The Gothamist ran an article about gentrification a couple years ago in their column Ask a Native New Yorker. The response they received was overwhelming, and one such response was published. A native to Bushwick, Rosa Rivera was displaced by increased rent in the neighbourhood and saw the gentrification of her block right after she left. Her anger over it is powerful. Rivera lends a voice to the multitude of displaced people who, undoubtedly, yearn for the security and appeal of gentrified neighbourhoods but don’t want them at their expense. What was once her home is no longer accessible to her due to the marketing toward affluence that pervades the neighbourhood. The image evoked – a woman locked out of a place she used to call her home – strikes a chord of fear and insecurity within us all. It forces us to ask the question if gentrification is really worth it, or if the human cost is too high.

Article can be viewed here.

Question: What is your opinion on gentrification, both before the course and after it? Was it affected by your research on Bushwick / the Bushwick walking tour, and if so, how?

I’m not surprised by the reading today, but I definitely have problems with it. Having visited LA and other Californian cities like it, I know what the city is like. I know its history. But I was most caught by Davis’ description of the Goldwyn Library. The library itself is fairly unassuming. If sentries and fences are problematic, then so is much of NYC. But for a library that had faced arson previously, the anti-vandalism and anti-theft measures are understandable. The vilification of safety seems ridiculous. Davis is projecting his own biases on Gehry’s architecture, claiming that the Library’s security measures – which, according to the Library, are used to protect a valuable archive of rare film materials – is a measure to intimidate ‘undesirable’ people, the poor and homeless, from being in the library. Libraries are public spaces with a purpose. And I’d expect libraries with rare collections who’d been previously burned to enforce that purpose. Trying to claim ulterior motives only serves to bring up the old argument that the only people concerned with security are the people who have something to hide.

Question: What is your take on the Goldwyn Library and the ‘Panopticon Mall’? What do you think of overt security in public places?

In this Huffington Post article regarding the gentrification of Bushwick, the issue of gentrification consequences is discussed. The author interviews a local resident East WillyB and discusses the problems that gentrification has caused this area of Brooklyn. Bushwick is home to Williamsburg, a notorious hipster center (especially with the food festival coming up this summer). With the increasing rent prices, people have been forced to pay more or move out. The displacement of older residents is apparent, as described by East WillyB. Those with a college education, for example, are favored against those who have not had the privilege to attend such institutions. I was happy to see that the intervewee acknowledged his privilege and admitted that he was part of this growing problem. In speaking to others who have lived through these gentrification sweeps, however, I know that the displaced residents will relocate to other areas. At the Macaulay conference, it was discussed that such outlets for residents included places like Flatbush. While they will still find a place to live, it is questionable how this cycle of being pushed from place to place will end.

Question: How can we, instead of just accepting that gentrification will move from place to place, create a space that houses the social benefits of gentrification without displacing old-time residents who cannot afford to pay the new prices that gentrification brings?

article link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sahra-vang-nguyen/the-gentrification-of-bus_b_6018048.html

I think it was interesting that the article started with a description of the militarization urban space using the terms middle class and urban poor as the two warring classes. I feel like in America, this is a strange term to use because everyone generally is considered to be middle class. The gray area is only discussed when we go into the details of what exactly middle class means here. For some people, middle class is defined as being able to own multiple flat-screen televisions and gaming consoles, while struggling to meet ends with rent payments and struggling to afford healthy meals. For others, it means sending their children to the second-best private elementary school in the city and being able to afford a house and organic food. All of these people are middle class, so it is a little ambiguous to use it in such a context. However, the urban poor may also be considered to be part of that lower end of the economic spectrum of middle class citizens. This is, however, debatable, as people will self-identify variably.

Question: how do we address this problem of the increasing militarization of the urban space without making deeper cuts between these described groups and engaging in further class warfare?

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?