ABSTRACT
Battery Park City provides an unparalleled view of New York City’s utopian longings. From the waterfront one can see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. And Battery Park City itself provides a certain insight into different unrealized, imagined futures. The history of the four billion dollar, ninety-two acre mixed-use development provides insight into the contradictory impulses that guide urban redevelopment. Originally proposed as a self-financing low-and middle-income neighborhood, it became a civic showpiece and playground of the rich. Tracing the production of this space illuminates changing assumptions about private and public and the meaning of the city.
