Posted on Thursday, January 05, 2006 - 1:05 pm:

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quote:

Prior to Detroit's woes, no city knew urban erasure like New York .... In 1976, for instance, New York City began "thinking the unthinkable" when its top housing official, Roger Starr, urged all sensible Americans to get hip to the thought of "planned shrinkage." The city already had pockets of dwindling population — namely the South Bronx and Brooklyn's Brownsville neighborhood — and if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Public policy would accelerate that shrinkage, so that blighted areas could be scratched off the list of neighborhoods needing expensive city services. No doubt about it, Starr said. "The stretches of empty blocks may then be knocked down, services can be stopped, subway stations closed, and the land left to lie fallow until a change in economic and demographic assumptions makes the land useful once again." It was strong medicine for an American dream obsessed with building up and growing ever bigger, as Starr himself acknowledged. "I surely cannot underestimate the fears engendered by this notion of growing smaller," he said, "in a social milieu in which growing bigger has been the hope of those who have not had a fair share."

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