Tag Archives: Uneven Growth

Reading Response

The Right to the/Just City, , , , , , , , , , ,

This week’s readings were David Harvey’s chapter, “The Right to the City”, and Susan Fainstein’s “Justice and Urban Transformation: Planning in Context”. Both of these articles elaborated the classes running theme of displacement of low-income families for urbanization of cities.

“The Right to the City,” an excerpt from Rebel Cities showed in depth analysis of the history and urbanization. Harvey, started the analysis with Haussmann’s plan to urbanize Paris in 1848, continued on to discuss the “mortgage and housing asset value crisis of 2008” and current urbanization in Brooklyn and in Harlem. The premise of the chapter focused on the capitalist societies’ need to produce “surplus product” in-order to continue to exist. The Housing market has done an excellent job of providing such a surplus. Providing a need for labor and the expansion of cities to accommodate the changing times. The ethical issue, that seems to be ignored throughout history, is “what is this urbanization costing?”. After reading this article, seems that whenever a city goes into financial instability and the unemployment rates rise, the government’s answer to the issue is “let’s build”. It is not surprising that history repeats itself and capitalist societies have to resort to amending past policies to supply the “surplus product” that is needed for the capitalism to function. However, the areas that are redone are inhabited by members of the community who are of low-income.  This urbanization is meant to increase the appeal of the city but it also seems to increase how drastically different the incomes and qualities of life are between the wealthy and middle-class, or even more dramatically the poor, of the city. Susan Fainstein’s chapter points out that urbanization is damaging to low-income and minority groups because it does not take the urban space that it affects into context.

“Justice and Urban Transformation: Planning in Context” focused on the belief of Karl Mannheim, which sought to give the power of urbanization to the members of the community through the efforts of elected officials. Mannheim’s theory stems from the idea of attempting to eliminate class bias. “Comprehensiveness,” which is Mannheim’s policy for planning, theorizes that values can be organized based on importance, and thus planning would proceed based on those values. The issues with the policy are rooted in the fact that values are hard to quantify and not everyone values things the same. As the chapter states, “values of democracy, diversity, and equity may pull in different ways”.  This belief is based on the idea that elected officials have a better understanding of what neighborhoods need when compared to organizations and the wealthy, like Yale University and others discussed in “The Right to the City” who currently hold an overwhelming amount of influence in planning.  When you are dealing with people and issues that affect “collective human rights” (Harvey 2013)  such as property, each individual situation contains aspects that require amending, adapting, and evolving policies so they are beneficial to that area. A policy that worked in South Jamaica in the past may not work in present day East Harlem; unless one is familiar with the needs and individuals of the area, one would not know how to adjust a policy to an area. If done correctly, where the needs of the community are the driving force (not capital and profit), this is a system which may work.

Discussion Question:  We live on a country that makes decisions through precedence and tradition; government is constantly looking to the past in-order make policies to improve the future. However, the negative aspects of the past, such as the displacement of communities, are often ignored if the policy showed promise, hence why there is a constant cycle of urbanization and resistance. Will New York ever see a policy that has not already been established in-order to benefit both the needs of a community and the needs of capitalism? Can an adapted version of “comprehensiveness” be the answer?

 

Location, Location, Location

The Politics of Place, Oppression, and Privilege, , , ,

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?