All posts by Wilian

The Needs of the Community

Clarifying Key Concepts

“Community development emerges in the context of the current limitations of the capitalist political economy to fulfill the needs and desires of the community.” (DeFelippis and Saergert, 5)

That is what the authors believe that community development should be used for. This does not seem to hold true in the case of  the Flushing West rezoning. DeBlasio has stated the rezoning across the city is done to improve the community, but that is not what the community needs. Communities are important for the well being of the workforce, but the local workforce in Flushing is still stuck with low wage jobs.

The development only had the input of the wealthy. The local institutions didn’t give power to the poorer minorities. The organizations that the community does have ties with don’t have the power to affect the rezoning. The City Council has voted to approve DeBlasio’s plan, despite the Community Boards advising them to veto it. Activists in other areas affected by rezoning have called for giving the Community Boards veto power in land use cases. The people of Flushing will have maximize their collective capacity, and use all their resources to protect their community.

Conflict, Contradiction, and Complexity

Clarifying Key Concepts

The multitude of processes that make up progressive community planning all have the elements stated in the title. All of these elements are also seen in the community’s attempts to change the rezoning of Flushing West. The Flushing community wants more housing and a cleaner waterfront, but real estate investors want to build for luxury housing and the locals will not be able to afford it. The worst part is that the developers are taking advantage of the public subsidies for affordable housing, but they aren’t building enough affordable housing. Community Board 7 (CB7) members want to further incite building affordable housing, but the tax breaks are no longer in effect and they allow the developers to build higher due to being so close the LaGuardia Airport.

Upzoning Flushing West is supposed to be best for the whole area, but it doesn’t represent the diverse interests of its residents. However, adding more people will worsen the overcrowding problem that already exists in Flushing. The plan will have contrary effects than it’s supposed to. The needs of Flushing conflict with what developers want, but the latter are the ones that have a greater voice in the rezoning. Now that the City Council has approved the rezoning, the Flushing community will have to take action to make their voices heard. This problem does not have a simple solution; there are upsides and downsides to different solutions. That is why the residents of Flushing need to be informed to make sure they have power in their community.

Weekly Report 3

Updates - Flushing West

Overview of Key Project Ideas

We have gathered our information about the elements of the Flushing West rezoning and how the community will be affected by it. On Monday, we decided that we cannot thoroughly cover all the effects of the rezoning, so we decided to narrow it down to gentrification. The biggest fear of the Flushing West residents in that the neighborhood will be gentrified, and that it will lead to them being displaced.

 

Update on Current Progress

During this week, there were not any town hall meetings, and MinKwon did not have any updates concerning the rezoning. Since there was a lack of events, we decided to meet up and work on the project.

On Monday we agreed to concentrate our project on gentrification that can be caused by the current proposal for the rezoning. Gentrification is the main source of all the complaints that we heard from the community since we started working on this project. The recent history of Flushing also shows that the property values have increased from $359,900 in 2010 to $431,800 in 2014, while the median household income has gone down from $50,231 to $37,083. (American Community Survey 2010-2014).

There has also been an increase in commercial building, and this rezoning wants to add even more to what already exists in the Flushing area. The people however, want the planners to improve the Flushing infrastructure so that it can accommodate the already massive amount of commerce that it has. Adding high-end housing and commercial buildings will add more strain to the overcrowded 7 train, a train line that is one of the few forms of public transportation to and from Flushing.

SkyView is an example of the gentrification that the residents want to prevent. SkyView Parc added housing for the rich when affordable housing was needed. With the addition of luxury housing to a mall, SkyView Center and the streets around it are very overcrowded. There is not enough public transportation for all the people, and for those that own cars, there is no parking. Parking at SkyView used to be free for anyone, but after it people started living there, they started charging for the parking, giving everyone else less space to park. The current plan for rezoning may not give space for another development like SkyView, but it is a waterfront area that investors will be attracted to, and what they want will clash with the needs of the residents.

So, now we have an example of a previous waterfront development by looking at the Greenpoint/Williamsburg plan, and we also have an example of development that caused gentrification in Flushing by looking at SkyView center. Social Explorer was also a tremendous help in visualizing the changes in Flushing  over the last couple of years.

 

Interesting Findings

There is a type of urban planning under the 197-a law in the City Charter that allows the communities themselves to decide on the urban development based on the input from the residents that live there. It is the type of plan that was used in the Greenpoint/Williamsburg waterfront rezoning in 2003. The community there made their own plan to revitalize the area. This plan included parks, open space, and affordable housing, the last one being what the residents of Flushing West need the most.

 

Challenges encountered

One of the biggest challenges we faced this week is that we made our project too broad. When we went to the public meeting two weeks ago, we saw many issues that the people of Flushing West had with the rezoning proposal. We were being overly ambitious in trying to tackle all the problems that they had. During class on Monday we decided that gentrification was the biggest complaint and it needed to be attended to the most.

Another challenge that we face is finding an effective public education product. The 3D map of Flushing West might not be what we need to accommodate our new goal. We can either find a way to make it work, or use a different form of delivery. We really do not want to do a flyer or another paper product. There were many other flyers given out during the public meeting, and we do not want our product to be lost among the papers they hand out.

 

Tasks Remaining

We still have to look deeper into SkyView Center’s development. In addition to our quantitative data, we should acquire some data about people’s thoughts on the development. Interviews of people that lived in the area would help to see the community’s reaction to the development, and to see how those sentiments affect their view on the current Flushing West rezoning. We also want to see if those feelings are supported by our quantitative data, so we can have a valid stance against the current rezoning proposal.

When we learned about the 197-a plan, we also read that it has only been implemented in 13 different occasions since its addition to the City Charter in 1989. I plan on finding out why this plan is not used very often, and also why it was not used for the rezoning of Flushing West. We also plan on finding other waterfront developments, in addition to the Greenpoint/Williamsburg development, to use as examples of what to do, and what not to do, with the current proposal. We now have a clearer motive for our white paper, and now we need to get more useful data to support the claim that the plan for rezoning Flushing West will cause gentrification to an area that cannot handle it.

 

Group Dynamic

We have already met twice since our class meeting on Monday, and we all have decided on tasks that we will do for this project. Brian will find another waterfront development that we can use to support our case. Christine, Claudia and Erica will now look at the aftermath of the development of SkyView, and they will get some input from residents in the area. Erica will also continue engaging with the MinKwon center in order to get more information, and to see if there are any announcements about the rezoning. I will continue looking into the 197-a planning and, along with the rest of the group, find connections between our research and what is being proposed in the Flushing West rezoning.

The Bloomberg Administration and Rezoning

Contemporary Planning in NYC

After the recession in the early 1990s, the Regional Plan Association (RPA) looked for a plan to improve the future of New York City. Their solution was to increase the quality of life in the region thereby increasing investment into the region. This would be accomplished by building around the three E’s: economy, equity, and environment. Previous projects had only focused on one E, usually economy, and it came at the cost of the other aspects. We now call these improvements gentrification. To cover the cost of gentrifying public space, it was privatized, and eventually used according to the needs of those with money. If the neighborhood was relatively poor, the people with money pushed out the people without money.

Bloomberg’s redevelopment agenda for the city used some of the ideas that the RPA proposed to improve its future. He rezoned many areas to make previously underdeveloped areas attractive to developers. Many of the projects depended on the financing of the private sector. Unfortunately, the private sector took advantage of the freedom that the Bloomberg administration offered them, but they made the minimum effort to meet the public use requirements. His “inclusionary zoning” was meant to incentivize major developments while requiring them to build affordable housing, but the private sector was unwilling to cooperate in these efforts.

This city’s dependence on private financing for development and lack of regulation has led developers to ignore public interests. Bloomberg’s agenda for rapid rezoning seemed to be a plan for the future that has been enforced uncontrollably. Bringing in money does not inherently improve the quality of life in the city. The open microphone session for the rezoning of the Clinton/Hell’s Kitchen showed how it could have the opposite effect in a neighborhood.

Discussion question: In the text the city is referred as a “reactive.” How can we become more proactive in development? How can the city enforce affordable housing requirements to meet the demands of the city? Is upzoning low income neighborhoods the right approach to improving their quality of life?

The Real Estate Industry and the Wealthy

The Capital of Capital

The relationship between capital and labor has influenced the development of New York City. With wealth came better living conditions, and greater influence in the development of the city. Real estate development, or lack of development, has been a result of shifts in capital. The city has always tried to accommodate the wealthy to stay in the city because they are a major source of the city’s income. That has at the cost of the low-income workers in the city. Labor laws and unions, which protect the workers, have been torn down to keep the wealthy in the city. The real estate industry even used dirty tricks to influence people to leave their homes in order to sell it at a higher price. Public space, such as Central Park, was planned for the wealthy people in the area.

My group is working on the rezoning of Flushing West and one of the concerns that we saw was the development of the land along the Flushing Creek. That land is currently undeveloped and it is of high value. The Flushing-Willets Point-Corona Local Development Corporation is in charge of planning the development of that land. From this reading I can understand why the community would be worried about what the LDC will do with the land. It can be a very attractive location for business, but it wouldn’t help the Flushing West community if the businesses that moved there were global companies that only gave low wages. There would be no point in spending tax money on cleaning the Creek if the businesses that moved in created dead-end jobs.

 

Discussion Questions: How can we promote quality of life changes rather than changes for growth?

All Part of the Plan

A Plague on Houses

The Rand Fire Project was probably the most inhumane response to building abandonment that I have ever heard of. Letting your city burn down in order to “get money for new housing” is a disgusting idea, but it was popular amongst political leaders in the 1970s. During this time period there were many “plans” going into effect that were not good in the first place, and only got worse during the execution.

This reading had me concerned about the handling of governmental agencies and intellectual institutions. They all were aware of what the Rand Fire Project was and what it did to New York City, and other cities in the country, from the start. In the 1976 hearings about the fire service reductions, many politicians there knew about the atrocities that this service caused to their neighborhoods, and were still in its favor. Even the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development knew about it and defended it by citing the awards it received from professional societies. Hopefully, now the public is more keen to noticing when something is wrong and more vocal in acting against it.

Reducing the size of the fire department was supposed to just affect the poor communities. Accelerating the demise of poor neighborhoods opened up the opportunity to create a new and better city. This was a logical approach to those with power because they viewed the poor as destructive to themselves and to the city. And just like Robert Moses, they saw a physical problem in need of a physical solution. Not only was the physical city burnt down, the social ties were also burnt down. They didn’t see the deeper social ties that Jane Jacobs saw, which gives an identity to the city. Unfortunately, in this case the solution not only hurt the poor, it also hurt the neighborhoods that were doing better.

This is an important part of this city’s history that we should always keep in our minds. Plans like the Fire House Project should not ever come to effect again. The physical and social aspects of a city are linked to each other and we need to keep that in consideration when considering the future of New York City.

 

Discussion Question: What measures are there today to prevent such misinformation from spreading? How can we inform the poor without having too much bias?