Jarrett Murphy’s article regarding New York City’s rezoning and future plans under Bloomberg’s administration is lacking in various areas. Government regulation on land use changed since 2002 with the 9,400 rezoned block in New York City. This large amount of change during Bloomberg’s administration makes me wonder why it was all even necessary. Under Koch, the maximum amount of rezoned blocks was five, and this was even into the 90s, which was not too long ago. Although the claim that rezoning was done to pursue “transit-oriented development” it does not appear to be the case. About more than half of the rezoned areas downsized actually had good proximity to transit. Thus, it seems that City Planning is working against its supposed goal and is just reshaping New York City as it pleases.

As the first city to apply zoning on a citywide basis, we had started off other cities rezoning such as Chicago and Miami. Although a different tactic was taken, the plans of these two cities were successful. Efforts to succeed in our rezoning plans in 1939, 1950, and 1969 all failed. According to Tom Angotti, if comprehensive plans were made and succeeded, New York would be different than what it is today. This would not be too much of a big deal in my opinion, if the article had not mentioned that City Planning is not working on long comprehensive planning and is instead narrowing down their focus to individual proposals and neighborhoods. From my perspective, why do areas have to be rezoned anyway? Either way all the different areas make up New York and the districts are fine the way they are. Even if they are rezoned, people in the area most likely will not know that they have been rezoned. I know I would not.

With the name PlaNYC, one would think it is a plan to help New York City’s future. However, according to Murphy’s article that is not the case. Apparently, “PlaNYC was never intended to be what its name implies,” instead it is supposed to be an “agenda.” This is the simplest, yet biggest mistake that could be made. The name of something should tell the audience or give the audience an idea of what it is, yet this name was chosen because it was “cute.” Even when planners had told them that the name gave off the wrong meaning, it was still decided that the agenda would be called PlaNYC. From this, I think that this group needs to rethink their name or fulfill the meaning of PlaNYC with real plans instead of agendas. To get things done, the city needs plans more than agendas.

The Uniform Land Use Review Procedure creates a difficult path for plans. The developer must first gather paperwork to be reviewed by City Planning, mainly a complete environmental impact statement. The EIS is not only costly for the developer, it is also risky as the market involved in the proposed plan fluctuates as the plan is being reviewed. As time is of essence, approval of the EIS in a timely fashion is crucial, but even for a short project it takes three to six months to review. Besides time being a problem, some developers “downplay obvious concerns.” I think this is a bigger problem than time, since not going into depth of problems in the environment can lead to future harm and damage. If a developer does this, I do not think their proposal should be considered, because this small action can lead to bigger more harmful actions.

Although New York City is always growing and changing, a long comprehensive plan to ensure its future is possible. Without a plan, how will New York solve the present and past problems that will affect its future? People cannot just rush ahead without a plan, so neither should the city, and officials should understand that and start working on a plan.

Although I do not have a strong opinion about gentrification, I believe that the success of gentrification depends heavily on the people of the neighborhood. Freeman mentions that to create mixed communities gentrification has the greatest potential. Most gentrification would be of middle class people moving to relatively poor neighborhoods. (126) By creating mixed communities, the neighborhood would rise in value and attraction, thus benefiting the lower-income families. In a review of literature, gentrification gives hope to “improving the housing stock, increasing the tax base,…improving quality of services.” (126) Although it is wonderful to improve a relatively poor neighborhood, it feels as though changing the neighborhood slowly forces previous lower-income residents to leave. If the lifestyle of the neighborhood increases in value, lower-income families would not be able to afford to continue living there.

Freeman mentions that gentrification would help with social ties, and thus would help the lower-income families move up in socially. With middle-income families moving into neighborhoods with lower-income families, the lower-income family would have a chance to obtain information that would help with jobs and other financial activity. However, there was not much change in mobility, because of limited access to resources. (146) Although some women were able to receive benefits through socializing, there was not much change that would benefit the families long-term. I do not think that social ties would do much for lower-income families, especially in our current period. From my experience living in several apartments, there is not much conversation with neighbors. So, in today’s time I do not think that social ties would be a benefit from gentrification.

Smith mentions many neighborhoods in New York City transformed through gentrification, which are now some of the most mainstream areas of Manhattan. He first mentions the Lower East Side and the account of a couple moving down to Ludlow street. This couple had never even heard of Ludlow street before moving in, indicating how infrequently they visited the Lower East Side. Presently, the Lower East Side is filled with many people and businesses. This illustrates how gentrification turned out successful in this neighborhood in increasing attraction.

In addition to the Lower East Side, Smith mentions SoHo that was gentrified in that 1960s and 1970s. In the past SoHo was an area filled with artists lofts and galleries. It also had many unique stores that demonstrated gentrification with the unique products it sold, such as Navajo rugs. Now, SoHo is a shopping destination with many retail stores lined up along Broadway. I find it hard to imagine SoHo gentrified, but do not find it hard to believe that it had been gentrified. With all the chain retail stores in the area, I find it believable that the neighborhood was gentrified.

From Smith’s article, I found out that two neighborhoods in New York City were gentrified. However, I feel that presently this gentrification has raised the costs of living in the area. In a way these two neighborhoods could be considered hubs, which would result in increasing cost of apartments in the area. Thus, this would provide more space for middle-income families and force lower-income families to move out.

Having grown up in New York City, I have always thought of the Bronx as a dangerous area surrounded by poverty. After reading the article, “Government Can’t Help? Tell That to the South Bronx,” by Michael Powell, I learned that changes were taking place in the South Bronx. I had the preconception that the government did not do much for housing in NYC, but after learning about the aid the South Bronx received I was surprised, especially after reading the article, “In Re In Rem,” by Braconi. From Braconi’s article, it seemed like housing during Ed Koch did not really resurrect the housing.

Braconi mentions how public housing units in New York were being abandoned, which peaked in the 1970s. This abandonment was due to Caucasians moving to more attractive housing options and other ethnicities replacing them, especially “black and Puerto Rican migrants.” As these tenants did not have high paying jobs, it became difficult of building owners to collect rent to pay for building maintenance and other expenses. Back then not much was done about housing, but when Mayor Ed Koch noticed the rent payment rate of City owned buildings, he began to take matters into his own hands.

Ed Koch had ordered collections of rent by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. This is appalling, because it is evident that there are people living in the buildings that can barely afford to get by and the Mayor is demanding payment instead of asking for possible solutions that would help both the people and the city? In response to the Mayor’s demand, the HPD created a network of check-cashing outlets that would allow tenants to pay their bill in person, and the HPD also created the Tenant Legal Affairs Unit. Although I see why the city became strict in obtaining rent from tenants, I still think that they should have come up with plans to ensure that tenants living there would continue living there and be able to pay rent.

Michael Powell’s article described the South Bronx just as I had always perceived it to be, “ghost canyons of burnt-out buildings, saw mattresses and old sinks and tubs piled atop hills of rubble, and encountered smack dealers who cordoned off blocks for open-air markets.” This description was during the 1970s, which was when housing abandonment was at its peak in New York. From this illustration, I am more convinced that Ed Koch’s demand for rent collection is the wrong first step to take. I believe he should have focused on rebuilding and attracting more people to the area and then collect rent.

However, after Ed Koch’s “resurrection” of the Bronx and the Bloomberg administrations addition, the previous portrait of the South Bronx transformed. Although Koch’s first step in dealing with housing abandonment in New York was to collect rent, as mentioned in Braconi’s article, Powell states that Koch decided ‘the city would rebuild.’ This became true during Mayor Bloomberg’s administration, as $8 billion went to building and preserving 165,000 apartments. The construction of these buildings will have “solar panels and roof gardens for low and middle income families.” As a New Yorker, I find that impressive. I have only heard of roof gardens in Manhattan, and seen pictures of roof gardens in the middle of very urban areas. This construction clearly illustrates the transformation of the housing in the Bronx for me, and reduces the stereotyped image of a run-down and criminal ridden Bronx community.

New York’s financial crisis that occurred after 1975 was due to the inability of the city government to maintain the city at a level the people were accustomed to. Roger Starr states that the maintenance was not possible, because the city’s input of wealth was not sufficient to maintain the standards of the people. However, after reading the goals on how to increase or acquire funds for the city, I think a major contribution to the problem is failure to acknowledge change, and the growing population within New York City.

Starr describes the problem by separating the problem into two cities: Economic City and Political City. I agree with him that the crisis was formed by the problems of the Political City, which as a result created problems in the Economic City. Starr explains that there is money involved in the Political City, and this money comes from the government. For instance, government funds for criminal justice and education. The national government was strict with how much money was given in the case of poverty and nonsocial programs, which made it difficult for New York to increase their wealth, even though they increased local taxes. Although it was difficult to attain funding from the national government, if New York’s government focused on the biggest problem of financial trouble, there might have been a way to avoid this crisis. For instance, problems in the economic sector began to arise when the city’s exports began to diminish. While exports were dwindling, the city began to increase more imports. If the city noticed that increasing imports would not increase the city’s wealth, maybe there could have been a relatively heavy tax on importing goods so that businesses would have to think twice about buying goods abroad.

I think that the city’s desire to stay the way it was contributed to the crisis. When the city was increasing imports, they did not do so out of necessity, but out of “hope for the future.” People of the city wanted to use the reputation to convince others that New York would stand on top in the future even though they were going through a bumpy road at that moment. Although this reputation holds some truth to it today, if there had been some slight changes to adjust the wealth of the city to match the amount that was incoming, maybe the crisis could have been avoided. Maybe the city could have changed the level of maintenance accordingly with how much the predicted wealth would be after proposals to increase wealth were put to action.

Population also played an important role to the crisis. Starr stated that to increase the wealth of the city, there needed to be more jobs so there would be less unemployed people and more people boosting the economy. During the crisis, employment dropped more than it had before, yet the population was growing. With a growing population up to 8 million, decreasing employment would only further deepen the crisis. Even so, there were only slight attempts to increase employment, which in the end did not do much to boost the economy. I think there should have been more efforts to create more jobs, especially since the population was not going to decrease anytime soon. More people without jobs would just mean more money needed from the government to help people out of poverty, which is due to unemployment.

I believe that this crisis would have happened even if the government provided more help to New York. New York, with its growing population, had refused to change, which led to its downfall. Even if New York decided to change just a bit, I think the local government could not have done enough to bring more wealth in. Without increasing or stable incoming wealth, New York would not be able to avoid the crisis it fell into.

When we began this film, I did not have expectations since I had no clue as to what the Pruitt-Igoe Myth was. I assumed it would be a documentary about housing, which it was, but I did not expect it to have such a big impact on me. The interviews of people who had lived and grew up in Pruitt-Igoe made the documentary effective in displaying how public housing can go wrong. When I learned about slums in history class, and how terrible they were, I sympathized for the people who had to live through such conditions. After watching this film, I felt horrible that such living conditions even existed.

The woman who did not regret living in Pruitt-Igoe left a strong impression on me. I thought she was an extremely strong and positive woman to be able to think so optimistically about the time she lived in Pruitt-Igoe. When she described what the buildings were like when they were first established, it seemed like a wonderful place to live, especially when they were showing the interior of the rooms. Then they began showing how the buildings were deteriorating: vandalism, broken windows, garbage strewn about the floor, etc. After seeing the diminishing quality of Pruitt-Igoe, I found it hard to understand how the woman could treasure her time at Pruitt-Igoe; that the positives outweighed the negatives. She was the only optimistic perspective in the documentary.

Another person who I thought created a strong impact was the man who became the buildings elevator repairman. Although this man’s story about being stuck in a smelly elevator with his brother was not meant to be funny, he provided a small moment of relief from all the depressing narratives. I thought it was clever how he made his narrative into something positive. It is strange to think that two young boys were climbing through the elevator and opening the elevator doors to get out. Also, hearing that no one would come help people stuck in the elevator is outrageous. Luckily the boys were kind enough to be there and help. If there were stories about kids helping out people stuck in elevators, there would be criticisms about how the government is slacking off and taxes going to waste.

The narrative that left the strongest impression on me was the story of the man who lost his brother due to violence in the building. This man’s story was so emotional that I felt myself on the brink of tears. No child should have to grow up and/or live in a dangerous area. Although there are better public housing than Pruitt-Igoe today, there are still dangerous neighborhoods with gangs and other criminal activities. I think there is a common aspect of these two problems. I believe that trouble travels to troubled areas and continues to grow as a result. Thus, this story of how criminals took over the community brings a connection to today’s society, indicating that there are problem areas that are still present.

If Pruitt-Igoe was well kept, would there be a different outcome? Personally, I think there would have been. However, I felt that Pruitt-Igoe rapidly deteriorated because the tenants there began to not care about the quality of the housing, because the government stopped caring. If the community got together and tried to keep Pruitt-Igoe in its original condition, I think there could have been a different outcome of Pruitt-Igoe.

In the past, New York City did not have many regulations for housing, which led to many slums filling the city. In the 1940s, Robert Moses began plans to clear most of these slums without using too much money. In order to clear out the slums, the NYCHA had started with vacant land sites. After building on these vacant land sites of their choice, they began their renovation of slums. However, these slum clearances did not seem too thought out in the initial stages.

Moses had strongly opposed vacant land projects, because his main goal was slum clearance. However, I think this was a critical step for slum clearance to occur. After the war, there was housing shortage. So, while clearing the slums, where would the tenants living there go? By beginning with vacant land projects, they are providing these tenants places to consider moving to, which would save the NYCHA some money and time. This is because while planning out slum clearance, the main problem of the program was moving the tenants of slums. By working on vacant land sites, the NYCHA would partially solve the problem of having to move tenants in slums before beginning their slum clearance. A possible step the organization could have taken was creating temporary contracts with tenants to allow them to stay in buildings from vacant land projects until the slum clearance is completed. Thus, I think it would have been better to focus or spend more time on vacant land projects before beginning slum clearance.

In the plan for slum clearance, the main focus was destruction of the slums and creation of better housing. However, when Moses and authority took action, they began pairing opposites: private housing and public housing, and low income neighborhoods and middle income neighborhoods. These pairs created a balance in the program, but I believe this balance would affect the people that build the neighborhood. It is in human nature for people to flock together with their own kind. This can be seen in low income families, in which they would form ‘ghettos’ in a neighborhood. Thus, if a low income neighborhood surrounds a middle income neighborhood, would there not be tension between the two neighborhoods? Herman Stichman mentions that these ‘ghettos’ prevent different income levels from meeting in neighborhood activities and fostering class feeling (134). Although the article does not mention an neighborhood tensions, I think the NYCHA should have considered the social aspect in slum clearance.

The success of New York housing after all the creations of new buildings appealed to many other cities. For example, St. Louis created high rise housing because Mayor Joseph Darst was impressed by New York’s skyscrapers and NYCHA’s towers (150). However, their development did not turn out the same way as New York, due to their lack of consideration of cost in the initial stages. When the city realized how costly the construction would be, there had to be major changes in the plans. Many of these changes involved making the rooms smaller and removing amenities. Along with other changes, the final creation of the public housing building was not any more different than slum housing (151). If these cities had thoroughly planned and spent more time working on these public housing, I believe they would have been successful.

The problems in past housing in any city was lack of regulation, which led to slum housing. To counter slum housing in New York, Robert Moses ‘created’ the plan of slum clearance. The main problem with the plan was moving tenants around for slum clearance to happen, which could have been partially solved with vacant land projects. Even though NYCHA began with vacant land projects, they only built a small amount of buildings for these projects before moving on to slum clearance. Regardless, there were certain aspects of slum clearance I thought would bring failure to the program, but in the end it became extremely successful.

Visiting the Museum of the City of New York and learning about the housing situation in New York as compared to other places was an eye opening experience. Housing in New York, as many of us may know, is difficult. With all these new methods of saving space and creating apartments for single people instead of single-family, New York City is not only catching up to the current population trend but also considering the future.

My favorite part of the exhibit was looking at the architectural mini models that won contests. I have actually seen small models of buildings before; however, the model as a whole was for a large area of land where a private community was to be built in China. The model was very colorful and realistic looking, but what caught my attention was that it looked “fancy.” Since I do not plan on immigrating to China, dreaming of such a community would not work out for me. So when I saw these models and their unique designs, I was immediately drawn in.

Another part of the exhibit I enjoyed was the apartment floor model. When the guide was showing us all the space saving objects, such as the pull down bed, I felt like a little girl in a doll house. I have seen many space saving gadgets on the internet, but seeing them up close and watching how simple they work is even more amazing. When she went through the whole floor model, I felt convinced that my ideal “when I get a job and live by myself” home was an apartment like that.
When exploring other exhibits, I thought the world fair exhibit was intriguing as well. There were many object displayed from past world fairs, like the huge robot man that I found extremely creepy the longer I looked at it. Another object that caught my eye was the toaster and coffee pot. Being able to compare old inventions of a toaster and coffee pot allowed me to really feel the technological advancement of the present. Since I grew up in a generation where technology was rapidly developing, technology feels “normal” to me. So being able to see up close something from the past was a nice experience. Overall, I really enjoyed the trip to the Museum of the City of New York. There were many fascinating displays, and I think others should look at the World’s Fair exhibit. Also, the museum guide was extremely passionate and made the housing exhibit very intriguing.

We all know that many immigrants came to America because of the “American Dream.” Part of this dream included ownership of a house. Many obstacles made this aspect difficult to achieve for many immigrants. However, the government eventually stepped in to increase housing during Hoover’s period. President Hoover believed housing was “the foundation of a sound economic and social system.” (193) In other words, due to poor housing in the country, the United States would collapse and to prevent the country’s downfall the government must step in and aid people in housing. At first I thought that it was ridiculous for the whole country’s development to depend on housing, but thinking about it again Hoover’s words are plausible.

Although the government began to financially become involved in housing during President Hoover’s reign, the first significant government involvement was during World War I. The government established two programs that aimed to provide ‘housing for heads of households moving to industrial areas to produce weapons for the war.’ (192) In a way, I am reminded about the American Revolution when people had to house soldiers in their homes. however in this case, people were provided their own houses. This is the first I have heard that the government provided houses for people to live in while they worked to produce weapons for the war, and I had expected a lot of houses to have been built for this reason. However, Jackson states that not many houses were built; “less than 25,000 units were built in the entire nation.” (192) Many people worked in the factories to produce weapons during the war, so it would seem as if many houses would be built as a result. Surprisingly, it was the exact opposite. It sort of seems that the government was reluctant to establish too many homes, which would make the government appear too involved with housing as Jackson seemed to have hinted at. Although the government was able to step out of housing at this time, the eventually had to take matters into their own hands.

During Hoover’s presidency, the United States was entering the Great Depression, and people turned to the government for help. This became the first actual involvement from the government, which resulted in failure in Hoover’s presidency. Legislation made, such as the Federal Loan Home Bank Act, did not do what they were created to do because of restrictions that prevented many people who needed the help from receiving aid. In an attempt to help, but not provide too much help, the government failed to quickly and efficiently restore the country to stability. President Hoover’s quote appeared to want to fix the housing in the country, but it seems the government did not want to become too involved and had failed as a result. This may have possibly influenced the decisions of a past event.

Not too long ago, there was a financial crisis that was believed to have occurred because of mortgage applications. From what I know, many mortgage applications were accepted when they should not have been when real estate was affordable. As a result of too many mortgages accepted and not enough people qualified to pay it off, many homes were foreclosed and real estate increased. At the same time, the economy was dropping and entering a recession. From this event, Hoover’s words prove to be true that housing is the foundation of the nation’s system.

Had the country not gone through a recession because of the leniency to accept mortgages, I would be arguing that it is too much for the nation’s economic and social system to be so strongly influenced by housing. After all, the country’s gross domestic product contains many different aspects that affect it. But from these two events, it seems that housing is extremely influential.

Although I have learned about the migration within the country, where African Americans from the South moved up to the North to begin a new life, the excerpts found in “Warmth of Other Suns” really brought the journey to life. I was most affected by the fourth book with Ida Mae Brandon Gladney’s experience trying to rebuild her life, as well as the descriptive riots. When learning about this in history class, it is extremely objective and you do feel sympathy, but reading first hand accounts tug on the reader’s emotions, which is exactly what it did to me.

While reading Gladney’s time in Milwaukee, most of her experience was familiar. Moving up North would require her husband to find a job, and it was given that during that time it would be difficult for her husband to find a stable job. Especially since the war had just ended and soldiers were coming back home, which would mean they would take their jobs back. However, it seems that when Gladney’s migrated to the North most jobs were not available. Even if that were the case, it may be possible for her husband to find a job for cheap labor. However, according to Gladney’s it did not seem so since they moved to Chicago.

Before Mr. Gladney’s had moved to Chicago to find a more stable job to support his family, Ida Gladney’s was pregnant and had traveled down South to give birth. I found this extremely interesting. This is the first I’ve ever heard of people traveling down South to give birth. If Ida was already in the North, would it not have been better to give birth there as it would save money and be more convenient? Also, was it not possible to find a midwife in the North? Regardless, Ida’s decision appears to have led Mr. Gladney’s choice to move to Chicago. If Ida had stayed in the North to give birth, I do not think Mr. Gladney’s would have moved to Chicago and they would not have gotten their own small home. Mr. Gladney’s hard work as an iceman that helped buy a home for his family illustrated how even after slavery ended life was still hard for African Americans.

During the Gladney family’s time in Chicago, riots were erupting everywhere. The stories mentioned, such as a young African American boy being killed and stirring up riots, were extremely heart-wrenching. These accounts made the riots that killed and injured so many people feel more real instead of just being statistically told from a history textbook of what happened. Also, these stories illustrate the extremity of the racial tension and conflict.

From Ida’s experience, I got to understand from her first hand experience of the hardships that she faced. Many of them are similar to the hardships that many immigrants of other ethnicity faced.  From her time to the present, many things have changed and it feels unrealistic that all these racial discrimination and hardships existed back then. However, I believe it is inevitable that all past occurrences happened; because they happened, we are where we are today.