I fear that most of my reading responses are very reactionary forms of “oh my god how could this be happening?” I do not think I’m cut out for sociology. But seriously, how far are we from the kind of ghettoization of arab communities during the Algerian war being applied to social classes? What struck me most in this article, for whatever reason, was the focus on Gehry’s neoconservative architecture. I’d never thought about architecture as a basis for division—it just never occurred to me. I’ve always seen architecture as more or less innocuous—utility over form and whatnot—but the amount of thought put into making these buildings as uninviting as possible for those of the lower-classes is sickening and mind-boggling. It’s classism being literally built into the foundation of a city—how much further from egalitarianism can we get? Even if these class divides were solved, these buildings would remain like grim reminders. But this has me thinking: what does egalitarian architecture look like? I can see why vertical facades and fortress-like premises are the domain of classist architecture, but does architecture exist for the cohabitation of classes? What does that look like? How does it function? My mind immediately brings up the image of large, very horizontal designs that might take up more room than anyone would benefit from, but surely this is a thing that’s been talked about, right? Please tell me there is architecture designed for class integration. Please.

“Canaries of the Creative Age” discusses how community organization is a beneficial way to accomplish agendas that governments have been putting off or declining to look at. One such issue is the “Quality of Life”, similar to what we discussed last week about zero tolerance policing in order to improve crimes rates, safety, and the overall neighborhood. In this week’s reading there was an activist group named FIERCE based in Greenwich Village, which sought to remove this way of policing from their neighborhood. Expect, the entire community did not agree with this group. The community wanted policing to stay how it is, so the neighborhood can be safer. The community claimed that it was prostitution that brought “shady youths” into the neighborhood (aka LGBT groups) This group, which was in support of LGBT, wanted to remove this mentality and wanted to stop discrimination of this kind against this community. It was one of the first opposition that the general public faced to be forced to accept LGBT communities. It supposedly worked, because nowadays the LGBT has succeeded in many of their missions.

How and is this model of community organization be used today to ensure all inequality is erased?

According to “Canaries of the Creative Age,” Greenwich Village received an influx of gay and lesbian youth of color, who helped to organize a group called ‘FIERCE’ in order to protest against increased policing and police brutality as well as the fact that there was no public space on the piers. This was not the only group to form that centered on “pier youth culture” including youths of color. ‘FIERCE’ also tried to decrease how vulnerable gay and lesbian youth were to the violence and crime in Greenwich Village. The pier was a place that LGBT youth frequented as the areas surrounding it succumbed to privatization. ‘FIERCE’ wanted to have nonresidents have more of a “claim to the neighborhood,” while residents and police wanted them to leave and to increase policing. This argument between multiple parties is similar to the policy of stop-and-frisk today and how the community and police are in disagreements with each other.

What I found interesting was how this article contrasts with last week’s article in terms of “quality of life” policing. While the LGBT community fights to stop the increase policing, the residents of Greenwich Village actually want to increase the “quality of life” policing for increased safety. Last week’s article discussed this type of policing more negatively, explaining how this policing is centered on the low-income neighborhoods and how police brutality is often involved.

Question: Are there more pros or cons to “quality of life” policing now that we have seen two perspectives of how it can both be helpful and negative?

It’s an odd thing: using the guise of making towns aesthetically pleasing in order to push out the individuals that you feel are “disorderly” or “not normal”. It’s strange to read how something like the zoning of land into commercial, residential and manufacturing sections, which is meant to diversify the community, actually causes more segregation and separation. The article states that zoning   caused and even greater racial and class segregation because places of employment were separated from lower income residences, and laws were used to limit the growth of manufacturing and affordable housing, which basically weeds out the lower income residents from a particular neighborhood. I think one of the strangest examples in the article was the administrative obstacles and real estate pressures that were faced by “The Special Greenwich Village Hudson River District” which focused on protecting the printing, meat market, and graphic arts industries as well as providing low-income housing for seniors and individuals with disabilities, including those with AIDS, but all the private and public funds that went into developing the Manhattan waterfront, and the pier and other parks in general. All these actions seemed to try to better the appearance of the neighborhood, making it more expensive to live in, again casting out people who appear “disorderly”, which this article specifies as nonwhite homosexuals, minority youth and lower income individuals.

I thought it was very interesting that someone who addresses the marginalization of the queer and colored minority populations would use terms like “narrow” to describe the liberal political thought surrounding resource partitioning for civil services like welfare policies. I think it is somewhat novel to see in this line of thought (maybe because of personal bias) expressed because the group of people and the media I am exposed to are increasingly liberal in the new sense (ie: sexual identity is not chosen; gender identity does not have ramifications on what housing you choose; rather, other economic, social and political factors decide what housing you get). However, there is a fine line between radicalism on either end of the spectrum of political alignment and I think it is important to address that because a statement like this that expresses that there are extremist liberals who think that gender has nothing to do with resource partitioning would not be looking at the situation from enough of an intersectionalist perspective. In order to fully assess any circumstance, the intersection of factors liker race, gender identity, financial politics and other social constructs must be taken into account.

Question: The text focused quite a bit on the younger demographic that is affected by police brutality and other consequences of marginalizing policies. A lot of the resistance described (against these youth) is said to come from older folk. How can we go about educating a group of older people whose argument against the youth is to “sit down” or “shut up?”

This week’s reading continued to discuss the topic of quality of life specifically focusing on the Greenwich Village area and touches upon Times Square. In this reading the author automatically expresses a negative point of view on Neoliberalism. Also, police brutality is brought up once again. In comparison to last week’s readings, this article could’ve included some personal accounts regarding the issue of police brutality to make the argument stronger. However, unlike the last reading, this article seems to have a slightly different perspective and actually requested more police presence and quality of life responsiveness. Community board two supported the police and blamed prostitution for resident discomfort and for attracting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth. They believe that Greenwich Village attracts the LGBT population and as a result, they get mixed up in activities such as drugs and prostitution. In reality those activities attract police violence, resident vigilance and anti LGBT threats. In response the LGBT community has formed groups such as Fierce to promote change and fight against discrimination. Unfortunately, they still face hard times when youth of color get ignored at meetings and aren’t taken seriously. This effects community planning and promotes discrimination.

How do we insure that community planning is fair when not everyone’s voice is being heard?

I felt that this week’s reading was a bit lacking in focus. The chapter opens with a quote which does a wonderful job of creating a tone of crime, chaos, panic, and danger. However, the writing that follows seems to only barely relate to that theme. Hanhardt fluctuates between discussion of riots, racial segregation and gentrification, and gay communities without really providing what feel like strong connections between the themes. What’s worse, none of her themes seem to serve any overarching informative goal – the chapter seems to lack a purpose.

The real shame is that this weeks reading seems to be covering a particularly unique subject. While we have already spent a fair deal of time discussing racial tensions and how they relate to financial and housing crises, I believe this is the first time that discussion of LGBT communities and “The Gay Index” has come up in class. The Gay Index was a completely new concept to me, and I found it genuinely interesting to discover that there were such important correlations between the presence of gay communities and various advancements in tech and business.

The strange parallelism between an aesthetically “clean” environment and the imaginary safety of said environment resulted in a wave of harmful legislation and policing policies. I believe that these abusive policies are the issue, as far as the issues we have covered in class, that directly impacted my experience in New York City. I have been a direct witness to police tactics aimed at “cleaning” a neighborhood up, that simply result in antagonized citizens already at a severe disadvantage within the community. Friends of mine with otherwise completely clean records ending up suspended from high schools in which they were performing appropriately because principles catch wind of their arrest for graffiti. A violation whose consequence could’ve been a ticket was escalated to the point of trial, and although the charges were immediately dropped, the resounding consequences in that young man’s life affected the level of eduction to which he was exposed. Alienating and disenfranchising misdemeanor offenders seems to me like a counter productive strategy, as it only fuels the cycle of poverty and distrust of police. Cleanliness of walls and of citizens does not translate to safety, but they are telling of much deeper issues that must be solved as opposed to making the victims of these problems disappear. A 17 year old with a marker should not be held overnight in the same cell as dangerous criminals, taught to equate himself to them, and then stripped of opportunity, and to think that this strategy is helping the city move forward is foolish.

“Quality of life policing” is probably one of the most hypocritical and unjust phrases I have ever heard. It is supposedly aimed at making neighborhoods and cities safer and more enjoyable places to live. However, this better quality of living is not for everyone. It is reserved only for those who fit or conform to society’s standards of what is considered “normal.”  For those who do not fit into this very narrow category, quality of life is significantly decreased.

Broken windows theory is an idea used to support zero tolerance and quality of life policing. Interestingly enough, this theory can be used to describe this type of policing. If we allow police officers to do whatever they please when it comes to “enforcing the law,” they will take advantage of vulnerable populations. Many police officers have gone unpunished for serious CRIMES they have committed under the guise of zero tolerance policing.

Also, quality of life policing is meant to improve PUBLIC spaces, when it is really taking these spaces away from the public, especially those who need it most. Our country spends the most on incarceration instead of things like healthcare.

Question: Should there be a zero tolerance policy placed on police officers?