While reading the New York Times this past week I came across an article titled “After Years of Delay, a Lower East Side Gap Is Ready to Be Filled.” The first paragraph reads, “Nearly half a century after a neighborhood of tenements on the Lower East Side was razed in the name of urban renewal, the area — which happens to be the largest undeveloped swath of city-owned land in Manhattan south of 96th Street — is finally poised for redevelopment.” Coincidentally, the “urban renewal” discussed in the article is the same urban renewal Christopher Mele talks about in his chapter titled “Utopia Metropolis.” Both the newspaper article and Mele’s chapter touch upon many of the same topics which include disputes and plans to redevelopment and reestablish the Lower East Side. The article, which discusses issues that the Lower East Side faces today, seemed so reminiscent of Mele’s chapter which talks about plans and problems in the area in the early-mid 20th century. The article so closely resembled the story Mele tries to tell in his chapter, that it led me to believe that the Lower East Side is stuck in a vicious cycle of failure. This vicious cycle includes numerous attempts to “reinvent” the Lower East Side, followed by a series of disputes and debates which ultimately lead to inaction and an unchanged Lower East Side. In Mele’s chapter, this is the case with plans for a middle-class renewal, yet given the fragmented land ownership, opposing interests of landlords and developers and the need for state intervention, the plans ultimately perished. The New York Times article details proposals to to build new low-income housing. However, plans quite similar to this new “urban renewal” have been proposed over the years and have failed miserably. The article notes several failed attempts that occurred in 1967, the 1980s and most recently in 2003 when “opponents blocked city effort that called for a mix of low- and middle-income housing at a community board meeting that grew so heated racial epithets were exchanged.” It is amazing to see how history repeats itself incessantly; and given this vicious cycle that seems to exist, I am skeptical that these new plans will succeed.
