In “Parks for Profit,” Loughran depicts how public spaces can be viewed in terms of privilege: in this neoliberal era, wealthier neighborhoods get more developed and maintained parks in an attempt to draw in tourists and wealthy consumers, while parks in poorer areas are underfunded and neglected unless they can serve “growth” schemes. One thing Loughran writes is how the High Line is narrow and linear, and has few places to sit, play, or linger. Additionally, I skimmed through a High Line documentary, and it revealed – no doubt unintentionally – that the park’s purpose is just to look pretty and bring in money (Great Museums 2014). For instance, it says how the High Line is a theater and the plants are performing on stage. Also, it revealed that the sun lawn is closed 2 days a week to “regenerate” because so many people use it, and actually most of the greenery is roped off. Additionally, the documentary claimed that the kids love playing and walking along the tracks, but the first of the many rules for the High Line is the prohibition against walking along the tracks, gravel, and plants (Norman n.d). The purpose of the park isn’t for kids to play, but to just be aesthetically pleasing. Also, Amanda Burden is filmed saying how the northern end of the High Line comes around the Hudson Yards and claims that we’ll see the expansion of a whole new neighborhood. As we read in previous readings, the Bloomberg administration was itching to get their hands on Hudson Yards, and the High Line was a pet project of Burden who claimed the High Line not only turned into an iconic public space but also boosted development in the area. In fact, Burden calls the area “Architect’s Row” because of all the starchitecture nearby (McGeehan 2011). The High Line’s purpose, then, wasn’t to be a place to play, but rather to bring in tourists and upwardly-mobile residents in an attempt to revitalize the area; it’s a place to walk through and consume and spend money.

Not only is the architecture of the High Line meant to deter certain actions, but, as I mentioned before, there are rules for what is and isn’t allowed in the park. Things like picking flowers, walking on plants, bicycling and skateboarding, commercial activity or performances except by permit, and even a classic park activity like feeding birds are all prohibited on the High Line (Norman n.d.) Also, employees constantly collect bottles to prevent lower-income people from bottle-collecting. Moreover, in their overzealousness to have what they consider the “best,” Friends of the High Line promulgated so many rules for sellers which make it difficult to function. To get the opportunity to even sell in the park, food vendors have to go through a 2-month selection process that includes shelling out a non-refundable smacking $1,000; then, if they get the chance to sell, food vendors aren’t allowed to have trash bags or even give people napkins, and have to empty their hidden trash boxes far from the park after their shifts. And only artisanal, hand-crafted foods are selected, vendors who sell more common street food – and who tend to be immigrants instead of middle-class college graduates – are demarcated to the streets under the High Line. Additionally, only 5 artists are allowed on the High Line each day, which actually hurts artists. And in order to make sure their rules are followed, Friends of the High Line have security cameras and private security patrolling the grounds (Wilson 2011). All these actions are conscious efforts to make the High Line comfortable for a certain group of people while simultaneously making it uncomfortable for another.

Furthermore, the High Line narrative completely ignores the fact that the original residents who lived there before the park were largely displaced. Moss writes that the area used to house working-class residents and light-industrial business, but between 2003-2011, property values increased by 103%, redeveloping the entire neighborhood for a new elite group of residents (2012).  In light of this, the Community Parks Initiative makes me skeptical. First, the website touts how the government improves parks in underserved neighborhoods while completely ignoring how the government is the reason why the neighborhoods became so underserved to begin with and why the parks were neglected at all. Additionally, looking at the before and after pictures, they really just slapped some paint on the playgrounds (and, in some cases, planted a couple bushes) and called it a day. Also, obviously the “after” pictures look better because the “before” ones were taken on foggy days with low lighting and a lot of the photos are on skewed angles, whereas the “after” ones were taken on sunny days, with greater lighting and contrast, are straighter photos, and some even have people playing in them. It seems to me that the government is like ‘oh look how good we are/we’re totally helping the poor/look how nice we made this bad area your park is prettier now so you can forget all about the years of institutionalized racism you faced at our hands.’ I don’t really think the kids that live there really care if the paint glistens in the sun or not. Growing up, there was a park by my house that had flaking green paint and I loved it. I mean, give kids an open lot and and a stick and let their imagination do the rest and they’ll be happy. Which is why I don’t think these improvements were done for the good of the people living there. This is politics, and in politics there’s always an angle. But whether this is just a ploy to show that Mayor de Blasio is helping the less fortunate and garner support for a reelection, or if it’s, as Loughran believes, part of the more sinister undercurrent of those in power putting funding into a park in order to revitalize the neighborhood, I don’t know. All I do know is that, using the High Line as an example, history shows that this has happened before, and unless we’re careful it can happen again and again until low-income people are completely pushed out of the city.

Are these parks being fixed up in order to transform the area like the High Line did and eventually displace the current residents? I sincerely hope not.

 

Readings:

NYC Parks. (n.d.). Community Parks Initiative targeted improvements. Retrieved April 16, 2017, from https://www.nycgovparks.org/about/framework-for-an-equitable-future/community-parks-initiative/caring

Loughran, K. (2014). Parks for profit: The High Line, growth machines, and the uneven development of urban public spaces. City & Community, 13(1), 49-68.

Additional Works Used:

Great Museums (2014). Great museums: elevated thinking: The High Line in New York City. Retrieved April 16, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CgTlg_L_Sw

Mcgeehan, P. (2011). The High Line isn’t just a sight to see; it’s also an economic dynamo. The New York Times. Retrieved April 16, 2017, from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/06/nyregion/with-next-phase-ready-area-around-high-line-is-flourishing.html?referer&_r=1

Moss, J. (2012). Disney World on the Hudson. The New York Times. Retrieved April 16, 2017, from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/opinion/in-the-shadows-of-the-high-line.html?_r=0

Norman, N. (n.d.). Defensive architecture. Retrieved April 16, 2017, from http://www.dismalgarden.com/archives/item/defensive_architecture/2911

Wilson, M. (2011). The park is elevated. Its crime rate is anything but. The New York Times. Retrieved April 16, 2017, from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/11/nyregion/the-high-line-park-is-elevated-its-crime-rate-is-not.html

Jane Jacobs in “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” argues that the current state of cities is deplorable and that something needs to be done. Jacobs attributes this fault to urban planners who have ignored certain facts and realities of urban life, and were influenced by towns, suburbs, and dream cities instead of actual cities. Jacobs condemns urban planners for mistakenly believing that superficial makeovers are the cure for all the cities ailments.

Interestingly enough, Mumford, a Decentrist which Jacob condemns, also criticizes urban planners for not realizing that city problems can’t just be fixed by “merely building sanitary tenements or straightening out and widening irregular streets” (1937). However, while Jacobs and Mumford agree that there is a problem, they disagree on what to do about it. Mumford favors a “polynucleated city” in which there are groups of evenly spaced and sized communities with completely planned out resources and with limitations to size and density (1937). He claims his plan would strengthen cities, however, Jacobs seems to think it would undermine the economy of cities and kill them, and I agree. First, who decides who gets to live in these ‘new and improved’ cities and how would they decide that? What’s the criteria for who gets to live there? Where do they draw the lines? It seems to me that he’s pressing for gentrification and for marginalizing the poor. Also, how would he decide which businesses stay in his planned out resources? His rigid plan doesn’t appear to allow for economic growth and seems to favor monopolistic companies while kicking out smaller businesses. Additionally, today’s population is growing rapidly and half the world lives in cities (and the amount is expected to increase); how does he plan to accommodate the ever-growing population in his evenly dispersed and limited-in-size communities? Again I worry that this will only benefit the privileged, while the poor will suffer in increasingly cramped and impoverished areas.

On the other hand, Jacobs likes dense cities and sees the value in the orderly disorder, however, I believe that her vision isn’t safe from gentrification either. In fact, I believe that she’s part of the problem. I believe there are two steps to the gentrification process: the first step is when long-time residents and owners begin to change a neighborhood, and then newcomers come in and complete the transformation. For instance, when Jacobs first visited the North End it was overcrowded and poor, but the next time she came, she writes, it was completely changed and full of live and vibrancy due to the efforts of its residents. This is the first stage of gentrification in which the people living there try to better their situations, and Jacobs applauds this. She also writes, however, how the families in the tenements have “uncrowded themselves” by combining apartments into larger ones, but how exactly did they magically uncrowd themselves? Where did the previous tenants go? Here we see the beginnings of original residents being pushed out of their communities. Then, according to Dumanoski, young people began to move in and the North End became an interesting and desirable place to live, and suddenly rents were increasing, condominiums were being built, and, as Dumanoski writes, “there will be a push for ‘Italian culture,’ but it will be a plastic Italian culture” (1979). Indeed, today the North End is only about 3% Italian, while its history and symbols have been reduced to mere commodities to consume for entertainment (Seligson 2016). In the place of small mom-and-pop shops are pricey boutiques and bakeries that sell cannolis (Seligson 2016).

Jacobs writes that “the visitors sniff out where something vigorous exists already, and come to share it, thereby further supporting it,” but I disagree. These newcomers or “urban pioneers” (like Jacobs – a middle class out-of-towner who moved to Greenwich Village most probably for the low rents and it’s charming bohemian atmosphere) in their search for and appreciation of inner-city “authenticity” and “diversity” actually incorporate those very locations back into the middle class mainstream, leaving behind the original residents that made it so. Further, I don’t think Jacobs actually cares about diversity in terms of race. For instance, Halle points out that Jacobs praised Midtown for its diversity in terms of its “high rise office buildings, a thriving entertainment industry…and some tall residential buildings along with smaller structures too,” without even seemingly caring about the fact that all this contributed to gentrification in the area (2006). The revitalization of Times Square, for example, has homogenized the surrounding areas and pushed out lower-income residents. Also, it seems that she wasn’t too keen on integration (like Moses), since, according to Halle, she fought against having a high-rise public housing project in the Village, even though that would’ve definitely improved the area’s diversity (2006).

Which leads me to the question of can you improve an area without it leading to gentrification. Efforts have been made in Harlem, for example, to help its residents who lived there, but now Harlem, an area that has been redlined and discriminated against for years, has “urban pioneers,” trendy restaurants, high-end housing, and is no longer majority black (Roberts 2010). Similarly, great efforts were taken by residents in Brownsville to improve their neighborhood, however, now residents are trying to combat the second stage of gentrification that is occurring in surrounding neighborhoods such as Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Crown Heights (Pope-Sussman 2016). Also, the decades-long trend of poverty being higher in cities is now reversing; nowadays, suburban poverty levels are actually higher than urban levels as more and more of the urban poor are being pushed out of their neighborhoods (Edsall 2015). So do you think it’s possible to help a neighborhood in need without it leading to the exodus of those very residents? Because, from where I’m standing, I, unfortunately, don’t think it is.

Readings:

Halle, D. (2006). Who wears Jane Jacobs’s mantle in today’s New York City? City and Community, 5(3), 237-241.

Jacobs, J. (1961). Introduction. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities (pp. 2-25). New York: Vintage Books.

Jacobs, J. (1961). The generators of diversity. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities (pp. 143-151). New York: Vintage Books.

Additional Works Used:

Dumanoski, D. (1979) Boston’s Italian North End. American Preservation Magazine. Retrieved March 3, 2017, from http://northendwaterfront.com/2017/01/revisiting-north-end-gentrification-1979-american-preservation-magazine/

Edsall, T. B. (2015) The Gentrification Effect. The New York Times. Retrieved March 03, 2017, from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/opinion/the-gentrification-effect.html

Mumford, L. (1937) What is a city? Architectural Record, pp. 92-96. Retrieved March 3, 2017, from https://deensharp.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/mumford-what-is-a-city_.pdf

Pope-Sussman, R. (2016) ‘Best of Brownsville’ street kiosk triggers local gentrification fears. Retrieved March 03, 2017, from http://gothamist.com/2016/09/16/brownsville_gentrification_fear.php

Roberts, S. (2010) No longer majority black, Harlem is in transition. The New York Times. Retrieved March 03, 2017, from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/nyregion/06harlem.html

Seligson, S. (2016, July 12). Is the North End Still Italian? Retrieved March 03, 2017, from https://www.bu.edu/today/2016/north-end-boston/