According to Squires and Kubrin, “Real estate mantra tells us that three factors determine the market value of a home: location, location and location.” What encompasses the value of location? This emphasis on location is due to the many things that define it, such as: proximity to great schooling, economically stable neighborhoods, proximity to public transport and public goods such as hospitals. However the availability of these amenities in a neighborhood are directly correlated to ‘privilege’.
New York City, a city that is at the center of the world and a city that never sleeps, has its own fair share of problems that bring rise to unrest and injustice to its very own residents. It is a city that is divided into cultural community backgrounds, for example you have Little Italy, Chinatown, Spanish Harlem just to name a few. But the real question that arises is that are all of these communities receiving the same amount of attention regarding opportunities and growth?
Because of the ‘development’ of these communities people of particular ethnicities are more attracted to live among the people who remind them of home. This indirectly results in racial segregation and affects the distribution of urban growth. Even though the general theory taught is that education is important to get out of the poorer neighborhoods, with this continuous uneven distribution of wealth the allocation of resources is significantly different. Squires and Kubrin state that the “continuing disparities result in fewer educational resources, less qualified teachers and higher teacher turnover and, ultimately, lower educational achievement in low-income and minority communities.” This means that this is an endless cycle of poor education resulting in lower paying jobs and inability to relocate to a more affluent neighborhood.
All of this relates back to my group’s project on the new private development in Spanish Harlem. When speaking to our contact, he told us that most of them congregated to that area because they missed the feel of the community they had back home. They tried to create that here in NYC and had succeeded. However most of the businesses in that particular neighborhood were family owned businesses and not much money was being spent in that particular neighborhood as was in the upper east side, which is approximately 10 blocks down. This results in people being forced to go back to the countries they come from or even escaped from. And now with the new private development the contractors are using the excuse of pouring money into the neighborhood to attract the city to their plans. But instead all they are doing is breaking up this community feeling that the residents have and gentrifying the area that would result in higher land values that could cause more displacement. Even though more money is entering the neighborhood and this could lead to better schools, the ones who needed the better education are the ones being forced out so who is really helping?
