The ‘valley of ashes’ and the ‘fresh green breast’: metaphors from The Great Gatsby in planning New York

ABSTRACT

Visions in planning of what a city could or should be tend to be constructed around metaphors, rhetorical tropes that crystalize the image of a preferable future city. Such metaphorizations are never innocent: they draw on pre-existing cultural narratives and activate particular frames of expectation. This article examines two metaphors used in the planning of New York City, and its shores, in particular: the spectre of the ‘valley of ashes’ and the dream of the ‘fresh green breast’. These metaphors, taken from F. Scott Fizgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby (1925), appear time and again in the planning and thinking of the New York shoreline, from Robert Moses’s plans for Flushing Meadow to Major Bloomberg’s waterfront development and Eric Sanderson’s vision of a 2406 New York in Mannahatta (2006). This article examines how the metaphors of the ‘valley of ashes’ and the ‘fresh green breast’ have been adapted throughout decades of planning New York City to accommodate changing relationships, conflicts and ideals, always infused by a pastoral undercurrent that is already questioned in Fitzgerald’s novel.

KEYWORDS:

• Metaphor
• New York
• The Great Gatsby
• ‘green breast’
• ‘valley of ashes’

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Lieven Ameel is collegium researcher at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies, Finland. He holds a PhD in comparative literature and Finnish literature (JLU Giessen & University of Helsinki) and is adjunct professor in urban studies and planning methods (Tampere University). His research interests include encounters in public space, city literature, urban futures, and narratives in urban planning.

ORCID

Lieven Ameel http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8072-4970

Notes

1 Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence.

2 Cresswell, “Weeds, Plagues”, 336.

3 Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 29.

4 Steinberg, Gotham Unbound, 212.

5 Ameel, “The City Novel.”

6 See Jeremiah 31:40; Isaiah 61: 1–4.

7 Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 187–188.

8 Berman, All That is Solid, 298.

9 Mumford, “On Guard”, 23.

10 Mumford, City in History, 619.

11 See e.g. Moses, “From Dump to Glory”.

12 As quoted in Berman, All That is Solid, 304.

13 WNYC, “Mayor: Valley of Ashes.”

14 New York City, Willets Point.

15 Valgora, “New York’s East River.” The ‘wild promise’ refers to the description of the city seen from the Queensboro bridge in The Great Gatsby.

16 New York City, A Report, 9.

17 Ibid.

18 See Gandy, Concrete and Clay, 52–59.

19 New York City, A Report, 11–12.

20 Rogers, Green Metropolis, 202–203.

21 Ibid. 203.

22 Gersdorf, The Poetics and Politics of the Desert, 13, 332.

23 Ibid., 14.

24 Robinson, New York 2140, 548.

25 Rose, “Visual Desires”, 258.

26 Sanderson, Mannahatta, 243.

27 Ibid., 240–242.

28 Myers, “Getting Back”, 65.

29 Myers, “Getting Back”, 73, 71.

30 See Westling, The Green Breast, 5ff.

31 Marx, The Machine in the Garden, 363.

32 Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 117.