Well, I think that title sums it up pretty succinctly. What I got out of today’s reading was that Amanda Burden is little more than the female, modern-day version of Robert Moses. Obsessed more with what the city looked like than what the city could provide for the average person living within it, Burden sought to create a haven for the ultra-wealthy–a group of which she, of course, was a member.

 

Before I discuss Burden’s actual urban vision, I’d like to point out the sort of person that she is. Frankly, I think it speaks a lot to who she is that a Google search of her name turns up a Vanity Fair article that does little more than accentuate her wealth as the third result (following only the standard Wikipedia article and her page on the Bloomberg Associates website). For all that Burden claims to have done all she could to escape the stigmatism of being no more than an Upper East Side socialite, she still lives that type of life, and that comes through in her method of urban planning, where everything must look fabulous.

This UES attitude is further reinforced by Burden’s requiring her projects to involve “starchitects” like the world-renowned Frank Gehry, even at the expense of running up the cost of a project well beyond what may have been necessary (Larson 140). Obviously it never hurt anyone to live in an aesthetically pleasing environment, but the city government is supposed to help it’s citizens; wouldn’t money spent on these starchitects have been put to much better use funding, say, schools or other public services?

Burden tries to shake her Moses-like disregard for people, but she never really manages it. In an interview with Urban Land Magazine in 2011, Burden opens by saying that cities aren’t about buildings, they’re about people. But as she tries to explain this in her next sentence, she goes on to talk about “how important well-designed, well-used public open spaces are to the economic and social well-being of cities” (Burden 0:13 – 0:22). She goes on to talk about bringing private investment into the city, and though maybe her intent is that such investments will benefit the city, she rarely mentions the actual people of the city again.

It doesn’t say good things about the city and its planning when the people considered most influential in urban planning have a regrettable tendency to forget the people for whom they are purportedly working. Sure, maybe Burden’s design ideas were based on Jane Jacobs’s ideas as Burden received them through the hands of William “Holly” Whyte, but I find it hard to believe that Burden’s motivations equaled Jacobs’s. Think back to the video we watched about the Harlem re-zoning. Did the woman we saw chairing those zoning meetings seem like the sort of person who was trying to help people or an economy? Sure, some people may benefit from the economic gains of Burden’s plans. But which people? The residents and small business owners of 125th Street? Or the corporate giants of Wall Street?

Burden is unconvincing in her regard for the people, much like the last urban planner to have as large an impact as her: Robert Moses.