2014 Shaping the Future of New York Fridays: 11:00-1:45 Boylan Hall, 2231

Before I had taken this class, I had a very limited understanding of what “public health” meant. What came to mind at hearing this term were ideas like healthcare, insurance and the qualities of hospitals. When I think of health, in general, my first thoughts center around physical health, and what it means to live with or around disease. I think of statistics, of maps, of populations and large groups of people.

What is striking to me, then, about readings like Root Shock and even the reading we had for last week, is that they focus intensely on the emotional aspect of public health as well as the individual aspect of public health. Dr. Fullilove presents her findings on a very personal level, regaling the reader with various tales of individuals she has encountered while doing her research and the way urban renewal has specifically affected their own lives. Her argument is centered around the concept that the emotional changes that come with losing one’s home within a community pose severe consequences to the quality of life that individual will face moving forward. While it may be obvious that a tragic outbreak of cholera in Victorian London because of unsanitary conditions is a major public health issue, I believe the displacement of communities, usually low income minorities, in twentieth century America is an issue not as many people recognize as being one of public health. I certainly did not.

“Kindness worked through the collective as both buffer and glue. It was a force for tolerance and respect…[But] in the aftermath of urban renewal, individuals were preoccupied with making a new life, and perhaps they could not be as kind as they had been previously.” This passage in the reading really struck me, and is an excellent example of the point I am trying to make. To focus on the level of kindness present within a community may sound like something very personal, a well as something trivial, in discussing the health of the residents of that community. But Dr. Fullilove focuses on it extensively, describing different people’s reactions to the decline of kindness in their renewed neighborhoods. What the reading for this week shows is that emotional health is just as pressing an issue as physical health, and individuals demand our attention so that we can learn from their personal stories and fix the problems of the collective. After all, isn’t it individuals who make up our statistics?

It seems that a reoccurring theme in many of our class readings and discussions has been the exploration of how individual factors, such as social bias against the “other” as exemplified in “white flight”, can join together to create a system that is biased on so many levels that it becomes an institutionalized system of selective oppression. That is, there are often commercial/economic motives involved in decisions made by the government (98), which is also influenced by social biases. These social biases are then reinforced by government and business policy, connecting the loop right back to the beginning of the vicious cycle that is “urban renewal”.

Fullilove is careful to note the pattern of American domination and marginalization of minorities and groups with less money or power, beginning with the Native Americans that were driven into reserves (57-59) to the early 2000s.  As long as major businesses are making a profit,as long as the politicians make policies that will win them public support, people groups that are disadvantaged or have less power, privilege, and/or opportunity have little to no say in shaping any policies. Even as supportive, friendly urban communities were built in the face of pressure and discrimination, they were torn down to make way for luxury shops and art museums.

The thing is, when artists begin to attract wealthier people to the area, they can no longer afford to live in their own neighborhood. This is not limited to the 1960s or even the early 21st century; urban renewal has changed form to become gentrification, and it is happening now, here in Brooklyn.  Art is not confined to framed canvases, and even the graffiti artists can no longer afford to live in the same neighborhoods. And artists getting kicked out is the least of it, as gentrification that is once again large-scale and supported by the political and commercial industries that are interested in gaining wealthy citizens and “beautifying” certain urban areas. These are the policies of gentrification that affect minorities and poorer populations with less political and social influence and opportunity.

Two recent documentaries explore the themes of gentrification and the history of urban renewal in Brooklyn, as well as the negative impact these policies and beliefs have on communities of local artists.  In 2013, it was the gentrification of Williamsburg that affected, along with blacks and hispanics/latin@s, artist communities that filmmaker Sue Friedrich explored (and expressed anger towards) in her film Gut Renovation. Then, later in the year, director Kelly Anderson’s film My Brooklyn was released, taking a close look at housing discrimination and racially biased projects and connecting it to the history of urban renewal in the mid 20th century. Once again, many factors, biases, and influences have come together to, essentially, make the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And once again, racial policies and their long-lasting negative effects have not disappeared, they have merely changed names and changed forms. Equality could be achieved if society was willing to accept minorities, aid the disadvantaged, and whistle-blow any biased policies that were noticed and acknowledged.

And recently, even Spike Lee has something to say about gentrification. (0:00-3:55)

What sticks out to me about this reading is the discrepancy in perspectives between those who enact urban renewal and highway building and those who are affected by it. Those who enact it seem to be either blissfully ignorant or wholly uncaring that the places they seek to “beautify” are the homes of real people with real lives. Crazy, right? I loved reading about Mary Bishop’s research and how she came to know the people who lived in the poorer areas of Roanoke. These places were typically populated by poor Blacks, who, as housing discrimination goes, were forced into these neighborhoods and kept there without any hope of upward mobility. This was an inevitable outcome of the Great Migration to the North by Southern Blacks. It’s interesting how history would show that, in truth, very little good came of the Great Migration for Blacks, but that’s an aside. I especially liked the explanation on page 65 of how public housing “made the poor poorer”. It truly was a last-minute decision, but I’m not sure if I could really fault the powers-that-be for that one. People were coming—a lot of people—and they had to do something, didn’t they? But more to the point, the people who were coming would settle in communities that were poor and hardly upkept, and those who did not live in those neighborhoods and neither experienced the discrimination nor lived the lifestyle that these people lived would decide to change the city to their own liking. Thus, urban renewal and highway building comes into the picture, which is disgusting. Although, the development of the Cross-Bronx did give us hip-hop, although at the cost of pretty much everyone living in the South Bronx.

I liked Reginald Shareef’s summary of how urban renewal worked. Urban renewal was full of promise, but initiated with ulterior motives. It seemed to bring promise of improvement to the neighborhoods that needed it, and thus improving quality of life, but in reality, it’s meant to cater to those who already have economic means and social standing. Downtown Roanoke is beautiful and consistently being developed, but at the cost of the Black community that once lived there. This is gentrification at work, and it threatens to take Bedford-Stuyvesant within the near future, sadly. I would like to know, personally, what steps can be taken to prevent gentrification. My own neighborhood, which is historically very white and racist, has become rather integrated in the past few years, and I’m not sure how that came about, given Howard Beach’s violent history and relative isolation. Perhaps whatever causes resulted in its integration can be translated to other neighborhoods to promote diversity.