The Battle for Gotham Read Online Free PDF Page B

River Alliance.
    With some overlap in member organizations, the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance is composed of a smaller number of local and citywide organizations that came together specifically to advocate for the community plan to eliminate the Sheridan Expressway and redevelop its footprint for affordable housing, community and commercial space, and parks. 17 The Sheridan Expressway is a little-used, never-completed 1.25-mile Moses road that runs parallel to the river and separates a huge community from it. Despite the road’s minimum transportation value and maximum community damage, the State Department of Transportation has been trying for years to maintain and finish it. 18 The community plan to demolish it would instead reclaim twenty-eight acres and reconnect existing neighborhoods—West Farms, Longwood, Bronx River, Hunts Point, and more—to each other and to the Bronx River (and the new greenway parks). 19 Local streets would be extended to connect the community to the river, wetlands would be restored, and land would be reclaimed on which to build affordable housing.
    It is hard to overstate the impact, especially on the Bronx, of the proliferation of citizen efforts since the earliest ones in the 1970s. What occurred between then, when the South Bronx looked like Berlin after World War II, and now, when finding empty land to build on is difficult, is a story with more lessons than experts can absorb. A cleaned-up Bronx River, new parks, youth programs, cultural venues, community-planned new development, environmental improvements, and community events—the list is endless but all part of the regeneration process that evolved from the bottom up to repair the damage of the Moses era. Various agencies under Mayor Bloomberg have been clearly responsive, leading to partnerships that have strengthened and advanced the momentum of positive change. This is the same Bronx that Robert Moses and housing commissioner Roger Starr (Planned Shrinkage) 20 declared hopeless and wanted to only clear and rebuild or landbank.
    Private efforts in upscale Manhattan neighborhoods also have had enormous impact. One of the most celebrated, and internationally emulated, new public spaces is the High Line on the Lower West Side, six blocks of hulking elevated rail track once used to carry goods from Hudson River piers to warehouses in Lower Manhattan. The effort to transform it into a linear park, designed by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, is the result of two citizens, Josh David and Robert Hammond, 21 who fought the demolition plan of former mayor Rudolph Giuliani and found a sympathetic administration with the election of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The High Line cause paralleled the rising appeal of the neighboring Gansevoort Market Historic District, a once-gritty, truck-filled area now dominated by upscale fashion retailers, art galleries, and restaurants. All of these efforts demonstrate clearly the enormous positive change possible from assorted modest citizen-led initiatives.

    BIG CITY CHANGE IN INCREMENTAL STEPS
    The city administration as well is making big changes with small strides even while it more aggressively promotes and overvalues controversial large projects. Individuals within the administration have a mandate to find new creative ways to make positive changes, especially in the area of reducing traffic congestion and air pollution. The Housing and Preservation Department under Shawn Donovan, now head of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, D.C., created 81,500 new low-income units scattered around the city, out of a goal of 165,000 over five years, less than they hoped for but considerable nonetheless. 22 The Housing Authority is making possible needed infill development on long-underused and unnecessary open space left from the tower-in-the-park era of misguided development. For years the Housing Authority has been replacing windows, upgrading water-conserving plumbing, and installing