Roosevelt Island has faced one of the toughest political battles in New York City because of the wide criticism it received when city designer, Ed Logue, constructed the plan. Nobody would have ever imagined that one single neighborhood would be able to house people from many different backgrounds as well as people with varying income levels. This hesitance pushed Logue even further to show to New York and to the country that it was indeed possible, which he proudly succeeded in doing. Today, Roosevelt Island is physical proof that such a neighborhood could exist, as it is the one area in all of New York City that boasts such high levels of mixed-income and mixed-race persons.
The chart above illustrates a comparison between Roosevelt Island and other cities in New York City and other states based on racial and economic characteristics. In the first half displaying the pie charts, Roosevelt Island’s pie chart does not contain a percentage of 50% or higher, showing that there is no dominant race in that neighborhood. In the second half, Roosevelt Island’s lines reach about the 20% mark for each category, showing some equivalence between the categories of different incomes.
Roosevelt Island did not magically appear to have such data exist, there was a clear intent to create a distinct neighborhood in all of New York City that would be able to have different types of people co-exist and live together in one knitted community. Although today people may see it as something that came quite easy, since it is a small island and does not have a large population, it was actually quite a difficult feat for Logue. The struggles he faced with securing larger grants from the government and for gaining new investors to support such a risky project lasted awhile, but he knew that accomplishing such a goal would convey to the city and to the rest of the country that it is possible for diversified neighborhoods to exist, and successfully at that.
Logue’s strong leadership capabilities are what brought him to design such a plan and to execute it with a powerful foundation. He knew that in order for the project to go forward, he would need stable funding and a location perfect enough that the funding would be enough. His plan included building housing that would bring in lower, middle, and upper income families to live in, if possible, one building. But after proposing such a unique idea, the city was very hesitant because nobody thought that people of such varying incomes would even think about living next door to one another. As such, Logue, along with other architects such as Johnson and Burgee, designed separate building for the different income levels, but nonetheless designed them to be built side by side. It was important for Logue to focus on this community where someone could step walk outside their building and be able to directly communicate and live with someone from such a different background.
Citations:
Freemark, Yonah. U.S. Census. 2000. Data Charts. Web. New York.
Bermon, Sharon. Ed Logue, Who Conceived Roosevelt Island
And Served As Its Midwife, Is Dead at 78. 2000. Photograph. Web. New York.
Prudon, Theodore. Aerial View of Roosevelt Island. 2011. Photograph. Web. New York.
