The major drawback of this story as a national example is that New York City sits in stark contrast to cities elsewhere where abandonment and vacant useful housing are still the norm. The New York of the 1970s is gone. No vacant, undervalued areas are left, where local residents can take control of property and conditions under the radar of city officials. Today the challenge is over-success and the opportunity-hunting of developers taking advantage of massive upzonings citywide. Much of De Rienzo’s analysis of effective community-based action still applies – but the need for adjustments to current conditions is huge.
This is a must-read for people from New Orleans to Youngstown, Ohio who think the solution to diminished population and abandonment is demolition – these days called “creative shrinkage," which is just a euphemism for planned shrinkage. Planned shrinkage would have let the Bronx and other beleaguered city neighborhoods continue to rot into oblivion. Local people resisted, proved the experts wrong and are responsible for today’s success. They proved both the unrecognized capacity of empowered local citizens and the effectiveness of a public policy that reflects community wisdom and experience.
“Ultimately,” De Rienzo writes, “the Bronx was revived as a result of substantial public subsidies, an extensive infrastructure of community development corporations, and local leadership that focused on results and not on patronage.”
The lessons are as pertinent today as they were 30 years ago. The only difference is that then the lessons were yet to be learned. Now, they are as clear as day.
Roberta Brandes Gratz is an award-winning journalist and chairman and founder of The Center for the Living City at Purchase College. She wrote the books "Cities Back From the Edge: New Life for Downtown" and "The Living City: Thinking Small in a Big Way," in which the Banana Kelly story plays a central role.
"The Concept of Community" is not stocked at bookstores, but can be ordered online at Amazon.com, Powells.com, or Barnes and Noble.
