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alexisrt's review against another edition
4.0
"Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning."
Howard Cosell never said this in 1977, but the Bronx surely burned. I read, before, that the fires of 1970s New York were an arson plot, designed to burn out tenants and get rid of unprofitable buildings. Flood convincingly demonstrates that this was largely not the case—most buldings were not burned by arson, and the arson that did occur was largely buildings that had already been abandoned. Instead, the fires were the culmination of a long series of events, largely tied to changes in New York politics and the use of centralized planning and root analysis.
There is an enormous amount of information in this book, most of which is not about the fires themselves. That was slightly disappointing, as I would have been interested to read more about the fires and their effects. Flood doesn't even get to the fires until page 172, and spends the first half-plus of the book setting up his chess pieces. There's far too much to summarize: The tension between Tammany Hall's machine and would be reformers; Mayor Lindsay, who campaigned as one of those reformers after a particularly corrupt stretch; Fire Chief and later Commissioner Joe O'Hagan, who is determined to modernize the department; and the social changes of the 1960s.
When discussing the history of New York and the consequences of urban planning, there's a tendency, which Flood sometimes falls prey to, to romanticize the days of Tammany Hall and the chaos of the slums. Tammany was a corrupt organization that harmed as many as it helped, and as New York diversified, it maintained its Irish-Italian base, closing out Black and Puerto Rican politicians. There's solid reasons that reform mayors have been periodically elected, especially Fiorello LaGuardia. The city's elite made catastrophic decisions to de-industrialize early, to remove working class neighborhoods, and to treat ordinary New Yorkers as chess pieces that could be moved at will. But we need to remember that the old neighborhoods (that my grandparents grew up in) were not all lovely places, and the street ballet that Jane Jacobs memorably described is one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city and has been for decades. Flood does, to his credit, acknowledge Tammany's corruption, but it would be better to appreciate its street level organization without liking the organization that created it. By the late 1960s, city politicians, of both parties and all races, were willing to sell out their constituents, making them ineffective counterweights to bad planning.
Flood is on sure ground when he examines the specific flaws of root analysis. Data is useful (the initial CompStat program grew out of a real need, as he points out), but a model is only as good as the data it's given. RAND used data that didn't correlate well to outcomes, and then politicians manipulated it. The result was that units in the busiest areas were cut, making the fires harder and harder to combat. When fiscal crisis hit in 1975, O'Hagan's efficiency bit him: his department had no fat to cut.
This is, overall, a great read about how the pieces of history combined to create a crisis that destroyed large swathes of NYC and displaced hundreds of thousands. Flood wrote this at the tail end of the Bloomberg administration, which was infamous for its centralized, data focused approach, and I can't help but think that this is meant as a retort. In the end, however, we should not view it as a simple binary choice. Planning is useful. Data, when used carefully and thoughtfully, is important: our instincts can fail us. But the story of the fires warns us about the consequences of a root analysis that's done by people with little street level familiarity; who treat a social problem as a mathematical abstraction.
Howard Cosell never said this in 1977, but the Bronx surely burned. I read, before, that the fires of 1970s New York were an arson plot, designed to burn out tenants and get rid of unprofitable buildings. Flood convincingly demonstrates that this was largely not the case—most buldings were not burned by arson, and the arson that did occur was largely buildings that had already been abandoned. Instead, the fires were the culmination of a long series of events, largely tied to changes in New York politics and the use of centralized planning and root analysis.
There is an enormous amount of information in this book, most of which is not about the fires themselves. That was slightly disappointing, as I would have been interested to read more about the fires and their effects. Flood doesn't even get to the fires until page 172, and spends the first half-plus of the book setting up his chess pieces. There's far too much to summarize: The tension between Tammany Hall's machine and would be reformers; Mayor Lindsay, who campaigned as one of those reformers after a particularly corrupt stretch; Fire Chief and later Commissioner Joe O'Hagan, who is determined to modernize the department; and the social changes of the 1960s.
When discussing the history of New York and the consequences of urban planning, there's a tendency, which Flood sometimes falls prey to, to romanticize the days of Tammany Hall and the chaos of the slums. Tammany was a corrupt organization that harmed as many as it helped, and as New York diversified, it maintained its Irish-Italian base, closing out Black and Puerto Rican politicians. There's solid reasons that reform mayors have been periodically elected, especially Fiorello LaGuardia. The city's elite made catastrophic decisions to de-industrialize early, to remove working class neighborhoods, and to treat ordinary New Yorkers as chess pieces that could be moved at will. But we need to remember that the old neighborhoods (that my grandparents grew up in) were not all lovely places, and the street ballet that Jane Jacobs memorably described is one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city and has been for decades. Flood does, to his credit, acknowledge Tammany's corruption, but it would be better to appreciate its street level organization without liking the organization that created it. By the late 1960s, city politicians, of both parties and all races, were willing to sell out their constituents, making them ineffective counterweights to bad planning.
Flood is on sure ground when he examines the specific flaws of root analysis. Data is useful (the initial CompStat program grew out of a real need, as he points out), but a model is only as good as the data it's given. RAND used data that didn't correlate well to outcomes, and then politicians manipulated it. The result was that units in the busiest areas were cut, making the fires harder and harder to combat. When fiscal crisis hit in 1975, O'Hagan's efficiency bit him: his department had no fat to cut.
This is, overall, a great read about how the pieces of history combined to create a crisis that destroyed large swathes of NYC and displaced hundreds of thousands. Flood wrote this at the tail end of the Bloomberg administration, which was infamous for its centralized, data focused approach, and I can't help but think that this is meant as a retort. In the end, however, we should not view it as a simple binary choice. Planning is useful. Data, when used carefully and thoughtfully, is important: our instincts can fail us. But the story of the fires warns us about the consequences of a root analysis that's done by people with little street level familiarity; who treat a social problem as a mathematical abstraction.
tonydecember's review against another edition
4.0
U.S. government research and development computer modeling -- spun off as the RAND Corporation think tank -- drives military prowess and Robert McNamara's Vietnam War, then intervenes at Ford Motor Co., and on those "successes" ends up promulgating changes in the city government of New York with the fire department as a test case.
Except the changes rammed through city hall subverted the common sense intelligence of those on the front-lines -- specifically, the firemen and NYC's most progressive commissioner/chief, John O'Hagan -- and helped devolve the (arguably) greatest city in the world into a disintegrating, dangerous, fire-ravaged, feared "city in crisis" that was nearly lost to myopic bureaucracy.
In this well-researched, rich-in-details book by the young and wonderfully talented Joe Flood ((http://joe-flood.com/reviewsandmedia)), a post-war history is revealed of a city struggling through financial bungles, political gamesmanship and racial rifts in the '60s and '70s.
Of all the books I've read in the past several months, this is a standout. It is not only about the fires of the South Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan's Lower East Side and Harlem, and how poor neighborhoods were allowed to burn down through practically purposeful neglect, but also about the history of the city's dysfunction -- beginning with the corrupt Tammany Hall and political "clubhouses," and through to the political subversion of fire codes that allowed deathtraps such as the World Trade Center towers to exist -- and how an experiment in social and civil engineering based on flawed assumptions and bad mathematical models was exported to cities across the country.
If you thought NYC was being torched by arsonists at every turn during those years, this book will give you perspective on what was really behind the city that burned.
Includes a serviceable history of the tenures of Mayors La Guardia, Lindsey and Beame.
Except the changes rammed through city hall subverted the common sense intelligence of those on the front-lines -- specifically, the firemen and NYC's most progressive commissioner/chief, John O'Hagan -- and helped devolve the (arguably) greatest city in the world into a disintegrating, dangerous, fire-ravaged, feared "city in crisis" that was nearly lost to myopic bureaucracy.
In this well-researched, rich-in-details book by the young and wonderfully talented Joe Flood ((http://joe-flood.com/reviewsandmedia)), a post-war history is revealed of a city struggling through financial bungles, political gamesmanship and racial rifts in the '60s and '70s.
Of all the books I've read in the past several months, this is a standout. It is not only about the fires of the South Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan's Lower East Side and Harlem, and how poor neighborhoods were allowed to burn down through practically purposeful neglect, but also about the history of the city's dysfunction -- beginning with the corrupt Tammany Hall and political "clubhouses," and through to the political subversion of fire codes that allowed deathtraps such as the World Trade Center towers to exist -- and how an experiment in social and civil engineering based on flawed assumptions and bad mathematical models was exported to cities across the country.
If you thought NYC was being torched by arsonists at every turn during those years, this book will give you perspective on what was really behind the city that burned.
Includes a serviceable history of the tenures of Mayors La Guardia, Lindsey and Beame.
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