A Tale of Two Coney Islands: A Review of Literature
It is the best of times and the worst of times for Coney Island. Walking down the boardwalk, the efforts of the revitalization project are apparent. The amusement park is up and running, the upcoming Cyclone season is ready to begin, and the Aquarium is bouncing back from Hurricane Sandy, slowly but surely. But there are other parts of Coney Island that the revitalization efforts never reached, made worse by the tragedies of Hurricane Sandy. It is the coexistence of these two sections of Coney Island, the affluent and the destitute, which account for the conflict found in this neighborhood.
When an outsider thinks of Coney Island, his or her first thoughts are of the boardwalk area; this is because Coney Island is an entertainment economy, based off of tourism and entertainment. Immerso (2002) and Kasson (2011) both discuss the manner in which Coney Island became New York City’s playground, and a center of entertainment for the city dwellers and travellers across the country. Using state of the art technology at every turn of Coney Island’s history, and sparing no expense to keep up with the newest technologies, the Coney Island boardwalk was able to maintain its fun and exciting nature from the onset of its existence as a tourist attraction. The boardwalk is comparable to Cape May, Atlantic City, Las Vegas, New Orleans, and various other resort-like areas in its ability to entertain tourists. New York City has always prioritized making the boardwalk an attractive place, and has thus created a dual economy in the neighborhood, by neglecting the residential aspect of Coney Island.
Schneider (2013) discusses the dualism of the economy in New Orleans, which can easily be related to Coney Island. In the New Orleans area, there exists a globalized economy centered on tourism and big business, as well as a local economy centered on small businesses. This journal explains the tension between the locals and the big business in New Orleans, which is a good indicator of what is happening in Coney Island now. The journal talks about how the globalized economy has better infrastructure, and is given more attention by the government, while the local economy suffers. Because of this extreme disparity, the local community then resists the global economy, and the area becomes more segregated.
Zukin et al (1998) compare Coney Island to Las Vegas, whose entertainment-based economy had completely different effects on the local economy than those of Coney Island and New Orleans. This journal article summarizes the different aspects of urban living in Coney Island and Las Vegas throughout each of their histories, and explains how the two cities on opposite sides of the coast could not have evolved more oppositely. While similar in some aspects, Zukin et al (1998) cover how Coney Island has its boardwalk, which has declined over the years, and how Las Vegas has its casino strip, which has evolved and has reached an economic boom. Another characteristic covered within the article include the difference of classes, with Coney Island becoming a fixture of lower class and Las Vegas exploding as a Hollywood commodity. Racial differences have also been explored, specifically the inverse of racial diversity. As the population of Las Vegas skyrocketed, the racial makeup remained majorly white. As the population of Coney Island diminished, the racial makeup evened out substantially more than in previous decades. Coney Island’s residential area is a “racialized” space, which Robert Moses rezoned for public housing projects in the 1950’s. This re-zoning sealed Coney Island’s residential fate as a low-income area, with it’s entertainment section maintaining its status as a high-income area.
Coney Island’s “racialized” nature, as well as its dual economy, are very prominent issues for the neighborhood, and provide a great deal of conflict between the two sections of Coney Island, including resentment towards the boardwalk from the poorer section of Coney Island. Lessard (2009) found that socioeconomic status has great impact on public health. Areas with low socioeconomic standing tend to contain residents with lower physical and mental health, as well as higher rates of crime. Since poverty is rampant outside of the boardwalk in Coney Island, public health is most likely much lower in this area than near the boardwalk.
A study in the 1988 edition of the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics dealing with poverty and crime found that property-related crimes such as robbery, burglary, motor-vehicle theft, and larceny are committed when the perpetrators have incomes lower than the New York City mean. People in economically depressed neighborhoods and areas like Coney Island are more likely to commit property-related crimes, which would explain why many of the houses on and around Neptune Avenue had multiple gates up, with barbed wire and barred windows. Poorer individuals usually evaluate their economics based on the more affluent people in the area, and their contrast to the people that surround them. The great contrast between the boardwalk and the residents leads poorer people to feel anger and to get involved in more criminal behavior directed at available property.
Part of the reason for Coney Island’s great poverty and disparity is due to the “racialized” nature of its residency. Residential Coney Island consists mostly of Russian, Jewish, African American, and Hispanic groups, who are often underrepresented in government, and therefore have little voice in political decisions about their area. Soehl (2011) wrote an article focusing on Russian-Jewish immigrants within the country and in New York, specifically southern Brooklyn. The article showed that having someone in government who represents a large demographic portion of the governed area can lead to positive changes for that area’s future. Unfortunately, however, the minority groups are still underrepresented in Coney Island, which continues to result in poverty and hostility between the haves and have-nots of the neighborhood.
When Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast of the United States in 2012, Coney Island was hit very hard with damages, as was most of southern Brooklyn and surrounding areas. Schmeltz et al (2013) discuss the effect of Hurricane Sandy in Brooklyn on the poorer areas, and overview the way that the super storm affected the poverty stricken areas of Brooklyn, including community perceptions towards the government and further economic hardships due to losses of job and property.
The storm not only damaged the area financially, but socially as well; the storm resulted in increased tensions between the boardwalk and the surrounding areas of residential Coney Island, because of the recovery efforts that were made and prioritized by the government. This economic disparity and preference that is tearing the neighborhood apart can be seen easily in the Coney Island area after Hurricane Sandy; the boardwalk is completely rebuilt and better than ever, while some people were displaced from their homes and still lack the government funding to get their lives on track.
Schuman (2013) and Greenberg (2014) discuss the importance of image in tourist driven economies, and how the entertainment districts are prioritized over residential areas. These articles discuss how after a natural disaster, most funding gets poured into tourist attractions, with the idea that rebuilding tourism will rebuild the economy of the surrounding area as well. All the infrastructure of these tourist areas gets rebuilt with great precedence over the infrastructure of the rest of the community, because the image of the tourist attraction is more important to the government than the basic needs of the surrounding economy. Because the tourism is the main source of the total income for the Coney Island area, the boardwalk receives the most government granted recovery funding even if this large influx of money benefits only the bigger businesses and not the locals.
Works Cited
“An Empirical Model of Property Crime: Deterrence versus Redistribution.” Journal of Post Keynesian Economics 10.4 (1988): 572-84. JSTOR. Web. 19 Mar. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/4538094?ref=search- gateway:ca888c042fbb6096707cc8623a3c91f0>.
Greenberg, Miriam. “The Disaster inside the Disaster: Hurricane Sandy and Post-crisis Redevelopment.” New Labor Forum (Sage Publications Inc.). 23.1 (2014): 44-52. Web. 16 Mar. 2014.
Immerso, Michael. Coney Island: The People’s Playground. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2002. Print.
Kasson, John F. Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century. New York: Hill & Wang, 2011. Print.
Lessard, Richard. “Public Health and Poverty.” Canadian Journal of Public Health / Revue Canadienne De Sante’e Publique 100.4 (2009): 247-48. JSTOR. Web. 19 Mar. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/41995260?ref=search-gateway:5c31dd4eee3ce73c99031ecfdc24fdd8>.
Schmeltz, Michael T., Sonia K. González, Liza Fuentes, Amy Kwan, Anna Ortega-Williams, and Lisa Pilar Cowan. “Lessons from Hurricane Sandy: A Community Response in Brooklyn, New York.” Journal of Urban Health 90.5 (2013): 799-809. Print.
Schneider, A. (2013). Dualist Development, Globalized Growth, Segmented Labor Markets, and Community-Based Resistance. Social Policy, 43(1), 44-54.
Schumann, I. L. (2013). Recovering Destination from Devastation. Southeastern Geographer, 53(2), 136-156.
Soehl, T. (2011). The Ambiguities of Political Opportunity: Political claims
making of Russian-Jewish Immigrants in New York City. UCLA: UCLA International Institute. Retrieved from: http://escholarship.org.ez.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/uc/item/9gr107hp
Zukin, Sharon , Robert Baskerville, Miriam Greenberg, Courtney Guthreau, Jean Halley, Mark Halling, Kristin Lawler, Ron Nerio, et al. “From Coney Island to Las Vegas in the urban imaginary: discursive practices of growth and decline.” Urban Affairs Review. 33.5 (1998): n. page. Web. 16 Mar. 2014.
