South Bronx Rising: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of an American City

Rating:
Summary: A Bronx Tear
Review: 'South Bronx Rising' pulls no punches and painstankingly charts the penultimate urban destruction of the South Bronx.In someone else's hands, this story that charts the downfall of what was once a bountiful hinterland north of Manhatten, could have got bogged down in accusations and boring political meanderings. Instead, the story of the utter deveastation of what was at one time the playground of the princes of Manhatten, comes alive with a depth of feeling and poignancy, only someone who got into the blood and guts of the people of the Bronx could have written.
Kudos to Jonnes for evoking the 'neighborhood.' For that is what permeates this story of the downslide of a dream.
The Bronx started out as an oasis for countless immigrants who clawed there way out of the lower Eastside tenemants of NYC. First the Irish and the Germans, then the Jews and Italians.
The Bronx, with its verdant parks, luxurious apartment buildings and vibrant neighbrhoods offered a safe haven for aspiring immigrants to do good by their children and offer them a better way of life. As these immigrants 'moved on up' to the middle class and further north, the next wave moved on in. As it had always done.
But by the early sixties, existing housing was growing old, plumbing and heating systems needed to be replaced, but the culture of rent control saw landlords not able to afford the renovations.Welfare housing was a temporary boon to the coiffers, but in the end, was the end of the South Bronx.

The destruction starts, and it is as harrowing in the descriptions as it is in the photos. Acres of housing are abandonned by landlords. Heat, hotwater, electricity become things of the past. Junkies rule the streets and begin literaaly tearing buildings apart as they scavange for whatever copper and piping they can find to sell to suport their habits. The landlords realise they can make more money by burning their properties than by selling them. And the South Bronx begins to burn. And Burn. Until it is no more than worthless acres of rubble.
Jonnes chronicles the steady downfall of the Bronx in many compassionate stories, but her hard hitting investigative jouranlistic traits shine through as well. You are left in no doubt that the politicos of the South Bronx definitly were fiddling as the Bronx was burning.
I was there. I grew up in the South Bronx. This book is as real as it gets.
The final chapters deal with the rise of the South Bronx, but one wonders, at what cost? --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.