Modernist architecture has failed American cities.

From City-Journal:
Glazer compares the lively street life of the East Harlem of his childhood with the desolation of what eventually followed: streetscape-less towers in a park. In the 1960s, Chicago mayor Richard Daley, told of federal plans to build vertical hives, protested that people of all races preferred to live in two- and three-story walk-ups of the sort he’d grown up in. But he found himself overruled. Modernist architecture has failed American cities. The upshot was the massive Robert Taylor Homes, which became a synonym for social breakdown. All across the country, public housing towers, cut off from the ordinary street life of city neighborhoods, came to symbolize modernism’s failure.

and what is mayor bloomberg and Ratner advocating - streetscapelesss towers....but not in a park but a 'publicly accessible open space' I guess that's 'progress'.