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February 22, 2010
Nonfiction Book Reviews: 2/22/2010
Publishers Weekly
The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs Roberta Brandes Gratz. Nation, $27.95 (400p) ISBN 978-1-56858-438-6
The mid-20th-century showdown between New York City planning czar Moses and legendary community urbanist Jacobs reverberates down the decades in this meandering polemic. A journalist and member of New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission, Gratz (The Living City) views 50 years of economic and real estate development as a duel between the legacies of Moses, whose pharaonic highway and urban renewal projects obliterated neighborhoods, and Jacobs, who extolled urban diversity and disorderly mixed uses, hated cars, and championed organic, human-scale development. Through this lens, Gratz rehashes Jacobs's defeat of Moses's Manhattan expressway schemes, examines New York's (anti-)industrial policies and historical preservation laws, and attacks what she sees as latter-day boondoggles like Brooklyn's proposed mammoth Atlantic Yards development and Columbia University's expansion.
Posted by eric at February 22, 2010 11:37 AM