Big Apple Circus

NEW YORK: THE POLITICS OF URBAN REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT by Michael N. Danielson and Jameson W. Doig '54 University of California Press. 1982: 347 pp.. $27.50. cloth

This is an ambitious book which focuses on a challenging policy issue: To what extent do the actions of governmental organizations have a significant independent influence on urban development?

More than two decades ago, Raymond Vernon, Robert C. Wood, and a group of colleagues conducted a landmark series of studies of the New York metropolitan area which indicated that public programs and policies were of little consequence in shap- ing the region's growth. During more re- cent years, other observers such as Robert Caro and Theodore Kheel have argued that powerful governmental agencies or officials the New York Port Authority and Robert Moses for example have exercised overwhelming influence on patterns of regional development.

Michael Danielson and Jameson Doig, both professors at Princeton, have now revisited the New York region via a series of perceptive case studies which lead to a more sophisticated set of conclusions about the dynamics of metropolitan development. According to their analysis, development and redevelopment trends are characterized by a continuum of diverse interrelationships between a wide variety of governmental and private participants in decision-making.

At one end of this continuum, governmental officials merely ratify decisions which have already been made in the pfivate marketplace, such as allocating vacant land to meet the specifications of develop ers. In a middle range of policy decisionsgovernmental units play a more aggressive role by focusing private market demands, or by attempting to modify these demands through such mechanisms as restrictive zoning ordinances which suburban municipalities may use in an effort to prevent the construction of moderately priced, sinale-family housing. At the opposite end of the continuum, governmental actions can play a critical role in initiating significant patterns of regional development through such major projects as the Lincoln Center complex, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, and the World Trade Center.

Although Danielson and Doig concentrate their study on the New York region the most complex metropolis in North America with almost 2200 independent units of local government their findings clarify the diverse range of interrelationships between public and private groups that have influenced the development of other metropolitan areas that make up our modern urban society. As a result, this book is of significant interest to readers who are concerned about problems of regional planning, economic development, and other urban public policies either within the New York region or beyond the confines of the Big Apple alone.

Frank Smallwood, the Orvil Dryfoos Professorof Public Affairs, has recently been named thefirst director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Centerfor the Social Sciences.