Key Project Activities

Now that we are nearing the deadline for the white paper, our group has been focusing most of our time trying to make sense of all the information that we piled up over the past month. This was not an easy task, but meeting up during class on Monday and Wednesday helped us solidify a solid plan of putting the entire project together. For this update, I wish to provide a comprehensive plan/outline for our project.

As we have mentioned many times before, our main focus is the BQX streetcar line. In order to focus ourselves with what we are going to do with the BQX, we formulated a working thesis to start us off: The BQX will be a successful project if it can meet the criteria we created based on the analysis of other street car projects. The thesis is very vague right now, but it will be refined as we move along with the white paper. It will also make some more sense after I describe the other parts of the outline.

First off, we have the introduction and background. We want to use this part of our project to get our reader up to date with the key information needed to understand our project. This includes the historical context that we worked on earlier this semester. We will be briefly exploring the history of streetcars in NYC and all the reasons of why it went out of use, since the same problems might arise again. Then we will be talking about what the BQX streetcar line is. We will give a detailed overview of what the proposed streetcar line would entail, the people supporting the project, and the predicted impact of the streetcar line as described by the policy makers. Since the streetcar line will go through a number of neighborhoods, we feel that it would be appropriate as well that we briefly mention the demographics of these neighborhoods and other pertinent information.

Before we move on to research methods, as it has been ordered with the model outline, we want to talk about the political context first. There is a large amount of information that we will be going over in the research findings that require the knowledge of the political context. Furthermore, the BQX is a project the city is planning to use as part of their urban planning. As we have seen in class readings, the city is constantly changing and new policies are made in order to provide the maximum economic growth. The BQX is a project that will cause an economic overhaul of the communities along the Brooklyn-Queens waterfront. Policies such as rezoning and tax-incentives for development are part of the city’s urban development agenda. The BQX is just another aspect of the agenda. By having the political context come first, we will be able to gain a basis for which our claims and findings can be compared to.

Our research method is mostly based on the study of streetcars in other cities. We will be analyzing census data, demographic information and understanding the factors that made these streetcar systems successful. Based on the successes of these cities, we have created a criteria list or guidelines that the BQX project should, in one way or another, address. Some of the guidelines will already be met by the currently proposed BQX. But for the ones that don’t, we will be focusing our arguments and claims in those categories. We will be visiting the neighborhoods affected by the BQX to gather the qualitative data needed for the comparison to the other cities. Some of the things we’ll be looking out for during the visit would be potential effect on traffic, availability of transportation and the types of uses for these areas. Community input would also be used as well in determining the potential consequences of the proposed streetcar.

The research findings contain the bulk of our argument. We will be presenting all the relevant information from the research mentioned in the research methods section. Preliminary evaluation of our research findings lead to the formulation of some key concepts from which we will be making our claims. We will be looking into the effects on traffic, extent of gentrification, how re-zoning will affect existing businesses/communities, and transit oriented development. Under these key concepts, we will present the reasoning and evidence acquired through the community input and the other cities. Maps and photos will be used to help present our findings.

Based on our findings, we will then make our policy recommendations. We have several types of policy recommendations but our main focus will be with democratic participation and legislative. Our preliminary findings showed that the BQX has the potential to cause gentrification and displacement. It will also likely cause traffic concerns. There are many people who are displeased with what the BQX might bring, and establishing some way for the people to get involved is a must. Next will be legislative action. We’ll recommend some policies that the city can implement to lessen the effects of gentrifications such as rent control or business protection. We will also make recommendations in increasing the budget in order to have enough funds to create a dedicated streetcar lane.

The conclusion will summarize our main points. We’ll also work on the executive summary after the rest of the paper is written. We are off to a good start already so we should have a draft ready by the end of the weekend.

Update on progress

Research regarding the New Jersey and Baltimore streetcar lines has been making great progress. Patrick and Adrian are consolidating their research findings into a form that’s easy to understand and follow. They are using social explorer to create maps that shows the development along the streetcar lines. Mohamed has been gathering data about “failed” street car projects. Something interesting that he found was that some of the streetcar projects were shot down because of funding issues or that people voted against it. Jeffrey has been doing his share of work too by looking for information that can supplement everyone’s findings.

Challenges

We’re still having some trouble with community contact, but Sonia is going to try calling these contacts instead of emailing. Hopefully we can get some input. Some of the criteria we use overlap so we will condense it down into a few, but equally effect set of guidelines. We also realize that it is not realistic for the BQX to completely meet all the criteria. Rather than having to satisfy all, maybe we can say that the BQX will be a successful system if it can satisfy most of the criteria.

Task Remaining

Most of our research is done or almost done. We still need to get some more community input. Our main focus is still the BQX. We have a great deal of information on the other streetcar line but ultimately we need to bring the argument back to the BQX. This still needs more work, but I’m confident that our group can tackle this problem. Finally I will be spending some time during spring break to visit some of these neighborhoods, take photo and notes. This will be used for the qualitative data for the BQX.

Group dynamics

I feel that the group is working really well together. Whenever we have a meeting/discussion, everyone contributes valuable input. There is also communication going on outside of the classroom through email or in person.