Reading the essay about the development of Jackson Heights, Queens, I realized that no matter how hard one tries, one cannot always control the outcome of a neighborhood. There are too many outside factors that make this control difficult. MacDougall lost in his fight to create an upper middle class to upper class exclusive neighborhood, Jackson Heights. Building the neighborhood in a great economy, he banned certain groups of people, such as Jews and Blacks, from moving to Jackson Heights, but when the Great Depression hit, this all changed. People could no longer afford these homes, so some people moved out, and prices of all the homes dropped. The Great Depression did set up Jackson Heights for its new dynamic of being a diverse neighborhood, but it was not until decades after the Great Depression that immigrants, other than Jews or Catholics, moved to Jackson Heights. The outside factors were the introducing of two new acts that made opened the door for immigrants to come to the United States. Since Jackson Heights’ real estate market was still bad when these acts were put in place, Jackson Heights was the perfect place for immigrants to settle.
The essay describes Jackson Heights, specifically Roosevelt Avenue, as a place full of life. Every block has stores representing a different nationality. What became of Jackson Heights seems better than MacDougall’s original dream of creating a citadel-like neighborhood composed of only wealthy whites. The Jackson Heights that was created seems much more interesting and attractive. It is so attractive that people come from other states to shop in the area, similar to how people go to Flushing to do their shopping.
The topic of controlling who inhabits an area is intriguing to me because in my town that issue has recently been coming up. A developer wants to build new apartments in my town, but people are afraid that kids are going to settle there, and the schools are already crowded. The developer can try to make the apartments as unattractive to families with kids as it wants, but as we saw with MacDougall’s efforts to control, outside factors can change everything.
