Race may be a myth from a biological standpoint, but it’s an idea that has had a very real impact on the growth and change of New York neighborhoods. In fact, this week’s readings are practically bursting with examples of this influence, case in point being the odyssey of public housing in both Brownsville and East Harlem.
Undoubtedly, the birth of public housing was awash with good intentions: originally intended to encourage diversity and racial integration, the projects quickly became veritable theaters of ethnic tension. By dangling the carrot of affordable living, public housing complexes easily attracted large numbers of relatively poor minorities,and had similarly little trouble attracting the crime that would inevitably follow this increasing density of poverty. This so-called “neighborhood decline” was often attributed to racial (and not economic) demographics, contributing to the sort of “white flight” we’ve encountered in relation to suburbs like Levittown. This, in turn, opened up more space in the projects for poor minorities seeking inexpensive housing, the influx of whom led to the demolition of community buildings and institutions to make way for even more public housing, further fueling the appearance of decline…such was the vicious cycle of neighborhood decay caused by public housing and it’s ever-growing concentration of the poor.
Another important process of neighborhood transformation covered in this week’s readings is “urban renewal,” or “gentrification.” It is in many ways the fraternal twin of public housing, occurring when property in such declining neighborhoods becomes cheap enough to be bought for upmarket commercial development. This has the unfortunate effect of pricing out longtime residents who can no longer afford to live in their own neighborhoods. In short, gentrification spells radical change for neighborhoods like Harlem and Brownsville, often much to the distress of those, like Sharman’s Lucille, who have grown to love their flawed communities precisely as they are.
By chance, I happened to have misread the epigraphic Sharman quote at the top of Praveena’s spark so that “the live of our neighbors” became “the lives of our neighborhoods,” and in retrospect that seems strangely fitting; neighborhoods change all the time (from Italian Harlem to Spanish Harlem, from project to upscale hotel), and, in a way, are indeed undeniably alive.
