Governmental Policy and Its Impact on Neighborhoods – Spark 3/27

This week’s readings (their occasional moments of nigh-lethal tediousness aside) contained a bombardment of information that I am still finding difficult to categorize and process. Nonetheless, since I have the privilege of being one of the sparkers this week, I am going to have to do my best.  All that I ask is that you bear with me, because this could get messy.

New York City during the last two decades of the 20th century must have been a pretty turbulent place. Sanjek’s account seemed to apply that there was virtually no favorable stability – particularly in aspects of governmental policy – during that era. Beginning with Ed Koch’s utter failure to consistently focus his attention on anywhere other than Manhattan, Sanjek provides a seventy-page exposé of sorts about three of New York City’s mayors – Koch, Dinkins, and Giuliani – in their failure to truly improve New Yorkers’ “quality of life.”

The Koch administration’s acceptance of “planned shrinkage” – “the deliberate withdrawal of public resources from the city’s poorest districts” – was reflected in Koch’s overall unresponsive stance towards Elmhurst-Corona (141). Instead of focusing on school and subway overcrowding, increasing crime rates, and housing code violations (among many other dysfunctions present in the community), Koch instead focused on budget cuts that only served to further cripple the community, curbing “sanitation, police, educational and health services” (169). In fact, “at the beginning of the 1989 election year, 72 percent of New Yorkers agreed that ‘city life [had] worsened under Koch” (170).

Nor was Dinkins any better. During his brief mayoral stint, budget cutting only intensified, dramatically increasing the number of unemployed citizens and, in turn, decreasing New Yorkers’ overall quality of life. Privatization also reared its head under Dinkins’ administration when 10 percent of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park was leased to the United States Tennis Association, leaving only 450 acres of usable space for local residents.

Surprisingly (at least, I found it surprising), the city didn’t fare any better subsequent to Giuliani’s election. Devastating (and quite frankly, at this point, downright hard-edged) budget cuts – instead of increased policies to repair the shocking realities noted in Chapter Nine – continued to remain the reform method of choice. This time, they affected both educational facilities and hospitals. “Tuition at CUNY was raised one-third,” writes Sanjek (sound familiar?), and Giuliani sought to privatize three of New York’s public hospitals, including Elmhurst Hospital Center. (The latter was thankfully met with much opposition, thus curbing Giuliani’s plans.) What’s more, Giuliani’s policies all represented a perpetuation of the senseless “planned shrinkage” ideology started by Koch.

Gregory’s Black Corona (admittedly a far less engaging read than Sanjek’s The Future of Us All) presents a similarly confused government, one that did more harm than good for the residents of Corona. According to Gregory, the multiple surveys and reports of the 1960s that were administered and released about Corona-East Elmhurst as a result of the state’s newfound interest in its renewal “reconfirm[ed] popular and professionalized discourses about poverty that located its roots in the race-specific behaviors and cultural disposition of the poor” rather than rightfully putting the blame on “the deliberate policies and practices of the public sector and private capital” (91). Many of the processes that went into effect during the 1960s in Corona curtailed the political significance of racially specific trends of poverty. Moreover, the state’s response to activism that arose in Corona as a result of public discontent was to further “extend its reach into the infrastructure of black political life,” shedding light on a government that was abortively intrusive and duly ineffective in meeting its citizens’ needs.

Some questions:

1. I know this doesn’t really pertain to the main idea of the readings, but what did you think about Giuliani’s statement in support of the CUNY tuition increase: “[The students] might have to work a little harder and take out a loan. Learn a little civic responsibility” (179). Do you think that statement would “fly” today in 2012 when similar increases are being proposed?

2. Of the three mayors Sanjek presents, who do you think harmed the city the most? The least?

3. Highly speculative, but still – If you were mayor of NYC either during the 1960s or the 1980s-1990s, what is one thing you would have done to improve the “quality of life” for the people living in Corona?