Bronx Ecology: Blueprint for a New Environmentalism

Rating:
Summary: I'm Right and Everyone Else is Too Stupid and Too Corrupt
Review: This was a painful read for me. I had high hopes that Heshkowitz had learned something valuable to share with the rest of us. Instead he gives us his pontification and a virtual blame-fest for his failure to carry through execution of this project.

In this telling everyone involved is faulted except the author. Yet in the estimation of many of those receiving the blame, the project was poorly conceived from the start, the author was deaf to suggestions and naive in his understanding of urban and paper industry economics (to say nothing of politics, culture, logistics and technology). Are any of these views fairly presented? Do we actually get a "Blueprint for a New Evironmentalism?" No and no.

Consider this test of clear thinking: You need to build a gigantic, complex heavy manufacturing facility, a paper mill, for the Bronx. Whom do you hire to design it? Answer: Maya Lin, designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. And it gets worse.

Hershkowitz tells us that Mayor Giuliani was among those to blame for finally hammering the death blow to this project. The Mayor should be commended for having the clear vision to cut our losses before this turkey ate our lunch.

I have read other books on failed projects (most recently Project Orion by Dyson - highly recommended) and battles (Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy by McNamara) that were enlightening, because we learn how the leaders' went wrong from their own introspections. These can help the world. Here we just get lectured on how the author was and is right and the rest of us are wrong. OK, author, so why is there no paper mill in the Bronx?

It takes much more than a dream, self-promotion and some fuzzy ideas to achieve such a goal. It takes understanding of others' interests and needs and a willingness to learn.