The Assassination of New York. - book reviews

Monthly Review, July-August, 1994 by Robert Engler

Fitch is certainly on solid ground in looking at the price tag for the glittering technocratic utopia. Speculative overbuilding of office space stimulated by public subsidies; inadequate residen0ial housing for people of moderate and middle incomes; the decimation of skilled work (how much of the vaunted computer and other white-collar work is repetitious and requires limited skill? how different are the fives of these employees than those in the old industrial order?); decreased opportunity for employment for young people; inadequate resources earmarked for schools; high welfare rolls; an eroded tax base; heightened racial tensions; increased crime; and a greater polarization between rich and poor.

Nevertheless, the tide, The Assassination of New York, is misleading. The planning for a service economy is not the only reason for New York's similarities to the grimmer features of the Third World. Nor is the shame of the city an overnight phenomenon. The attrition of small-scale manufacturing, the physical and fiscal neglect and deterioration, and the dying of neighborhoods have taken place over many years. And despite the litany of downward development, New York retains extraordinary vitality and promise which continue to attract and hold Dany of its people.

While Fitch forgoes any celebration of these latter qualities, he concludes with a series of proposals for halting the decline, thus suggesting that he does not take the title of his own book literally. The challenge then is not resurrection but regeneration.

The heart of his agenda is to reclaim the city for its people. A first step is to reclaim the land. New York is not Chiapas and his purpose is to create the physical room and the environment for reindustrialization. He does not want another form of branch-plant economy to spring up in the newly acquired space: what he seeks is a restoration of what was once healthy - an essentially diversified economy in which needed goods and services are produced by skilled workers in locally controlled businesses. There are many other related proposals, including a bank for development which would fund such enterprises and cooperatives. Rebuilding the port and a rail network to support it has a high priority as does stimulating the construction industry through programs for building affordable housing and for maintaining public structures. He advocates the privatization of such inappropriate public burdens as the World Trade Center and a review of subsidies which primarily enhance the powerful and the privileged. Institutions in the non-profit sector, including foundations and universities, control substantial property and wealth in New York. Combined, their budgets exceed that of the city's government. Fitch views them as exerting a strong influence on public policy, including the pursuit of the post-industrial grail. His recommendation: add them to the tax rolls.

The calls for change are thoughtful and worthy of closer examination. As they stand, they tend to be sketchy and may invite the unsympathetic to dismiss them as "looking backward." One wants to learn more about taking back municipal land. It is a concept, although somewhat different, reminiscent of the approach of Henry George in Progress and Poverty in 1880 to the seeming paradox of a society discovering how to produce prodigious wealth while unable or unwilling to stem the mass economic distress accompanying this growth. George sought to challenge through taxation the assumption that land and increases in its value could simply be treated as private property at the disposal of the owner. How might Fitch's land bank work? What might one discover from other land bank experiments? Is there a reasonable expectation that a properly funded land bank would foster a mixed economy of sufficient dimension to revitalize the city? Or would it encourage, somewhat haphazardly, scattered businesses while the dominant corporate patterns remain?