Ed Logue's passing last week removed one of a small band of pioneers in housing, education and community planning.  He probably received more citations of excellence in urban affairs from the U.S. Conference of Mayors to architectural, university and professional organizations than any of his contemporaries.  He was the leading advocate of the responsibility of public policy to build affordable housing that the market had forgotten.

He was, even at his height, a giant in urban innovation.  He was also a good friend as well as an unusually effective leader in confronting the nation's response to the urban crisis.  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., first introduced me to him four decades ago.  He was a successful young lawyer in Boston, but had run across Lincoln Steffens' Shame of the Cities, which at the time I was preparing for a new edition.  That book was his epiphany and gyroscope for his long, productive career that took him to Boston, New York, New Haven, Philadelphia and dozens of cities overseas.

Roosevelt Island was always closest to his heart and he loved to bask in its international reputation as the most successful "New Town" anywhere.  Present Islanders should appreciate their paternity.  He kept abreast of the Island's development over the years until his death.  He considered Dr. Jerome Blue's autocratic behavior and the attempt to privatize Rivercross as mindless contaminations of a wonderfully successful experiment in affordable community living.

Richard C. Wade

...and Common Bonds

Ed Logue's dream for this unique community is a reminder of all we hold in common.  It's food for thought at a time of heightened activism and the natural conflicts that arise when people take something like Roosevelt Island seriously.

Through all the rhetoric, all the angst, it's renewing to remember: He had a vision, and we live it daily.  All we do here, in harmony overall, in conflict only on the details, celebrates that vision.

Dick Lutz