“The geography of AIDS in the Bronx is indeed basically that of drug abuse,” Rodrick Wallace states. Wallace connects “planned shrinkage” in the Bronx—the process of allowing overcrowded and decaying buildings to burn by purposely meeting the blazes with ill equipped and insufficient numbers of firefighters—to the spread of intravenous drug use and in turn HIV/AIDS. Wallace is making several complicated arguments in this piece, all of them connected. He believe data shows that the burnout out process in decaying communities and the drug use and AIDS rates that follow it are essentially a contagious phenomena, e.g. a self fulfilling prophecy. I had no idea that vast sections of South Bronx, Brownsville, Bushwick, East New York, and the Lower East Side were essentially left to burn, and was shocked at what seemed the blatant illegality of this. The city purposely downsized or closed fire departments that served decaying communities with the highest incidences of fire, so as to burn out this “urban decay;” most of this done under the direction and advice from the Rand Institute of Research, hired by the city. Rodrick mentions that it is the equivalent to stopping the production of and distribution of medicine in an area that faces an epidemic. Perhaps Rodrick’s paper didn’t have the intent of focusing on victims of the blazes, but the question that was left unanswered for me was how many were negligently left to die in burning buildings, due to a planned insufficient fire rescue response.

Rodrick’s argument for why the burnout was contagious is fairly logical and simple. As vast areas burn, populations are displaced and must move into surrounding real estate. This burdens buildings in the surrounding area with overcrowding, taxing ancient electrical systems with more use and causing further buildup of highly flammable trash and people smoking/lighting/cooking things. And with the displacement of the burned out population into surrounding areas comes the movement of diseases and social habits: AIDS and drug use. The areas that were initially allowed to burn already had high incidences of AIDS and drug use, and moving and causing forced mingling of these populations with surrounding areas only intensified the rate and spread of these problems. And as the surrounding areas became overcrowded and burned out, the problems further spread. I found Rodrick’s arguments highly persuasive and interesting, and the stats well placed although complicated. My question is, what were the legal ramifications for the city, now that the evidence is out that the burnings and negligence were planned in advance?

-Jesse Geisler