History of Housing in New York City

Richard Plunz is professor of architecture and the director of the Earth Institute's Urban Design Lab at Columbia University, where he has also chaired the Division of Architecture and directed the Urban Design Program at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. His many books include The Urban Lifeworld: Formation, Perception, Representation (2001), After Shopping (2003), Eco-Gowanus: Urban Remediation by Design (2007), and Urban Climate Change Crossroads (2010).

• List of Illustrations Foreword, by Kenneth T. Jackson Preface: Dwelling Type and Social Change in the American Metropolis Acknowledgments 1. Early Precedents 2. Legislating the Tenement 3. Rich and Poor 4. Beyond the Tenement 5. The Garden Apartment 6. Aesthetics and Realities 7. Government Intervention 8. Pathology of Public Housing 9. New Directions 10. Entropies and Atrophies Epilogue: Endgames? Notes Bibliography Illustration Credits Index

A History of Housing in New York is an indispensable book, and not just for those interested specifically in housing in NYC. If your subject is the history of New York City or urban housing anywhere, Richard Plunz's book is a 'must read'. It provides an expert introduction to a touchstone New York issue, the supply and affordability of housing, and incisively surveys an inventive portfolio of solutions to dense, urban living. -- Hillary Ballon, New York University Richard Plunz's landmark history offers a critical overview of how the complex and often pioneering housing industry has developed in the great metropolis of New York City. His new preface and chapter, which cover the last 25 years, enable readers to understand how the current housing reality came into being and what the future might hold for it. New York City, Plunz explains, plays the role the American frontier had played in the American imagination in the nineteenth century, the opening of the door to possibility...it must continue to do so. -- Kenneth T. Jackson, Columbia University Plunz provides an erudite, revealing, and relentlessly engaging portrait of a great urban place and its people. One would think the recollection of so many cycles of high-mindedness, ruthless exploitation, and damned foolishness would only exacerbate the discouragement we feel in the face of the intractable housing problems of our times. Somehow, that is not the case, for one is more impressed by the energy and the ingenuity, and the funny mix of social vision and business acumen upon which New York has been so unsatisfactorily but magnificently built. -- Kent Barwick, President, The Municipal Art Society of New York