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ITF Post: Links for Week of March 26

Need inspiration for your posts? Don’t worry, I’ve got your back!

First: Why not argue for the superiority of Liza Minnelli’s “New York, New York” compared to Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York”? (ITF Note: I am dead serious about this! Liza 4Ever!) 

WNYC, “History of Zoning” with Brian Lehrer: “The first zoning laws were created in New York City 101 years ago. Mike Wallace, distinguished professor of history at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, director of the Gotham Center for New York City History and author of Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919 (The History of NYC Series), and Jenny Schuetz, Brookings Institution fellow, talk about how zoning changed the shape and power structure of the city.”

Click for more links including a movie about why LA wants to be NYC (duh) and info about the documentary “If These Knishes Could Talk”!

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Posted on by Naveera Arif

Fight Gentrification With Local Mobilization

Gentrification has become a force to be reckoned with, as it spreads unhindered across not only New York, but also many other cities, nationally and globally. The process causes the displacement of low income residents in favor of higher income residents who can afford large increases in rent pricing. This residential displacement, along with “increasing demolition, affordable housing problems, and market failure,” all work as strategies to further “renewal” and gentrification, especially the residential displacement, which has become one of the “primary dangers” for those concerned by how the market has become structured to exclude lower income residents (Newman and Wily 27). The increasing prices of living in gentrified neighborhoods exposes the population benefitting most from the process at the expense of those who cannot afford them, creating a very efficient mask that looks like progress and improvement on the outside, but hides, underneath, the utilization of income inequality to choose who has access to these improvements.

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Posted on by Redi Shuli

Authenticity

In “The Naked City: Union Square and The Paradox of Public Space”, Sharon Zukin describes the transformation that Union Square underwent. The park opened in 1830, and had a wealthy neighborhood with upper class families living in. When the upper class moved out, it became a land of cheap shopping and low rents with immigrants and working class people moving in. However in the 1970s the park became a very dangerous place due to the illegal drugs trades going on. In the 1980s, the Union Square Partnership was the first Business Improvement District (BID) to be formed in New York State. Its purpose was to keep public spaces such as shopping streets and parks clean and safe.  This organization then led to upper class and chain stores to move into the neighborhood.

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