Dennis Hollingsworth

NYCHA

I'm curious about the historical transition in housing in NYC, the efforts of "slum" clearance and redevelopment:
"...of odd spots swept away by the era of LaGuardia and Robert Moses by the era of the modern superbox of public housing..."

Robert Moses was only a prime exponent of a generation and it was an entire generation who was enamored of a particular idea of progress (in the first video at T=8:34, there is a photographic still of a street with a billboard advertising Chevy's, a foreshadowing of what was to come). I'm not critical of any particular idea of progress or of an enthusiastic anticipation of the future. I'm saying that the we should be suspicious of any vision whose fulfillment requires the elimination of a competing, older vision. Heritage may wither away, but it should never purposefully eliminated. I should check myself of course: 1) the vehicle for the wholesale redesign of NYC neighborhoods was "slum clearance", and whether the history recorded in the photographs featured in these videos was miserable or culturally rich or a ratio of both states... is still up in the air; and 2) the phenomena of modern superbox of housing in NYC is itself an artifact of NYC heritage. Checkity-Check: Is heritage merely anything that prevails in history???