All posts by Sonia Marinovic

Update on BQX Project mostly focusing on criteria for streetcar/ Community needs/deliverable

Updates - Public Transportation

For this week, our group mainly focused on meeting together and re-evaluating our strategy on how to best inform the public of the government’s intentions with the streetcar and how to inform the government of people’s need from the streetcar. We further developed our assessment of the effectiveness of the BQX streetcar, both economically and humanistically city wise and community wise, using criteria laid out by Baltimore’s light rail system planners and community groups such as TRUST South LA. Members continue to study the progress of other streetcar systems in other American cities, such as Baltimore and Hoboken, as well as researching other cities that planned to build a streetcar but then aborted their plans, San Antonio, TX or Arlington, VA.  We are also in the process of redefining community’s needs from the streetcar, which we need to complete much more field work, collecting data by conducting interviews and doing community planning, in order to accomplish. We also roughed out a clearer picture of our deliverable by creating a brochure with a map of the proposed streetcar line with community input collected from interviews.  

 

Our first task that we set out to accomplish is to determine the criteria the streetcar must meet in order to be ‘successful’. Our criteria were mostly altered and adapted from criteria made by the Baltimore Region Rail System Plan Advisory Committee (since streetcars are rail based) and the criteria listed in the World Transport Policy and Practice book. The criteria mainly focus on economic benefit to the city, as well as personal needs of people. The criteria are as follows:

    • The rail system must serve corridors with high concentrations of population. (The more people use it, the more purpose it has being built and will have a quicker return in investment).
    • Rail system must serve major employment centers, activity centers, universities, shopping centers. (It must lead to places that people want to go or building it is not useful and a waste of money).
    • Rail System must support existing land use and major targeted growth areas. (It must be able to have a return on investment by being in the right place where lots of people would have to use it).
    • Rail system must meet the needs of the transit-dependent population (Otherwises, it fails to meet its essential purpose and will probably fail in being a self-sufficient system).
    • Optimize the use of existing transit system (This would decrease costs and cause less disruption in the community from construction)
    • “Seamless” for transit rider (Must be easy to use, or people will not use it)
    • Provide a trip which is as competitive as possible with the automobile with regard to speed and reliability (Or else, people will use the alternative transport and it does not strengthen public transportation).
    • Attract new riders (This helps to strengthen public transportation and increase revenue)
    • Improve or maintain access to employment; goods and services while shortening trip lengths and/or reducing the need to travel (It will positively affect citizen’s day to day lives, making overall life happier and easier.)

 

The community based, humanistic criteria of the streetcar are based on the principles of the TRUST South LA Community Group. These criteria are mostly aimed at maintaining the culture of the community and strengthening its economic interdependence. The criteria are as follows:

 

    • Since construction of streetcar will most likely accelerate gentrification and increase rents/property values, stabilized or low income housing must also be preserved as to allow current community members to stay in their homes; therefore, retaining some of the culture and social dynamic of the neighborhood, as well as instilling a diverse population.
    • Along with stabilized/ low income housing, businesses that move into these growing areas should be encouraged to hire locally or promote local businesses. This would ensure that community members use the BQX and strengthen community bonds.   
    • It must be environmentally friendly, as to help the environment and not negatively impact public safety. Its construction should also focus on minimizing disturbances in the neighborhood, such as trying to avoid moving as much infrastructure as possible and working at reasonable times as to not annoy community members.

Community criteria will be mentioned in regards to informing government officials about the needs of the people if the streetcar project ever advances. For our project, it is more important to first analyze whether a streetcar is a viable option that can effectively serve its basic function as a transportation system, and then determine further its further impact on the community. These criteria will help us to evaluate the effectiveness of other city’s streetcar systems and the planned BQX. We will discuss our criteria with Julia Kite at Transportation Alternatives to see if we are missing something.

 

As far as comparing other cities’ streetcars to the BQX plan, individual group members are further developing their research. Adrian continues to research on the Hoboken, NJ streetcar line. Patrick continues to research the effectiveness of the Baltimore, MD light rail line, finding the bulk of the rail criteria, as well as finding similarities to the proposed BQX line, such as building the line to foster a growing area and not support an already made area. Muhammad is now focusing on other cities’ abandoned streetcar lines, such as in San Antonio, and why they were abandoned. We do this research in the hopes of finding what works when executing a streetcar plan and what prevents a streetcar car from being built, as guidance or examples of caution in the BQX streetcar’s development. Overall, we focused much more on the general project idea this week, rather than these points.

 

Our group’s main work in progress is establishing community based contacts and conducting fieldwork. I have e-mailed several community organizations, including Uprose in Sunset Park, Red hook Community Group, and Queens Community Board for Long Island City/Sunnyside, but no organization responded. We are still on the lookout for community meetings, but for now we are going to conduct interviews with people in affected communities. These interviews will ask questions such as: do you think you community needs a new form of transportation?; have you heard of the BQX streetcar plan?; what were your first impressions of this plan?; what you would like to see as the result of the BQX?; what are some of the potential drawbacks of the BQX plan?; do you think a streetcar is the best form of transportation for your area? In general, members of the affected communities are mostly going to be concerned with how the streetcar will be built into the infrastructure and if they are able to stay in their homes after it is built. The streetcar will accelerate gentrification and change the makeup of the neighborhood into mostly diverse, poorer blue collar communities into upper class, white white collar communities, which the government benefits from because these richer communities generate more revenue. I am not sure what community organizing is already going on because I have not been able to contact community groups and their social media pages mainly focus on other topics, such as environmentalism. So, learning about community groups’ goals is a priority. Our group can help by clarifying the government’s BQX initiatives and how it can affect their communities.  

 

We were also working on our deliverable. We were debating whether to create a brochure or a poster. We definitely wanted to include a map of the BQX line overlaid with income per neighborhood and possibly population density per neighborhood, in order to show why these particular areas were being updated with new transportation. We also wanted to include community input by people from different affected communities. This needed to be presented as well as introducing the main idea and impact of the BQX. With so much information, the deliverable must naturally segregate subject points. So, we decide on having a brochure/map that opens up into different points but in the back has one comprehensive map. This deliverable is meant to inform the public about the BQX plans and its potential impact.

Everyone in the group functions extremely well together.  Everyone is very hardworking and is always available for help and input. Our members are very receptive to new ideas and finding the best ways to express ideas. We are currently working on finding community contacts, besides Transportation Alternatives, to hone in on community needs. Hopefully, we meet someone to further discuss the BQX’s financial sustainability or an actual developer in the BQX plan, but these are long shot goals. We are adding to our research, while drafting the white paper and a deliverable.
 

The Hierarchy within the Growth Machine

Contemporary Planning in NYC

The first pages of Chapter 5 of Larson’s Text present the main conflict of urban planning, experts in urban planning assuming that they know what is right and the communities that they affect have virtually no say in the matter. After the decline of manufacturing jobs and the decline of New York City, government officials and planners were looking to revitalize the City. They began to do this by transitioning into a service economy, that catered to private business, white-collared workers, and real estate developers.  New businesses must be built along with new infrastructure to attract tourists. These new plans, as laid out by RPA Yaro and Hiss’s A Region at RIsk, were described as modernizing and globalizing a city through a combination of Mose’s and Jacob’s urban planning styles. These plans defined neoliberalism and its approach, as government rezoned areas for maximum profit by catering to private companies. Contemporary planning, practiced by Bloomberg, becomes another version of the top-down approach seen in other eras of New York history that neglects the needs of the people due to grand plans by experts, which normal citizens are deemed not qualified to answer and do not partake in the process. Although, the planners attempt to avoid these problems by offering ‘public spaces’ in certain developments, these features are not useful and do not make an impact. Admittedly, the updates for the waterfronts and parks have been nice, but these are not intended to serve people in the community but rather increase property costs and attract tourism. The government rezones places, wealthy new comers move into certain areas, which attract investors and developers. Do these grand plans made by experts truly determine the best course for the future? The condos being built can easily double the population of New York City and require demolition of smaller homes. Admittedly, condos are geared towards wealthier professionals who are single or married. Do these spaces allow for families to grow? Where will children go to school or play? Can the transportation system support these numbers? How congested will the city become? Will it affect the quality of life? Where will we store and process the food to support these growing populations if industrial places are becoming rezoned? Where will the people at the bottom of this growth machine, who are not part of these exclusive communities live? Will this increase homeless? Most of these plans include lots of building, but I am not convince that they have much foresight.

Discussion Question: Does this style of contemporary planning work for long term stability?

Activism and its Boundaries

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I watched “How to Survive a Plague” on Netflix, and I learned that people apparently survive a plague through activism. In this class, the prejudiced social and economic inequalities embedded in government and problems of certain (regarding race or sexual orientation) groups of people is often referred to as a “plague.” This was also the case in the work about “the Bronx is Burning,” except that in this case, the meaning stays close to original meaning as it discusses the spread of AIDS in America.

I respect that this film is comprised of actual footage and the people involved. It truly transports you back to that time and shows you inside of what happened. My knowledge of AIDS mostly comes from Hollywood recreations of that time, such in the movie “Philadelphia” and  “The Normal Heart” (written by one of the activist in the film), but I never saw actual footage of what it is like to have AIDS. It was sad to see home footages of the man with his daughter at the beginning of the film and towards the end of the film. He looked so sickly towards the end, but I guess he was lucky that his former wife was so understanding and let him have contact with his daughter during a time that people were still unsure about the disease.

The development of AIDS activism that proved to be extremely beneficial is when people started to educate themselves about the disease and potential treatments or ways to improve research. I imagine this to be liberating, taking at death sentence, at that time, and strategizing  a solution. I realize that this was an unfortunate affect of the government’s neglect, but this became the stepping stone to real change and progress to finding a treatment. I thought that Iris was a funny, amazing character. She was a housewife in Queens with a PhD and a helpful, smart personality who became a crusader, then went back home after a legitimate treatment was found.

Some actions, however, when too far and strayed from its intended purposed. I was shocked at the scenes in which protesters threw ashes of those killed by AIDS  into the White House lawn. Please do not disrespect the dead, especially loved ones. Do not fling their ashes to make a point. I thought that this crossed the line. Parading the dead body of an AIDS victim through the street is also crossing the line. These forms of protest make it look like these activists do not care or respect for the deceased. Some actions are so wrong in themselves that any intended meaning from them are rebutted and only ugliness remains. Other forms of protest presented, such as stand-ins and debate, proved much more beneficial to the cause.

Discussion Question: Did some forms of protest go to far?

Fire as an epidemic

A Plague on Houses

I would have never associated fire incidences and poverty, especially in the context of the decline of NYC in the late 1960- 1970s. I knew that the City was in major decline during these eras but reading this article, I could visualize the someone dropping a match, burning the City, with people running from their homes, leaving empty buildings. The author of this article illustrates the Rand Institute as the arsonist, as city officials prompt and look on. One other comparison is that the fire is an epidemic, which the author uses quite literally as he shows that the fire incidences fit with the S-shaped pattern of other epidemics, such as measles. He presents the Rand Institute as the origin of this disease, (which he believes is a reality in more ways than one as he provides its associated with HUD and human testing) and as the government as its condoner. The describes the government as giving the Rand Institute power to dictate its resources and published flawy information, as the Institution did not truly attempt to fully evaluate the fire statistics by not bothering to collect real data or concern a wide multitude of variables involved. However, their statistics gave way to the government removing resources, like fire departments, from certain low-income black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the Bronx through initiatives like ‘planned shrinkage.’  The removal of these resources from these neighborhoods exacerbated already difficult living situations and what once may have been prejudiced exaggerations of fire rates by Rand grew into real destruction of people’s homes  and more struggle.

His analogy of fires with an epidemic is intriguing because it works as a counter argument to views of Moynihan’s  and Starr’s in the beginning of the paper. You don’t blame an epidemic on the people. The people are a casualty to greater forces that cause the epidemic. This thinking directly opposes that the high fire incidents in these neighborhoods due to the malicious nature of its inhabitance. Later in the paper the author undermines Starr’s quote about lack of community in these neighborhoods by discussing the tight bonds between people facing adversity and who did not have proper support and stability because of outside forces. The author also attributes the decline and literal burning down of these neighborhoods to the Republican office, and notes that no party or government official acknowledges responsibilities for this epidemic.  I don’t think that any one in government will ever acknowledge this point of view, which basically says the government wanted parts of the City to burn, so it could focus on higher class white neighborhoods. I wonder what about other poorer parts of the City in Brooklyn or Queens, and if similar situations happened in other major American cities because these cities also experienced urban decline.

Discussion Question: Do you think the assessment of fire as an epidemic is accurate?

Integrating Community Planning and City Planning

The Roots of Community Planning

Reading through “From Dislocation to Resistance: The Roots of Community Planning,” the author mainly focusing on racial and economic inequality of City Planning. She presents New York as a place where public officials and wealthy citizens move working class people like pawns, especially black working class people, without any regard, in the process of transforming the City. On many occasions, this exercise of power from the powerful usually results in forms of resistant from the oppressed, such as riots, like in the 1860’s or 1950’s, forming grass roots community organization, like CDCs ,or living on the fringe, like squatting . I love reading about the “mutual aid societies” or “cooperative ownership of land” during the early 1900’s. These types of societies do not really achieve the integration and shared communities that highlight modern urban planning, since they included only the same ethnicity/make up in a group, but I love hearing about people working together and forming a collective stake in their future. This idea is especially important in lower-middle class communities because their strength stems from their numbers and their specialized abilities, not from individual wealth. The victories gardens during WWII were also adorable, and I wish they were maintained instead of becoming abandoned. Having green space and growing fresh fruits and vegetables is always advantageous.

I am confused about the “slum clearance” of the 1950-60s. Neighborhoods were just teared down because they were in disrepair or the government officials just didn’t  like the people living there? That’s in no way a rational approach. More people just become dispersed and more impoverished, worsening the problem. It’s an example that City Planning cannot solely solve by moving/building buildings. I also found the Columbia University gym protest funny in recent light. There’s no gym, but there is an enormous Columbia research facility being built in Harlem. At least if there was a gym, it could be open to members of the community at certain times- but how will a research center involve a community?

Discussion Question: How can City Planning more effectively take into account the needs of the community?

Creating an American City

Situating North American Cities

Globalization is the main marker in American Cities, while European cities are continually growing into that trend. It’s true that no American City has the history that European Cities have, but American Cities grew out of a New World filled with different people and commerce, while European Cities have to adjust their workings to fit into this perspective.  I enjoyed visualizing Manhattan as a medieval village. I do see medieval styled building in Greenwich Village with its strange streets. It’s also strange to visualize early American cities having homologous populations of people with the same background and religion. Now, every American major city has many ethnic enclaves. It’s interesting that America’s diverse population does truly come from people seeking opportunity, as America’s diversity began to increase during the late 1600’s- 1700’s due to its increased economic strength. America became America when it built efficient centers of commerce. My AP US History teacher made sure to stress that the Revolutionary War was not mainly do to ideological reasonings, but financial reasons. As soon  as it became more profitable to separate, Americans began to oppose the British.

Cities can only grow with innovation, as evident in their boom after the Industrial Revolution. As commerce increased and technology increased, cities increased. Populations grew as the buildings grew. Those who did not grow and look forward to change fell behind. North Eastern Cities grew economically and culturally, while the South did not move forward and stuck to its traditional way of life. The differences between the North and South are still visible today, as the South is generally poorer with worse education and the North generally does better in these areas. Cities, as hotbeds of opportunity, could not support all the people it drew. The cities grew to surrounding areas. As the city expanded, ethnic and economic lines of its people deepened. Wealthier on the outside and poorer on the inside As the cities’ growth slowed, these divides became more evident. I wonder why Toronto is not as greatly affected by these divides?  This trend is starting to reverse and wealthier people are moving back to cities and poorer people are moving further out. When did moving back to the city become more desirable?

Discussion Question: How has technology benefited the city, bringing people together, and how does technology create a divide in the city?