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The Battle for Gotham

New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs

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By Roberta Brandes Gratz

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On Sale
Sep 6, 2011
Page Count
400 pages
Publisher
Bold Type Books
ISBN-13
9781568586786

In the 1970s, New York City hit rock bottom. Crime was at its highest, the middle class exodus was in high gear, and bankruptcy loomed. Many people credit New York’s “master builder” Robert Moses with turning Gotham around, despite his brutal, undemocratic. and demolition-heavy ways.

Urban critic and journalist Roberta Brandes Gratz contradicts this conventional view. New York City, Gratz argues, recovered precisely because of the waning power of Moses. His decline in the late 1960s and the drying up of big government funding for urban renewal projects allowed New York to organically regenerate according to the precepts defined by Jane Jacobs in her classic, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and in contradiction to Moses’s urban philosophy.

As American cities face a devastating economic crisis, Jacobs’s philosophy is again vital for the redevelopment of metropolitan life. Gratz who was named as one of Planetizen’s Top 100 Urban Thinkers gives an on-the-ground account of urban renewal and community success.

Genre:

  • New York Times
    "[A] profoundly personal account of Moses's bulldozer diplomacy and its consequences for today...[Gratz] writes eloquently of her childhood in Greenwich Village, and then proves her point...Readers might not share her conclusions, but can't help being impressed with her reporting."
    Boston Review

Formats and Prices

Price

$24.99

Price

$31.99 CAD

Format

Format:

  1. Trade Paperback $24.99 $31.99 CAD
  2. ebook $11.99

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Roberta Brandes Gratz

About the Author

Roberta Brandes Gratz is an award-winning journalist, urban critic, lecturer, and author who has published four previous books, including most recently We’re Still Here Ya Bastards: How the People of New Orleans Rebuilt Their City andThe Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs. Her writing has also appeared in the Nation, the New York Times Magazine, and the Wall Street Journal. She led the Eldridge Street Project for more than 20 years, the effort to restore the 1887 synagogue on the Lower East Side and establish the Eldridge Street Museum. She previously served on New York City’s Landmark Preservation Commission and NYC’s Sustainability Advisory Board. With Jane Jacobs, she founded The Center for the Living City. She lives in New York City.

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