Fordham Urban Law Center

As New York is recovering from the mega-storm and planning for the future, this seems like the perfect moment for Fordham Law School to create an urban law center, which will be run by Nestor Davidson.  Though I have lived outside of New York for twenty years now, I still recall the excitement I felt when I first moved to New York.  I thought then -- and still do -- that New York is an ideal place to study what law contributes to urban life and how it can improve life of those who live and work in cities.  This reminds me again of Jane Jacobs' wonderful book The Life and Death of Great American Cities, which I first read in college; it shaped my thinking about the role of individuals in improving cities, and it demonstrates how and why cities are places of innovation that drive economic and intellectual development.  Of course my interests also encompass New York's history -- and that reminds me of Betsy Blackmar's wonderful legal history of tenancy in New York in the nineteenth century, Manhattan for Rent.