Roosevelt Island’s Not A Utopia But An Experiment To Keep Middle Class In New York City Says RIOC Board Director

Responding to yesterday’s NY Times City Room blog post on Leslie Torres first day as RIOC President that described Roosevelt Island as:

… the East River urban experiment that never achieved its utopian ideals,…

RIOC Board Director David Kraut writes:

To state that Roosevelt Island has never achieved its utopian ideals is to make several assumptions. The original goal was not to create a utopia, but to find a way to keep the middle class however loosely defined in New York at a time when it was fleeing to the suburbs, leaving Manhattan to the rich and to the poor. In the years since, Manhattan has become richer and poorer and much less middling, while Roosevelt Island continues to search for ways to maintain a middle class existence within a few subway stops of midtown.

I wouldnt say were there yet, by any means, but I wouldnt use the word never: I would say, not yet.

Here’s a You Tube video of Roosevelt Island – An Island Place , showing what the Roosevelt Island Experiment was like for some of the first residents to move here in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.More on Roosevelt Island affordable and market rate housing from previous posts.