GAZETTE: Can you give us a little background on Logue?
cohen: Logue’s career in urban redevelopment began in the 1950s, in New Haven. He came to Boston in the 1960s, then he moved on to New York State when Gov. Nelson Rockefeller brought him to head a very powerful, innovative, state-level organization called the New York Urban Development Corporation (UDC). And Logue’s last big job was in the South Bronx. He was a powerful figure whose long career gave me the opportunity to look at a half century of both successful and failed efforts to revitalize American cities.
GAZETTE: He was a brilliant visionary, but he could be harsh with those who disagreed with him or those he didn’t feel were measuring up to his exacting standards. He had a strong sense of his own importance, but he was also devoted to diversity and helping those less fortunate live better lives. Can you say more about his complicated character?
cohen: That’s probably one of the most important points of the book. We miss a lot when we reduce the story to simply Robert Moses versus Jane Jacobs and assume the worst of people who worked to actively revitalize cities that were in terrible shape after World War II. Some urban redevelopers surely were politically corrupt and in the pockets of big business, but Logue wasn’t one of them. His goals were truly progressive. He aimed to bring the activism of the New Deal, which he admired tremendously, to the deep problems of American cities in the postwar period. He believed in empowering the federal government to use its resources and influence to assist cities in coping with the problems brought on by a decade of the Great Depression, followed by the war.
GAZETTE: Why was the period after World War II such an inflection point?
cohen: After World War II there was a terrible housing shortage in the United States, with hundreds of thousands of returning GIs, and many new families being formed. The federal government’s sponsorship of mortgage programs under the Federal Housing Administration and the G.I. Bill famously redlined many urban neighborhoods and encouraged white middle-class families to move into new suburban housing. So cities were not only suffering from deteriorating conditions, they were also grappling with the loss of many residents. In addition, cities that had prospered in the 19th century with industrialization were losing those industries — just as African Americans, desperate to leave the South and build new lives in the North, were arriving in the hopes of finding good industrial jobs. Contrary to many assumptions made about urban renewers, Logue really did have a desire to create cities that were more just and more equitable. He wanted to improve the quality of housing and he learned over time how to do it in ways that didn’t dislocate people. He also sought to create more interracial and mixed-income communities because he recognized that in the United States, where you live determines so many of your opportunities in life. He knew that access to good schools, good transportation, good services depends on whether you live in a community that has the political and social clout to demand and secure those benefits.
GAZETTE: Can you talk more about his work in Boston? In particular about Government Center. Many people today see it as a failure, but at the time many considered it groundbreaking.
cohen: I think that it was a flawed success. It was needed at the time because downtown was not drawing and keeping people in the city. The Yankee business elite for decades had avoided investing in Boston. Scollay Square, which Government Center replaced, was really not a vibrant part of the city. And residents and jobs were moving out — along the new Route 128, for example. So the city had to do something. The hope was for a government center that would bring together federal, state, county, and city agencies and create jobs in the heart of downtown, with spillover effects supporting more commerce and business. In the end, that was what happened. The number of people employed in the area went from approximately 6,000 to 25,000. What Logue did was to use federal dollars as leverage to get others to invest downtown, because he knew that government money alone wouldn’t be enough to turn the area around. I think that the city needed something like Government Center. I don’t think that taking down Scollay Square was a great loss, the way the destruction of the West End immigrant neighborhood had been, before Logue arrived in Boston. But I do think there were mistakes made in the actual design. The plaza just doesn’t work; it’s a very alienating kind of space. Interestingly, some of the historic buildings surrounding Government Center survived because Logue learned over time that it was important to create a city fabric that mixed the historic and the modern.