New York City Housing Authority as Model and Anti-Model in the 1960s

The decades after World War II witnessed extensive development of public housing in New York City, and federal laws like the 1949 and 1954 Housing Acts closely linked the fate of local housing standards with national debates about redevelopment and renewal. It appeared New Yorkers were "getting down to business," reorganizing their city and clearing old, sub-standard units for new pristine blocks. The successes or failures of New York's public housing program would matter far beyond the five boroughs: in launching into the relatively uncharted territory of urban renewal, New York became famous - at least momentarily – not only nationally, but internationally as a forerunner in the redefinition of clearance, the exercise of eminent domain, and the restructuring of public housing finance. Urban planners from around the world studied, debated, and exported New York ideas and techniques, often through intergovernmental organizations like the Technical Assistance Administration, the Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance, and the United Nations Special Fund, or through bilateral agreements with US-AID or the Ford Foundation. Architects and planners from the developing world were particularly eager to import construction techniques and funding strategies, since cities like Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Djakarta, and Bangkok all faced severe blight and housing shortages, and since international aid dollars came conditionally. When the New York Savings Bank gave advice about how to structure mortgage guarantees, or when New York lawyer Charles Abrams suggested possible uses of eminent domain, Southeast Asian planners like Alan Choe (Singapore) and Fook Choong (Malaysia) listened closely and mined the New York experience for best practices. Not all of Gotham's "lessons" would resonate in predictable ways, however; this paper will examine the public housing and urban renewal practices that NYCHA attempted to project internationally, and the multifarious responses these received in the Southeast Asian context.