I certainly don’t know enough about Willets Point to judge whether this ethnic enclave (seems more like a class enclave) is really a leg up for the underclass or a trap that promises subsistence at the expense of upward mobility. The decision of the Bloomberg administration to conduct major development there, however, seems even more unethical to me than many of its other rash unscrupulous decisions. It’s no wonder that the Giuliani and Wagner Jr. administrations had failed to improve the neighborhood if they neglected to provide Willets Point with even the basic amenities of a sewage system and running water. Bloomberg’s project is no different – he wants to see radical transformation within a few years, and he is unwilling to take a slower self-unfolding approach that might include and benefit some of the people who reside there today. The city created Willets Point through its negligence, attracting unskilled and undocumented workers, who otherwise would not have been so concentrated, and now the city wants to destroy it, along with the livelihood of the poorest, who have learned to depend on it for subsistence and will find no replacement.
Simon Plutser-Sarno
