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By Root 1118 0

as is commonly assumed. In a fascinating piece of research, Cornell’s Robert Finch unearthed the original 1929 plan of the New York Regional Plan Association. Today, the Association is dedicated to mass transportation and controlled growth; fifty years ago, it was dedicated to and controlled by Manhattan real-estate interests whose aim was to replace the sprawling, low-rise lofts and tenements with high-rise buildings. The Association’s twelve-volume plan urged a “highway system, designed like a sculptor’s armature to serve as infrastructural support for the desired suburbanization and decentralization of the region.…” The plan proposed to shift Manhattan’s economic base from light industry to office towers. It was silent about the subway system and largely ignored the issue of mass transportation. It was this plan that was later followed and supplemented by Robert Moses. Manhattan real-estate values soared, and roads cut wide swatches through neighborhoods.

There was business logic to the plan. From a profit-making point of view, the crowded lofts and tenements and small factories were inefficient. Greater profits could be generated from high-rise buildings housing many more rent-paying tenants and businesses. The highways made for cheaper truck transportation. In a free economy, it was not surprising to see landlords and developers act in their own interest. Perhaps a socialist system, intent on development, would have made similar decisions—with the buildings even uglier, a tomb to proletarian solidarity rather than an ice-skating rink in Rockefeller Center. But the demands of profits and growth inevitably clashed with neighborhoods and a sense of community.

Public officials, spurred on by a plethora of developers, construction unions, lawyers, insurance agents and patronage-hungry political leaders, plunged ahead. In the 1930’s, the federal government financed private homes by creating the Federal Housing Administration to stimulate the flow of money into home mortgages. This effort was interrupted by World War II, but then on June 22, 1944, President Roosevelt signed into law the GI Bill of Rights. The federal government now offered 4 percent home loans to veterans, with no down payment required. Thus the American dream to own a home led to massive federal assistance to fulfill that dream. Implicitly, government was saying: We invite you to the suburbs.

Millions took advantage of that offer and of subsequent home and education loan gifts. Statistics on file with the federal Veterans Administration in Washington reveal the impact of these loans. According to Robert C. Coon, the VA Director of Home Loans, the suburban New York county of Nassau has received more home loans (162,669) since 1944 than all of New York City combined (146,691). Over thirty-three years, Manhattan received 351 home loans; suburban Suffolk County, 76,543. The Bronx received 9,927; its northern neighbor, suburban Westchester, three times that number (29,660). The city government had no plan to retain middle- and upper-income residents; the federal government had no plan to cope with the consequences of its policies.

Government also made it possible for people to get to their new homes. On January 16, 1955, the Triboro Bridge and Tunnel Authority and the Port Authority agreed to a $1.2 billion scheme to construct a second deck on the George Washington Bridge and miles of new bridge approaches and roads that would bulldoze neighborhoods. The architect of this scheme was Robert Moses, who borrowed from the first regional plan. As Robert Caro observes in The Power Broker, his masterful biography of Moses, the pact “sealed, perhaps for centuries, the future of New York and its suburbs.” It stimulated new road construction. Visions of sugarplums danced before the eyes of the establishment. The banks thought of the bonds to be sold; the construction unions, of the jobs to be created; the law firms and politicians, of the legal fees and insurance premiums; the real-estate interests, of the enhanced value of their Manhattan properties.

Had that money