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MODULE ONE Q U E R Y O N E

New York City: The Evolution of the Physical and Social City

I wanna wake up in a city that doesn’t sleep And find I’m king of the hill, top of the heap

… If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere

It’s up to you, New York, New York

FRANK SINATRA THEME FROM NEW YORK NEW YORK

HERE ARE AS MANY WAYS to define the word city as there are cities and people living in them. But

one definition that cannot be applied is that of “simple machine.” Rather, a city is a complex

organism of many moving parts, acting together in a series of actions, interactions, and reactions, the

actions of one part reverberating throughout the whole.

New York City, as America’s largest and, therefore, most physically and socially complex city, is our

nation’s foremost example of an organic city of many moving, interdependent and interacting parts. Further,

this city of George Washington’s first inauguration, this city of immigrants, this city of the Statue of Liberty—

this city is a case study of the unique and important role that urbanism plays in our democracy. What makes

the United States of America a democracy is that here, at least according to our most sacred creeds, each

individual is recognized not only as unique, but recognized as something of immeasurable worth, and as such

is to be given the opportunity to improve him-/herself and, in turn, improve the republic and the world at

large. Cities are the mechanism by which this individual progression occurs. This idea is embodied in the

words of Frank Sinatra’s theme from New York New York, an excerpt from which is found above. In New York

City, the prototypical example of American cities, despite the city’s incredible success, there are many signs

that this city has failed at even this most basic function.

No American city has seen such rapid growth in both population and commerce on such a scale as

New York nor so many of the accompanying changes in physical and social structure. According to Ken

Burns’ New York: A Documentary Film, the city grew from a small town of only about 5,000 in 1776 to over

7,000,000 by the early twentieth century, with millions more at the city’s threshold. Much of this growth

resulted from the wave of immigrants that began to arrive in the last half of the nineteenth century. Yet those

immigrants, most of whom had given up everything they had in their homelands to benefit from and

T

By Dustin Tyler Joyce URBPL 5240 | WEDNESDAY, 2 FEBRUARY 2005

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contribute to the promise of American democracy, found themselves subject to the “sorting out” that would

be a hallmark of this city and dozens of others across the continent throughout the twentieth century.

This sorting out was accomplished through major changes in the physical structure of the city. A

unique urban form reflecting a unique social structure was developed. In turn, these physical changes led to

further social changes in this urban organism. Ultimately, it becomes impossible to discuss changes of one

type without discussing the accompanying changes of the other type—physical changes in the landscape of the

city not only mirror social changes but can in many ways even cause those social changes. In New York City

most of all do these changes go hand-in-hand with one another.

Throughout the period of our study, the years from 1931 to 1969, New York and its region

physically changed in two primary ways: transportation and housing. In other words, the city changed not

only in how you got from place to place, but also in what it was like once you got to where you were going.

Under the hand of Robert Moses, the transportation infrastructure of the city and its suburbs changed to a

degree unmatched except for perhaps the opening of the subway at the beginning of the century. Two prime

examples of this change are the rapid expansion of suburban highways in the metropolitan region, especially

on Long Island to the city’s east, and highway expansion within the city itself, most notably the construction

of the Cross-Bronx Expressway. The city’s housing structure changed first under the hand of the Federal

Housing Authority (FHA), a New Deal program whose effects were felt long after the end of the Great

Depression, and subsequently under the guise of Urban Renewal.

Robert Moses began his reign beyond the city’s borders, where new limited-access highways opened

up land to a greater degree than trains had in the previous century. Enjoying the freedom of the personal

automobile and the open road, urbanites—middle-class whites in particular—could leave the noise, crowding,

crime, and grit of the city for the park-like habitations of the suburbs. And they did, doing so in greater

numbers than they had previously with the construction of passenger rail. In the process, a further sorting out

occurred, only this time not along lines of religion and nationality, but rather along economic and racial lines,

and at that self-imposed.

Moses’s highway building program eventually worked its way into the city itself. His highways

slashed huge swaths through the heart of every borough except Manhattan—and, if Moses had had his way,

through Manhattan, too. Overnight, thousands were evicted from their homes and displaced, neighbors found

themselves cut off from one another, and communities which had developed over generations were, if not

destroyed outright, severely weakened with a sort of terminal illness. In no place were the physical and social

changes wrought by the new highways more poignant than in The Bronx, the city’s northernmost borough.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, in response to increasing needs for transportation infrastructure and under

the guidance of Robert Moses, thousands of apartment buildings were razed in a path wider than a football

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field through the center of the borough. Tens of thousands of residents were displaced, with no new housing

constructed to replace the residences that were lost, and hundreds of businesses shut their doors forever. In

their place was the Cross-Bronx Expressway. Previously among the most tightly-knit communities, The Bronx

now found itself torn asunder by a virtually impenetrable ribbon of asphalt.

Reacting to the burden of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the

Federal Housing Authority in the 1930s as a means to bring the dream of home ownership to millions of

middle- and lower-class Americans for the first time and in a New Deal effort to jump-start the nation’s failing

economy. What the FHA and similar federal programs meant was that the old days of large down payments

and short-term mortgages were gone; in their place were small down payments and long-term mortgages,

extending for as many as twenty and even thirty years. Attached to this program were a lengthy series of

conditions, among which were:

a preference for construction of new subdivisions by one primary developer, as opposed to the previous

practice of having many developers and contractors create America’s new suburban neighborhoods.

recommendations that seclusion and privacy in new neighborhoods be assured through the use of winding,

small-scale streets and dead-end cul-de-sacs—a virtual prescription for today’s automobile suburbs.

the suggestion that the most viable and secure neighborhoods—in other words, the areas where banks

could feel most comfortable in taking the risk of making a home loan—were homogeneous, where

residences were separated from other uses and where all inhabitants were of the same race and social class.

These conditions changed not only the physical characteristics of suburbs across America but also their social

structure, a much greater consequence. And it was under the influence of the FHA that New York City’s

suburbs were built from the 1930s on, perhaps the greatest change in the layout and social characteristics of

the city and its region since its founding three centuries before.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, a new federal program appeared on the scene: Urban Renewal. Its

purpose was to rid American cities of their dirty, run-down slums not through incremental improvement but

by cataclysmic change. Urban Renewal promoted wholesale slum clearance—the demolition of entire

neighborhoods and communities. A variety of things could be built in their place: parks, office buildings, civic

centers, or, under another new federal program, public housing. America’s first federal public housing project

was Techwood Homes, built in Atlanta in the mid-1930s. But among the most extensive and destructive

projects were those built throughout New York City in the decades following World War II. As was the case

with the Cross-Bronx Expressway and other highways built under the hand of Robert Moses, Urban Renewal

and public housing meant the demolition of thousands of apartment buildings throughout the boroughs, the

displacement of tens of thousands—perhaps hundreds of thousands—of residents, the loss of the hundreds

and thousands of businesses those residents frequented, and the overnight destruction of lives and

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communities. Rather than bringing hope to the lower classes, the prospect of urban renewal brought fear of

imprisonment in perpetually poor neighborhoods, permanent separation from dear neighbors and friends and

from the city at large, and the loss of many of the things residents held dear. In short, slum clearance was the

clearance of dreams.

The economic and fiscal impacts of these physical and social changes are extensive. Among the major

consequences are:

White flight caused the loss of a huge segment of the middle-class tax and economic base to the suburbs.

Robert Moses and his highway building program contributed the enormous civic expense of

constructing and maintaining a greatly expanded—and in many cases unneeded or at least inefficient—

highway system. Private citizens diverted income to pay for the purchase and maintenance of personal

automobiles.

Urban Renewal and public housing created new areas of perpetual impoverishment and the maintenance

of pre-existing poor neighborhoods. These programs almost always targeted blacks and working-class

whites. Victims of the projects became entrapped in a cycle of poverty that was either created or reinforced

by these housing policies. These victims were forced to take menial jobs with low pay and which no one

else wanted. Those who eventually did climb out of poverty either moved out of their neighborhoods by

choice or were forced out by income limits in public housing, a scenario that played itself out again and

again and that resulted in neighborhoods sorted out by income and economic and social status and bereft

of any means of improving quality of life and income level. Local, state, and federal government were left

with the huge burden of providing continuous public subsidies for the maintenance of public housing. At

one point the City of New York was even on the verge of bankruptcy.

The demolition of entire neighborhoods and swaths of land, either for highways or under the guise of

Urban Renewal, took thousands of apartment buildings and individual residences off the market and

forced the closure of hundreds, if not thousands, of small businesses. Most residences were not replaced;

public expenditure paid for most that were. Most small businesses forced to close never reopened. The

ultimate economic impact of these losses, which may last well into the future, is perhaps immeasurable.

While New York City remains the most prosperous American city to this day, and while some economic and

fiscal benefits could be numbered (such as employment of large numbers of laborers to construct public

housing or highways), for those trapped in the projects and their cycle of poverty such a dream of prosperity

remains out of reach. The concurrent physical and social changes that occurred in the city during the twentieth

century have caused New York to fail in its democratic mission to those to whom it is most obligated: its

individual citizens. It is difficult to argue that New York City as a whole would be better off now

economically and fiscally had the city’s course during the century been different, but it is obvious that for

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many of its citizens the road to recovery from the economic disaster wrought by these policies has been a

long, difficult one.

The cities of our democracy are a strange paradox. They elevate the individual by bringing him/her

into contact with others. Individuals progress through the creation of a community—indeed, individual

progression is virtually impossible outside this communal envelope. And as individuals progress, that

community and our entire nation progress. This act of bringing individuals into a community to ensure their

progression is the primary purpose of American cities.

Throughout the last century, however, forces such as suburbanization, sorting out along racial and

social lines, and economic change along with government programs such as Urban Renewal, FHA, public

housing, and highway construction have meant the scarring and death of much of the urban organism and the

community it fosters. Perhaps no where can these forces be seen more keenly than in the New York City

Metropolitan Area. Scars of the destruction of its historic communities can be seen everywhere, from the

Cross-Bronx Expressway to its suburban bedroom communities, and in the thousands of vacant storefronts

and residences in between. This destruction signals a failure of our society in fulfilling its basic creeds toward

its individual citizens, most notably those considered of the lowest worth—blacks, working-class white,

immigrants, and religious minorities. As the most ultra-American city, New York City’s partial failure is

perhaps a sign that American cities altogether have failed to some degree at performing their central role in

our democracy. And we, both as individuals and as a nation, are left the worse for it.

Q U E R Y T W O

Planning Theory and Ethical Theory

A | Antithetical Planning and Normative Ethical Theories

THE PLANNING THEORY with which I disagree most is policy analysis. The roots my disagreement lie in the

very foundation of what I feel a city is. I have learned over the past few years, and more so recently as I have

studied cities more intensely for my major, that a city is not simply a collection of buildings, streets, and

subway and sewer lines. Rather, the fabric of which a city is made—the thing that makes a city a city—is

people, human beings, the individual citizens who live, work, play, and make their lives there. Take the people

away from Salt Lake City, or even away from the world’s greatest cities such as New York, London, or Tokyo,

and you no longer have a city. In its place you would find a ghost town of beautiful buildings, parks, and

promenades, but you wouldn’t find a city.

We have a nasty habit of reducing our cities to numbers. These statistics can be very helpful in

determining budgets, policies, needs, and the city’s progress and are rightfully used for such—to an extent.

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Problems arise when we rely solely on these numbers, disregarding the underlying social reasons for them or

the individual emotions and desires that are beyond the realm of mathematics. The problem is compounded

when we use numbers for things we shouldn’t use them for, such as comparing ourselves and our cities with

others. However, my real problem with our over-reliance on statistics is this: if the basic component of a city

is not its physical but rather its human quality, when you reduce that city to numbers, you are not merely

reducing its stock of buildings or infrastructure to numbers, you are reducing its inhabitants to mere statistics.

And no human being should ever be subject to being reduced to a statistic or a number.

Policy analysis is a technical, science-focused approach to planning. Cities, made of humans, are not

technical, science-focused things; why would one use such an approach in creating them? Further, last week’s

presenters described this planning theory as “value-free decision making.” All the humans I know have values

of one sort or another, so, again, why would one use a value-free process to build something for creatures

who have values and hold on to them so dearly? Finally, policy analysis planning has its basis in utilitarian

ethical theory, a system in which the rightness or wrongness of a process is determined by its outcome. Ask

the former inhabitants of a New York City neighborhood that was destroyed in the name of slum clearance or

Urban Renewal and replaced with a beautiful city park or gleaming office towers or whatever; I doubt they’ll

tell you that the ends justified the means.

While the technical support and documentation provided by policy analysis offers a great deal of

assistance in making many decisions concerning our cities, alone it is of a poor caliber. It reduces the human

inhabitants of cities to mere statistics and makes no consideration of their wants, desires, and emotions. It was

not used alone in the creation of the world’s great cities, and it cannot be relied upon solely in our efforts to

make all of our cities great.

B | Congruent Planning and Normative Ethical Theories

THE PLANNING THEORY with which I most agree is social learning. I would lean toward social reform, but I

feel that in order for this reform to be most sincere and effective, it cannot be imposed; instead, it must

happen on a very individual and local level. But for any reform to occur at all, avenues of opportunity must be

opened. Education is the greatest way to open these avenues, and obtaining knowledge of cities and those

who inhabit them is the entire purpose of social learning.

A city, or any community for that matter, is the total sum of its parts; in other words, no one

member is any more or less valuable than any other member. Through social learning, the planner becomes

the mediator, hearing and considering each individual’s needs and wants and considering them against each

other. When a plan is put into action, the result is much more likely to be of the greatest good to all

concerned.

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This approach has its foundation in communitarian, Habermasian, and Rawlsian normative ethical

theories. I agree with much of what these ethical theories promote. However, I do take issue with the

Rawlsian ideas that ethics should be determined by a neutral “third party” of sorts, one who is unfamiliar with

the hierarchy, structure, and other aspects of the society for which ethics are being considered. First, like with

social reform, these changes and decisions, to be of greatest worth and efficacy, must be made from within.

Second, history has set a poor precedent for the determination of internal affairs by outside influence. Simply

consider the division of the Middle East and the entire continent of Africa made by European powers and the

problems that have lingered ever since. Other examples include the division of Germany and Eastern Europe

by the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union following World War II. Currently, many

Americans question their country’s influence in the affairs of Iraq. While in this last example we all hope for

the best outcome, for many the outcome will not justify the means, nor are they convinced that the outcome

will prove to be a success.

In spite of this disagreement, I still feel that social learning is the best approach to planning a city. It

recognizes the individuals of which the city is comprised and addresses their human needs and concerns. It

opens avenues to learning about the city and its inhabitants, and it is through this comprehensive approach

combining knowledge and action that the greatest outcomes will be achieved. Upon this foundation,

individuals may progress, fulfilling the purpose of a city and causing the city’s progression as well.

C | The Liberal Democratic Notion of Personhood

THE FOUNDATIONAL STONES of both democracies and democratic cities are individual persons. America and

its cities both exist for the elevation of the individual. And despite the fact that the oldest readings in this

module date only from around 1976, our notion of individuals, our society’s responsibilities to them, and how

our society can best fulfill those responsibilities has changed dramatically.

The year 1976 was, after all, the era of the end of the Vietnam War, the push for ratification of the

Equal Rights Amendment, and the first decade of an integrated society. Since that time we have seen the

spread of the AIDS epidemic, the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Union and of communism in

Eastern Europe, and the rise of a sort of Asian superpower. Our communications systems have advanced more

in the last thirty years than they did in perhaps all of the previous years of the world’s history combined,

bringing at the touch of a button the images and beliefs of a world that seems to be getting smaller by the

second. These domestic events and this unprecedented contact with things abroad have changed what we

believe about ourselves, others, and the world around us. They have, in the space of three short decades, once

again made America into a new nation, grappling to understand who we are and our place in the world.

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Throughout these queries I have made the world I live in quite clear. It is a world of the individual.

In this world of the individual, all individuals have worth and incredible potential; to fail any single person is

the fail the world. I believe that each person who lives enriches my life and the world around me in a unique

way, a way in which only he/she can. Only in a world of individuals can this planet be as varied and majestic as

I believe it is. And because of that reliance upon individuals to contribute to our society—in short, because of

how much our world needs each individual person—our society and its cities have a profound responsibility to

nurture, protect, and support each individual.

This, I feel, is the current direction of urban planning and theory. Democratic cities must look to

their individuals citizens for their very existence. If cities do not, despite their grandeur, their beauty, or their

wealth, they are failures. And in a society as urbanized as ours in North America, if our cities are failures, we

as a nation are a failure. And the individual, despite being the all-important building block of that nation,

must rely upon it for his/her individual progression. It is in our best interest to ensure that we and our leaders

look with a discerning eye to the future in determining the course we take as cities. As we do, individuals will

succeed, and so will the cities and nations they comprise.