated. The latest being that no Dutch citizen should be allowed to have two passports. Now, I know that the people suggesting this do not have my son Brendan--who has two passports--in mind, but I take personal offense. And I can only begin to understand how this must feel to childeren of immigrants, who were born and raised in the Netherlands.

After reading Shorto's book I could not help but feel there is a lot to be learned from history, and that policy makers, politicians and even urban planners should find a way to make history part of efforts to make changes. Shorto's retelling of the history of New York made me feel very proud of being Dutch:

Because of its geography, its population, and the fact that it was under the control of the Dutch (even then its parent city, Amsterdam, was the most liberal in Europe), this island city would become the first multiethnic, upwardly mobile society on America's shores, a prototype of the kind of society that would be duplicated throughout the country and around the world.

It has long been recognized that the Dutch Republic in the 1600s was the most progressive and culturally diverse society in Europe.

The Netherlands of this time was the melting pot of Europe. When this society founded a colony based on Manhattan Island, that colony had the same features of tolerance, openness, and free trade that existed in the home country.

...(New York City)…would develop into a unique place that would foster an intensive stew of cultures and a widely fertile intellectual, artistic, and business environment.

I guess that is--aside from personal circumstances--why I want to be here.