When housing takes priority over parking space

New York

SO many development battles in major cities around the world fall into easy narratives (villainy versus virtue, for instance) that we tend to imagine them all possessing moral fault lines that are clearly visible: a set of capitalist savages on one side, and on the other, the marginalised agents of a more noble civic mission.

That scenario has proved vulnerable to inconsistency. This year, a group of neighbours inhabiting a patch of the Upper West Side in New York City began a campaign called Save Manhattan Valley.

From what did they hope to save it? In this case, the enemy was not a future condominium tower with an in- house aromatherapist and windows the height of an Italian cypress. Instead, it was the city's planned demolition of three parking garages it owns …