“Which part of Jacob’s vision was actually misinterpreted?.”This is what I remember briefly asking myself after rereading the beginning of Tochterman’s “Theorizing Neoliberal Urban Development: A Genealogy from Richard Florida to Jane Jacobs” this week. As a mutual consensus, Jane Jacobs is and will be forever seen as the hero who fought the defining “urban crisis” battle of Greenwich Village against Moses; thus effectively reconstituting the idealism of urban renewal. But her ideals although self-proclaimed were inherently liberal, believing in a preservation of culture and diversity while integrating both for economic/social prosperity. The political push set in motion by Jacobs, was funded by the Rockefeller foundation and its message imbued within The Death and Life of the Great American Cities. Though Jacob’s genuine yearn for urban prosperity was proposed, it simultaneously was placed on the pedestal of a great game we as American’s play: “What are her beliefs and which Party does it conform to?” Ideas are usually fitting to be in the middle of the road since both sides of any coin need to be considered. The painting by Frankie Alfonso “Republicans vs Democrats” uses a color scheme which he imbued in both sides showing the hypocritical tendencies of both:
Frankie Alfonso, SAATCHI ART
Along with Richard Florida, Jacob’s believed in a community backed by a creative-minded, fluid, short-blocked, diverse, and economically self dependent collective. For a city to grow “by a process of gradual diversification and differentiation of its economy starting from…. its export work”, the system proposed by Jacobs was heavily government independent . Her system combatted the nihilistic outcome of NYC has perpetuated by Jermiah Moses in his book Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul. But what occurred was quite the opposite. Her views were not misinterpreted because her views were not simply black or white but gray. However “Death and Life functioned as a primer on gentrification, where soon-to be-priced-out industrial service workers catered to the whims of upper middle-class migrants rehabbing aged housing stock.” Jane Jacobs proposed a plan which relied on the creation of a new market but gave no thoughts on how to keep them “diversified” hence leaving a room for interpretation. These houses Jacobs wants to preserved were on high demand thus her vision was not sustained. The moment Jacobs views weren’t entirely liberal as one would expect, historians began to contemplate her legacy.
Ideas about societal convention follow a two-set paradigm for me: 1)The law of equivalent exchange and 2) Search for the Middle Ground. Referring to last weeks reading, Jacob’s society wanted a free market, diversity, talent, toleration, privacy, and protection. Generally most of them can’t exist in the presence of the other to a certain degree. Hence something must be given to gain an attribute and thus a middle ground is presented. For NYC we need to relinquish “Left” or “Right” and try our best to be open-minded and fix ideas rather than destroying them. Furthermore, the ideas were set in a place and time were things were objectively different hence the necessity for the ideas to be taken in context.
In the following TedX talk, Juan Enriquez provoked the audience’s perception on the what was right or wrong by evoking all the belligerent and derogatory actions permitted by our founding fathers. He used this to instill the subjectivity of misinterpretation after the individual’s death/time of existence.
Questions
1. Is gentrification a spontaneous and irreversible process?
2. Are we New Yorkers seen as no more than a commodity rather than citizens as Jeremiah Moss stated? What are the set conditions needed to be changed in our City so that this is not true?
3. Are there statistical variables that can be used to predict gentrification and where it can occur?
