There is a certain consequence to rezoning that cannot be mitigated. Communities can be displaced, poverty can escalate exponentially, and entire racial groups can be left in the dust as newer (wealthier) people move in. There are few ways to prevent those consequences, fewer ways to alleviate them, and fewer ways to support those damaged by the effects.
It is an undeniable fact that rezoning can have a direct effect on many peoples’ lives. Displacement is commonplace, gentrification highly prevalent, and it is all often done against the communities wishes and without any thought or consideration for the people living in a certain area. As I read Stabrowski’s “New-Build Gentrification and the Everyday Displacement of Polish Immigrant Tenants in Greenpoint, Brooklyn”, I was reminded of an article that I read from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle – an piece titled “Demands for racial impact studies grow amid de Blasio rezonings”. In that piece, the author, Chase Brush Special, describes some of the same issues that Stabrowski does, and both relate to the same set of rezoning efforts that were begun in 2005. They discuss displacement, racial and cultural removal, and the fact that rezonings can lead to higher rent, which often force evictions of people who have lived in their apartments for decades, as many of the Polish people in Stabrowski’s article can attest to.
In nearly all cases of rezoning, the community does not have a say in the rezoning efforts that take their homes from them. In the case of Greenpoint’s rezoning, countless Polish people were left without homes, because New York City decided that that area would be of better use for a different purpose. They had built a community in Greenpoint, where they had shops, schools, and gathering places where the people were Polish, the people spoke Polish, and the community was held together by a sense of familiarity and belonging. Generations of Polish people, who had been drawn to Greenpoint by family relations, work, or countless other reasons, were betrayed by the very city they had strived to join. The community they had built together was shattered.
Special, in his Brooklyn Daily Eagle piece, argues that factors, such as race and culture, should be taken into account during the rezoning process. If they are not considered, cultural centers and rich, diverse communities can be killed and replaced by policies that serve to segregate (whether that consequence is unintentional or not). It is hard to debate that point. Gentrification all too often leaves the original community behind to replace them with a much richer and a much whiter population. A racial impact study, like the one the article calls for, could be an excellent way to at least begin to tackle some of the issues that rezoning has caused all over New York.
In order to prevent the everyday displacement that plagues people like the Polish gentrification refugees, we need to first work to understand the racial and cultural impact that rezoning efforts can have, before they happen. Anything else is simply too late. Because, while there are few ways to prevent consequences due to rezoning, there are fewer ways to alleviate them, and fewer still ways to support those damaged by the effects. The only flawless way to prevent everyday displacement is to not displace at all, and to consider cultural impacts before the City takes a measure that might have severe consequences for some of the everyday people that call this city home.
Questions:
Should we take race into account when rezoning?
Can rezoning be done without displacing people?
How can community opinions be taken into account in the zoning process?
Sources:
Special, Chase Brush. “Demands for Racial Impact Studies Grow amid De Blasio Rezonings.” Brooklyn Eagle, 19 Mar. 2019, brooklyneagle.com/articles/2019/03/19/racial-impact-zoning/.
Stabrowski, Filip. “New-Build Gentrification and the Everyday Displacement of Polish Immigrant Tenants in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.” Antipode, vol. 46, no. 3, 2014, pp. 794–815., doi:10.1111/anti.12074.
