Hi Sophia,

I really enjoyed reading your post.

I agree with your comments that technological fixes would not work in low-income neighborhoods without some kind of economic benefit for those companies. It seems unlikely that the poorest and most vulnerable neighborhoods would receive aid proportionately to wealthier ones. When it comes to environmental crisis, settling for top down development just doesn’t cut it.

You mention how Murphy’s The Flood Next Time talks about how most people with knowledge of a natural disaster coming would still choose to remain where they are. I don’t totally agree with your argument here — that because of the fact that the danger is not pressing, people choose to stay there. While this may be true for some people, I don’t think it is true for everyone. In many cases, I imagine that low-income residents may be forced to live there- whether it’s for their job, or because the rent is cheap enough that they can live there. In high crime communities, danger is imminent — but many families stay there not by choice, but by necessity. I think it’s important that we make that distinction.

I think we also have to look critically at what we mean when we tell people to get out — or to evacuate. For many low income residents, they may not have access to a car, may have pets that they cannot take to shelters, or may not have the money/family ties to spend days somewhere else. Thinking about it this way — we can see another critical flaw in how we continuously set ourselves up for a huge disaster. When people are not considered, they are put in danger and raise the casualties that a storm can cause.

Thinking about money for rebuilding — low income families who rent their homes may not have the same compensation if any that home owners would receive. Building owners would be the ones to receive funding from NY to rebuild. When that eventually happens, those people who were displaced may not even be able to go back.

Ultimately, I agree that with your comments that we should not continue to focus on development as an answer to rising shorelines. However, for the already existing structures, perhaps some kind of barriers protecting the most vulnerable areas of NYC (not just in manhattan as the article you posted mentioned) could be helpful if it could be implemented on a wide scale. In addition, perhaps implementing an evacuation plan (buses?, properly equipped shelters?) that address some of the difficulties of low income residents could be helpful in avoiding the devastation that natural disasters can cause in this city.

What I am trying to get at here is very similar to what Neil Smith talks about in “There’s No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster.” He talks about how “the supposed ‘naturalness’ of disasters here has become an ideological camouflage for the social (and therefore preventable) dimensions of such disasters, covering for quite specific social interests.” While there are certainly acts of nature which cannot be avoided, it seems like a cop out to categorize the deaths of NYC residents and destruction of communities as unavoidable and not as a failure of the city to protect its residents.

Additional Source:

http://understandingkatrina.ssrc.org/Smith/

Hi Sophia,

The last piece of your response to Miriam’s blog really got me thinking. You wrote:

“In the end, how can any of these people claim to be building “with Jacobs in mind” when she advocated community above all else?

I totally agree with your statement that building “with Jacobs in mind” is completely in conflict the planning of Amanda Burden. The four principles of a successful city – mixed primary uses, short blocks, mixed age buildings, and population density – don’t seem to be a part of Burden’s planning much at all. Perhaps her micro-managing of projects and keen attention to detail is her interpretation of Jacbos’ principle of having diversity with buildings.

I believe you are correct in your statements that Jacob valued communities above all else. In her ideal city, I believe that the major influence to the neighborhood would be the people and businesses shaping it.

This is another section of your post that I really agreed with:

“These building methods where bureaucrats influence what kinds of development can happen through zoning and funding completely disregards any existing culture and familiarity built by the community itself.”

As we saw in the rezoning documentary, the rezoning of Harlem under Burden is a perfect example of how existing culture is erased for corporate gain. The community really did shape the area and most of the businesses reflected the people that lived in the area – something very rare in this day and age. Given her support for this redevelopment, I don’t think that she can honestly say that she is building with Jacobs in mind. If anything, she has Jacobs in her mind and is consciously choosing to ignore her. She certainly does have Moses in mind though, as she take on very grande scheme projects such as the high line designed for the “greater good” (in this case – bringing profit to the surrounding area and NYC in general).

Overall, I really agree with you that the planning within the city has become about mostly about businesses and how to make the most profit, even over maintaining cultural communities. While the city certainly gains something from this (more income and a more favorable environment to private corporations), the city and residents lose a lot as well. If planners continually pimp out the city to bring in wealth, then it will ultimately lose a lot of the charm and cultural diversity it’s known for.

 

 

 

Hi Noelia,

I’m not scheduled for a response this week, but I wanted to add a comment to your response.

In your response to Ariana you wrote:

“On a side note, isn’t gentrification sort of expected as a result of rezoning areas in a capitalist society and urban landscape like ours?”

This is exactly what I thought after going over the readings and blog posts this week.

I also asked myself why it’s any surprise that rezoning has been used to displace low income residents when more profitable opportunities arise. Putting aside the capitalist spirit of the city for a moment, urban planning has focused heavily on economic growth and prosperity. Thinking back to our discussion of the past and present Time Square, it’s clear that urban planners favored the plan that would open up economic growth and prosperity. The Third Regional Plan, while stressing the Three E’s, similarly talked a lot about how to make the tri-state region desirable to global businesses.

Going back to your statement about capitalism and urban landscape, I totally agree with what you said. If we go with the typical capitalist narrative of picking ourselves up from out bootstraps, working hard and becoming wealthy, and we do so — doesn’t it make sense (in this system) that we get what we want? Shouldn’t we be rewarded with the convenience of living near Colombia University, for example?

Based on this model, why should the 19% of people earning $10,000 – $25,000 per year be protected from displacement? Didn’t they do something wrong? Didn’t the people who can afford to attend and live within Colombia University do something right?

I think what I’m getting at here is that the city and it’s planners do not value everyone the same. Rezoning and strategizing to take land by the Bloomberg administration using the justification of economic development says this. The prospect of putting wealth into an area of the city is more important than maintaining low income housing.

Based on a capitalist system, is this wrong? If the goal of both the city and it’s planners is to make money, then perhaps it is the right thing to focus on the upper middle class and wealthy at the expense of low income residents.

For the super wealthy, the city has a vested interest in attracting them and keeping them happy. Some information about NYC’s top 1% was in the Daily News today. NYC’s top 1% (individuals who earn at least $636,000 per year) paid 47% of income taxes in 2013. They earned $107.5 billion, around 38% of the city’s income. In our capitalist system, their voices far outweigh those earning $10,000 – $25,000 per year. But isn’t that only fair? If true equity “the quality of being fair and impartial” (dictionary.com) in the city is myth, then what does “urban equity” or “capitalist equity” look like?

 

The first reading, “A Region at Risk”, discussed the Third Regional Plan. Unlike the first and second regional plans, this third plan, according to authors Yarro and Hiss, was markedly different. One of the biggest differences noted was that the third regional plan addressed the interconnectedness of urban cities and suburban sprawl. In the overview of the Third Regional Plan, the authors asserted that “more than ever, the economies, societies and environments of all the communities in the Tri-State Metropolitan Region are intertwined, transcending arbitrary political divisions” (6). According to the authors, redevelopment plans had to include both localities because the success of one depended on the success of the other, and the two “share a common destiny” (6).

Even though the plan was developed in 1996, some of the key themes in the Third Regional Plan are particularly important to understanding contemporary urban planning.

For one, as Larson notes in Building Like Moses With Jacobs in Mind the “narrative of threat” is ever-present. in the Third Regional Plan. Like Moses and even Jacobs, the authors spend a lot of time talking about how without the specific instruments listed in the plan, the city would ultimately fall into a cycle of stagnant growth. In this regard, the plan is not different from previous planning agendas such as Moses’ because it relies on threat and perceived morality to garner public support. The “narrative of threat” evident in the plan makes it largely based on morality and ideology. One example of this the focus on the three E’s — economy, environment and equity. In describing the three E’s, the authors focus on philosophical/moral arguments. In describing how each of the three E’s unite us, they write that “we all inhabit the same landscape, breath the same air” and go on to stress that “when our cities and suburbs are interdependent, they succeed or fail as one” (6). They wrap their explanation by stating that “our lives are embedded in far-reaching networks… that stretch across all social, racial, economic, physical and political boundaries” (6). While similarly employing a paternalistic attitude (reminiscent of Moses) towards large scale projects to aid “a region at risk,” it simultaneously focuses the justifications for these plans on the individual, arguing that everyone within the region has responsibility to save the region, presumably by supporting the plan. The authors go on to assert that the current dillema facing the city was due to “global changes coinciding with our own failure to change — of 25 years of economic transformation unfolding worldwide during a generation of underinvestment” (7). While the lack of planning making our cities more vulnerable may have indeed been the case, hindsight is 20/20, and using fear as a method of change may not be the correct approach. Examining the past and attributing current societal ills to failure to act may be a convenient method to garner support to a redevelopment plan, but again shows the tendency of the Third Regional Plan to use ideology and moralistic arguments for proposing these changes.

While the Third Regional Plan does present a similar narrative of threat at most planning initiatives, one of it’s greatest strengths the incorporation of both Moses’ and Jacobs’ ideas for the city. On the one hand, the plan broadens it’s scope to the tri-state region, and focuses heavily on economic development for the city (although simultaneously stressing the importance of focusing equally on the three E’s). In redeveloping the tri-state area to acclimate to a global economy, grandiose projects like those Moses initiated for the city can serve as an enthusiastic model towards the major overhaul of planning that “A Region at Risk” proposes.

On the other hand, it also stressed the importance of citizen involvement and Jacobs’ ideals of natural, organic cities with growth that is conscious of the existing atmosphere of neighborhoods. Remembering that Jacobs’ The Death and Life was a response to the Moses era of urban planning, it makes sense to incorporate some of her ideas towards community building. With such large-scale projects, small neighborhoods within the tri-state region could easily be disregarded or overlooked, as was the case of the South Bronx during the Moses era.

Perhaps one of the most glaring challenges that the plan deemphasizes is the difficulty of implementing the three R’s given such a broad scale redevelopment of the tri-state area — which would include both urban and suburban areas.

One of the best examples of this difficulty is in regards to the environment and sustainability mentioned within the Third Regional Plan. The focus on sustainability as protecting or introducing nature into otherwise industrial environments isn’t a great sustainable model. Sustainable cities mean more than just throwing green-space around, adding parks, and planting trees. Sustainable development must also include a decrease in fossil fuel consumption — most notably in a drastic reduction in dependence on cars. Redesigning suburban sprawl to include walkability and “pedestrian connectivity,” as explained in “Evaluating Pedestrian Connectivity for Suburban Sustainability,” is a unique, region-specific planning issue within itself. Regional transit, as well as more walkable destinations, requires the “retrofitting” of suburban sprawl. In practice, implementing these changes would take a great deal of compliance and coordination with local ordinances across the tri-state area.

In “Green Cities, Growing Cities, Just Cities?” Scott Campbell highlights that sustainable development  and planning within the urban environment is already facing challenges. He argues that in planning sustainable cities, we tend to “romanticize our sustainable past” and propose plans that are “too vaguely holistic” (1). The planner must therefore contend with the “planners triangle” — with the environment, economy, and social equity at each of the three corners. Unsurprisingly, he argues that that there is a tension between these three points, and with sustainability being in the center. Going back to the three E’s, the authors’ insistence that all three E’s must be given equal consideration, or else the system fails, is overly optimistic.

 

Additional Sources:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~sdcamp/Ecoeco/Greencities.html

http://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9488(2001)127:1(1)

The introduction to Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities, for the most part, sums up some of the difficulties facing New York City at the time of her writing (1960’s). Neighborhoods such as Morningside Heights were descending on a downward spiral towards a slum like squalor, in spite of the city’s multiple planning efforts to revitalize the area. To Jacobs, this allegiance to “orthodox urbanism” – employing classical teachings to city neighborhoods that clearly did not work – on the part of the city’s planners was not redeveloping the city, but sacking the city instead.

In Jacobs’s view, a successful urban city is one that has diversity. According to her, this diversity is not automatically generated,but is instead  generated because of the various efficient economic pools of use that they form.

I believe that significance of her methodology lie in the fact that she rejects the paternalistic, authoritarian approach to city planning and instead fosters (on some level) a sense of community participation in the city planning process. Although her approach is by no means a democratic process, it relies on the diversity of communities and therefore interacts with how individual people within a neighborhood have shaped the space around them. Her idea of city planning is then an extension of this, maintaining the value of previous structures and economic pools while consistently adding new ones that fit within the system.

Based on this principle, it is entirely possible for huge cities like New York to develop in a holistic way, examining neighborhood dynamics as well as fostering economic and density growth (even if the power to do so is centralized within a city agency). As David Halle acknowledges  in “Who Wears Jane Jacobs’s Mantle in Today’s New York City,” “The Death and Life is a cry for better central planning, albeit a planning that recognizes and respects local and market-based characteristics of neighborhoods” (240). In terms of influence, Jacobs’s work seemed to be ahead of it’s time in promoting a more inclusive methodology of city planning that is “geographically balanced and sensitive to neighborhoods,” a method which the Bloomberg administration implemented in the Department of City Planning (240).  

Interestingly, it was community boards, not city officials who misconstrued Jacobs’s arguments. Her reaction to Moses and the “modern world” was not one that promoted a return back to small, intimate cities, but one that was growing with diversity (both old and new) and increasing density. According to her arguments, tall buildings that were opposed in Greenwich Village were at odds with her fundamental ideas. To allow the city to grow, old structures should mingle in close quarters with new, and the city should also build upwards if necessary to facilitate greater urban density.

The days of authoritarian city planners (at least to the extent it was during Moses’ time) has ended. Communities are more interested in democratic ways of becoming involved in their communities, and city wide initiatives have shown this to be true.  Participatory budgeting for example, has been implemented in various community boards throughout the city. In this program, citizens are able to directly allocated funds towards various projects within their community, such as investing in public spaces like parks or recreational facilities. While this doesn’t directly influence the new structures entering a neighborhood, it does provide an opportunity for maintaining some of the old structures Jacobs described as essential to urban diversity. Overall, Jane Jacobs’s legacy of activism and central planning was a valuable starting point for the greater sense of representation that exists in city planning today.

 

Participatory Budgeting: http://ideas.pbnyc.org/page/about