In reference to: In Bushwick, Artists Try to Rewrite Gentrification’s Usual Story

This article presents and interesting way to fight back against the displacement of gentrification. A small community of artists has decided to pool together money and buy apartment buildings and turn them into workspace instead of continuing to rent out apartments. The article states that the rent in Bushwick has gone from around one dollar a square foot to around four dollars a square foot, which means that apartments that once cost $500 now cost around $2000. This is obviously unfair and a price that most struggling artists cannot afford. So the idea of pooling money together to buy a space presents a very interesting idea. Their methods of collecting money goes as follows: either collecting money from investors or gallery owners that want to support young artists to create a trust that would help buy a large building that could be converted into studios for artists, or getting a small group of artists to donate money to put down payments on smaller buildings that they could make into studios. These artists are essentially trying to buy their way back into their property and instead of fighting gentrification head on, they are trying to keep hold of their environment in the same way that landlords and real estate speculators and corporations try to gentrify their town. It’s an interesting role reversal that hopefully has the opposite effect.

In all honesty, I thought this article was, to say the least, a bit over the top. I understand that Davis was trying to portray this new level of policing and the complete lack of truly public space in a shocking light in order to make people realize what is going on. However, he speaks of a city that is completely bereft of goodness and social activism. When, in truth, there are many organizations and individuals who are completely opposed to the disenfranchisement of poor and minority groups.

On the other hand, I do agree that because the upper classes own most of the wealth, and have all the power, our society is geared toward discrimination and unfairness. More belongs to the rich because they have the power to take it.  I do enjoy the inherit parallels of the “American Dream” that Davis draws and the negation of this dream. He does so by saying that many streets are not free for certain people to walk down and that the opportunities in business districts are not for everyone.

Question: How can we even begin to take the power away from the rich and put it back into the hands of the general populace?

“Fortress Los Angeles: The Militarization of Urban Space”  by Mike Davis struck me as being unlike any of the previous course readings. Whereas our other readings addressed social crises, particularly those affecting NYC, Davis’s work addresses a crisis of physical space in LA. Initially, I found the central idea of the piece to be quite abstract but images like that of “fortified garbage” are very powerful and ground Davis’s argument in reality. Adding maps and images of the referenced buildings could have further strengthened Davis’s argument.

Of all the examples provided in the article about security and militarization of public space, I found the use of LAPD helicopters under the Astro program to be the most extreme. Not only is it environmentally detrimental for helicopters to spend circa nineteen hours in the air, this extreme type of surveillance is also wildly inappropriate and unnecessary. Lastly, as I had mentioned in previous blog posts, the phenomena of the militarization of the police force in America has been well documented and studied…and yet, the problem remains largely unaddressed.

Frederick Law Olmsted had it right when he said that public spaces should be for people or all races, genders, income classes, and such to get together and mingle. It should not be a space restricted for only a certain types of people, as Davis is describing the completely separate lives of the rich and poor in Los Angeles. So many immigrants have entered the city hoping for a better life, when in reality, what is happening is that public spaces are being allowed to deteriorate. There are fewer and fewer parks, libraries, and playgrounds, while the poorer neighborhood streets are getting more dangerous by the day. Though not as severe, there is a specific example that I have witnessed on Staten Island as well. It wasn’t that the public spaces open for poorer people was being closed, it was more that poorer people were being inexplicitly denied from, at least, this one specific park. A certain ethnic house of worship was located near the park and so more and more people of that ethnicity started to move into the neighborhood. It was a park that many people used to visit after school, but pretty soon, with the influx of these newer residents, the previous residents who visited the park did not feel comfortable being around the new residents. The new people renovated the park and made it look like brand new, and so the previous residents felt uncomfortable going inside anymore. To further worsen the situation, the new residents placed locks on the park entrances, so no one would be able to go in or out without them knowing. Though not completely the same as the Los Angeles case, it is strikingly similar.

Question: Why is the mixing of different socioeconomic classes so difficult and is there any way it could ever be achieved?

The “Second Civil War” is a social warfare between the interests of the middle class against the welfare of the urban poor. Malls and complexes of many buildings have replaced public space; police inside these complexes places people under surveillance. These malls and office centers have access to electronics, whereas in the ghetto it electronics are not as accessible. This unequal distribution is the start of Los Angeles heading into one direction favoring the elite. Public services are diminishing and public spaces are becoming more privatized. This clashes with the view of Frederick Law Olmsted, the mastermind behind Central Park. He saw parks and other public spaces as a way to bring the different social classes together through similar leisurely activities. Olmsted wrote, “No one who has closely observed the conduct of the people who visit [Central] Park can doubt that it exercises a distinctly harmonizing and refining influence upon the most unfortunate and most lawless classes of the city-an influence favorable to courtesy, self-control, and temperance.” Why has the distinction between classes been reinforced by public spaces?

In Fortress Los Angeles: The Militarization of Urban Space, the author discusses how in Los Angeles it has become clear that the gap between rich and poor has been reinforced through security. The author states, “ The defense of luxury has given birth to an arsenal of security systems and an obsession with the policing of social boundaries.” No longer are the wealthy distinguished from the poor based on their riches. The poor neighborhoods are secluded from urban society through police enforced barricades. The disparity between rich and poor is now physically in place through military enforcement as well as construction of luxury buildings that clearly exclude those below a certain stature. The new use of public space as areas to divide the classes opposes the Olmstedian vision, which saw public spaces like parks as areas for the mixing of the rich and poor.

Question: How can public officials fulfill the Olmstedian vision through public policies?

This article truly makes Los Angeles look like a horrible place, determined to protect their wealth and status at all costs, even if that means destroying the last truly public spaces in exchange for security-heavy destinations, banking on the draw of exclusivity. While I don’t doubt that LA (and probably other large American cities) are seeing a turn towards the polarization of any person or thing not deemed socially “elite” (I.e. minorities, the poor), I can’t help but question the extremity of the article, which depicts the city as a sort of militaristic city of a dystopian future. Regardless, the privatization of public space is a concerning issue, especially as income gaps continue to widen nationwide. This issue particularly effects the homeless, who are no longer allowed in more and more areas of the city. Rather than focusing on finding housing for the homeless of the city, they are focusing on ways to keep them out of “luxury” areas, only further deepening class divides.

I was appalled by this week’s readings. Never have been to LA and only being exposed to the glamorous side of the city on television, I had no idea that LA functioned in such a harsh way. As described in the reading, the city is divided into stark like life versus broadway chaos. This means that part of the city is rich and flourishing while the other part is dysfunctional. The reading stressed how the military and rich people strive to keep those two worlds separate. I was shocked at how they have attempted to isolate the poor and how cruel the city is to them. What stood out most was when the author described how the city replaced the seats at terminals with barrel like chairs and how the sprinklers were programmed to go off to scare away the homeless sleeping on park benches. Furthermore, restaurants made sure they were unable to go through the trash cans and the government eliminated most public bathrooms. Such isolation and cruelty broke my heart when reading this. In addition, this information is hidden since the area looks appealing on brochures.

How much regulation should be forced upon the homeless?

I had never really wanted to visit Los Angeles before, but now I definitely don’t want to. If what Davis is describing is close to reality, it sounds like an awful, racist, classist, city of the rich. I’d like to stay far away from Los Angeles. I definitely subscribe more to Olmsted’s philosophy of public space: it should be common ground for people of all classes, races, religions, and so forth. What’s going on in Los Angeles, its shameless and deliberate militarization, is just plain wrong. Los Angeles is not only wrongfully pandering to the wealthy, but it does so at the purposeful expense of the poor. It is immoral, irresponsible, and frankly, criminal. Los Angeles is not ignoring the needs of the majority of its citizens – it is consciously denying them. This is no way to promote a healthy, happy, and productive city. I believe by being so short-sighted, Los Angeles developers and legislators are poisoning the future of the City of Angels.