It’s the 1970’s and the Bronx is Burning. A city with crime on the rise, decimated by the site of abandoned homes, burning buildings, drugs and prostitution. On top of the crime unemployment, cut backs in city jobs and the population of the city was decreasing 1% per year. All of these circumstances inspired the idea of Planned Shrinkage led by Roger Starr.
In the mid-70s Roger Starr was New York City’s Administrator of Housing and Development. Starr introduced a proposal that New York City follow a strategy called “planned shrinkage.” The concept of planned shrinkage was to relocate a group of people from poor, crime infested, deteriorated areas like the South Bronx and Brownsville to more concentrated areas like Far Rockaway. In the process the old buildings will be destroyed and new housing will be built. This was Roger Starr’s idea for saving money in New York City which at the time were suffering from declining population, lost jobs and high taxes.
During the time when Starr proposed planned shrinkage the South Bronx was seeing large amounts of arson, crime and housing abandonment and Brownsville was seeing urban renewal, crime and abandonment as well. Starr saw this as a quick fix solution to all these issues. Moving all people together outside of the more popular cities, then rebuilding the properties that are now vacant and constructing privatized housing, in the effort to get back the middle class that had moved to suburban areas like Long Island and Westchester. In order for this strategy of “planned shrinkage” to take effect, services would be gradually reduced in these areas categorized as slums. These services includes police and fire departments, sanitation, health care, social services, public transportation and schools.
The people didn’t take this news in stride including city council members and mayor at the time Mayor Abraham D. Beame. Protesters invaded press conferences where Roger Starr was set to deliver a statement to the public. Councilman Frederick Samuel and others demanded the resignation of Starr saying that his planned shrinkage idea was genocidal, racist, inhuman, arrogant and irresponsible.
During the time when Roger Starr wanted to introduced the idea of planned shrinkage an article written by Frank Lombardi in the Daily News showed that New York City had cut 3,432 city jobs in a month. During that month 2,082 full-time Board of Education employees were dropped. The bigger picture showed that in past 14 months 25,000 workers had been fired. The most significant agency affected included Police 4,879, Fire Dept. 1,926, Sanitation 2.612 and Social Services 3,815.
Robert Fitch interviewed Roger Starr on 9-2-93 where he explains his philosophy about planned shrinkage. The interview explains his influence about the idea. Starr remembers a conversation he had with Robert Moses on Randall’s Island. During the conversation Starr even questions him and says, “You don’t really think that you can treat people nowadays as though they were parcels in the package room…” Starrs doubt about Moses “slum clearance” approached helped build the foundation for the idea of planned shrinkage.
When hired as executive director of “Citizens Housing and Planning Council” Starr was very outspoken about “rent control” because it was destroying New York City’s private housing stock. He goes on the say “the problem with government programs is that you find yourself having to take in tenants who are extremely destructive and whom you can’t get rid of. Starr being very vocal on these housing subject lead him to being hired by Mayor Beame as “housing and development administrator.
The idea of Planned Shrinkage to save a city seems quite idiotic when you look at the overall destruction it could of caused to the structure of such a diverse area but the idea alone did some good. It seem to have woken up the people of the city to take a stand and force change. Councilmen where opposed to Starr’s idea and defended the city by demanding him to resign. The city never moved, the people rebuild and created a better city.
No comments:
Post a Comment