Roberta
Brandes Gratz is an award-winning journalist and urban critic, lecturer and
author. Her newest book is The
Battle For Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs. Earlier
works were the now classic The
Living City: Thinking Small in a Big Way, and Cities
Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtown.
She
is an international lecturer on urban development issues and former
award-winning reporter for the New York Post. Ms. Gratz was appointed by Mayor
Michael Bloomberg to the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission in 2003 and in
2010 resigned from the commission and was then appointed by the mayor to serve
on the Sustainability Advisory Board for PlaNYC.
In
2005, in collaboration with Jane Jacobs, Ms. Gratz and a small group of
accomplished urbanists founded The Center For the Living City. On November 5, The
Historic Districts Council of NY (citywide) will honor her at
the Four Seasons restaurant as their 2012 Landmark Lion.
After
Hurricane Katrina, Roberta bought a shotgun in the Bywater so she could get the
story on the city’s rebuilding. She
lives there half the year.
Q:
Thanks for taking time out from your new book to talk about your experience in
New Orleans. What would your hero Jane
Jacobs appreciate about New Orleans as an urban environment? What changes have we made to our urban fabric
that would she have deplored?
A: She’d love the degree to which local people
are involved in their own neighborhoods both working to rebuild them in
positive ways and opposing inappropriate or disruptive changes when necessary.
She’d also love the survival of corner stores and neighborhood shopping streets
filled with pedestrian activity throughout the city, something all American
cities used to have but lost.
She’d
deplore the refusal to reopen the patient-ready Charity hospital after Katrina
and its oversize, suburban-style replacement at a location guaranteed to
undermine the downtown and causing the unnecessary destruction of a solid
working class neighborhood. She would also deplore the gratuitous tear down of
all the public housing undamaged by hurricanes when so much of it could have
been creatively reworked to be safe, economically integrated and appealing. She
would recognize a contradiction in a city over-dependant on tourism yet not
genuinely committed to protecting its architectural and cultural legacy.
Q:
Can you tell our readers the tale of how New Orleans defeated her arch-rival
Robert Moses’ plan to build an interstate along the river on the edge of the
French Quarter? Who were the heroes in that uniquely successful struggle?
A: Local lawyer Bill Borah with the full backing
of the Stern Foundation led that fight with a number of others willing to face
down the biggest powers that be from New Orleans to Washington to make the
right thing happen. New Orleans would have been destroyed by that highway, as
so many American cities have been by similar projects.
Q: Of
course the downside to that preservationist victory was that the interstate was
moved instead to the heart of Treme and a 2 mile double alley of glorious live
oaks were cut down to build the elevated expressway. Treme as an African
American business district along North Claiborne died a not-so-slow death. I’ve
been a big proponent since Katrina of tearing it down (as they did in the
Embarcadero after the San Francisco earthquake). What are the pros and cons of
that teardown? And what do you think the
likelihood of its being torn down?
A: That is a myth. Moses original drawings show
two roadways, not unusual for him. That idea, I suspect, has been perpetrated
to purposely foster divisiveness.
The
taking down of the I-10 is as good an idea as it has been in the other cities
where similar highways have come down. However, I don’t yet sense a real
concern for the displacement of people that would result nor a sense that a
replacement roadway would provide appropriate space for the significant
cultural uses that now occur under the I-10. Until those local activities are
provided for in a new design and until there is protection in place for the
affected residents and businesses, full local support for this idea will not be
forthcoming. It risks looking too much
like a land grab.
Q: “A
crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” said University of Chicago
arch-conservative Milton Friedman. HBO’s Treme
seems geared up this year to explore the way developers made the most of
things, not always in an above-board manner.
Can you share some of that story, the way developers exploited our
crisis? Are there telling examples of how sometimes they were stopped?
A: I’m really looking forward to Treme’s
treatment of this issue.
The
hospital and public housing examples are the most visible but all over the city
structures have come down that shouldn’t have. Many have not only because of
local watchdogs, particularly starting with Karen Gadbois and her blog
Squandered Heritage that alerted the public to outrageous activities. That blog
eventually led Karen and Arielle Cohen to establish The Lens, which has evolved
into a fabulous investigative journalism outlet.
Clearly
the northern section of the Lower Ninth Ward would have been toast without
vehement local resistance.
Sadly,
Treme is a current target of subtle and not-so-subtle developer exploitation
with the feds aiding and abetting the process with the redevelopment strategy
for the Iberville Houses. Iberville is a perfect example of the kind of quality
that cannot be reproduced but could be upgraded, restored and added onto in
order to create a dense, economically-integrated community.
Q:
Surely one of our biggest blunders post-Katrina is our handling of the medical
corridor: the decision not to fix Charity Hospital (for $500mm) and instead to
tear down 17 acres (?) of mid-city to build a new medical complex (for $1.4
billion). Is the LSU-VA/Charity hospital
struggle comparable to the Robert Moses interstate fight? Care to weigh in on those decisions? Is there
hope it won’t be as bad as some fear?
A: This is a classic Robert Moses-era scandal,
reminiscent of the Urban Renewal-style that was supposed to be behind us, as I
wrote in detail in
The
Nation.
This is especially tragic because of the quicker, cheaper alternative to
modernize and upgrade the existing Charity that unnecessarily still stands
empty. What a shot in the arm for all of downtown that would have been
economically, to say nothing of the importance of the continued enviable
hospital and teaching facility that is now history.
It
will be worse than is feared, as the lack of construction funds continues and
the draconian cuts to the state’s entire Charity Hospital and health care
system. It is dire, to be sure. The disrupted lives of a neighborhood can’t be
calculated.
Q:
Can you tell us a bit about your forthcoming book? What went wrong in our return from Katrina
and what went right? Who are some of your heroes in our rebirth?
A: Ah, you’ll have to wait for the book for my
view of what went wrong and right, aside from some of what I said above. That
will be the essence of the story. I’m still very much in the information
gathering and observation stage to give you conclusions.
Q:
When can we anticipate your book?
A: I have been busy interviewing what will add
up to hundreds of people. I have never ceased to be the newspaper
reporter/investigative journalist that I started out as several decades ago
which means my work is ongoing. Plan on 2015.
Q:
Tell us about your life in New Orleans? What have you come to like most about
New Orleans? How’s the Bywater as urban environment?
A: I
love the warmth and friendliness of the people most of all. Urbanistically, New
Orleans is unique and I am very much an urban person. The scale, diversity,
culturally vibrancy and all the other obvious things are very appealing.
The
Bywater is a particularly friendly neighborhood. It has become increasingly
popular with lots of local stores and restaurants opening. I love being a 15
minute bike ride from downtown. Sadly, I don’t think the city’s and transit
authority’s next streetcar priority is St. Claude. This is so shortsighted. The
city is more focused on tourists than on the resident and business taxpaying
population that really keeps the city going. That mass transit access is the
neighborhood’s real deficiency.