THE BATTLE OF WESTWAY was a triumph of People Power over the Establishment. This time, however, the Establishment had the progressive vision and imagination, and the people, fearful and conservative, dug in their heels. Above and beyond the salutary effects on a community that had learned how to defeat the entrenched power structure, I am left with the sad reflection that New York City has entered its querulous middle age. It is ruled by a fractious civic culture, better suited to stop anything from getting built, than to respond creatively and energetically to the need for fresh urban solutions. We have erected the art of paralysis," Louis Winnick, an urban analyst, reflected at the time on Westway's demise. "The city has lost its capacity to do monumental things." The political climate of New York is littered today with prospectuses for important public works that have either been shot down or hang on in a twilight of indefinite deferral: the Second Avenue subway, the 42nd Street trolley, Governors Island, vestway, the Brooklyn Navy Yard incinerators (or any sane way of deal 8 with our garbage, besides trucking it elsewhere). The metropolis that gave us the Croton Waterworks, Central Park, steam under the pavements, and the Brooklyn Bridge is afraid to undertake something new The public is chary and tired. They have been burnt too often. There is a lack of conviction when it comes to generating new urban tissue, which is understandable, since nowadays the big projects always come out slightly bogus, pompous, denatured, and suburban. Who is to say that Westway would not have ended up looking like an urban waxworks, as have parts of Battery Park City? Still, I think it was a lost opportunity, the kind that comes along only once in a century. As Edward Logue put it (and I think he was right): "Were Westway built, it would not have many enemies." The many enemies of an unbuilt Westway proliferated, however, in part because it remained an abstraction, a clumsy giant born of theory, unable to defend itself from charges of unreality. THE DEFEAT OF WESTWAY brought many changes. Though the tradeoff for mass transit came to only a few hundred million dollars, the infusion of capital did help the subway system improve: stations were redecorated, new trains and computerized monitoring equipment purchased. In the wake of Westway's defeat, communities across the country made out well in securing federal funds. The biggest recipient was Boston, whose sunken highway, the "Big Dig," inherited the billions of dollars that were there to be spent by the Highway Trust Fund, thanks to Tip O'Neill's authority in Congress. As a costly ("the most expensive highway in history") solution to heal the original rift and bring people to the waterfront, the Big Dig could be considered Son of Westway: it differed only in not building an outboard tunnel, but sinking the original perimeter highway in place and covering it over with a lid.