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How a Computer Formula, Big Ideas, and the Best of Intentions Burned Down New York City-and Determined the Future of Cities
Riverhead
June 2010
On Sale: May 27, 2010
336 pages
ISBN: 1594488983
EAN: 9781594488986
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
New York City, 1968. The RAND Corporation had presented an
alluring proposal to a city on the brink of economic
collapse: Using RAND's computer models, which had been
successfully implemented in high-level military operations,
the city could save millions of dollars by establishing more
efficient public services. The RAND boys were the best and
brightest, and bore all the sheen of modern American
success. New York City, on the other hand, seemed
old-fashioned, insular, and corrupt-and the new mayor was
eager for outside help, especially something as innovative
and infallible as "computer modeling." A deal was struck:
RAND would begin its first major civilian effort with the FDNY. Over the next decade-a time New York City firefighters would
refer to as "The War Years"-a series of fires swept through
the South Bronx, the Lower East Side, Harlem, and Brooklyn,
gutting whole neighborhoods, killing more than two thousand
people and displacing hundreds of thousands. Conventional
wisdom would blame arson, but these fires were the result of
something altogether different: the intentional withdrawal
of fire protection from the city's poorest neighborhoods-all
based on RAND's computer modeling systems. Despite the disastrous consequences, New York City in the
1970s set the template for how a modern city functions-both
literally, as RAND sold its computer models to cities across
the country, and systematically, as a new wave of
technocratic decision-making took hold, which persists to
this day. In The Fires, Joe Flood provides an X-ray of these
inner workings, using the dramatic story of a pair of
mayors, an ambitious fire commissioner, and an even more
ambitious think tank to illuminate the patterns and formulas
that are now inextricably woven into the very fabric of
contemporary urban life. The Fires is a must read for anyone
curious about how a modern city works.
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