Word: whyte
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...Whyte puts his faith in something he calls "the impulse of the center," which animates his vision of the teeming urban core. "You see it at cocktail parties," he says, "the phenomenon where people move toward the center. It is an instinct to be in a position of maximum choice...
...other hand, Whyte contends, the heralded corporate exodus to the suburbs has produced minimal choice. "The new suburban headquarters," he declares, "say, 'By God, if those bastards from New York come and try to storm our ramparts, we'll pour boiling water on them.' " He claims these suburban offices are such lonely places that consultants have to be imported as visitors. "One guy said, 'You've missed an important point. It is true no one comes out to see us. But when we go into town, we're much more careful, and we schedule ourselves much more efficiently than otherwise...
...Whyte has detected what may be a selfish motive behind the suburban corporate shift. He tracked 38 companies that left New York City over a ten- year period and discovered that 31 of them had relocated to within eight miles of the home of their chief executive officer. "I take that at face value," he says deadpan...
...Whyte also claims that gentrification, one of the symbols of renewed urban vitality, is not the social evil for displaced people it has been made out to be. The real culprit, he contends, is the government decision not to build more housing. "People think you have a nice Italian family, and then you have these peace-eating liberals who push them out. Well, that's not the way it works," Whyte argues. "By and large, many steps have been taking place before the so-called gentrifiers move in. They do not buy from the nice ethnic family and kick them...
...Whyte is noticeably quiet about the crime, dirt, awful schools and general corrosiveness that drive people out of cities in the first place. One urban expert says Whyte romanticizes a city that no longer exists -- "the city E.B. White wrote about in 1946, where you could leave the Stork Club at 2 a.m. and take the subway home." Whyte concedes that he has no plan to solve the litany of urban problems, but he denies he is a dreamer. "I am an anti-Utopian," he says. "We've got a lot of problems in New York that are not going...