Reconstruct

I've briefly touched upon effects of mid-twentieth century urban renewal in a previous post, and the form that urban reconstruction took at the time. The buildings may have looked different but the structure of urban centers remained largely the same despite massive social, political, and economic changes. I just came across this quote from Kevin Lynch's 1972 book What Time is This Place? I start quoting after a discussion of general efficiency and only limited failures in conception:

"Despite these more spectacular failures, the replanned public services and the regulation of rebuilding were both highly effective. The new city did not adjust as well to it's new economy, the changes in its population, or the shift from river traffic to road traffic. In these areas the City was planning for obsolete needs, but indeed most plans are preoccupied with the past. Moreover, and this is also not unusual, the changes bore most heavily on the poor."

Ok, this sounds about right. We're probably talking about Detroit or St. Louis, or one of the many 'Rust-belt' cities that sought to renew despite large shifts in the economy and in society. Having just seen the Pruitt-Igoe Myth (I highly recommend it!) it was clear that demographic trends went in the opposite direction of those projected by urban planners. Their misreading of population dispersal to the suburbs and de-industrialization laid their efficient work to waste to the detriment of the poor population left in the city.

South Street 2

Schermerhorn Row, South Street Seaport.

Continued from here.

In 1968, the same year that the replacement for New York's old Pennsylvania Station (Pennsylvania Plaza and Madison Square Garden) was completed, Schermerhorn Row on the southwest tip of Manhattan was designated an historic landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission to save it from destruction. It would eventually become part of a larger redevelopment: the South Street Seaport.

From the beginning the planning of the South Street Seaport was divided between a variety of interests including the mayor's Office of Development, the Seaport Museum and affiliates, the Maritime Museum, the state of New York, various financial institutions, the Rouse Company, and several design firms. However, as the developer, the Rouse company set much of the agenda for the site, and on the tail of recent successes James Rouse proposed a festival marketplace.[1]