A
web interview with Mike Wallace on GothamGazette.com
Read the interview.
Mike Wallace sets forth a bracingly optimistic program
for regenerating not just Ground Zero but the whole
metropolitan region. This mini-manifesto of fewer
than 100 5-by-7-inch pages calls for an all-out government-supported
program modeled after the sweeping initiatives of
Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. -- New York Times
Book Review
BLOOMBERG NEWS - JAN.
16, 2003
By Joe Mysak
I couldn't remember the last time I read a sentence
with the term "municipal bonds'' in a book sold
anywhere but the business section of a bookstore,
let alone one that advocates the creation of a new
bond-issuing authority. I asked Wallace if he had
gotten any reaction to his proposal from bankers.
Putting together a new bond authority and underwriting
a $10 billion issue would mean a payday of at least
$50 million. He said he hadn't. Maybe that's because
the bankers who put together municipal bond issues
haven't read ``A New Deal for New York.'' Or maybe
it's because they picked it up but didn't make it
to page 56, where Wallace outlines his proposal. Maybe
they didn't hear about his proposal, or his book,
at all. Maybe now they have....
Read
the whole article.
THE
NATION - JAN. 6, 2003
by Mary Campbell Gallagher
"Now, in A
New Deal for New York, MIke Wallce gives us a
high-spirited, old-style broadside, published just
a year after the September 11 attack and chock full
of ideas and inspiration for re-invigorating New York
City. By making New York's chronic economic conditions
acute, Wallace says,the tragedy helped us galvanize
the will to confront them. In fewer than 100 pages,
Wallace stirringly argues for his vision of a renewed
New York City....
Read
the whole article.
VICE
MAGAZINE - JAN. 2003
by Lisa Phillips
The author of Gotham: A History of New York City to
1898 is one of the few people from whom I want to
hear anything about September 11th. The whole idea
in his new book is that times of crisis in America
can bring amazing opportunities for renewal -- economically,
socially, and creatively. After a lively history of
the downtown area in the first section of this short
and easily read book, Wallace proposes a few different
ideas. His strategies take so much into account, covering
everything from new job opportunities, a revitalized
port, affordable housing, business real estate, and
recreational public spaces. And to silence any naysayers,
Wallace also shows us exactly how and where to spend
exactly what money to make it all happen. Mr. Governor,
Mr. Mayor -- even Mr. President -- please read this
book NOW.
THE
NEW YORK TIMES - JAN. 4, 2003
(excerpt)
by Frank Rich
. . . The beautiful plans for ground zero similarly
help us avoid dwelling on the reality that no grand
renewal is likely to happen there for years (short
of a federal-government-sponsored "New Deal for
New York," like the one proposed by the historian
Mike Wallace in his book of that title). As one downtown
landlord told Charles Bagli of The Times: "You
can't build that stuff. Ultimately, the market is
going to dictate what's needed and when it's needed."
You can't build the tallest building in the world
downtown when Lower Manhattan already has 17 million
square feet of vacant office space. The plans on view
at the Winter Garden are placebos. They're more compelling
as an exercise in group therapy than as a window into
the future. . . .
THE BERKSHIRE
EAGLE (LETTER FROM NEW YORK)
by Leonard Quart
Since I'm writing about city politics I wanted to
recommend a short book, "A New Deal for New York,"
written by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Mike Wallace,
author of "Gotham: A History of New York City
to 1898." The new book offers a plethora of proposals
for how to rebuild downtown Manhattan, and, more importantly,
how to revive the city as a whole. Many of the proposals
are imaginative, others are commonsensical, but what's
most interesting is Wallace's linking up his vision
of the future city with FDR's New Deal.
Read
the whole article.
DISTRICT COUNCIL
37 (website)
by Ken Nash
But while New York City is in crisis, the rest of
the country is also suffering, and federal action
is needed. Mr. Wallace argues that the country needs
a new New Deal, building on the best of the 1930s
efforts. The place to begin is here in New York City,
where so many of the ideas of the original New Deal
bubbled up and were implemented. This is a program
and an agenda that could excite not only Democrats
but even some moderate Republicans in other states
that are also hurting from the recession. Mr. Wallace
is a fountain of new ideas based on the best of the
progressive tradition.
Read
the whole article.
THE
NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS -- DEC. 19, 2002
by Jason Epstein
"This exhilarating, great-hearted book of a mere
99 pages, written by Mike Wallace, coathor of the
magisterial Gotham: A History of New York City
to 1898, is described with excessive modesty by
its author as compendium of ideas mostly floated by
others for reconstructing Lower Manhattan and energising
the city as a whole. But the synthesis of these ideas,
whatever their origin, and thus the force of the argument,
belongs entirely to Wallace, who also claims that
he wrote in haste and under pressure. But this is
not evident in his spare, conversational and vigorous
prose....
Read the whole article.
THE NEW YORK
TIMES -- DECEMBER 8, 2002
In ''A New Deal for New York,'' the urbanologist Mike
Wallace -- who with Edwin G. Burrows wrote ''Gotham,''
the best general history of New York City to date
-- sets forth a bracingly optimistic program for regenerating
not just Ground Zero but the whole metropolitan region.
This mini-manifesto of fewer than 100 5-by-7-inch
pages calls for an all-out government-supported program
modeled after the sweeping initiatives of Franklin
D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Acutely attuned to the economic
and political realities that determine the architecture
of cities, Wallace nonetheless sees no need to stifle
the humanitarian impulses that pulled America out
of the Great Depression. Here he urges that however
conservative the electorate may seem to have become
in recent decades, a similar spirit of shared purpose
can prevail against the very different perils we face
today.
GOTHAM
GAZETTE -- DEC. 11, 2002
The
book is Wallace's view of how to rebuild downtown
Manhattan after September 11th, as well as revive
the city as a whole, and indeed the entire nation.A
few of the opinions in Wallace's book are not widely
held: He would like all 16 acres of the World Trade
Center to "lie fallow, at least for a suitable
interim period." But many of the ideas in A New
Deal For New York are pulled together largely from
those being put forth by such "in-the-trenches
experts" (in Wallace's phrase) as the coalition
of post-9/11 rebuilding groups, which recently issued
nine principles or rebuilding....
Read
the whole article.
THE
NEW YORK SUN -- NOV. 13, 2002
In “A New Deal for New York,” Mike Wallace
... has written an extended essay dedicated to seeing
our current condition through 1930s lenses. For most
of America, the statism of the New Deal was the exception;
in New York, for much of the political class, at least,
it’s still the norm....
Read
the whole article.
THE
NEW REPUBLIC -- SEPT. 9, 2002
by Martin Filler
"By far the most cogent set of recommendations
advanced in the past year of intense debate over the
fate of Ground Zero is contained in a small book by
Mike Wallace called A New Deal for New York . . .
Wallace places the project within its larger regional
and national context, delineated with a breadth of
historical learning and socio-political insight not
seen since Lewis Mumford . . . This is just what we
need now, and Wallace has risen to the occasion splendidly.
. . ."
Read
the whole article.
NEW
YORK OBSERVER -- SEPT. 11, 2002
Tom McGeveran
"Mike Wallace, the Pulitzer Prize–winning
co-author of Gotham: A History of New York City to
1898, and arguably the city’s foremost public
intellectual on the subject of New York history, is
making the case for redevelopment on a human, rather
than a monumental, scale. Mr. Wallace’s new book
links downtown redevelopment to a call for a reinvigorated,
activist government—that is, the kind of government
that was born in New York in the 1920’s and 30’s."
Read the whole article.
TIME
OUT NEW YORK -- OCT. 3-10, 2002
Billie Cohen
In A New Deal for New York, Mike Wallace, the Pulitzer
Prize winning co-author of Gotham, fleshes out the
issues surrounding the rebuilding of Ground Zero and
what they mean for the rebirth of the city as a whole.
Wallace doesn't just focus on pie-in-the-sky visions:
he offers historical examples and a recipe for rallying
the political and financial resources needed to get
the job done. There's only one problem: Such a specific
book will feel very dated very soon. Still, as a freeze-frame
of a memorable moment, it has timeless values.
THE WASHINGTON POST -- OCT. 27, 2002
Michael Tomasky
. . . A New Deal for New York is Wallace's
prescription for what to do now. It is part analysis
and part polemic; and while it is more successful
as the former than as the latter, it serves as a valuable
guide to what the city can be if its political leaders
can summon the will -- and find the money -- to undertake
the kind of great public acts that New York, in its
heyday, accomplished with such stunning regularity.
Read
the whole article.
CITY LIMITS -- NOV. 2002
Much of what's in this slender prospectus has been
argued before, but no previous effort has matched
Wallace's sheer eloquence. Deftly and succinctly,
he identifies lower Manhattan's reconstruction as
an historic opportunity to transform the city's development
strategy, away from sucking up to financial conglomerates
and towards embracing an array of job-creating sectors.
A bonus: in reviewing the first New Deal,Wallace provides
a sneak preview of his next book on New York, coming
in a few years when he finishes his 20th-century follow-up
to the awesome Gotham.
PUBLISHERS
WEEKLY -- OCT. 28, 2002
The co-author of of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gotham:
A History of New York to 1898 here uses his extensive
knowledge of the city to guide a new vision of New
York after September 11. Wallace was in the public
library preparing a follow-up to Gotham when
the city was attacked. After following the many different
proposals for renewal, Wallace decided to lay them
against lessons from history. His premise is that
New York digests crisis to make itself stronger and
has done so repeatedly over its 400 year history.
In this essay-like monograph, published in conjunction
with the Gotham Center for New York City History,
Wallace sees a revitalized port, improved mass transit,
and more affordable housing as essential goals, and
points out that previous accomplishments of urban
planning were on a much greater scale than will be
necessary to rebuild downtown: the 1930s New Deal,
for example, was responsible for building innumerable
health clinics, libraries, educational facilities,
homeless shelters, courthouses, firehouses, police
stations, LaGuardia Airport, the FDR Drive, and the
Holland and Lincoln Tunnels. Beacuse the present budget
crisis is no worse than the depression, Wallace sees
no reason why the remewal in this century should not
be as progressive as it was in the last, since New
York history has always shown that "the oppposite
side of disaster is opportunity."
ARTHUR
SCHLESINGER, JR.
"A New Deal for New York
is lively, acute, and packed with usable information.
Everyone interested in the future of our town should
read Mike Wallace's book."
JAMES
K. GALBRAITH*
"A New Deal for New York is a glorious effort
-- rich, imaginative, sensible, and necessary. Above
all it is sane. It deserves a huge audience."
* Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business
Relations at the University of Texas at Austin
THOMAS
KESSNER*
"A fantastic ride! A New Deal for New York is inspiring,
thought-provoking and always a joy to read."
* author of Fiorello LaGuardia
and the Making of Modern New York
