From NYTimes writer Roberta Brandes Gratz, an article about revitalizing the Upper West Side. Regarding the brownstones: "Yet where others saw risk, we saw opportunity: affordable housing, racial and economic diversity and a vision of a sustainable, vibrant community not yet on the urban demographer’s radar. [...] Most Upper West Side brownstones had been built in the late 1890’s for middle-class families but had been broken up into tiny apartments in the 1950’s and neglected since by absentee landlords. They were easily, if expensively, converted back to single-family or duplex dwellings." Regarding Lincoln Center: "The superblock created by Lincoln Center destroyed the entire neighborhood of San Juan Hill. [...] For example, there’s the tenacious myth that Lincoln Center was the catalyst for the Upper West Side’s rebirth. But if anything, Lincoln Center, with its forbidding plinth and bulky structures that turn their back on the city, was a symbol and cause of the decline of urban life." Full article here. (Photo credit: Fred Conrad.)