The Great Migration.

It was from the ashes of the failed amusement park called Freedomland that Bronx politicians and developers first got the idea to create the largest housing cooperative in America. They stood near the salty marshes of the lonely reaches of the Northeast Bronx and decreed that here they would save the borough.

The swamps and marshes would be dredged, and a utopia of 15,382 units of affordable housing would be created. This was in the mid-1960s, as the Bronx was just entering the wretched decline that would come close to ruining the borough. America's social planners were then caught up in LBJ's Great Society, convinced that if you threw money at social problems they would go away. But it didn't work. Far from saving the Bronx, Co-op City hastened its decline.

Even before anyone had moved into Co-op City, there was a disturbing harbinger of things to come. A distraught local man climbed to the top of one of the 24-story towers and jumped to his death. A photographer for the Daily News caught the man in free fall, and the paper ran the picture on the cover. This is how a lot of New Yorkers first found out about the development.

But the work continued. Between 1968 and 1970, 35 high-rise towers and 236 townhouse units were finished. When completed, Co-op City also had eight multilevel parking garages, three shopping centers, a heating plant, a firehouse, four public schools, one high school and no soul. More than 55,000 people ultimately moved into the burg, most from older West Bronx neighborhoods. This exodus from other parts of the Bronx left apartment buildings empty, which would ultimately bring about the burning of the borough.

I recently talked with Raanan Geberer, managing editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, who moved into Co-op City in 1971 with his family.

"I lived [there] on and off until 1980. I still go there to visit. My father lives out in Section 5 near Einstein Loop. That section was built later and when we moved the lobby was still unfinished."

Geberer laughed when he told me he now lives in Chelsea: "Oddly enough I am still in Mitchell-Lama housing," referring to the 1955 city and state program to create affordable family housing.

Back in 1971, the Geberers were living in the West Bronx in the Marble Hill Projects. That development was going down and the family was happy to get out.

"I was just glad we moved somewhere. The Marble Hill projects were getting bad, filled with welfare and low-income people, and were becoming dirty and dangerous. When we got to Co-op City it was nice, but I found it impersonal. It was so far away from anything. It was hard to get to Fordham Rd., which was the heart of the Bronx."

Geberer went on to tell me that almost every Jewish kid he knew in the Bronx wound up in Co-op City. Even with all the company, he found it hard to be a young man living in the development.

"Young people didn't like Co-op City because there was nothing for us to do. Young people found it boring. They had things for seniors and a lot of religious functions but there wasn't much else. I took an automotive repair course. When I was stuck there living with my father after college, I started to explore the area and found a driving range nearby and discovered City Island which is close by. I had never been on City Island, and that was a nice discovery."

What was good about Co-op City?

"It offered an escape hatch to those trying to get out of the South Bronx. It was a safe and good neighborhood and had good social services for older people. It also offered an organizational framework for the population which then was predominantly Jewish and is now mainly black."

But Geberer didn't wax nostalgic. "I don't feel any nostalgia when I go back to Co-op City because nothing has changed there. It is just so plain. When I go back to where I once lived in Washington Heights or Fordham Rd., I get nostalgic for what was, but never out in Co-op City."

And how does his father find living there in 2003?

"[He] still thinks it is okay but he doesn't like the fact that most of the Jewish families have left."

I recently took a ride out to Co-op City. From the New England Thruway you can see the towers rising out of the flatness. There isn't much around the City but the City itself. I drove around and was impressed: The streets are clean, there's little graffiti and the buildings and grounds are well-maintained.

Most blocks end in a cul-de-sac; they aren't named streets or avenues, but loops. I went through almost every loop, and the only major problem I saw was a lack of parks. I found one small square set aside for park benches, but open green space is lacking.

I stopped to talk with a heavyset man who would not give me his name, but told me he had been living in Co-op City for 5 years. He came there from Russia.

"This is a good place. Maybe not a hotshot New York neighborhood, but a nice clean place. Better here than Russia."

I looked around at the towers and the clear blue sky and thought that maybe Co-op City had caught up with the Bronx. You could certainly do a lot worse than here, so maybe those Great Society warriors had it right back in the 60s after all. Give people a nice place to live and they'll keep it up.