The Ted Talk above was delivered by Dan Barasch, the cofounder and executive director of a new project called the Lowline. This project, as explained in the video, aims to use innovative solar technology to create New York City’s first underground park from a historical trolley terminal on the lower east side. This park would serve as a creative and green cultural space ironically situated in a gentrifying and overdeveloped area of our city. When reading about this project, I immediately drew parallels to our readings, specifically to Brian Tochterman’s discussion of Florida’s view of the creative class in the city and the necessity of the creative class in terms of stimulating the economy. Furthermore, a parallel can also be drawn to Tom Angotti’s discussion of the Growth Machine and the perpetuation of the myth that growth primed by real estate brings money into neighborhoods.
Totcherman’s discussion regarding the creative class surrounds a theory Florida proposed in 2002, which was dependent on market driven redevelopment projects aimed at a city-loving creative class. Florida defined the creative class as a group that “rejected the conformity and banality of suburban life for the authenticity of urban life. He argued that cities have to attract this class for the city to grow and prosper. To attract this class, cities had to adhere to Florida’s three T’s: technology, talent, and tolerance. The Lowline Project is an embodiment full circle of the creative class developing the city, allowing it to “grow” and at the same time creating a city that is more attractive to this very creative class. For instance, the project itself is an extremely creative development, which was founded by individuals Florida would consider “the creative class”. At the same time, once this project comes to fruition, its existence in NYC will attract more members of this “creative class” to come and move in our city. According to Florida, this would stimulate our economy via what Florida called the “trickle down effect”. However, Totcherman raised the following contention. The creative class is not necessarily correlated with reviving our economy; in fact, it may be in part responsible for the market crash we experienced in the 2008. The creative class has an obsession “with with overpriced housing in chic urban neighborhoods, the futility of industrial production, or the risky investments on the part of entrepreneurs and civic guardians desperately trying to adapt to the creative wave”, while the “noncreative” class bears the brunt of the Recession. This begs the question: What consequences will we see after the completion of the Lowline? Will prices in the area go up even more? Will this stimulate further gentrification? What is really the relationship between the creative class and our economy in relation to the crash we saw in 2008 and how can we use this relationship to predict potential economical outcomes such as those that will emerge after the Lowline is built?
This discussion can also include Tom Angotti’s mention of the growth machine myth. The Growth Machine is a misconception that growth primed by real estate brings money into neighborhoods. In other words, more building in an area leads to more growth and money for that area. Angotti cites examples of this myth in action; such as in Harlem and Red Hook where new businesses that came into the areas actually took more money from the neighborhood than they brought in. However, the contradiction of the Growth Machine that I particularly wanted to highlight is our obsession with growth ultimately hinders the quality of life of residential peoples of that neighborhood, which then suppresses growth. In fact, Angotti mentions that this myth is so powerful that NYC’s rate of construction over the last fifty years has been considered to be extremely slow. However, importantly, no one attributes this slowness to the suppression of growth due to factors such as overdevelopment, which leads to the aforementioned decreased quality of life and lack of population growth. In a way, I thought the Lowline Project was a form of breaking out of this myth. Because of overdevelopment in the lower east side, the neighborhood is extremely congested and is projected to be more so congested as development continues in the years to come. Therefore, like Angotti argues the residents in this area see a potential decreased quality of life, due to lack of green spaces and park areas. However, the Lowline Project corrects this issue by giving the residents this space without interfering with any development. I thought this was particularly interesting as a sort of medium in regards to Angotti’s mention of the growth machine myth. I am interested to see whether the Lowline accomplishes its goals as the creative green space the lower east side residents truly need.
