[lbo-talk] my Bob Fitch tribute

[Chuck Grimes]

We talked endlessly about the role of Wall Street and the real estate elite 
in planning the city (themes he would put  between covers in The 
Assassination of New York, published by Verso in 1996). So many of the 
things that were attributed to anonymous global forces, like the 
deindustrialization of the city and its transformation into the prototype of 
the globally oriented post-industrial metropolis, were consciously guided by 
bankers, developers, and their hired hands. They used all the instruments of 
state power-subsidies, zoning laws, eminent domain-to get their way.

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This was done to San Francisco too. The plan was to get rid of the blue
collar work force that dominated the city, when I first saw it in 1966. It 
looked like a industrial city with some downtown finanical district places. 
Slow over the next twenty years they transformed the place...

CG

Yes, and good read.