SEMINAR 4 THE FUTURE OF NEW YORK CITY Macaulay Honors College at Hunter City University of New York Tuesday 9:45am-12:15pm Instructor: Clyde Haberman Location: #518 Thomas Hunter Hall
“The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding” —John Updike
“It’ll be a great place if they ever finish it” — O. Henry
My primary goal in this final Macaulay seminar is to get you thinking critically about the city where you live and work. By “critically,” I don’t necessarily mean negatively. Rather, the aim is to have you thinking about how New York works — or, in some instances, doesn’t work — with a trained eye, a ready ear and an informed mind. This will be accomplished through a combination of readings, lectures, discussions among ourselves, the expertise of guest speakers and field trips to public and private spaces in the city to assess how they are used.
Most weeks, you will be assigned readings. Many weeks, probably a majority, you will be assigned to write short essays on a specific topic. Several purposes lie behind this exercise. One is, quite simply, to set you thinking more personally about the topics we will read about and discuss in class. Another is to exercise your writing muscles, with time pressure as an important added factor. To steal from and paraphrase Dr. Samuel Johnson, nothing focuses the mind so wondrously as the imminent prospect of a deadline. (Johnson had the imminent prospect of a hanging in mind. No need for us to go that far.)
You will also produce an in-depth semester-end paper on a research topic of your choosing. We can discuss the desired length as the semester progresses and as you refine your topics. But I would think, provisionally, that 3,000 words is a reasonable length to think about. That is, should you indeed choose to make your presentation a traditional, written paper. This research project may take any of several other forms. Some of you may wish to convey your research through other methods, be it video or some online format. Those forms are perfectly acceptable, only I plead that they be put together in a manner that is easily accessible to someone — i.e., me — who may not be as technologically proficient as you.
We will discuss possible topics, collectively and individually, in coming weeks. But the project can examine an area of urban life that is of particular interest to you, be it transportation, criminal justice and policing, public health, education (higher or lower), immigration, race relations, sustainability in age of climate change, development and/or landmarking issues, use of public spaces, the political structure of the city, New York as a tourist and cultural mecca, housing policy, the city’s relations with and dependence on Washington and Albany. Other topics may well present themselves. These are offered solely as examples of areas you might wish to examine. They are not meant at all to be your only choices. Other possibilities may present themselves. I certainly hope they do. This is, obviously, a very big city, with countless topics worth exploring.
By the end of February or early March, at the outside, I will need to talk with each of you about your thoughts for your project and how you plan to proceed.
Absolutely, feel free to collaborate with one another, both to learn from your colleagues and to help them. But the work, in the end, must truly be your own. If ideas are not your own for how the city might better perform in, say, housing policy or education or crime prevention or any other area, you must give credit to whomever you borrowed from — be it a fellow student or a recognized expert in the field. That’s what footnotes and end notes are for. I assume that by now you are familiar with them. I trust that you need no reminder that plagiarism, falsification and other transgressions violate all standards of academic (and journalistic) integrity and will invite penalties in the form of lowered grades.
On the subject of grades, I am frankly uncomfortable assigning fixed percentages to various components that will go into determining a final letter. But I have come to learn that many students prefer having clearly defined parameters. So expect the final paper/project to count for 50 percent of the final grade, class participation for 25 percent, the quality of shorter writings that you will be assigned throughout the semester for 20 percent, and written observations on the use of public space based on your field work for 5 percent. (There is an East Harlem component to some of this, which is discussed below and will be fleshed out more fully in class.) Please bear in mind that this is an honors course. As such, expectations of you are high. Top grades must be earned, not assumed.
I cannot overemphasize the importance of class participation. I believe firmly that we all have knowledge and sensibilities to impart to and learn from one another. This concept works only if we all show up. So attendance each week is mandatory unless an emergency arises and you have received a dispensation from me in advance. Arriving on time is also mandatory. Be assured that I have a keen eye for habitual lateness, and will factor both absences and lateness into the final grade.
As for readings, they will in the main be assigned on a week-to-week basis, depending on the topic planned for the next session. I’m not including all of them here because some required readings will be works in progress, dependent to an extent on current events. Speaking of which, I urge — in fact, I insist — that you all keep on top of New York news and major national news as we head into a new, and unpredictable (to put it mildly) administration in Washington. Assessing the performance of our political leaders and gauging where the city is headed requires that you keep abreast of major news developments. There are many ways to do this. But to help you focus, a few easily found resources include the major New York newspapers, notably but not exclusively The Times, the DNAInfo website, essays carried on the websites of the Manhattan Institute (right-leaning politically) and the Center for an Urban Future (left-leaning), the Straphangers Campaign (on mass transit) and NYPDConfidential.com, a website focused, as the name suggests, on the police. Other sources will be offered as we go along.
My intention is to examine a different aspect of city life each week. But there will be two major required spheres of study connected to, and yet distinct from, the core of the syllabus. One involves a class project that will be presented in May at a weekend conference at the Macaulay space on West 67th Street (assuming the venue isn’t changed at some point). We will discuss possible themes as the semester progresses. The Macaulay weekend, which falls on May 6 and 7, is an unshakable obligation for you, and for me as well. We will discuss your projects, and even rehearse them, as the semester progresses.
The other sphere involves East Harlem. With Hunter having a satellite campus in East Harlem, there is a desire on the college’s part for us to give special attention to that large and interesting neighborhood. This may involve observation of a particular block or a group of blocks. For some of you, I will strongly encourage making an East Harlem-related theme the focus of your major term-end project. This, too, is something that we can discuss more thoroughly in due time.
In studying various aspects of New York, here is my plan. I present it tentatively, because there may well be changes as we go along. As I suggested earlier, I hope to make field trips part of our work. But the weather will undoubtedly play an important role in deciding where (or even if) we go beyond the Hunter campus.
For now, this is what I intend to do:
Session 1: An introduction to the course, to me and to the expectations of you. Of course, I will need you to introduce yourselves. This will be followed by another introduction: to the city’s governmental and political structure, with a survey of how the modern city came into being, focused strongly on the consolidation of the five-borough New York and fiscal crises, especially that of the 1970s, that continue to shape municipal policies. One reading that I will assign for the next class is E.B. White’s classic 1949 essay “Here Is New York.” We will discuss it for its relevance even today despite the many particulars that have obviously changed.
Session 2: Transportation. How the city lives or dies with mass transit (and other forms of transportation). Relevant readings will be assigned. We will also discuss the E.B. White essay.
Session 3: Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement, from stop and frisk to community policing, from courtroom to prison cell. Current tensions over police practices will assuredly form a significant part of the discussion.
Session 4: Use of Public Space vs. Private Demands, from developers seeking profit to neighborhoods seeking to keep their essential character from slipping away under the pressures of high rents and the wrecking ball. What gets built in New York and, often more to the point, what doesn’t get built? There will be a fair amount of reading for this session, including inevitably. comparisons between the master builder Robert Moses and the neighborhood advocate Jane Jacobs — a debate that has been ongoing for many years.
The public-space discussion may well extend into Session 5. One aspect that also will be discussed is the use of public space for protest. Events of the last year and a half, including the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, should be familiar to all of you. What sorts of protest are permitted — and how they may be conducted — demand our attention.
Session 6: Race Relations, Inequality and Homelessness. Where are we today compared with years past, better or worse? Here, too, current events will help guide our exploration.
Session 7: Sanitation and Environment. Lots to discuss here, including how we prepare for the next superstorm. Sanitation, from garbage collection to street cleaning, is an essential municipal function that (sadly) is easily taken for granted. It tends to be noticed only when it isn’t done right.
Session 8: Housing. How do we make it affordable? Is it even possible in a city with such great extremes in wealth? How is the de Blasio administration doing in this regard compared with its predecessor?
Session 9: Public Health and Hospitals. How healthy are New York hospitals, whose numbers keep declining. And how far should the city be allowed to go to tell you what you may eat, drink or smoke?
Session 10: Education, higher and lower. We will look at everything from pre-K (a matter of paramount interest for Mayor de Blasio) to asking how well New York public schools prepare their students for college.
Session 11: The Aging City. The population is getting steadily older. This has important implications for how New York deals with many aspects of city life, from housing policies to the design of streets and sidewalks, from health issues to public safety.
Session 12: The News Media, New York and America. Does this city have a special role in the hearts and minds of Americans? A look at how the news media helps shape the New York agenda and we interact with the rest of the United States, including the role that the federal government should play — and usually does not — in aiding urban America.
Session 13: Recreational New York. How well does the city provide for people in need of entertainment and diversion, from the High Line to Lincoln Center. And how does it deal with tourists? Can’t live with them but, most assuredly, we can’t live without them.
Session 14: To Be Decided
Bear in mind that this is a basic outline of my intentions. Plans may well change. Indeed, I fully expect them to change, especially when the weather turns warmer and we will aim for field work. And as I said, readings will be assigned as we go along. Weather, to repeat, will go far to determine what we can and cannot do. Also, some topics may be better explored with guest speakers whom I intend to invite.
Bear in mind, too, that I am not an academician by either training or inclination. I’m a lifelong journalist. It is through those eyes that most of these subjects will be examined.
If you need to reach me, my e-mail address is clyde.haberman@gmail.com. I will give you my phone number in class in case you need to reach me that way. Unfortunately, I do not have an office at Hunter. So much for having office hours. But I am available when you feel you need me. It requires only a phone call or an email.
Our Instructional Technology Fellow, or ITF, is Marnie Brady (marniebrady@gmail.com), who will guide me through the technology maze that sometimes causes me agita. She will also be available to assist you with your final project (depending on what form it takes), and most definitely with the group projects for the Macaulay Honors College weekend in May.
All information relevant to everyone in the course will be posted through Ms. Brady on our classroom blog. But as with this long note, you may get a fair amount of assignments, suggested readings and the like from me by way of e-mail. Plain and simple, it is a form with which I am most familiar and comfortable. I have found that many students prefer it as well.
One more thing: Our purpose here may be serious, but let’s have fun in this course, with lots of class discussion and respectful debate about this city of ours; “respectful” is purposefully underlined. But really, let’s enjoy our exploration of our city. Love it or hate it, the one thing you certainly cannot do is ignore it.
