Keep in Mind the Prognostications

But planners' greatest concern was that the nation's biggest city, a sprawling 319-square-mile metropolis that still counted 268 commercial farms on 1,451 acres, was simply running out of room to grow.

"The city finds herself, in mid-century, almost at the end of her land resources," wrote Meyer Berger of The Times. Cautioning that similar dire warnings had been sounded before, one article predicted nonetheless that with only 31,000 acres of unused residential space remaining, "the end now seems not too far - somewhere around 1975, or, at most optimistic measures, the year 2000."

New York is a very different city from the one that Times reporters dissected in 1955. The main constant has been change. The promise of Lincoln Center was fulfilled. The promising futures of Penn Station, Coney Island and the Sunnyside yards were not. Nor were the fears about Fifth Avenue. Some changes were unexpected. Times Square was reborn. Globalization lured a record number of immigrants, but also contributed to an exodus of factory jobs -belying those gloomy forecasts that the urban frontier in New York was on the verge of closing forever.

Today, according to city planners, only about 7,639 of the 11,533 acres defined as available vacant land - nearly half the total is in Staten Island - is zoned for residential use. But other variables, in 1955 and in 2005, render those raw numbers almost moot.

"It was true 50 years ago and it is true today that there is not a meaningful amount of vacant land on which to build new housing," said Brad Lander, director of Pratt Institute's Center for Community Development, "but there are all sorts of other ways in which to build."

Since 1950, according to the census, the city's population dipped and has now risen by at least 100,000. The number of homes and apartments has expanded by nearly 800,000, but so far the city hasn't reached the end of its land resources.

"Why hasn't the end come?" said Eric Kober, director of housing, economic and infrastructure planning for the city's Department of City Planning. "Land gets recycled."

That same 1955 report noted the pending demise of Times Square and a dearth of space for new development. Neither has come to pass.

The only thing that has remained the same is that change is inevitable and that the urban planners often fail to predict it.