When thinking about the elite reconstruction of the High Line, I think it is important to remember Amanda Burden’s characterization of Harlem, which was recounted in the documentary we watched in class (Rezoning Harlem). She motioned down Harlem’s main drag, filled with soul food and other culturally significant restaurants, and concluded that there was no place to eat (Rezoning Harlem). The readings we have done for this class (specifically Parks for Profit by Kevin Loughran) have led me to believe that the rich don’t want any place they might set foot in to feel ‘uncomfortable’ or in Loughran’s words like a “quality of life violation’. The High Line was no different. However, the moment they command a formerly impoverished neighborhood as their own ‘public’ space, they are quick to institute security and deterrents to privatize the place that they once felt excluded from. I was struck by the stark difference between the policing of public parks in poor areas and the policing of the High Line. I find it telling that parks with private investors and programming aimed at a wealthy neo-liberal audience have security guards and surveillance keeping people out, policing the influx of people into the park based on behavior (57). In poor parks, policing takes place within the park, and removes people participating in ‘illegal’ activity from the park after having patronized it. The High Line’s security and surveillance, coupled with the regulations on cleanliness meant to deter low-income people from collecting bottles (62) [and even from becoming food venders] (59), shows that the High Line’s regulations which come from the wealthy members of Friends of the High Line try to make the park as comfortable as possible for rich people, and patently uncomfortable for the poor. I would classify this as preemptive policing, which functionally privatizes the park without the community backlash of openly saying that the park is ‘rich-only’.

 

On a similar note, Loughran describes the way that people only pay attention to poor parks when they can make the wealthy money as “growth schemes” (51). This sparked my interest, because it made me think about the mindset of the upper class and the concept of entitlement in relation to public space. Specifically, when money is commodified to the point that it defines social worth, it provides a sense of entitlement to the bearer of that money. The highline as an abandoned railroad track was a part of a low-income neighborhood, a neighborhood that had very little to offer the wealthy (51). The privilege detailed in Loughran’s paper shows the nature of entitlement to public spaces, and the desire of the rich to obtain spaces using their wealth and change them to make them comfortable for high-brow activities.

 

In the 2013 article High Line Offers a Walk on the Wild Side by Lisa W. Foderaro, the plan for third installment of the highline is discussed. It was opened to the public in 2014. In Foderaro’s article, she builds the anticipation for the new section of the park which would be comprised of rusted rail road tracks overgrown with native plants and shrubbery. It is heralded in her piece as a way to “evoke the ruin and rebirth that the founders found so compelling in the first place”. She mentions that the money for the construction came directly from the luxury company Coach whose building was slated to “straddle the new section, called High Line at the Railyards” (Foderaro). It is interesting to think briefly about the initial call to arms concerning the High Line, in which it was implied that the only way to save it [and the neighborhood beneath it] was to change it, via sleek architectural design made possible by the donations of the elite. However, this third section is simply a sanitized version of the original High Line, created for the rich to meander on. When the High Line was synonymous with ‘poor’, the structure bore interest only in its potential to ‘fix’ the neighborhood it inhabited. Now that the High Line attracts predominantly white, high-income people (60), its patrons can fetishize the ‘wildness’ of the original rails without the discomfort of having to interact with people of other socio-economic classes.

 

 

In relation to the concept of “growth” schemes (50), much of what can be seen on the  “Community Parks Initiative Targeted Improvements” website for New York City Parks Commission seems to be cosmetic fixes, not functional ones. Most of the changes made seem to be paint jobs, the removal of graffiti, the planting of little bushes. This type of park restoration, which only changes the outward appearance of the park without improving functionality based on community consensus, is simply a way for the city to show how much they ‘care’ about income inequality and the poor, without having to actually spend any significant time or money assisting them with what they need and want. Furthermore, these changes and ‘upgrades’ reflect more on what the parks commissioner thinks a ‘good’ park looks like than what the people using it do. The painting over of graffiti, for instance, is seen by many who grew up without graffiti culture to be assisting and improving a neighborhood. However, graffiti can be seen as an art form and a way for people within the community to express themselves and air their grievances. Writing and making art on public property, while illegal, is one of the most pure and direct forms of protest to a city and a society that has left you behind. To paint over it in efforts to appease the angered masses is only to ignore their strife and, metaphorically, paint over the actual problems that impoverished communities face.

The complete rebranding of the High Line and the makeover of low-income parks, while different in cost and outcome, prove a similar point. The construction of parks is rarely based on the needs of the people currently living in their vicinity. Instead, changes made to parks largely have to do with keeping up appearances, within the city and abroad. Just look again at the ‘targeted improvements’ that DeBlasio’s administration has made. They harken back to Jane Jacobs’ “look what I made” concept: that developers and city planners ‘fixed’ these parks so that they could show them to the city, and prove that they ‘helped’ low-income communities. So, of course, in all of the ‘after’ photos, the weather is better than the ‘before’ photos. The sun is out, whereas each ‘before’ photo has a gloomy sky. The changes are paraded in front of the citizens of New York, to push this narrative: “You see? The poor aren’t that bad off!” and “See this ‘bad’ neighborhood? Look how nice we made it!”. With the High Line, the city officials and elite investors in this “growth” project get to peddle a narrative of having ‘fixed’ a poor area, and show how much happier the residents are with their shiny new park (50). Never is it mentioned in their triumphant account that the current residents are elite residents and that they have displaced the ones who used to live there. The poor are instead shifted to a new corner of the city, to have the same struggles and the same lack of visibility until their neighborhood starts to seem monetarily and socially beneficial to a team of elites, who can yet again band together to give them a park and ‘save’ their block.

Works Cited

Foderaro, Lisa W. “High Line Offers a Walk on the Wild Side.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 2013. Web. 03 Apr. 2016.

Loughran, Kevin. “Parks for Profit: The High Line, Growth Machines, and the Uneven Development of Urban Public Spaces.” City & Community 13.1 (2014): 49-68. Web.

Rezoning Harlem

 

As someone who did not grow up in New York, I found reading about zoning during the Bloomberg administration extremely enlightening. By reading Building Like Moses With Jacobs in Mind by Scott Larson, I was able to better grasp the legal and social tactics that are used to “fix” a neighborhood that is perceived to be blighted.

The Bloomberg administration’s neglect of the needs of the most vulnerable citizens of New York was appalling. In Chapter 3, “The Bloomberg Practice”, Manhattan’s Far West Side was discussed. Larson brought up that it was referred to by developers as “a literal hole in the ground” which could be transformed in a “profitable development” (Larson 34). When proposing developments for the Far West Side, history seemed to repeat itself in reference to Moses and Jacobs’ feuds: while Bloomberg’s planners and developers proposed to build faster, denser, and “better” in efforts to create something profitable, the people for whom they were building had a decidedly Jacobsian response: they simply did not want or need it (Larson 35). It was described as “privatized planning” (Larson 35) that “ran counter to the local community’s own desires with very little public oversight” (Larson 35).

Atlantic Yards was yet another Bloomberg era redevelopment plan, and was meant to be largely residential, with a guarantee of 50% of the housing to be affordable for the middle class. Larson pointed out that they had promised, “30 percent of construction contracts would go to contractors run by minorities and women”(Larson 39). This interested me because eminent domain was being used to forcefully develop this new residential neighborhood, yet the developers were using the promise of fair and progressive hiring to disguise the immorality of their actions. It seemed like a slap in the face to the women and minorities who were displaced in this project. The reading explained (dishearteningly) that despite all the opposition, the development still happened. The promise of money and profit for the upper classes and the government seem to to consistently outweigh the desires of the middle and low-income classes.

The description of the development of Columbia University was possibly the most difficult and infuriating for me to read. The more I read, the more clear it became that the Bloomberg administration did not care about real people, but instead just an esoteric theory of what constitutes the “greater good”. An area that was eventually condemned as blighted was actually exhibiting the beginnings of Jacobs style diversity. Larson noted the mix of small businesses and residential units, providing jobs, homes and upward mobility for the low-income and middle class people who lived there. The Bloomberg administration relied on loopholes and cutting corners in its quest for development at any cost. While all of this was presented as beneficial to the city because it would get rid of an ‘underutilized’ area and replace it with a university, the discussion of it in Larson’s book got me thinking about who/ what constitutes a city. Who are the lucky few that get to benefit from Ivy League education? More broadly, who gets to benefit from the prestige New York City garners from expanding its most globally prominent universities instead of its most affordable ones? The reading was thought provoking on this subject for me because it prompted me to look at how the ‘greater’ good actually affects most people. Does the majority (the hypothetical ‘greater’ in ‘greater good’) actually benefit when the city does things supposedly in their name? Generally no. Small business entrepreneurs, diversity and the real greater good of the former residents of the area was sacrificed for a university that only the super wealthy are likely to have the privilege of using. Sure, you can argue for ‘public’ or ‘greater’ good, but instead of just the good of the city’s wealthiest or the city’s reputation, let’s start arguing for the good of the majority of people and the good of the existing community. The city should work to improve the lives of citizens, and then start asking whether they want an Ivy League university to be expanded, or funding for CUNY.

In Chapter 6, “The Armature for Development” Larson explains, “The Bloomberg Administration generated its own narrative of eminent danger as the justification for a new era of aggressive planning” (Larson 79). Borderline illegal planning practices were used and areas were falsely marketed as blighted, all of which was justified through slippery slope logic of ‘what will happen if we don’t?”. The threat of economic inferiority to other developed countries and cities was lorded over as a cloud of doom, but made no reference to moral inferiority, the fact that sacrificing our impoverished and middle class people and subjugating them to the suburbs only improves our reputation with the 1%. Larson’s points gave me the opportunity to think about how we measure a city’s success as a society: rarely do we compare ourselves to Norway’s happiness, instead we agonize over matching Shanghai’s prestige. I enjoyed the discussion of the “underutilized” areas of NYC because it again brought up some great Jacobsian recurring themes like: a) who wants these new developments? b) for whom are these areas underutilized?.

The more I read Larson’s accounts of urban planning, the more I thought: what is this obsession with catering to the wealthy? Are they really at a loss for housing? Are they going homeless? Is Whole Foods not near enough to them? In The Poor Are Better Off When We Build More Housing For The Rich by Emily Badger, she attempts to answer my question. She argues that as more market rate homes are built for the upper-middle class and wealthy class, the poor will gain better quality housing approximately 30 years in the future because wealthy housing today becomes the low-income housing of tomorrow. She argues that based on economic theory, as more homes are built there is an incremental ease in demand, lowering home prices in the long run. Certainly the theory of this is sound and the intention behind it admirable, but based on my reading of Larson’s book, I feel that her conclusions are misleading. I think that to build for the rich without concern for the poor in the present so that they may be housed in the future can only work on paper or on a computer screen. When real people and real livelihoods are involved, the promise of affordable housing after 30 years of economic strife and homelessness is hardly any consolation to those who are displaced.

In a similar vein, the Bloomberg administration’s propensity for cutting corners to build as much as fast as possible made them lose sight of whom the majority of his constituents are. There is a legal and moral obligation as mayor to serve your city. There comes a point where you seize so many middle class and poor homes and businesses to create parks for those citizens that they have nowhere to live or work. So, sure, you made them a place to relax and play, but now that they are homeless they have to sleep on the benches the city laid out for their amusement. Certainly this is an exaggeration, but my point is this: making people a playground should never be more important than making them a home. My thought after contemplating the reasoning behind zoning is that it let developments seem Jacobsian without having to actually follow her principles and be made accountable through listening to the needs of their community.

It is impossible to make rules that create a good city or a good village or a good neighborhood that will fit every single situation. Let’s ask the people what they want, ask the developers if it is possible, and then start building, creating a compromise between the needs of an economically successful city and the needs of its citizens. Zoning only succeeds in sanitizing and distilling the “public good” and “public space” into a set of distinctly unwanted offerings that can only be called impartial or beneficial by those whose homes and lives are unthreatened.

Works Cited

Larson, Scott. Building like Moses with Jacobs in Mind. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2013. Print.

“The Poor Are Better off When We Build More Housing for the Rich.” Washington Post. The Washington Post. Web. 27 Mar. 2016.

 

Hey Samantha!

 

I thought that you had very interesting insight on Times Square. I particularly found your anecdotes contrasting your feelings about modern day Times Square to your Mother’s lingering fear of the area.

While I thought your musings on the social changes in Times Square were very interesting, I did disagree somewhat with your analysis of Delany’s essay. I believe that when you talk about talking to strangers on the street, you are referencing the part of Delany’s article when he talks about sexual and nonsexual exchanges between people on the street before the rezoning of Times Square. Understandably, as women in New York, any sort of verbal or physical contact with strangers clearly jumps out as dangerous to us. However, I think this is a case where we have to analyze the circumstances that the LGBT community was facing in 1960’s and 1970’s New York. Many young people had been kicked out of their homes without money because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Furthermore, some LGBT people were unable to obtain a job due to prejudice, or were fired from their jobs if they were somehow ‘outed’. There were very few places where people could be themselves and find more people with whom they could identify. People were searching for comradery and also for unconventional moneymaking activities, and Times Square became a place where both of those things could happen. Given the social norms of the time, and the cultural safe house that Times Square was, it is very hard to apply our modern day assertions about talking to strangers to the people who lived, worked and sought pleasure in pre- zoning Times Square. As Delany expressed in his essay, social interactions in Times Square were really not between strangers, as most people lived or lingered around the neighborhood consistently, meaning that even if you had not spoken to someone before, you likely had seen their face.

 

In short, your blog got me thinking about the actual meaning behind Delany’s essay. I have come to the conclusion that it is not fair to classify this essay as solely being about the ‘safety’ of past and present Times Square. Instead, I think Delaney was attempting to paint a picture of a cultural center, with all of its positives and negatives, being dismantled by the capitalist desire for a money making tourist hot spot. Something that I agree with in your analysis is that Times Square really is not safer now than it was then. It has just managed to mask its crime with a populated, ‘safe’ looking façade. If Times Square was corporeal, it would be Mickey Mouse smoking a cigarette. But that is what makes the rezoning of Times Square so much more futile. They destroyed an oasis for oppressed communities. Furthermore, they did it through the slow eviction of poor and underserved minority groups, letting them slip deeper into poverty and consequently become more susceptible to the lure of crack cocaine. After all of that heartache, all of those human lives damaged in the name of ‘safety’, nothing even improved. All that was accomplished was a shiny new tourist trap and the destruction of any eyes-on-the-street policing that would have occurred when there was an actual community there.

Thanks for the thought provoking read!

~Willow

Hey Rebecca,

I really agreed with a lot of what was said in your post. I loved the assertion that Moses was “ruthlessly practical” because I feel it describes his methodology in every aspect of his career. He was unstoppable in the face of naysayers, because he saw the fastest and most logical (not necessarily the most moral) way out of an economic or infrastructure related dilemma and pushed his plans through until they were allowed by default.

I thought you did a great job of further connecting the argument that was posed in the reading about the affect of the New Deal funds on Moses’ construction plans to racist nature of the funds themselves. It was clear that the New Deal money was intended for white people, because those were the people whose vote Roosevelt felt was at stake (and most likely the people who Roosevelt thought mattered more).

The place where I do mildly disagree with your argument is that I do not think Moses’ decisions were entirely without malicious intent. Although it was a different time, he did make the express decisions to cater his quality of life improvements to white neighborhoods and white people. From my readings, it seems that most improvements he made to the city only positively affected white middle class and upper class people, and these swimming pools were no exception. While they perhaps reached a wider income demographic, the intense discrimination and segregation against black people insured that they would not obtain the same benefits as white people did from the city’s allocation of tax money and New Deal funds. Furthermore, as everyone else got to enjoy the brand new highways with which Moses had reshaped NYC, many black people were discriminated against at car dealerships and were refused service or given an exorbitant price that middle class people could not afford.

Simply put, I agreed with nearly all of the assertions made in this blog post. The place where I disagree is that I do not think Moses was lazy. I think that the racist nature of his building projects was simply something that did not matter to him, because he did not care about black people. When he talked about rebuilding the metropolis and providing beautiful park space for the community, he meant his community. Black people did not even cross his mind.

Thanks for the great read!