New York University
Who is Scott Barton?
Scott Barton is a professor at both NYU and Queens College. He is a cultural anthropologist who focuses on the way food impacts people and vice versa. He is an alum of NYU and familiar with the area and culture of both Greenwich Village and the East Village. Though this website focuses on NYU and Greenwich Village, the claims he makes about the East Village can be applied to Greenwich Village.
Key Points made during this interview:
- The non-NYU community of the East Village has had various disagreements with NYU.
- The food culture, specifically within the food-truck industry, is changing drastically in the East Village because of the diverse demographics of NYU.
- Public spaces are being jeopardized by an apparent privatization by NYU students.
- The East Village is now made up of many rich college students who wish to “experience” artsy life.
Some (Paraphrased) Questions and Answers:
Q: Can you tell me a little about the work you’ve done as an anthropologist?
A: I am a food anthropologist, and I seek to understand how food is used to inform generations of their cultures.
Q: Do you think the food services around NYU depend on NYU students?
A: Yes. The cafes, ethnic restaurants, and food trucks in the area are all dependent on the students.
Q: Would you say that NYU kids are trying to conform to Greenwich Village or they ARE Greenwich Village?
A: The students come to college with this expectation of what the NYU community is like, and they try to live up to this idea of what the village is like. Ultimately, it forces them to try to create this character for themselves that they project onto the village.
To listen to the full interview, click below!
Columbia University
Who is
Robert Beaureagard?
“There are people who, in saying, “I don’t see color,” treat the neighborhood like a blank slate. They have no idea how insulting they’re being, denying us our heritage and our stake in Harlem’s future,” writes Michael Henry Adams, in The New York Times article The End of Black Harlem, just about a year ago today. Harlem, alongside Morningside Heights and Manhattanville are some of the predominant neighborhoods surrounding Columbia University, a college smack in the middle of the controversy. On one hand, the surrounding neighborhoods of Columbia can be described as a tourist and developer influx, filled with new families pushing strollers and other urban pioneers that come for the draw of city tax abutments. This side of the neighborhoods are filled with high end housing, trendy restaurants and public improvement such as new movie theaters, dance studios and even landscape renovation.
Yet the other side of these neighborhoods is no doubt what we think of when we immediately think of names such as Harlem, Morningside, and Manhattanville. These areas are a cultural foundation of black America, a birthplace of music, art, literature, and so much more. It’s been home to pain and suffering as well as rebirth and liberation. And with the so much rich cultural context preluding this area, is it possible for the two to coexist, or is new consumerist ideas pushing out and erasing the complex and historically valuable nature of these neighborhoods surrounding the campus itself?
The first professor I interviewed was Robert Beauregard, a professor of Urban Planning at Columbia GSAPP. He teaches on urban redevelopment polices, social theory epistemology, and is a chairman of the Doctoral Subcommittee on Urban Planning.
The transcript is as follows:
Maggie: Hi Professor, how are you? I want to talk to you about the neighborhood surrounding Columbia and the effects of gentrification.
Robert: I’m good, thank you for asking. I’m going to assume that by ‘neighborhood’ you mean Morningside Heights and the adjacent Harlem neighborhood.
Maggie: Yes, those are some of the ones I’m definitely focusing on surrounding the campus. How have they changed in recent years, in your opinion?
Robert: Physically Manhattanville has changed very little in the last few years. The big change has been the new Manhattanville campus which replaced various mixed uses with a Columbia mega-project of labs and classrooms.
Maggie: In your opinion, is this change to the neighborhood positive or negative? In what ways?
Robert: Such judgments are always perspectival. The university will benefit from the new campus. The former residents and users of the site will not.
Maggie: And how does this carry over to housing? Has the cost of living in this neighborhood increased substantially over the last several years?
Robert: By cost of living, I believe you mean housing costs?
Maggie: Yes.
Robert: Like most of NYC, these costs have certainly risen. You could look for data on this, but I believe the housing costs in the neighborhood hasn’t risen excessively in Manhattanville. Possibly they have done so in central Harlem below 125th street though.
Maggie: On the opposite end of the spectrum, what has been preserved in the neighborhood throughout the last few years?
Robert: In Manhattanville, basically everything. Stores and restaurants have opened and closed, but the housing in Manhattanville has remained.
Maggie: But no doubt with everything that’s been going on these past few years, to say the least…
Robert: Oh, of course! Manhattanville has certainly undergone major changes.
Maggie: Do you think that the university has, in any part, contributed to change in the neighborhood(s)?
Robert: Undoubtedly! It has in west Harlem for sure. As for Manhattanville, the university (and its students, workers, and faculy) are a constant force in the neighborhood.
Maggie: Which is a great statement to hear, especially when there’s so much controversy around the building of the campus.
Robert: Any other questions?
Maggie: No that’s it, thank you again professor.
After conducting the first interview, it’s clear to see that the areas surrounding the campus are effected by it. The Manhattanville campus was brought to both higher and lower courts, and disputed over time. It would cause a huge rise in housing prices and change the demographic of the neighborhood drastically. However, with it’s eventual building it would also invest a hundred and sixty million back into the community when Columbia University reached an agreement with the court. This money would be exclusively used for Harlem community development, housing court aid, and other necessary funding for the area.
Who is Elliott Sclar?
The next professor I interviewed was Elliott Sclar, a special research scholar and director. He’s taught at the center for sustainable urban development, the Earth Institute, and Urban Planning.
Maggie: Hi Professor, how are you?
Elliott: I’m good, and yourself?
Maggie: Alright. Could you start by telling me a little about neighborhood change within the area?
Eliott: Well, first off, I’d definitely say let’s first start with the definition of a neighborhood change. Neighbor change occurs over any period of time where neighborhoods change socially and physically in response to larger changes in the economy and society. People move, people are born and people die. Along the way the uses of those spaces change as markets revalue locations.
Maggie: And how do you think this has effected the area around the campus specifically?
Elliott: For the gentrifiers it’s been overwhelmingly positive, for those displaced it is probably negative at worst or a mixed bag.
Elliott:To the extent that you’re interested in the impact of Columbia in Northern Manhattan, though, that’s too is complex to even delve into.
Maggie: We’d have to cite at least half a dozen New York times articles in one conversation.
Elliott: Exactly! I mean, to add something concise, the presence of these institutions along with the good access and good housing stock serves to hasten the gentrification process but its roots are in broader trends of social and economic inequality.
Maggie: And the cost of living, how has it changed over the years in relation to this?
Elliott: Well, then I’d ask you, who wins, who loses? It’s more a matter of that really.
Maggie; How so?
Elliott: In general, in any market economy those with the most resources win, those with the least lose. Simple. Government should mitigate the social costs but does so less and less for a variety of reasons. Cost of living has both an overall impact and local one as some neighborhoods are more valued and other less valued. So yes, Manhattan neighborhoods are more valued as the economy has transformed.
Maggie: Anything else on the subject matter?
Elliott: It’s hard to discuss without going into a long yarn. It’s as complex as gentrification is widespread and has been underway for decades in New York, and most acutely in Manhattan.
Maggie: Has it been underway longer in some places than others?
Elliott: Yes, it’s has been underway longer in some places than others, for sure. The rate at which neighborhoods change and affordability changes is also uneven. In all cases the rate of increase for housing costs exceeds the rates of increase in income levels within these Manhattan neighborhoods. Whether the change is positive or negative depends on what the terms of reference are.
Maggie: What about preservation?
Elliott: Preservation. A difficult question as we could be talking about the buildings or the people (in class or ethnic terms) Usually some of both go on.
Maggie: And the impact of the university?
Elliott: My own sense is that the presence of Columbia has made it more attractive as an area for upscaling. One way to look at this is to consider the area along Broadway between 125th St and Washington Heights. Columbia is a southern anchor and its health science campus is a northern anchor. In between you have City College. The area is well served by transit and has a large stock of gracious pre war apartment buildings.
Maggie: So, to sum it up, you’d say it largely depends on perspective?
Elliott: It really does. When you think about impact, from what perspective are you seeking to understand the neighborhood is what counts. Is it from the perspective of the university? Of the wealthier gentrifiers? Of the blacks who displaced the Jews? Of the Dominicans who began to displace the blacks? In a city that is constantly changing, whose neighborhood is it? That answer would impact the responses of who are the winners and losers given the changes that are constantly occurring.
Maggie: Thank you again professor. I think that in itself is answer enough to any other questions about the current state of the neighborhood. Have a good evening.
After talking to Professor Sclar what really stuck with me was the idea of how he approached gentrification or it’s roll in the neighborhood. In a neighborhood where all these different people live, some being pushed out, some renaming, others pushing their way in, talking to different people will give you a completely different story. I could write an article about the erasure of a historical neighborhood, the funding of new expensive housing and renovation, or the funding of a new school within the area. Perhaps the best approach is to understand it’s truly a place of flux, one in which there’s a lot of right answers and a lot of wrong ones, and they all depend on who you’re talking when you happen to walk through the campus, and by extension, it’s surrounding neighborhoods.
