Every day since this semester began, I have taken an LIRR train from Long Island to Jamaica station, and walked from that train station to the Queens College shuttle stop to get to school and back.. It is a relatively short walk, barely a block and a half, but every day it is a new experience. Whether there’s a new vendor on the block, or blaring sirens from a squad of firetrucks breaking through the heavy traffic, something always makes my head turn when I walk the 2 minute walk from one destination to the next. I don’t have much other experience in Jamaica, it was always a neighborhood that existed just outside the peripheral vision of the places in Queens I grew up in. I figured that it would be a perfect place to do neighborhood observations in, since the small section of Jamaica that I did grow to know over this past semester intrigued me.

I started walking down the main road, Archer Ave, on a Monday afternoon (4 pm) just to really take in all the activity going on that I would typically miss when I’m running to catch the bus. It is a very busy road, both in the terms of pedestrians and vehicles. It is never quiet, there’s loud music playing on the sidewalks, high school students (I presume from their appearances) yelling across the block, and cars honking constantly. There were so many MTA buses that it seemed like they made the bulk of traffic.

The area of Jamaica I focused on is a very commercial area, connected to a residential one from the roads branching out from Archer Avenue.

Since I was more used to the commercial area, I decided to take a walk through a few blocks branching out from the main road, just to see how the residential area compared. I found that it was a stark contrast from the Avenue, with almost no sounds coming from anywhere except the birds chirping, and the sounds of traffic a distant noise. The sidewalks were relatively empty, and the houses were built very close to each other, and there seemed to be a mix of homes that were seemed older and brand new houses on blocks right next to each other.

After a short walk through the residential streets, I ventured back out to the main road because most of the activity seemed to be focused there. Majority of the people frequenting the area looked like they were Asian, Latinx, or Black. It was very diverse in ages, with people as young as babies being wheeled by their mothers and those old enough to need assistance while walking. There was a great amount of high schoolers, which made sense as it was around the time school would get dismissed.

I also noticed a considerable amount of construction happening on the main road, with the most obvious being a massive building being built across from Jamaica station.

A quick google search told me that the project was going to be a large residential building, bringing “a total of 669 apartments to the neighborhood, which is up from the previously reported 580 apartments.” This confused me, because the apartment building was being built across from a very busy train station, and on an even busier commercial road. Building a huge residential building smack dab in the center of a shopping hub felt out of place, but maybe it will contribute positively to the neighborhood. Additionally, there were smaller construction projects taking place all over, with one even happening inside the train station itself.

Jamaica Avenue, namesake of the neighborhood itself, turned out to be a lot quieter than Archer Avenue. I went down this road the next day, around 2 pm, and it felt like a completely different place from the neighborhood from the day before. The roads were all lined with small shops, with each block organized by type. Electronic stores were all on the same block, flower shops were all on the same block, etc. The streets were a lot less busy, and it was much easier to walk down the sidewalk without getting shoved or stuck being a group of people.

I could make the assumption that this change in environment was because of the difference in time, with 4 pm being rush hour and 2 pm being the time when everyone’s at school or work. It was interesting how different the area felt without the loud hubbub that I had grown accustomed to.

Walking through Jamaica reminded me of Jane Jacobs, who was adamant about having a mix of quality of homes in the same neighborhood, and the endorsement of pedestrian activity on the streets.I wondered what she would’ve thought of the neighborhood. I think she would’ve liked it, since it contained lots of civilian engagement, and a great variety of zoning areas all within the same neighborhood. It was an interesting experience overall, because now I had a deeper idea of the neighborhood that – to me – had only existed as a crossways from one place to another. This was a learning experience, and I only took a small glance at what I know now to be a very rich and fascinating community.

Sources:

https://ny.curbed.com/2016/10/5/13177374/jamaica-airtain-residential-towers-fxfowle

Amna Siddiqi

Jane Jacobs was a vigorous proponent for building cities for the people. She championed changes to the city that citizens supported, and fought against proposals that threatened the livelihood of the community. In a relatively recent instance, Jacobs wrote an open letter to previous mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg. In it, she criticized Mayor Bloomberg’s insistence on carrying out the rezoning of the Greenpoint – Williamsburg waterfront. The people living in the neighborhood, she argues, know best for their own community, and it would be best if the city council heeded their protests. She lists all the issues that would be brought forth if the proposal was approved, as stated in the full text shown below:

Jane Jacobs
69 Albany Avenue
Toronto, ON M5R 3C2
CANADA

April 15, 2005

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and all members of the City Council
c/o City Council President Gifford Miller

Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

My name is Jane Jacobs. I am a student of cities, interested in learning why some cities persist in prospering while others persistently decline; why some provide social environments that fulfill the dreams and hopes of ambitious and hardworking immigrants, but others cruelly disappoint the hopes of immigrant parents that they have found an improved life for their children. I am not a resident of New York although most of what I know about cities I learned in New York during the almost half-century of my life here after I arrived as an immigrant from an impoverished Pennsylvania coal mining city in 1934.

I am pleased and proud to say that dozens of cities, ranging in size from London to Riga in Latvia, have found the vibrant success and vitality of New York to demonstrate useful and helpful lessons for their cities—and have realized that failures in New York are worth study as needed cautions

Let’s think first about revitalization successes; they are great and good teachers. They don’t result from gigantic plans and show-off projects, in New York or in other cities either. They build up gradually and authentically from diverse human communities; successful city revitalization builds itself on these authentic community foundations, as the community-devised plan 197a does.

What the intelligently worked out plan devised by the community itself does not do is worth noticing. It does not destroy hundreds of manufacturing jobs, desperately needed by New York citizens and by the city’s stagnating and stunted manufacturing economy. The community’s plan does not cheat the future by neglecting to provide provisions for schools, daycare, recreational outdoor amateur sports, and pleasant facilities for those things. The community’s plan does not promote new housing at the expense of both existing housing and imaginative and economical new shelter that residents can afford. The community’s plan does not violate the existing scale of the community, nor does it insult the visual and economic advantages of neighborhoods that are precisely of the kind and that demonstrably attract artists and other live-work craftsmen, initiating spontaneous and self-organizing renewal. Indeed so much renewal so rapidly that the problem converts to how to make an undesirable neighborhood to an attractive one less rapidly.

Of course the community’s plan does not promote any of the vicious and destructive results mentioned. Why would it? Are the citizens of Greenpoint and Williamsburg vandals? Are they so inhumane they want to contrive the possibility of jobs for their neighbors and for the greater community?

Surely not. But the proposal put forth before you by city staff is an ambush containing all those destructive consequences, packaged very sneakily with the visually tiresome, unimaginative and imitative luxury project towers. How weird, and how sad, that New York, which has demonstrated city successes enlightening to so much of the world, seems unable to learn lessons it needs for itself. I will make two predictions with utter confidence: 1) If you follow the community’s plan you will harvest success; 2) If you follow the proposal before you today, you will maybe enrich a few heedless and ignorant developers, but at the cost of an ugly and intractable mistake. Even the presumed beneficiaries of this mis-use of governmental powers, the developers and financiers of the luxury towers, may not benefit, misused environments are not good long-term economic bets.

Come on, do the right thing. The community really does know best.

Sincerely,

Jane Jacobs

The most important part of Jacobs’ letter to me was where she listed all of the faults of rezoning plan. They went hand in hand with what she stated in Chapter 7 of her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities – that cities require economic and social opportunities for the community to partake in, and in turn make the economic and social life of the city flourish. In the letter she argues that Bloomberg is ripping away these opportunities from the community, and in turn dooming the neighborhood to a horrible mistake.

Interestingly, Mayor Bloomberg ignored Jacobs’ criticisms along with the city’s protests and approved the plan. The area has now become a recreational spot, and the residential buildings have been reconstructed to high rise towers that are only available to those with the means to afford their astronomical prices. In this way Jacobs’ was right. Bloomberg’s plan did indeed end up promoting “new housing at he expense of both existing housing and imaginative and economical new shelter that residents can afford.” What makes me wonder though is, do the city planners who proposed this plan view the project as a success or not? In Jacobs’ eyes, it wasn’t a success, because it cost the community their space. However, as she mentions in her introduction, city planners often view her idea of failed projects as massive successes, and her successes as “slums.” Do the city planners recognize the stripping away of community from the neighborhood, or are they only concerned with the economic benefits they are reaping from the rich moving into the new spaces?