Julia Vitullo Martin
The Archive
Sane environmental laws boost the economy, too
This week President Trump paused in his — justified — victory lap on jobs to attack the environmental legacy that in part helped power the nation’s prosperity. He assailed “the...
Drunk with power -- how Prohibition led to big government
If they think about Prohibition at all, most Americans probably accept Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter’s conclusion that it was a farce, a “ludicrous caricature of the reforming impulse,” an...
Iconic Rockefeller failed because he couldn't stop spending
Nelson Rockefeller, writes biographer Richard Norton Smith, was not a patient man. “For the most powerful member of the most powerful family in the most powerful nation on earth, time...
Why are boro presidents important? Jobs
New York City’s much-disparaged office of borough president, which has been repeatedly targeted for abolition, is barely understood by most residents.Yet it is immensely important on precisely the issue that...
Hell-icopters
Whichever side you take in New York City’s long-standing helicopter wars, one thing is true: The views from one flying over the city, in all its five-borough glory, are magnificent....
Made in NYC
Is New York's long, sad story of industrial decline opening a happier chapter? Once the top city for American manufacturing, New York saw its industrial jobs plummet from well over...
Union change or die
New York City's construc tion unions face a crisis that verges on "change or die." The good news is that where they need to compromise isn't so much wages or...
What brown did for us
The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York by Suleiman Osman Oxford University Press “Manhattan, the new Brooklyn?” asked Time Out New York...
Harlem globe trotter
Harlem is Nowhere A Journey to the Mecca of Black America by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts Little, Brown & Company “Do you think you’ll ever go home?” Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts was asked as...
City, slicker
The Encyclopedia of New York City Second Edition edited by Kenneth T. Jackson Yale University Press When terrorists flew two jets into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001,...
A new growth-killer
Opponents of development have come up with a new way to abuse the city's land marking laws: A landmarked building now may be not just a one-two punch against development,...
Saving Coney Island
Has Coney Island finally been saved from decades of dereliction? From the crowds mobbing the beach for the Fourth of July festivities you’d certainly think so. Coney’s beguiling combination of...
Has landmarking in New York gone too far?
In 1965, as pieces of New York history fell without mercy to the wrecking ball, Mayor Robert F. Wagner created the Landmarks Preservation Commission to stop the destruction. Controversial at...
Tribeca's civil war over PS 234
Tribeca is embroiled in a bitter neighborhood-school war that some residents say is jeopardizing its sense of community, as well as its future. It's a story repeated from time to...
Naked City
It’s an old story: As cities gentrify, educated urbanites come to prize what they regard as “authentic” urban life, says Brooklyn College Prof. Sharon Zukin, from aging buildings to art...
Time for town halls
Mayor Bloomberg announced in his inaugural speech on New Year's Day that now is a time for him to listen. "The building behind me is yours," he said about City...
Taking on the NYC projects
After years of little change at the top, New York’s largest landlord of rental housing — the New York City Housing Authority — is under new leadership. They are the...
NYC's recipe for going bust
How hostile is the city to its businesses? Consider the plight of Good Enough to Eat -- a renowned restaurant on Manhattan's West Side, that can't seem to reopen in...
Don't 'superfund' the Gowanus
WHO should clean up the Gowanus Canal? The city's been masterminding a series of reclamation projects since 2002 -- but now the federal Environmental Protection Agency is looking to designate...
Boulevard of dreams
This story of the Grand Concourse, which wends its four-and-a-half-mile way through the center of the West Bronx, is a sort of birthday present for the boulevard, which will celebrate...