New York City

We’re recognizing the scale of the global warming crisis just as there’s a parallel crisis of imagination about how to address environmental problems. Because of years of conservatives’ claims that government doesn’t work, and that the only option is to privatize and deregulate, we’re left believing that we can’t take decisive action in the public interest. We think we can do no more than charge a fee while allowing the smokestacks to keep belching. Call it tax-and-burn environmentalism: Rather than eliminating dangerous practices, tax-and-burn introduces taxes and leaves practices unreformed. Ironically, tax-and-burn often makes things easier for polluters.

I recently got taken to the proverbial wood shed on Planetizen Interchange for arguing that mass transit is unsustainable. So, I decided that it might be useful to look at the mass transit system that seems to be the most successful in nation: New York City. New York has the density and economic activity to sustain transit—perhaps a best-case scenario in the U.S.

Solve this riddle: New York has an unequaled reputation for diversity in the US, but at the same time ranks as “hyper-segregated” in measures of Black-white racial segregation. How do we unravel this contradiction, and what does it say about what diversity really is?

The Columbia Encyclopedia provides the prevailing view: “New York City is also famous for its ethnic diversity, manifesting itself in scores of communities representing virtually every nation on earth, each preserving its identity.”

The recent exhibitions on Robert Moses at the Museum of the City of New York, the Queens Museum of Art, and Columbia University have revived old debates about Robert Moses, most of which have boiled down to the question: when all is said and done, was he good or bad? When I visited the exhibitions, trying to figure out my own answer, I remembered my father’s favorite saying (lifted from Oedipus Rex): “Would you condemn me for that which made me great?"