Detroit's population falls 25 percent in 10 years

BB, I wasn't talking about that, but I am sure you are correct. I don't know as much about that period in the 1960s, but I do know a bit about Robert Moses and the havoc he wreaked on the city. My example was DUMBO. DUMBO wasn't given Landmarks Preservation status until 2007. The development that was done there was largely done by then. It was a product of the 1990s and early 200s. Development still continues, but needing to go before a board for approval on any project has hampered some development, although a lot has been approved. I believe those commissions in this day and age create more problems than any good, particularly because they are frequently used by special interests and politicians for all the wrong reasons.

I believe the reason they designated DUMBO in 2007, was that it was primarily owned by one developer (that family really owns 90 percent of the neighborhood, the rest owned on the outskirts by the Jehovah's Witnesses), who increasingly has been the target of neighborhood activists. He had torn down a lot of decrepit buildings in favor of luxury co-ops and condos, rather than renovating the buildings to match their original character, and activists stepped in to stop him from taking down any more old buildings and to try to keep another Starbucks and women with poodles out. But my example (which might have been misplaced judging by how many people have had something to say) had nothing to do with Landmarks Preservation, which often hampers private development, because it creates too many hoops to jump through. At least in some neighborhoods of New York that has been the case.

It definitely serves a purpose in some places. For example, derwood mentioned Brooklyn Heights. It was the first place to receive that designation. It saved that neighborhood, which has some of the oldest houses in the country, and by requiring anything done to exteriors to match the original homes as they were built, it has kept the neighborhood as a time capsule and given it a unique character. I am not sure it serves the same purpose in many other neighborhoods, though. It's just another hoop to jump through.

In the case of the Heights, it was Robert Moses, and the messed up bureaucracy running NYC at the time that destroyed part of the neighborhood and almost eradicated it all. Moses was an autocrat who had free run in the 1950s to run expressways through whatever neighborhoods he wanted. He wreaked havoc on New York and destroyed some great old neighborhoods. He just had to deem them run down, and without any checks and balances on his power, he had free run to do whatever he wanted. He was also, by the way, the main force that pushed the Brooklyn Dodgers to LA, because he insisted that any new stadium had to be in Flushing Meadows when the team wanted it in Brooklyn. The only neighborhood that was able to stand up to Moses was Brooklyn Heights. His plan was to run the BQE right through the neighborhood, knock down some homes that dated to the early 1800s and split the neighborhood in two. It would have killed the place. The neighborhood formed an association, fought him successfully because they had a bit of clout, and forced a new plan that took the BQE along the water in that section underneath a promenade (which has great views) that was built. It was a decent compromise, although they did lose part of the neighborhood and Fulton Street was turned into Cadman Plaza with all the concrete around it, rather than the old stores that were once there. But for the rest of the neighborhood that survived, soon afterward, they became the first neighborhood protected by landmark preservation status in 1965.