In “Five Boroughs. One City. No Plan” written by Jarrett Murphy, it is amazing how New York City has already gone through 9,400 blocks of rezoning process. The head of the Department of City Planning, Amanda Burden, believes that rezoning “are setting the conditions for sustainable, transit-oriented growth and are signed to accommodate a population of 9 million New Yorkers projected by 2030.” Yet this immense amount of rezoning is disturbing since it changes the regulations surrounding the use of land, the size of buildings, and the distance between each building. Knowing that rezoning is to prepare for the expanding New York’s population, it still affects current residents and urban planners of the present day. Projection of the future is blinding people of the side effects that rezoning would cause today.

For example, some of the policies for rezoning sometimes go haywire. Areas that were supposed to get downzoned were instead becoming denser. The author mentioned in the article that there seem to have certain pattern in which the areas that got downzoned were mostly white and wealthy neighborhood. Therefore, rezoning may not necessarily be good for the current neighborhood but benefits developers who play God and decide who gets what.

Furthermore, the fact that the zoning was being done to accommodate the developers’ visions of how the city should be growing seems to contain a lot of risks. God forbid, if their visions were not realized, the results may be unpredictable and cause the residents of the specific rezoned neighborhoods to suffer. This is another way in which rezoning can fail when estimations are made for future populations and lifestyles, not for the current ones. I was surprised to learn that New York City started the trend of citywide zoning regulations in 1916, which specified what could be built on every square foot of the city. For example, the “wedding cake” rule stated that “builders had to set back the upper floors, so that building looked like cake layers stacked one atop another.” This is a more human-friendly style of building for it allows maximum exposure to sunlight for each building. However as time progressed, the “wedding cake” rule does not fit into the contemporary trend of modern skyscrapers, thus changed the rule forever.

The city should have researched about past success of the same fashion of rezoning in other metropolitan areas before taking its own step, but when I think about what risk-takers New Yorkers are, I guess it does not really come up as a surprise. Manhattan could have been less dense had the city made more detailed zoning regulations that include more research of other cities. This could have saved the city from many issues sprouted from the overarching density that have become today. In the words of the article, “New York has never taken a comprehensive approach to planning.” It has always been a scheme to revamp the city’s real estate without actual concern to build an organic, sustainable neighborhood, thus explains why rezoning usually takes a long time because no extensive planning ever took place.

Though being the all-time inherent pioneer and risk-taker of the States, New York City still have much to learn in order to concoct a concrete plan for the future. A idea taken into action is certainly a plus, but a brilliant idea sloppily executed is not something to be proud of. The uncertain future loom before the city.

From this class reading “Building the Frontier Myth” by Neil Smith, I noticed some interesting features that I have never learned before.

First, what is interesting is the way New York looked at the City back then, when it was yet to be developed, as a “frontier” and new settlers, as “urban pioneers.” It was amazing to see the way people, or rather newspaper, with their news-breaking titles and articles, look at “unknown” neighborhood with curiosity and fear: “Ludlow Street. No one we know would think of living here. No one we know has ever heard of Ludlow Street.” Even with neighborhood so familiar to us today, such as W 42nd St, was regarded by the “new settlers” as the untamed “Wild Wild West” that was to be “domesticated” by “trailblazers.” The Western Territory point of view in old cowboy movie made New York a more mythical place to live in, thus drove flocks of curious pionniers to explore the new frontier back then, making New York City the fully-and-over-capacity place that it is today. Throughout the first 2 pages of the articles, references of old cowboy movies like “Crocodile Dundee” proliferated: “optimism,” “hostile landscapes,” “natives,” “wilderness,” and the most outstanding reference of all – “manifest destiny.”

Second was the analogy made by the author about myth, as an event that achieves its long standing in history through the removal of historic and geographical context, altogether making up a cliche. The frontier myth of New York was becoming increasingly prevalent among the new settlers due to the erection of buildings named “The Dakota Apartments,” “Colorado,” “Savannah,” and “New West” with no comment about the consistency between New York and the Wild Wild West.

Third was the integration of businesses into the myth. The fable of the Wild Wild West transformed not only the buildings and facades of the City, but alo its businesses. Introduction of Tex-Mex restaurants, desert decor, and cowboy chic intoxicated the consumption of the day, along with SoHo stores selling Navajo Indian rugs, Santa Fe jewelry, terra-cotta pottery with plain store signs in front as if they were pieces of wood indifferently painted over by white paint (like in the movie). New Yorker did not only look “Western” but ate and dressed that way too.

Fourth was the fact that the frontier myth was also regarded as a “naturalization of urban history” and a place where nature was taken back to its original state.

I thought to myself that if I were to live during such an interesting episode of New York City, I would be wearing full brown leather clothes completed with boots and cowboy hat, with a toothpick half-chewed on my mouth. It would be hilarious. Yet from reading article I realized that the whole facade of the “frontier myth” was only a way for age-old New Yorkers of the day to escape “modernization” and “capitalist development” of the New World, deliberately ignoring contemporary social conflicts for the sake of “urban harmony” back in the days. It was pitiful.

Speaker of the House John A. Boehner started out the article with a disappointing yet untrue remark: “when the economy grows, it’s not because of a new government program or spending initiative… it’s time to leave that era behind.” Who else can the people lean on when the hard time comes, especially in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression? Just by a glance, one can conjecture that Boehner may reluctantly be an advocate of “laissez-faire” or free-market economics where the least governmental intervention in the market is the norm. But please remember what “laissez-faire” did to us back in the 30’s? Hoover’s “laissez-faire” policy was a perfect by-the-book example of classical Keynesian economics, yet it did not work. In fact, the American economy dove so deeply into the trough of the economic sine graph due to “laissez-faire” that it took us more than 10 years to get back to the grace of the market had it not for the intervention of New York’s own Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Mike Powell’s article once again debunks Boehner’s line

As an international student studying in New York, my knowledge of the city prior to my arrival was based on movie and novels. One fact pattern that always pops up is that the Bronx is not the most ideal of places to visit or to live in due to lines of old pre-war buildings with bullet-holed decorations. Having lived in New York City for over 5 years now and having visited the Bronx so many times, I have had chances to refute that old pattern that no longer holds truth in the present New York. Yet from the article, it is still amusing to learn about the past Bronx that was “the once broken beauty” and the vivid description of the borough from the narrative of the teenage Mike Powell. The kids drove through “ghost canyons of burnt-out buildings, saw mattresses and old sinks and tubs piled atop hills of rubble,” encountered drug dealers who mistook the white kids in a Buick as “boys in search of a fix.” I have learned of the success of housing authority in New York but their accomplishment in turning around such wreckage like the past Bronx and making it “livable” again cannot be overlooked, absolutely not. It is fascinating to learn about what the government has done for the borough, from Mayor Koch to today’s Bloomberg. The Bronx is “the greatest public rebuilding achievement since WWII” thanks to those administrations and a standing example of how terribly wrong John Boehner was in making such a depressive and assuming statement.

It was something of a peaceful sigh that I hear from the author, during the narrative of his trip around Melrose with “men in white fedoras playing dominoes under umbrellas” and the old lady’s statement “Oh my God, it was the ghetto.” Not anymore it wasn’t, all thanks to the government. My hope of our present government is somewhat restored, yet the author just had to say “the era of government may be in danger,” making me reexamining my own thinking. We will see.

This week, “Selling the City in Crisis” by Miriam Greenberg and Roger Starr’s “Making New York Smaller” were informative yet depressing. Theyr lays out many problems that New York City faced back in the 60s.

In contrast to New York City today, where excessive richness and congested traffic spread throughout the streets, New York City in the 60s was one of the worst places to live in. The crime rate was nearly 95% for more than a decade with reports of murders, mugging, and drugs were disseminated regularly on television. Vivid portrayal within the article were nauseating and thrilling. Even worse, Eisenhower’s highway projects facilitated outward immigration trend, making it easier for concerned parties to leave the city in the dust with all its notorious reputation.

Moreover, the city was in an economic crisis. Businesses declined proportionally to the rise of crime and interest rate. In 1963, bond’s rating was downgraded to “high risk,” forcing city officials to expensively borrow money to maintain the city. The combined effect pushed the city deeper into excessive borrowing and high level of debt, thus sinking the bond’s rating even lower. Neither the business nor the bonds of the city could be sold; New York City was losing a battle against the recession.

Since a city’s image strongly impacts its attractiveness to and the morale of the people, above-listed problems aggravated existing problems and caused new problems by further depressing New Yorkers who had already been stressed enough. The negative public image, in turn, pushed away both potential investments into and people away from the city. The United States Government was so repulsed by the city, seemingly regarding as a diseased spot that need to be left untouched, continuously declined funding and resources to resuscitate the City. Nowadays, one can see that the government has had a “fonder” view about New York City, continuously bailout banks and corporations of which headquarters are in New York all the while regarding it as the place where greed was born and presently resides.

Having mentally experienced what New York has been through through the pages, it is still hard for me to believe how bad the situation was back then. Upon realizing that, I have a better outlook on its current situation. The present does not seem so bad comparing to the past. I am now more grateful of the luck that we are currently enjoying. It’s not that bad after all.

This week reading brings about a wide array of views concerning the urban planning authority, Robert Moses, and their cooperating yet sometime rivaling relationship.

The author points out contemporary public criticisms about Moses, which we all know are numerous, yet I was surprised to read that Moses only could have gotten his way because his view and the view of the government coincided at that time (here we should neglect the fact that Moses did have enormous political influence). Moses’ dismal taste on housing design, surprisingly, was in compliant with the NYCHA design standard. It turns out that such a “standard,” demonstrated by “the lack of toilet bowl covers and closet doors” with special credit to Alfred Rheinstein’s “innovation” (128), was legally accepted back in the day because the NYCHA adopted the nature of a housing factory that churned out standardized, mass-produced products. Not only so, Moses and the NYCHA shared the same preference for “genuine slum clearance.”

It was interesting to see that sometime people who share the same vision often dispute upon the mean to its fruition, as in the case of the rivalry between Moses and the NYCHA during the post-war era. Moses wanted his masterpieces to be built upon slum clearance sites whereas the NYCHA rather constructed upon wastelands, or vacant land sites. Chairman Butler, before losing his seat due to his fervent opposition to Moses, claimed that project on vacant land sites would eliminate the time-consuming process of relocating residents in slums, all the while driving upward spending on public transportation. I felt sorry for the guy, although not too much, since his allegiance with Moses on the issue of overall slum clearance would later backfire as a backstabbing move to Moses which later drove Moses to remove Butler of the high seat in the NYCHA.

Besides the often-overlooked effects that slum clearance brought about i.e. racial integration as in the case of black and Pueto Rican slums residents, after being discharged from their Manhattan haven, were integrated in government housing projects in Bronx neighborhood. Yet in the proverbial list of pros and cons, the cons often outweigh the pros. Slum clearance practically destroyed the neighborhood, created public outrage over the clearance itself and over the loss of so many “brownstones.” And in most cases, public housing in most cities created a “second ghetto” worse than the first.

After running wild for a while, both Moses and the NYCHA were finally forced by the state government to integrate different income classes through slum clearance projects, for it is doubtful that Moses sincerely thought, without political pressure, that slum clearance areas will logically adjoin public housing areas” (133). Criticism from the state commissioner of housing at the time Herman Stichman substantially contributed the Moses and NYCHA’s cooperation. He said that the concentration of subsidized housing projects led to the development of ghettos that impeded meetings of different classes in the neighborhood and thus prevented empathic class feeling. The result of Title I redevelopment was the ultimate culmination of government’s effort to “positivize” slum clearance. It did not only celebrate Moses’ redevelopment scheme but also became the key of linking middle and high class houses with subsidized housing.

The field trip to the Museum of New York City was interesting and entertaining. Although I do not have an interest in housing, yet as a psychology major, it was gratifying for me that I got to observe the effect that the housing pattern in New York City has on New Yorkers. Therefore, I was especially attracted to the statistics of of people living in the Greater Area of New York.

I was shocked, yet not surprised, when I glanced through the different numbers presented to us as we approached the third floor of the museum. I knew instantly that Manhattan and New York City in general foster the kind of living that only single people can afford. Henceforth, New York City is not an ideal place to raise a child since the majority of families in New York City does not follow the traditional nuclear family model; it was shocking to see that the city has A LOT of single parents. I can remember that about 30-ish percent of New York City residents live alone, including senior citizens. Assuming that seniors are not compatible with the fast and hectic lifestyle here, I think that the enormous number of single senior citizens here would have dwelled upon something else more attractive that the city may have to offer, maybe superior healthcare, rich individuals retiring on massive amount of wealth, or affordable senior housing.

When we came across the number in Washington D.C., I was surprised that it topped the ranking for the city with the most single people. Rationally, one would think that as superior civic servants who represent the image of the country where family values are put on top, politicians and judges must have resided here with their family. Especially since D.C. is such a quiet city with no taxes and low crime rate, one would think that families would have found a perfect place to build a home. But the fact is not so.

Then we visited the more artistic and creative part of the exhibit, the Future of New York exhibit. Due to the limited space that New York has to offer, architects and urban planners have come up with creative ways to maximize comfort for massive amount of dwellers. The exhibit showed how much space could be saved with the right kind of thought. The space and furniture were efficiently utilized. The queen-size bed was hidden and fused as one with the spacious couch; the wooden chair was turned into a sturdy ladder; Concealed behind the huge flat-screen TV was the glass cabinet and a fridge. Even though the space was extremely limited, it turned out to be so much more comfortable and convenient for a single person to live in.

The more interesting part of the exhibit was the adAPT NYC project, a bold step into the future of New York City landscape. The winner was offered a piece of land to execute their building design. Given the statistics, the generous implementation of adAPT NYC by Michael Bloomberg may be able to fix the housing overcrowdedness in New York while fostering creativity among urban planners. Conclusively, I really like most parts of the exhibit while attainting some insights into the situation of New York City urban dwellers.