The Fires
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- Synopsis
- The disastrous story of how a computer program burned down America's greatest city-and forever changed the way the modern city works. The RAND Corporation had an alluring proposal for a city on the brink of economic collapse: using their computer models-which had been developed for and successfully implemented in military operations -New York City could save millions of dollars by streamlining public services. The RAND boys were the best and brightest, and bore all the sheen of postÂwar American success. Meanwhile, New York City seemed old-fashioned, insular, and corrupt-and the new mayor was eager for outside help, especially something as innovative and infallible as "computer modeling. " A deal was struck: RAND would begin their first civilian effort with the FDNY. Throughout the 1970s, a series of fires swept through the South Bronx, the Lower East Side, Harlem, and Brooklyn, displacing more than six hundred thousand people and killing over twenty-five hundred citizens and hundreds of firefighters. Conventional wisdom would blame arson, but fire investigators found no uptick in the number of "suspicious" fires. This was the result of something altogether different: the intentional withdrawal of fire protection from the city's poorest neighborhoods-all based on RAND's computer-modeling techniques. The Firestells the story of how the good intentions of an ambitious, working-class fire chief, a charismatic mayor and his wonkish successor, and the RAND Corporation went so disastrously wrong- and reveals how RAND's formulas were inextricably woven into the fabric of the late twentieth- and twenty-firstÂcentury city. RAND sold their computer models to cities across the country, and the very same system is still used by the FDNY to allocate resources. At a time when our country faces an economic climate not seen since the 1970s, and looks for new solutions, new heroes, and new cityscapes, The Firescould not be a more salient book.
- Copyright:
- 2010
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- ISBN-13:
- 9781101187203
- Publisher:
- PENGUIN group
- Date of Addition:
- 04/24/14
- Copyrighted By:
- Joe Flood
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Nonfiction, Politics and Government
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.