In Political Science there’s something called the “conflict trap” where as violence within a country worsens, human security declines, which causes more violence, until the state can no longer uplift itself from this vicious cycle. It’s not hard to see this very same phenomena being explained in the Wallace-Wallace “Origins of Collapse”. In the conflict trap trajectory, a state is no longer structurally able to provide for its people. Without any sort of outside intervention, it will fail. 

Similarly in the “Origins of Collapse” piece, Wallace and Wallace calls for “a coordinated and comprehensive program to stem contagious urban decay reverse social disintegration” (Wallace and Wallace, p.428). There is a tendency to forget how contagious human feelings are. When analyzing the issue of public housing, economists and urban planners will often want to look at the “most rational” answer. “Most rational” sometimes excluding the unpredictability of human nature and focuses on merely the cost-benefits. Providing more jobs or more housing does little to solve the actual psychological problems of urban decay. There might be more employment opportunities, but the retention rate is next to nothing. 

Humans find meaning and value in their possessions.  Recalling the words from Fried’s analysis of the impact on individuals from a community’s destruction, “I felt as though I lost everything.” “I felt like my heart was taken out of me.” (Wallace and Wallace, p.407). The comprehensive and coordinated program Wallace and Wallace seek should involve encouraging members of the fringe society to take ownership of their capability to find a solution. A program like this needs to act from the bottom-up. 

This proposition comes from experience with a service organization called Hands at Work. Hands’ policy is to provide the financial, hard labor, psychological, and spiritual support to the local community in South Africa. Many times, in the midst of upheaval and poverty in a community, local members will rise up to offer “care services”. These members are usually grandmothers, aunts, and/or sisters who provide child care in exchange for monies or food. Hands at Work looks to support these organic social constructions. It encourages the community to 1) acknowledge their problem 2) motivates them to seek a solution 3) creates an ownership over their solution. Charity is needed, but not sustainable if we’re talking about renewing a society. This method would be the best way to promote sustainable development. 

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?

This couplet of readings offered an analytical breakdown of the way city neighborhoods respond to the social, political, and economic fluctuations of city life.  Angotti’s well structured essay creates a layout very accurately named “From Dislocation to Resistance” in which he accounts for the struggle of those with little power or control over their living situations to combat the top-down approaches of the government’s plans for city renewed, replacement, or development.  In a relentless quest for control over their own land, citizens have to endure the real estate abandonment, gentrification, CDCs and their constant in-tension simultaneous investment in social missions and their roles as local landlords.

All in all, these articles are very disturbing.  Throughout the traced historical movements and moments that have spurred big changes in the structure of independent neighborhoods (but the underfunded and slum ones as a collective), a simple trend emerges; there is not enough power in the inhabitants of these neighborhoods to speak out for their own sakes, their own futures and homes.  They don’t have the power to fight off the floods of the choices made for them by those who have the money to substantiate their dominance.  It was inspiring to read about the 82 families that fought eviction for a decade against the church who owned their buildings and their desire to build a community facility.  Citizens are willing to do what it takes to get control.  Despite the jump in efforts with the establishment of community boards, locals still didn’t have much authority, although I do believe it is a great start in getting a dialogue open about the changes to a neighborhood, influenced and debated by those who live in it and thus to whom it really only makes sense to leave the decision up to.

While reading this article about the Emblem of Revolt and Reform, I can’t help but wonder if city planners, although it is a debatable technique, look at the patterns and circumstances of the past to influence the strategies for the future.  After MLK was assassinated, City Hall was reformed to open up more neighborhood consultations; 1970 was “the year of the neighborhood.”  With all the hostility and anger towards the law enforcement and their racial profiling currently brewing (extrapolated from that neighborhood discrimination), is there any chance for similar actions to be taken, for those neighborhoods to get a chance to voice their concerns in hope for change?

The “Origins of Public Health Collapse in New York City” article outlined the recent history and causes of disintegration and dispersal among overpopulated urban communities. Notably in areas such as the South Bronx, Central Harlem, and Inwood, the late 70s into the 1980s experienced abandonment of housing in minority-concentrated areas as well as the transfer of populations into other parts of the city. Interesting to observe is the relationship between these movements and the fire departments efforts to control fire incidents in the communities. In what Wallace terms the “abandonment epidemic”, fires were more likely to start in overcrowded units, where there is generally more concentrated human activity (i.e. more cooking going on, electricity being used, etc.). Coupled with the cutting of fire services to these areas of urgency, it seems almost inevitable that the 70s and 80s were marked by the reorganization of dense urban populations. And while the government was clearly aware of the issue and attempted at addressing it long before–in the opening of 20 new fire companies in 1969–later actions proved to not only counter but supplant any positive efforts made.

The solution implied here is that in densely populated urban communities, services made towards the safety and living conditions of residents should not be taken for granted. Rather, in order to prevent the disintegration of these communities and its subsequent social effects, services should be increased as needed. To accommodate for the number of fire incidents that take place in any given neighborhood, the effectiveness and quantity of fire services must be raised accordingly. In my opinion, this is the most direct way of deterring problems similar to the South Bronx example. However, it is only one. I believe that combatting urban decay in areas desperate on services for their survival should rely on multiple solutions. Without alternatives, the community may not pull through due to drawbacks on budgeting or other financial complications.

Therefore, another solution is to address the root of the fire incidents so as to lessen the likelihood of fire incidents occurring in the first place: overpopulation. I am not suggesting that the residents be moved elsewhere but rather that the residences themselves be altered in order to let each person or family occupy more space in the same location. Instead of multiple families living in crammed apartments where electrical usage runs high on each floor, each family would have ample amount of space in the buildings, spreading the activity of fire hazards and lessening the chance of fires. To maintain the neighborhood’s boundaries and overall mapping of the city’s demographics, the expansion of space would not be horizontal but vertical; in other words, taller buildings with wider apartments. Because I am not an architect or civil engineer, this idea is purely speculation. I wonder if designing such a residence would minimize population density (as I want to believe it would) or if it wouldn’t change the density/issue of overpopulation at all or, moreover, if it would change the understanding of population density itself (since the assumption that many people concentrated in one area live in close quarters would not hold true in this situation).

Housing and city planning have larger affects than most people today notice. Just because people aren’t homeless, doesn’t mean that their living situations are suitable or even reasonable. Around the 1970’s there was a large destruction of the South Bronx minority community. Minority communities and ghettos were looked upon as “obstacles” by policy makers.

The overcrowding of these communities, combined with the fact that there was no one who stood up for their basic needs, lead to many negative health repercussions. One of the most obvious violations of rights for the people living in these communities was the lack of fire stations, despite the fact that the overcrowded areas had a higher chance of incident. The fact that while forty-five fire houses were recommended to be open, yet only four were re-established in predominantly white neighborhoods, highlights the idea that minority communities were discriminated against to the point where they were in danger.

These neighborhoods in general, being in such poor condition, prove to have other negative health affects as well. A “casual association” has been made “between mental illness and the process of social disintegration.” It wasn’t merely the fact that it was overcrowded, it was the fact that minorities were forced into these communities because of their social status. The social environment plays just as big of a part on health as the physical environment does. Stress, among other heavy reactions, can have a serious toll on people throughout their life times.

City planning, as we all know, is a difficult thing. Balancing between creating a city landscape people want to live in with maintaining a level of adequate housing is not easy. But as we see from the past overcrowding individuals into small, hardly kept communities can have massive affects on those people as a whole.

From both the “Origins of Public Health Collapse in New York City” by Rodrick Wallace and the chapter in Angotti’s book, it is clear that many changes and events that materialized in New York City in the 1960s and 70s were interwoven. The research by Rodrick Wallace is essentially a commentary on what were the major consequences of the city’s cutbacks on vital services in the early 1970s, and how the subsequent abandonment of services like fire extinguishment (50 units between 1972 and 1976 to be exact) relentlessly afflicted the poorest neighborhoods in the region; namely South Bronx, East Harlem, East New York, Brownsville and Bedford-Stuyvesant. The so-called “burnout” of such communities didn’t only cause the forced migration of helpless families to other regions of the city, like West Bronx and central Brooklyn, but also the accompanying stress and frustration paved the way for numerous health problems such as tuberculosis, STDs like gonorrhea and syphilis, drug abuse and numerous mental illnesses. The “. . . destruction of housing and community”, as mentioned by Rodrick Wallace, was again elaborated by Angotti who focused more on the political landscape in America during that time. Moreover, many topics addressed in Wallace’s research made more sense through the lens of Angotti’s book. For example, the 20 firefighting companies that were opened by the city in impoverished neighborhoods where fires were rampant (Wallace) materialized as a result of the “War on Poverty” initiative propelled by president Lyndon Johnson in 1968 (Angotti). It also was no surprise that such positive initiatives were quickly abandoned with the election of Richard Nixon, the longevity of the costly Vietnam War and the principle of austerity adopted by subsequent presidents. The chapter in Angotti’s book also described a key topic of what happened to those who resisted eviction from abandoned communities like South Bronx. Not only did tenants begin forming organizations like UHAB and Union of City Tenants essentially to fight off the city’s policy of privatization, but also were the pioneers of community development corporations (CDCs) which successfully pressured the city to invest in the rehabilitation and management of “some 80,000 units of housing” in the poorest areas of the city (Angotti, 2008).

A concept vivid in both readings is that effects of urban decay were far more complicated and emotional than the mere relocation of families. The stress and depression that was inevitable from losing a home, along with overcrowding and being emotionally ostracized from the new neighborhood, rendered individuals anything but immune to diseases like tuberculosis. And the fact that most of these relocating families were African American didn’t help their situation at all considering the civil rights movement was just beginning. This reminded me of the article in New York Times about the talented girl named Dasani who also relocated to a new neighborhood and faced numerous difficulties adjusting to her new school and unwelcoming peers. Furthermore, since my group project is on homelessness and housing, both readings offer solutions to neighborhoods that are at risk of decaying. As Wallace describes for instance, “. . .adequate municipal services, particularly fire extinguishment, can act as a kind of immunization against some mechanisms of contagious urban decay, and, conversely, that service cut can synergistically accelerate the phenomenon.” (Wallace, 1990).

References

Wallace, R. and Walace D. (1990) “Origins of Public Health Collapse in New York City: The dynamics of Planned Shrinkage, Contagious Urban Decay, and Social Disintegration”.

Angotti, T. (2008) “From Dislocation to Resistance: The Roots of Community Planning” from New York for Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate, p 94-109.

Last week’s readings focused on how ethnocentric ideals and a biased lens forced out thriving communities under the name of “urban renewal.” Though there were social consequences of lost connections and economic challenges in starting over,  studies have also shown correlations with urban decay and health problems.

Slum neighborhoods experienced reduced fire protection services. Overcrowding, inadequate sanitation, and aging structures left these already blighted neighborhoods at higher risk for fires. When inadequate funding forced firehouses to shut down, these services were typically cut in a poorer area. Because these areas were already prone to fire danger, the incidence of fires increased greatly. One suspected cause is that these areas, already subjected to decay, were not seen worthy of protecting. The natural destruction of fire would bring about clearance and make these areas available for redevelopment. Instead of forced clearance, intentional neglect and the decay process would cause these neighborhoods to fall apart and residents to eventually move out. The increase in fires prompted for reopening of fire houses, but all 4 of them were in low-risk areas. This shows political motivation behind denial of these important services as a tool for urban renewal.

People began to flee these neighborhoods and there were many abandoned properties left behind. As the city seized them, poor planning caused them to fall apart and some squatters moved in to repair and recover. The city wanted to put these properties for sale, but because of the location and poor conditions buyers did not want to take risks in purchasing them. Some were sold off in risk free auctions and other became dumps. Political organization against this treatment lead to backlash, but little policy change. The reason for this is perhaps the minimal influence that such groups had in politics. Even though they rallied and tried to make a change, their interests were not represented in city actions. This was similar to how neighborhoods were relocated in urban renewal projects – they had little to say because they did not have effective political power. It seems that the desirability factor was based on how “white” the neighborhood was. The white neighborhood’s organizing and protesting efforts were always taken more seriously and as a result more successful.

Health consequences of overcrowded, poor living conditions included psychological stress and infectious disease. Those who had the strongest social ties were most impacted by this stress, which resulted in increased vulnerability to sicknesses and alcoholism. Living conditions created breeding grounds for diseases such as tuberculosis and increased transmissions. Separating the poor and confining them to slums had severe health consequences. The solution, which would have been to increase services to these areas and enact new laws to improve minimum living standards was not implemented because these communities were not seen as worth saving. There was not enough real estate value and developers did not want to take risks.

When I was reading the Public Health article, the impoverished neighborhoods (Brownsville, East New York, South Bronx, etc.) immediately rang in my mind as “the ghetto.” They tend to have a greater minority population and cheaper rent because they are not desirable places to live. Even though so many years have passed and the country as a whole has been moving in a progressive direction, these neighborhoods continue to be disadvantaged and receive less resources. These shortcomings have negative health consequences and especially impact the poor.

Discussion Question: How can impoverished neighborhoods increase their value in politicians’ eyes and gain influence? How can negative health consequences be avoided?

Discussion Question: What exactly are the right decisions to make when planning a city and what is at fault?

To those who know New York City, this city is constantly changing its demographic of what group, of people, lives where. Throughout the five boroughs, New Yorkers are used to new programs and policies to “renew” the city or “help” the area. There is no doubt that the city itself is over populated and overcrowded.

To quote the article, “Origins of Public Health Collapse in New York City: The Dynamics of Planned Shrinkage Urban Decay and Social Disintegration” by R. Wallace and D. Wallace. “Homeless people wander the streets and public places like war refugees; the addicted, the mentally ill, those afflicted with AIDS, and sick children overwhelm hospitals; crime and violence overwhelm entire neighborhoods and fill jails to bursting.” People are everywhere and continue to constantly migrate into the city. This article discusses a serious, and often fatal, impact that this over crowding has on this great city, fires. Because people low income and poor families ted to live in densely populated areas they are more susceptible to fires. The article talks of a “cycle” where service cuts in fire department causes an increase in response time and damage which also causes the families and businesses to relocate, changing the look of a new place. What we see is government making decisions that dramatically impact families and neighborhoods.

Another governmental influence that affects the residence of low-income families, is city planning. The Chapter of New York for Sale by Angotti discusses how city planning, which is disguised as a policy to better neighborhood, often forces current residence out of an area to make room for a more ideal class of people. The chapter focused on African American resistance to this displacement of people, mostly because they are most impacted by it.

The government believes it is bettering the city and neighborhoods and often ignores the impact it has on the poor, but what is the right answer to the city’s overcrowding and urban blight. I currently live in Harlem, which is in the process of gentrification. The middle class is taking over which is positive for the reputation of the neighborhood but not a positive change for its residence. The government is trying to “better the neighborhoods” but what about the people? Who has the right answer to how to fix the city crime rate and provide the greatest possible outcome for the greatest number of people? All the articles we have read criticize the policies put into place, but it is easy to criticize from a distance. Incorrectly predicting the impact of a policy is what the biggest problem seems to be. Not properly preparing for the long term affects and failing to consider the poor and homeless are the downfall of policies.

Both articles shed light on the misperception of the government to identify the true problems of the city while attempting to solve the issues by placing a bandaid on a large wound. Angotti points out that the community has always wanted to become more involved in the processes of the city’s development as proven by the various grassroots revolts by students, religious institutions, and labor unions. However, public officials have never placed a consistent importance on the communication of the neighborhood and those living in it. This problem is reflected on the inequality of the school system as well as the impact of the fiscal crisis on communities. The plight of industry and commerce in the 1970’s illustrated the lack of police and fire department response and deterioration of various neighborhoods. During this time, government officials were at a loss of how to deal with the in-rem housing, pushing the squatters to buy the buildings when the real estate industry had no incentive to buy the unvalued properties. The city auctioned off vacant lots as well with no implemented policies dealing with the long-term effects of New York City.

Deborah and Rodrick Wallace bring a focus on the inability of the city government to mold its policies to the issues of the current time and its problems. They discuss the lack of alternative policy options and lack of small preventative care actions that could have avoided the spiraling of urban decay such as fire department redlining city neighborhoods. It seems that history will continue to repeat itself until the city government chooses to produce a long-term goal for the city.