Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon

Lynne B Sagalyn,

ISBN 10: 0262194627 / ISBN 13: 9780262194624

Published by MIT Press (MA) November 2001, 2001

About this Item

The spectacularly successful transformation of Times Square has become amodel for other cities. From its beginning as Longacre Square, Times Square'scommercialism, signage, cultural diversity, and social tolerance have been deeplyembedded in New York City's psyche. Its symbolic role guaranteed that any plan forits renewal would push the hot buttons of public controversy: free speech, property-taking through eminent domain, development density, tax subsidy, andhistoric preservation.In Times Square Roulette, Lynne Sagalyn debunks the myth of anovernight urban miracle performed by Disney and Mayor Giuliani, to tell the far morecomplex and commanding tale of a twenty-year process of public controversy, nonstoplitigation, and interminable delay. She tells how the troubled execution of theoriginal redevelopment plan provided a rare opportunity to rescript it. And timingwas all: the mid-1990s saw rising international corporate interest in the city as amecca for mass-market entertainment and synergistic merchandising. Sagalyn detailsthe complex relationship between planning and politics and the role of market forcesin shaping Times Square's redevelopment opportunities. She shows how policy waswedded to deal making and how persistent individuals and groups forgedboth. The compelling story of the politics, policies, and personalities that made Times Square's revitalization possible. Wrapped in Brodart dust jacket protector. Book has minor shelf wear along bottom edge.

Seller Inventory # 55799

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon
• Publisher: MIT Press (MA) November 2001
• Publication Date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262194627
• ISBN 13: 9780262194624
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Used - Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Architecture - Urban Planning

About this title

Synopsis

The author chronicles the recent remake of Manhattan's most famous district, revealing the complex series of political and economic relationships that made the dramatically successful overhaul possible.

Reviews

Lynne B. Sagalyn, director of the MBA real estate program at Columbia University's business school, explores the underpinnings of New York's concerted mid-1990s gentrification efforts in Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon. Alongside the usual suspects Giuliani, Disney, the ousted peep shows and porn venues Sagalyn places Koch, the Broadway Association, "maverick realtor" Irving Maidman, Frederic S. Papert and his not-for-profit 42nd Street Development Corp., and a host of other major and minor players in the continual plans for redeveloping Times Square. By the 1960s, '70s and '80s, the area had become a blatant symbol of the decline of urban America, a far cry from its glory days in the 1920s as the pinnacle of theatrical couture. On the other hand, when redevelopment plans threatened too drastic a face-lift, critics waxed nostalgic about "the symbolic soul of New York." The jumble of symbolisms, politics, policies and business plans characterizing 20th-century 42nd Street has never before been subject to such thorough and perspicacious scrutiny. 175 illus., 25 in color.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.