So far in the class, many of our readings, especially our latest one from A Plague on Houses, have highlighted a common misconception that improvement and development can only happen with the destruction and removal of struggling, under-resourced neighborhoods. Perhaps, as was the case with Robert Moses, this destruction had good intent; by razing homes and buildings in dilapidated and disadvantaged communities, room could be made for new infrastructure for industry and urban renewal. In other words, it was this idea of starting from scratch – completely eradicating all the bad and replacing it with new, idealistic development projects that would wholly transform a community for the better.

Undoubtedly, there are numerous flaws to this notion. One of the most obvious flaws, as we’ve discussed previously in class and as we see described again in this reading, is the question: where do the displaced people go? It’s a question that persists today, as rezoning and redevelopment projects continue to force poor, nonwhite communities out of their homes to make way for industry and new housing initiatives.

Underneath this problem of displacement and relocation also lies a persisting racist point of view. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the Rand Institute exemplify this perspective. Improperly interpreting and analyzing statistical data, and disregarding numerous other variables that affect the incidence of fires, they targeted poor, nonwhite communities as scapegoats for a larger, much broader problem of unsuccessful and ineffective urban planning and policy-making. They characterized such neighborhoods as sick and irreparable and used their statistical misinterpretations as the faulty justification behind limiting resources and facilities that were originally meant to serve and protect the people. Ideals such as “benign neglect” and “planned shrinkage” were thus euphemisms for discrimination and neglecting the government’s most fundamental role of keeping all citizens, regardless of race or income, safe.

It is thus extremely ironic, yet unsurprising, that Moynihan’s and Rand’s cuts in the public service and fire safety sectors actually led to an increase in the incidence of fires and neighborhood deterioration. A lot of this, in large part, was due to their drastic oversimplification that poor neighborhoods were the cause, rather than the effect, of urban decay. Additionally, their extremely poor use of statistical data and mathematical models only proved to exacerbate the problems Moynihan and Rand had originally sought to fix. Hence, by wrongfully interpreting data to accommodate for underlying racial and economic discrimination, Moynihan and Rand not only failed to decrease the incidence of fires and improve neighborhood conditions, but also created even more problems that negatively impacted poor and wealthy communities alike.

Discussion: How can we prevent policy-makers from targeting poor, minority communities for displacement and relocation? In other words, how can we limit the racial and economic discrimination that appears to persist in urban planning today?

Where is the common sense in city planning? First off, I want to point out that everything about this is just wrong. It doesn’t make sense to model a city based on a mathematical equation. Doing so would create an inaccurate model. And since fire was becoming a problem with the increasing number of false alarms, large and frequent fires, as well as response times, why would it make sense to reduce service to these areas? I understand that the city is doing this because they think that certain areas are better off not there, but there are many other ways to do it. Also, the city should also attack the root of the problem. Reducing service in well-off areas so that the below average response time can be brought closer to the average is ineffective at solving the heart of the problem. Sub-optimization would only create more problems for these better off areas.

I see this model as a vicious cycle of the degeneration of the poor urban areas. Politicians use the fire department’s data on the numbers of fire alarms to deliberately reduce resource to the poor urban areas. The information is inaccurate and the numbers are often exaggerated with accidental fires labeled as arson. The targeted areas were South Bronx, Harlem and a number of other neighborhoods. These communities, which were mostly comprised of a black population would then be more susceptible to more frequent and violent fires, thus further encouraging politicians to abandon these areas. “Benign Neglect” and “Planned Shrinkage” are just euphemisms for the city to abandon troubled neighborhoods.

The problem explored in this brief reading is still apparent today. While it is true that services to these areas have been restored to a certain extent, the city is still not providing enough resources to these troubled areas. A friend of mine works in the fire department as an operator. He spoke of how his colleagues and him are having trouble with a contract. He has been working about 5 years without a contract because the city is refusing to give them anything. Much like the situation in the reading, The city is tightening their hold on resource as much as they can to these services. For the city, it would be beneficial if they can save resources by having branches closed out. As far as city planning goes, there’s not much common sense involved in solving urban problems. It seems like the city is creating more problems instead.

Discussion question: Should the city ever abandon the people that it’s comprised of? If so, when?

This weekend’s readings discussed the manner in which ‘benign neglect’ and planned shrinkage’ were supposed to ease the tension felt in impoverished communities. Communities such as the south Bronx were subject to large amounts of crime and required extensive community services in order to maintain higher levels of safety. However, in the eyes of Moynihan, the tension would ease quicker if the issues were left unattended. The other policy that was discussed, ‘Planned Shrinkage’ involved the removal of services and resources from poor neighborhoods and relocating them to neighborhoods that were better off.

The idea of planned shrinkage was supposed to let poor communities fend for themselves. They were being denied basic services because it was believed that eventually these communities ‘would die out’. However, this policy really just infuriated the members of the community. If the conditions reached a level where it was no longer inhabitable, these communities would just relocate to other areas. This would then increase the crime rates of the communities that were deemed ‘better off’. My issues with benign neglect and planned shrinkage were that they are inhumane and do not actually address the issues that poorer communities are facing. I find it disturbing that Moynihan felt it was necessary to leave these cities that were in dire need of help. As crime went up, the cities costs also went up. Fires continued to be a huge problem in cities like the Bronx. The infrastructure that was destroyed was never rebuilt, thus giving the people of these communities no reason to remain in that city.

I believe that Moynihan’s policies of “benign neglect” and “planned shrinkage” were immoral and did not truly address the issues that were at hand. However, I do believe that this is still an important part of our history that teaches to not neglect the people who live in a community.

It’s interesting to think of a community as a body. Similar to a body, communities have their own stages of development, growth, period of sickness, period of prosperity, and ultimately—if the state allows it—death. In this metaphor, Wallace emphasizes the fact that the government of the City of New York failed to revitalize its ailing neighborhoods. In the medical profession, doctors are bound by the Hippocratic Oath to ensure that their patients “suffer no hurt or damage”. Clearly, these rules don’t apply to legislators. Through racist and classist notions of the ideal community, neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx were systematically destroyed.

“Benign neglect” and “planned shrinkage” were essentially as harmful and blatant as Robert Moses’ physical destruction of communities of color. As the large-scale residential clearance for highways and bridges became controversial and fell out of favor, subtler forms of racism ensued. The “top-down” model of urban planning struck again as ignorance influenced the destruction of low-income communities of color. By using meaningless, pseudo intellectual mathematical models and botched fire report data, Rand was able to bring about the rapid decline in population in these areas. Specifically, Wallace points out that the Resource-Allocation Model didn’t take into account the fact that fires fluctuate depending on the time of day and the season. Just speaking to a community member or a nurse at a local hospital would emphasize this important variable. The disregard for public safety in these areas on behalf of Rand, Daniel Moynihan, and Roger Starr was far more antisocial than the community members themselves.

One issue mentioned early in the reading was the lack of industry in the South Bronx, which was cited as one of the reasons for its slow rate of development and the social climate of the area. Following Robert Moses’ urban planning model, it would follow that revitalizing the area would mean emptying out entire pockets of residential areas to create industry sectors. The city wasn’t interested in orchestrated attempts to revitalize the neighborhood. The “slash-and-burn” approach to urban planning is random, as city planners can’t choose where fires will happen—for obvious reasons. If we’re following the trajectory for the Robert Moses school of urban planning, we can refer to one of his more unabashedly racist quotes from 1977: “Now I ask you, what was that neighborhood? It was a Puerto Rican slum. Do you remember it? Yeah, well I lived there for many years and it was the worst slum in New York. And you want to leave it there?” This ideology of urban planning is based on a standard of achievement with middle class whites as the norm. Under this standard, it’s easy to assume why the South Bronx, East Harlem, Brownsville, and East New York were targeted for “planned shrinkage”.

It is the City’s responsibility to create sustainable communities for all residents. No city should allow communities to fail because of their demographies. One might argue that one of the reasons for the turmoil and social climate of the South Bronx was the earlier “renewal” caused by the displacement of hundreds of residents for Robert Moses’ Cross Bronx and his stance on public transportation (he hated public transportation, which many South Bronx residents were dependent on, as they couldn’t afford to purchase cars). As Wallace points out, communities are like bodies, and proper scales, measures, batteries, surveys, analyses, and examinations need to be performed before legislation is passed.

Discussion: Should urban planning be subject to greater scrutiny and regulations?

The story of the Rand Institute and Daniel Patrick Moynihan is a cautionary tale that continues to ring true for us in the present day due to how there are still people in America who hold views that are very similar to the ones that Moynihan espoused. In addition, the rampant abuse of statistics and conclusion-jumping that is featured in this reading make it hard to tell that it was describing events from almost 40 years ago. It’s too bad that the authors failed to include any quotes from the residents of the affected neighborhoods in the reading; it would have been interesting to read about how some of the lower and middle class African-Americans and Puerto Ricans living in the “sick neighborhoods” reacted to being labelled as sociopathic arsonists by Moynihan.

The idea of benign neglect is fairly odd once it is given some thought. It practically says: “Shut your eyes and pretend the problem is not there, and with any luck, once you open them it won’t be there.” Planned shrinkage is no better as a policy, but at least it actually had a plan, which was to pull resources out from “dying” neighborhoods and redistribute them among healthy ones. According to the authors, The Rand Fire Project deliberately manipulated NY Fire Department policy for its own purposes, which happen to coincide with Planned Shrinkage policy. With this in mind, it seems hard to believe that they were extremely simple-minded when they made all their assumptions and generalizations for their models. It is also hard to believe that the Rand Corporation is still around today, and it has done very well for itself since the 1970s, having been involved with studies on health insurance and national security and defense with numerous Nobel Prize recipients.

Discussion Question: To what extent should public policy be dictated by outside organizations like the Rand Corporation?

As we have seen with other forms of urban renewal, there is a sort of sick cycle associated with benign neglect and planned shrinkage. When Fire Alarms are ignored, or when fire services are actually withdrawn from certain neighborhoods, there is an increase in the spread of fires. Instead of a single house burning down, entire blocks and subsequent neighborhoods are reduced to rubble. With a lack of housing, those displaced by fires are forced to rely on mutual-aid networks to help them find housing, often in already-cramped housing units in other neighborhoods. With denser populations come a rise in fire causing factors, such as higher densities of smokers, electric appliances and greater accumulations of trash. Thus, fires arise again, burn down even more neighborhoods, people are displaced, rinse and repeat.

I think one of the many faults of this whole idea of benign neglect and planned shrinkage can be blamed on incredibly faulty logic. Moynihan uses the idea that since there are many more arsons and fire alarms in neighborhoods full of people of color and the poor, it must be these people who are setting the fires and triggering the alarms. I have never taken a statistics class in my life but I do know that correlation does not imply causation. Just because there is some sort of correlation between two distinct variables, in this case primarily poor and black neighborhoods and the number of fire alarms, does not imply that one is that cause of the other. Moynihan casually dismisses the fact that fires in abandoned buildings, cars and piles of trash are not always deliberately set and the fact that landlords and business owners commit arson as an insurance fraud. Instead, he labels most fires as arsons and the blame is on poor nonwhites.

What bothered me most about the reading was the mathematical model that was proposed. As an engineering student, I’m fairly familiar with mathematical models and what they set out to do. They’re meant to provide some insight into real-life situations using different mathematical concepts and other fun stuff. What they’re not meant to do is completely replace any actual research. Mathematical models do not stand on their own; they simply summarize and illustrate known phenomena. What Rand did with his proposed model was calculate a number, make some assumptions and then construct some relationship because “analyzing the real data would have been ‘too laborious.’” Models used to dictate Resource-allocation and Firehouse siting are not like my old physics lab reports; when lives are at stake, you really should avoid falsifying data to make your “findings” seem more reasonable or correct. Also, when your model is too difficult for a layperson to make sense of it, it really fails at being a proper model at all.

After doing a little further reading, its crazy how much of an impact the ideas of benign neglect and planned shrinkage had on the communities that were affected. Not only were entire neighborhoods destroyed, but research has also shown that planned shrinkage has played a role in the “rising number of violent deaths, deviant behaviors implicated in the spread of AIDS and the pattern of the AIDS outbreak itself” in the neighborhoods affected, all of which have been recognized to contribute to the plight of nonwhites in America.

Discussion Question: Is it ever ethical to use a mathematical model to analyze and predict solutions to social problems that are dynamic, as in they are not defined by concrete factors?

The Rand Fire Project was probably the most inhumane response to building abandonment that I have ever heard of. Letting your city burn down in order to “get money for new housing” is a disgusting idea, but it was popular amongst political leaders in the 1970s. During this time period there were many “plans” going into effect that were not good in the first place, and only got worse during the execution.

This reading had me concerned about the handling of governmental agencies and intellectual institutions. They all were aware of what the Rand Fire Project was and what it did to New York City, and other cities in the country, from the start. In the 1976 hearings about the fire service reductions, many politicians there knew about the atrocities that this service caused to their neighborhoods, and were still in its favor. Even the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development knew about it and defended it by citing the awards it received from professional societies. Hopefully, now the public is more keen to noticing when something is wrong and more vocal in acting against it.

Reducing the size of the fire department was supposed to just affect the poor communities. Accelerating the demise of poor neighborhoods opened up the opportunity to create a new and better city. This was a logical approach to those with power because they viewed the poor as destructive to themselves and to the city. And just like Robert Moses, they saw a physical problem in need of a physical solution. Not only was the physical city burnt down, the social ties were also burnt down. They didn’t see the deeper social ties that Jane Jacobs saw, which gives an identity to the city. Unfortunately, in this case the solution not only hurt the poor, it also hurt the neighborhoods that were doing better.

This is an important part of this city’s history that we should always keep in our minds. Plans like the Fire House Project should not ever come to effect again. The physical and social aspects of a city are linked to each other and we need to keep that in consideration when considering the future of New York City.

Discussion Question: What measures are there today to prevent such misinformation from spreading? How can we inform the poor without having too much bias?

Chapters two and three from, A Plague on Houses, written by Wallace D. and Wallace R., provides the history and reasoning behind the problem with fires that New York City had in the late 1900s. Chapter two begins by explaining the ideas behind benign neglect and planned shrinkage . The chapter also elaborates how those two ideas fueled the the amount of fires that occurred in New York City. Chapter three goes onto explaining how the fires affected New York City in regards to its populations, communities, and its outcomes.

Chapter two, with its ideas of benign neglect and planned shrinkage, brings up an age old argument that involves life and death: If a patient is terminally ill, would you pull the plug or let the patient die on his/her own?

Acting on the fact that a neighborhood, in its whole, is a living entity, benign neglect and planned shrinkage can be defined as:
Benign neglect – allowing the neighborhood to die out on its own while still providing life support.
Planned shrinkage – pulling the plug on a dying neighborhood.

Roger Starr’s planned shrinkage embodies the previous stated definition. Starr felt that if a neighborhood was going to die, it might as well die quickly and painlessly. The plan was when the neighborhood dies, a new thriving neighborhood can be born. This makes logical sense, except for the fact that there isn’t a painless way of ending a neighborhood. Pulling the plug isn’t ever painless. It might actually be more painful. In this case, it was definitely more painful seeing how  there was the constant spread of fires, abandonment of neighborhoods, deaths, and especially the negative impact planned shrinkage had on the people of New York City.

Discussion question: What would be the most painless way to have a neighborhood die out? When does planned shrinkage seem like a good idea?