All posts by Oneeka Khan

The Move to Create a Just City

The Right to the/Just City

All of the articles read so far on planning have made one thing increasingly clear; urban planning is no easy feat. This week’s reading, “Justice and Urban Transformation: Planning in Context” by Fainstein continues to highlight the shortcomings of ongoing urban planning policies. The main focus is that these policies take a biased approach that mainly succumbs to the interests of the upper and middle class and obliterates those of the lower class. Considering that a majority of the public is made up of lower class families, this essentially causes the effects of urban planning to go beyond just aesthetics and architecture. As Fainstein has mentioned, theorists have transformed city planning into a social science, which it has always been but has never been acknowledged as such before. The very building blocks of how the city is structured geographically, economically, and politically all allude to social relations within the communities formed in the city. For instance, last week’s article talked about how bias against Blacks have affected their social development; due to discrimination, a majority of Blacks frequent low incomes, choose neighborhoods that are affordable, and in this way choose neighborhoods that are mostly Black. This has led to a segregation that was for the large part unintentional, but still completely preventable. City planning policies have gradually created a pattern of living that has affected whole communities on a psychological level, violating the potential for a just city.

In our meeting with Ray Reyes today at Melrose Commons, he mentioned the psychological impact that planning has had on the community in terms of community gardens. In his words, “A flower garden would be growing flowers, a vegetable garden would be growing vegetables, a community garden grows all of these plants, but it also grows a community.” These words stuck out to me, because it demonstrates the complexity that is a community; something that existing laws and policies cannot deal with as well as something that is sensitive enough to become molded  through these same laws and policies. In his piece “The Right to the City”, Harvey also discusses the urban renewal of Paris, and how the vibrant neighborhood he once knew was now crumbling, disintegrating, and becoming something unfamiliar.

DQ: How can city planning as a social science be integrated more into education and the large policy-making commissions of the city? How can pertaining to the social aspects of planning be beneficial for larger and more powerful groups such as real estate?

Underlying Causes

The Politics of Place, Oppression, and Privilege

Even though NYC is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world, it’s interesting that the patterns of community that have taken shape over the years diverge from this notion of a melting pot. Rather than actually appear like a blend of different ethnicities, communities have segregated based largely on race and class. Being born and raised in NYC, I have grown accustomed to the different racial communities and have attributed it to a sense of nationalism; thinking that people simply feel more comfortable with their own race. However, this is not entirely the case. The article, “Privileged Places” by Squires, on the other hand, takes a deeper look into these patterns, and explains them through analysis of new urban sociology.

More specifically, Squires focuses on the relationship between structural constraints, location, race, and privilege and how these aspects create an influence on the community. According to the article, race has a really big role in public policy and the creation of communities and is essentially what determines the types of privileges that residents of a community can enjoy. By census, poor blacks and hispanics have been more likely to live in poor neighborhoods than poor whites. This has resulted overtime from wealth, fiscal, and social disparities among the races. For instance, non-whites earn a lot less than what whites earn, even with the same educational backgrounds, capabilities, jobs, and incomes. When it comes to home equity, blacks also receive 18% value for their investments, which is not as much as whites receive. These various inequalities have caused an uneven development and distribution of privilege, which spills over to effect the quality of life for underprivileged neighborhoods. This has been associated with issues such as teen pregnancy and high school dropouts.

It is because of all these disparities and low employment rates that certain people move to certain communities. Their choices are largely based on their financial capabilities, which are negatively impacted by discrimination. Therefore, sometimes some may not have a choice but to move into a neighborhood because of affordability. When it comes to solutions, it is a beneficial suggestion to have different groups become allies, that otherwise wouldn’t have a reason to work together. It makes sense that specializing in different purposes but having the same underlying motive might make the alliance a powerful one by offering differing perspectives on the issue and solutions that are strengthened by different facets.

 

The Foundation of Community Planning

Community, Part 2: Organizing and Planning

Most of the readings on community planning thus far in the semester have expressed reoccurring themes of hardships, struggles to gain power and recognition,  and helplessness (as city projects continue to tear through neighborhoods). However, the articles by DeRienzo and Angotti offer a different perspective into the whole issue. Their articles take more of  an analytical and organized approach, focusing on the very definition of community and producing a recipe for successful community organizing efforts based on that definition. In contrast, previous articles tended to focus on the outcome of failed plans and posing possible solutions that didn’t have a strong basis of reasoning. With the community issue being as complicated as it is, these empty solutions just made the issue seem like it was going in circles. Although DeRienzo and Angotti don’t pose any specific plans to deal with community planning, their line of thought seems to contain a reasoning that can only prove to be beneficial for communities moving forward.

The main idea going into these articles is that before attempting to organize communities, you need to familiarize yourself with what you’re dealing with. This is an extremely important concept that’s significance often times becomes undermined. There’s more to a community than meets the eye. Angotti demonstrates three key points that compromise a community; commonality, interdependence, and collective capacity. He also highlights the role that power plays in community, saying that if a community were to die, so would the power that interplayed within it. He also goes as far as to say that if a community needs organizing, then there is actually an absence of community because a community cannot be sustained on organizing, but is sustained by the relations, networks, and processes that make it up. I thought this was a better way of viewing communities rather than the more simplistic definition that just tended to stamp any neighborhood as a community.

 

Without Compromise

The Capital of Capital, Part 2, Uncategorized

It appears even when community issues have gained awareness from the big powers, neighborhoods are still short-handed. The inclusionary zoning plan was supposed to be a game-changing plan, both during the De Blasio administration now as well as the Bloomberg administration years ago. However, Stein’s article demonstrates the contradiction of this plan and how it actually leads to an overall downgrade in the status of affordable housing. The more articles that I read about zoning and development plans, the more it becomes prevalent that the community interest really has no significance to city planning and real estate commissions. They implement certain policies and plans in order to appease the public, however they have every intention of keeping profit a priority, even at the expense of the public. Therefore, it seems as long as profit is in the picture, which it will always be, there really may be no compromise for the working class.

Stein touches on the exciting claims of inclusionary zoning to create 20% of affordable housing for every construction project, which would at first glance seem to increase affordable housing. However, it almost seems as if the logistics of the plan work to have loop holes.  If built on a vacant lot, inclusionary zoning will indeed raise the number of affordable apartments. But at the same time, the ratio of market-priced or higher than market-priced housing is still greater than affordable housing, which only serves to encourage gentrification in the targeted areas. What is worse is that plots with existing affordable housing may be bulldozed for more modern housing, which results in more displacement in net loss in affordable housing; an occurrence completely contradictory to inclusionary zoning’s projected goals.

The transformation of vacant lots into modern developments can be related to the community gardens issue. Gardens fostered by the community are being destroyed in the name of zoning. Even though this isn’t technically a decrease in affordable housing, it is a loss of something very significant to the community, a place where people can get together, as well as a benefit to those struggling with finances (gardens cut the cost of food because of locally grown produce). One big reason for this is because these gardens appear as vacant lots in many city planning maps. So if a change were to be made, it would start with the acknowledgment of gardens as a used space and not a vacant lot.

Urban Decay

A Time of Crisis

The battle for communal rights in minority neighborhoods has been a long and arduous one for those willing to fight it. This battle has been particularly demonstrated in a chapter of Angotti’s book. Starting from the budding student protests for housing and community issues back in 1968, the attempt of community control of schools, the creation of CDCs that had a great hand in implementing community policies, the struggle against the urban renewal plan has not gone without hardships. Angotti really captured the gradual progression of the grassroots movements and how once deteriorating neighborhoods slowly started to strengthen over time. Reading about this progression really allows you to appreciate the perspective that you’re given on the issue. However, those getting displaced from their neighborhoods were not given the luxury of knowing that anything would eventually improve at the time. In the moment, they must have only felt devastation and hopelessness.

Wallace’s article paired with Angotti’s piece gave a really interesting take on the whole situation. As Wallace demonstrates in his study,  this constant urban decay had extremely damaging effects on social structure of the communities, which caused a domino effect on various health issues as well. While Angotti’s piece gives a lot of temporal information, Wallace focuses on a different aspect that brings everything full circle. He hones in on the physiological impact that urban decay would have on people and found immense results. I was surprised that Wallace found such a strong correlation between fire occurrences and urban decay, because fire doesn’t come to mind at all when thinking about people getting displaced from their homes. He also suggested that those exposed to this type of trauma tended to be psychologically harmed and more inclined to incurring an illness. These facts just go to show the spontaneous effects that a certain event can have and the importance of looking into the correlations like Wallace had.

DQ: What are some preventative measures that can be taken given the occurrence of urban decay in order to prevent the health impacts on those who are exposed to the deterioration of their neighborhoods? Is there a way for CDCs to remain true to their social mission while adequately addressing financial matters?