2014 Shaping the Future of New York Fridays: 11:00-1:45 Boylan Hall, 2231

Having taken economics, I’m used to hearing different arguments for why differing policies work better. Each side can show you really convincing supply and demand curves that make a lot of sense, and you often end up not sure which side of the fence makes more sense economically.

However, Stuckler and Basu depart from just academic hypothesis in their book. They provide the reader with real-life examples and natural experiments throughout history to prove their points. The style of the book makes for a very reassuring read in the information and ideas presented. The authors do a great job in providing substance and evidence to field which, at other times, leaves us wanting to know more.

I also think that the usage of real life people throughout the chapter helps to add a more human element to the book. All to often, economics dehumanizes in an attempt to study the science of money. Reframing our perspective on economics, especially when it concerns healthcare, is very valuable.

Josh Setton

As I went through the reading this week, I couldn’t help but think about Professor Braine’s comments when she posted the reading- that this is one of the rare cases where evil intent seems to be involved. While many damaging policies have been put into place over the years, for most of them, one can argue that they were not made with bad intent, bad rather error of judgement. In the case of planned shrinkage, on the other hand, is is very difficult to see any motives behind these actions besides for hurting a particular segment of the population.

Josh Setton

Going through the reading, one idea was stressed continually that I found to be quite interesting: the human aspect of the projects.

The developers of these various areas were quite good at building major centers and organizing large projects. Big highways, huge buildings – it makes sense that these projects would, at first glance, improve surrounding communities. Obviously, buying out residents and leaving them with little place to go is horrible, but the idea that these new communities would be nicer, with newly created low-income living areas for displaced people, is a very appealing one. So, where did it all go wrong?

Even more than failed promises to build new living places for most of the displaced persons, I think that the main problem was a failure to relate to these communities as people. People have relationships, sentiments and emotions that go beyond how wide their streets are. Community structure can be infinitely more important then civil engineering structure, and the failure to realize this is, I believe, the worst aspect of theses renewal projects. These project treated people like x’s and o’s on paper, are therein lies the biggest flaw of them.

Josh