In the great void that has been my absence from this site, I have read a grand total of two books.
The New York Nobody Knows: Walking 6,000 Miles in the City by William B. Helmreich (2013). An interesting idea put into practice by a sociology professor at CUNY – he attempted to walk every block in the city over 4 years. Some interesting encounters along the way and a description of how there is a real change in cultural dynamic and feel as you move from neighborhood to neighborhood. An interesting statistic is that the Jewish population in the five boroughs has decreased over time from 2 million to about 1.2 million.
Public Housing That Worked. The subtitle is New York in the Twentieth Century and the author is Nicholas Dagen Bloom (2008). As the title should suggest, the author believes that NYCHA’s version of public housing has been far more successful than in other cities because of the greater emphasis placed on implementing practices of competent property management. That is the case in spite of high-rise buildings (which are not ideal for a troubled and drug-addled population), political maneuvering by other city agencies that served to undermine the tenant selection process (and therefore the average tenant’s ability to pay rents), and the federal government’s decision over time to reduce support for public housing nationally. Far from perfect, but better than most.
