Alumni at Pratt: Ron Shiffman

ALUMNI AT PRATT:

Ron Shiffman

Photo: Carlos Rodriguez Estevez

Ron Shiffman has been the consummate student, and professor at Pratt, since finishing his undergrad in architecture and then M.S. in City and Regional Planning in 1965. His work in the field of planning, which he began while still a graduate student, has taken him through indelible historic moments in the evolution of planning in New York City; from urban renewal to the rise of community planning, and the navigation of the politics of advocacy.

The documentation of the more than 50 years of this work, which we’ve all seen collected in the migrating stacks of file boxes in 406, has now been donated to the Brooklyn Historical Society, where it will be archived as part of history. In the following, he speaks to just a few of the experiences during his graduate studies that shaped the foundation for these years.

THEN by Jay Skardis [CRP]

Jay Skardis: You graduated from one of the first cohorts of the CRP program in 1965. What was the program like then?

Ron Shiffman: It was not too dissimilar from now. It was a studio oriented program. It basically started my involvement in planning. I was offered a job in November of ‘63, on the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I had interviewed with George Raymond who was Chair of the department who had taken on a job to do a study of Bedford-Stuyvesant.

I didn’t start until late in the Spring of ‘64, when I became the field director of what was a study for a group called Church Community Services. It was a group in Bedford-Stuyvesant that had been concerned about parishioners moving out of the area to the integrating suburbs. They wanted to create a healthier community in a way that people would want to stay rather than just leave.

They had come up with ways of addressing the housing problem, among others, and went to the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation to ask them for assistance. And Rockefeller had, in about late ‘62 or ’63, given Pratt a grant which came out of a controversy that Pratt was involved in-which I should have began with- A Pratt studio had done a plan for an area called Dare, a Downtown Area Renewal Effort (not done by my class, but was done a year or two earlier). It’s what we now call Boerum Hill. And that downtown area renewal effort came up with a proposal for substantial new development within the community with a significant amount of housing to be retained, more than most urban renewal plans-but it was still an urban renewal plan. Smith Street and Court Street were streets that were part of it. The area was seeing an out-migration of white families, an in-migration of Latino families, and a significant number of African Americans who were moved into Gowanus Housing. And so people were afraid that the area would become abandoned, like East New York was becoming. It was still before the mass evacuation of the city, but you began seeing people moving out of New York to the suburbs and a whole bunch of things were all coming together that led to out-migration, particularly of the white population in the early 60’s.

JS: And this was all at the time that the Pratt Center began?

RS: Well, what happened was opposition grew to the Pratt plan. George Raymond was pushing for the Pratt plan and wanted the City to adopt it. But there were two people who opposed it. One of them was Elliot Willensky, who wrote the classic AIA ‘Guide to New York Buildings’, and the other was Jane Jacobs. And they defeated the plan. George Raymond was upset, and felt people didn’t know enough about housing and urban renewal plans.

So then Pratt got a grant to educate communities about housing and urban renewal. But then George made the mistake of hiring me to run this study of Bedford-Stuyvesant. He was a great teacher. We started working in Bedford-Stuyvesant and started working with a group there, and out of that, the template for what actually became the Pratt Center was formed.

That church group was for a short time attacked by some local residents for not really addressing the needs of all of the folks who lived there. And the community was rightly suspect of Pratt, a white institution, and what they were going to be doing in the community. And so, after about two or three very contentious meetings, we started working with the groups that were attacking us. We did that in a way that didn’t alienate the group that initially invited us in, but eventually enabled us to continue to stay there-until this day.

JS: And was the coalition that came out of that the Bedford- Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation [the first community development corporation in the country]?

RS: That gave birth to Bedford- Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation. It was originally Bedford-Stuyvesant Renewal and Rehabilitation Corporation. There was a split in the group. Basically, an accusation that the group was nominated by the patriarchy. We sided with the matriarchy. They lost out, and eventually they came back and started working with the Bed-Stuy Restoration. So it continued one group that split apart and came back together about four years later, and continued working with all sides.

JS: So you come together and try to see a situation from all angles? Do you think this was a main influence in your approach to planning?

RS: What really motivated me and a number of others at that time was the fact that ‘64 and ‘65 were a very important period in a lot of people’s lives. It was the height of the Civil Rights Movement, the growth of the anti-war movement, with a real debate going on in educational institutions. In other words, what should the role be of the professional in our society? Schools of architecture were teaching you how to design beach houses, and yet we’d look around the neighborhood as see poverty, we saw buildings declining. Schools of planning were teaching how to work for the powerful, the Mayors, for civic organizations.

Some of us began to say, how do we really begin to represent the needs of the poor? Paul and Linda Davidoff later wrote a seminal piece, titled

‘Advocacy and Pluralism.’ Paul was a friend. And when he was writing he would say that we were ‘advocate planners’, we were representing the poor people within Bedford-Stuyvesant who never had access, or a voice.

We entered into, in many cases, what was considered and adversarial relationship with the City. What we were trying to do was balance that dialogue. We didn’t try to speak for the people, but were trying to help them articulate what they wanted to say, and how they could achieve it. And what were the alternatives? Too often participation is looked at as just talking to people to see what they want, and tell them how they can achieve it. Rather than knowing that there are different pathways to achieve what they want and that the process is just as important as the product. And so the idea was to work with people in such a way as to enable them to make informed decisions based on alternatives that were available to them.

Ron Shiffman’s Rolodex: 50 years of contacts in planning.

Photo: Jay Skardis.

NOW by Kristin Brown [UPM]

With the 2018 Mid-Term elections nearing, I sat down with Ron Shiffman to look back at the Democracy, Equity and Public Space Lecture series that spent two semesters covering the current Administration. As the Graduate Assistant to the class for the Spring ’18 series, I was able to work closely with Ron as he curated a panel of guests that addressed topics such as: Tax Laws, Environmentalism, Infrastructure and how to create an agenda that moves people forward through the often murky waters of the Presidency. At one point Ron looked at me and said that never in all of his time of activism did he see such a divisive atmosphere in this country and it truly worried him. You could see it in his eyes. This was a lot to take on when one considers how fully and deeply Ron’s activist roots go.

Kristin Brown: You decided to focus the Spring 2017 Lecture Series on the election and resulting Administration. Can you tell me more about that?

RS: In 2017 we decided to focus on the election because there was a great deal of anxiety – in fact, I think it was subtitled “The Age of Anxiety” – we really didn’t know what was coming. Trump may have been unknown to the country, he was not unknown to some of us in New York. A lot of his work and what he did, dates back to the 70’s.

I met him (Trump) a couple of times while I was on the City Planning Commission. He was very erratic back then and had already been showing signs of being a racist and xenophobe. So when he got elected President, not only was the campaign an indication of who he would become, but also the history behind him.

People who believed in democracy and free press and an integrated society were all concerned, including, I think, a great number of people in the Republican party and the Conservative side. Many of these people I have disagreed with over the years, but shared a set of values and goals such as freedom of the press and a respect for the checks and balances system. Those were perceived to be under threat and unfortunately our worst perceptions have become a reality. That lead to an idea to say no and resist, but to figure out a way, or start a dialogue about an alternative or vision we want to espouse. At the same time build alliances with those that may not share all of our objectives, but a share a level of support for the basic institutions that make democracy work.

KB: You say that you are more pessimistic at this time, than your normal optimistic view… let’s talk more about what is fueling your pessimism but aiding your optimism.

RS: Well I am very concerned that if we don’t exert our voices, and sort of translate those voices into political action and votes, and win back the House, that we will not have the kinds of check and balances on this administration going forward. The attacks on the press – which I have never seen as sustained as they are today, become part and parcel of what Americans expect. I think there always has to be skepticism about some of our institutions there has to be a healthy respect and questioning of them. We have a multiplicity of invasion on our norms, one of them is the self-dealing of the family and the connections the President has in development and international relations.

The manipulation of these dealings and of the social media goes hand in hand and raises substantive questions about where this country is going. We were never perfect, but we always strived to be better and now that seems to be reversed. The optimist in me says we are going to win the elections, but I want to run scared until we do.

When I see the discussions I had with the students of the lecture series, and when I see the students around here, that is when I get optimistic. That is why I come to campus a lot.

KB: How did you see the Spring lecture series help with your concerns?

RS: We needed to begin a dialogue about how we start the conversation around income disparities and the discussion itself has hopefully had a ripple effect that will eventually take root in different places, like throwing seeds out.

The lecture then turned to environmental justice issues and we were able to inform a broader audience, who had not heard, particularly, from people of color people and what was happening in their communities.

The third lecture probably had the most conservative group there, talking about infrastructure that included social and physical elements. It had an impact raising the issue of how we deal with infrastructure in a different way.

The last was, I thought, probably one of the best that we had and it sorted of wrapped up a lot of the other feelings that were in the previous lectures. I think the key is going to be September and October of this year and how we roll out a way of getting a couple of Congressional people from New York elected and keeping what we do have. Also sharing it with networks we do have and the rest of the country. Part of it is the connections we make through different national organizations. The idea here is to build momentum for people, particularly people of color, lowincome people, and young people to come out and vote. Maybe we should work with other universities around the country to vote, particularly with programs that deal with urbanism. We need to convert resistance into something substantive, so that you are not addressing fears, but address their aspirations.

KB: You mentioned earlier that we needed to have these conversations amongst ourselves first. It seems like we need to be on the same page and to be organized going forward because if we aren’t, it can be more detrimental than saying or doing nothing at all. Can you elaborate on that?

RS: We need to have a vision. We at least have to know what direction we are going. I have two perspectives on this that sometimes I wrestle on within myself. One is that I do strongly believe because we don’t address the issues that are raised by people of color, low-income people, people that have been disenfranchised, that they recede and don’t participate. So I think it is really important that we raise that. At the same time, I do believe that we can’t be so pristine and so absorbed, that we can’t compromise in order to win. I think we need to find a way to speak so that we are bringing in the suburbanite, as well as the radical who is struggling. We need to find somebody that can speak to both and we need to have an agenda that speaks to both.

That is the way we get around. It’s the connections. You branch out and it multiplies very quickly.