Exemplars of Urban Living

Stuyvesant Town & Peter Cooper Village

Via The New York Sun, an icon of socialist central planning for the masses, Stuyvesant Town and for the more upscale masses, Peter Cooper Village, succumb to reality. For many decades, this huge complex, only slightly more appealing than vast the cinder block apartment complexes in the Soviet block was held up as a shinning example of urban living at its best. No need to state the obvious: apartments went to those with the best connections and it's stayed that way even to today.

Growing up, I remember the hoopla about the brave new world of urban living. Yet even my early memories as a child are of bleak, dark buildings and the kind of neglected parks found in most city neighborhoods.

Of course, decades of rent control ensured their deterioration and finally now, 70 years later, socialism being defunct, developers have moved in and residents must learn to deal with a world where their life style isn't subsidized by city taxpayers.

Those who can't or won't pay the new going rates will have to relocate. Perhaps then they'll learn how the downtrodden whose homes and neighborhoods were torn down to make room for them felt when they were tossed out.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of freeloaders.