Recently a destination for luxury development, New York's waterfront has historically been home to the city's poor. When Sandy inundated these vulnerable populations, it "looked like a perverse stroke of urban planning," writes Jonathan Mahler.
"How is it possible that the same winding, 538-mile coastline that has recently been colonized by condominium developers chasing wealthy New Yorkers, themselves chasing waterfront views, had been, for decades, a catch basin for many of the city’s poorest residents?" asks Mahler. In an essay for the Times, he answers his question by surveying the history of "accident, grand vision and political expedience," that led to public housing projects sprouting in close proximity to the water in such areas as the Rockaways, Coney Island, Red Hook and Alphabet City.
"New York started building housing projects on the waterfront because that’s where its poorest citizens happened to live. It continued because that’s where space was most readily available. Finally, it built them there because that’s where its projects already were."
Smack dab in the middle of this sequence sits Robert Moses. "It’s impossible to talk about the landscape of modern New York without talking about Moses," says Mahler, "who leveraged his position as head of the Mayor’s Committee on Slum Clearance to mass-produce thousands of units of high-rise public housing, often near the shoreline. His shadow looms over much of the havoc wreaked by the storm."
FULL STORY: How the Coastline Became a Place to Put the Poor
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EPA erases limits on planet-warming pollution from power plants
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Phoenix announces new on-demand transit service, more frequent RAPID buses
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FREE Course: Walkable City 1: Why Walkability?
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Reinventing Malls: Planning Alchemy—Turning Gray Fields Into Gold
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Eagle County Government
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Nashville Planning Department
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
The Pocatello Development Authority
The Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Pocatello
Journal of the American Planning Association