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.