A New Deal for New York

by Mike Wallace

Hailed in the New York Observer as a "utopian gesture in a city that has been mired in grim realities, " A New Deal for New York is a stirring call-to-arms from the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Mike Wallace. Written with the same verve and gusto of his Edwin G. Burrows's monumental Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, this new book is the most sweeping and ambitious response to the terrorist attacks. In it, Wallace argues that we not just rebuild and memorialize the World Trade Center site, but rethink and plan more broadly for the entire city's future. He tells the fascinating and largely unknown history of the financial center, revealing a wide variety of myths and obfuscations about the city's growth and success in recent years. He candidly and convincingly summarizes the many ambitious but viable projects that would improve all of New York by launching what he calls "the new New Deal"--a multipronged plan that, mindful of both the grand successes and dismal disappointments of the original New Deal, would feature such longed-for improvements as a revitalized port, improved mass transit, and more affordable housing. In short, he argues, September 11 has provided us an "opening, as a city, to make our own course corrections on the river of history, if we have the desire and can summon the will. It won't be the end of an era unless we decide to make it one. Happily, there are substantial grounds for believing that, under the press of hard blows and hard times, our audacious metropolis will again lead the nation in recalling our history, reimagining our future, and seizing hold of our collective destiny."

Genres: New York, History, Urban Planning, Nonfiction

115 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 2002

About the author

A graduate of Columbia University, Mike Wallace is Distinguished Professor of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York, where he has taught since 1971, and director of the Gotham Center for New York City History. He won the Pulitzer Prize for History for his book Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 and is the founder, co-publisher and editor of the Radical History Review.

Reviews

[Luke · Rating 1 out of 5]

booked sucked, dude talked a whole lot without saying a whole anything

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great little treatise on how to revitalize NYC and the nation, written in the wake of 9/11 and published in 2002. Still seems very relevant and very spot-on. Wallace does a fantastic job of providing historical context (NYC history is, after all, his life's work) before looking at the present and his visions of the future. It's a pleasure to read ideas about how we can bring vibrancy and equity here from someone who has a thorough understanding of the city's successful and failed plans of the last 300 years.