Product and process: New York's Model Cities vest-pocket housing and rehabilitation programme
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Date
2024
Publication Type
Journal Article
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yes
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Abstract
In January 1966, US President Lyndon Johnson proposed the Model Cities programme to 'improve the quality of urban life' in the nation's poorest areas through comprehensive action and citizen participation. That same month, John Lindsay became mayor of New York with a platform to create a more equitable city. Toward this end, Lindsay's administration rejected earlier urban renewal approaches, prioritizing infill construction on vacant sites and reusing existing buildings, all while including local communities in the planning process. Eugenia Flatow spearheaded this 'vest-pocket and rehabilitation programme' as a 'head start' to future Model Cities funding. As she commissioned Raymond & May, Walter Thabit, Jonas Vizbaras, and Fisher/Jackson with housing plans for Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Harlem, she was acutely aware of the resulting tension between a desired democratic process and the timely delivery of the product. A close reading of archival materials reveals how these planners responded in very different ways to the prompt. The governmental programme had created a space of possibility for rethinking the relationship of product and process in planning through the specificity of housing design. The plans also highlighted the paradox in attempting to effect socio-economic change through housing supply, one that still resonates today.
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Publication status
published
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Book title
Journal / series
Volume
39 (1)
Pages / Article No.
31 - 57
Publisher
Routledge
Event
Edition / version
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Software
Geographic location
Date collected
Date created
Subject
Model Cities; vest-pocket housing; housing rehabilitation; urban renewal; housing architecture; Eugenia Flatow; Barry Jackson
Organisational unit
Notes
Funding
156741 - Zwischen Wohnfabrik und Arbeiterpalast. Massenwohnungsbau im Wohlfahrtsstaat und in der Planwirtschaft in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren (SNF)