Author: christopherjpalessandro1462

Jane Jacobs believed that when planning and developing a city, the “character and liveliness” of the city had to be preserved (Zukin 220).  However, the type of environment that Jacobs was acquainted with has changed and, therefore, her conclusions should be reimagined. Jacobs knew cities as “urban villages”.  However, they have grown into cultural competition zones with “Destination Cultures” (Zukin 244). The cities with destination culture are built with money in mind. For example, large projects such as New York City Waterfalls by Olafur Eliasson gained $69 million dollars in just one year (Zukin 234).  This competing culture is apparent in not just large scale projects, but in everyday life including with housing. People with a low-economic status have to deal with raising rents as competing culture increases the value and cost of a surrounding neighborhood. One way to counteract this is through community land trusts.

Continue reading “Community Land Trusts”

When googling “gentrification and displacement” the first article to show up cites studies which demonstrate the complicated link between gentrification and displacement.  These include studies that show that income gains do not significantly predict household exit rates, that only 6 to 10 percent of moves in New York City is due to displacement, that poverty levels can decrease dramatically without gentrification, and that gentrification can lead to higher racial, income, and educational diversity.  It also includes studies that demonstrate that 23% of residents in 5 major cities were displaced due to eviction, rent increases, or the selling of the house they rented, and that the poorest people in gentrifying neighborhoods are stuck there because moving is too costly (Florida). This article might seem somewhat biased due to the larger amount of cited studies that mitigate the negative aspects of gentrification, and I would argue that this is true since the author of this article is Richard Florida, who is an urbanist who gets paid by cities to turn their land into hubs for the creative class, which inherently gentrifies these cities.
Continue reading “Gentrification and Displacement”

Williamsburg is a site for gentrification.  This processes had been accelerated by the Bloomberg administration who, with the City Council, ignored a proposal by Jane Jacobs with the wellness of the current residents of people in mind.  Bloomberg ignored Jacobs’s suggestions to not destroy manufacturing jobs or to not create housing in the area that current residents could afford. The City Council created waterfront and luxury housing in large buildings which replaced factories and warehouses (Zukin 59).  By doing this the area gentrified: real estate upscaled and rents increased which displaced residents. The process of gentrification is not always catalyzed by city officials. It is a natural process caused by the socio-economic system with many positive and negative effects.  To counteract the negative effect of displacement, New York has received federal funding to create public and affordable housing. In doing so, poor and current residents of gentrifiable neighborhoods stand a chance to keep their rents low. To incentivise the building of affordable housing, tax subsidies are offered to developers if 20% of their housing were affordable rental apartments. Continue reading “Affordable Housing and its Issues in New York”

Richard Florida was a neoliberal who believed that the economic driving force in cities was the creative-class who craved technology, talent, and social tolerance (Tochterman 75).  This theory had many encouraging ideas such as that the creative working class was an important part of the economy and that whites, gays, minorities, and all other peoples should be integrated, not segregated.  However, his theory lacked a way to enhance the economic standing and workplace freedom of the people serving creative elites.  This was a major issue since the wealth gap was increasing during this time period and since the creative-class was obsessed with consumerism (Tochterman 78).  This obsession eventually translated into overpriced housing and rents in neighborhoods that eventually no one could afford.  Many of these neighborhoods began with urban renewal schemes that were created such that private companies took profits while the state took the risk.  These renewal programs increased the prices in the areas such that poor residents were displaced and lost both jobs and homes.  In the 1970s, the neoliberal real estate sector and state allowed for this abasement to occur to an extreme.  During the 1970s, the industrialization of Asia and Latin America drew money from the globalized New York City (Angotti 75).  This hurt the local economy, and people stopped paying their rents.  These rents were already very high because of New York’s grossly overdeveloped land, which already deprived people’s quality of life.  It was even worse since, unlike during the New Deal, the government did not want to help.  In fact, President Gerald Ford famously told the city to “drop dead”, implying that New York should go through a contraction phase regardless that its people were suffering. Continue reading “New York’s Neoliberal and Real Estate Past”