Shopping Shaping New York City’s Future (Week of 4/8)

Right in the beginning of the reading, the author(s) describe local shopping streets as being more significant than just places for economic exchange, which I thought was the main idea of the film we watched in our last class. “Local shopping streets express an equally important need for social sustainability and cultural exchange.” Unfortunately, because I think larger corporations have more power in New York City, I think that change on local shopping streets in inevitable. With more big businesses replacing local/privately owned businesses, the city loses money. However, what is even more unfortunate is that with the loss of local shopping stores and businesses, there is also a loss of diversity in the area, which to me, changes the authenticity of the area and the face of the neighborhood. When people cannot find the produce or things they need because the stores they used to shop at all went out of business, those people might be tempted to leave. Change on local shopping streets seems like an effect of gentrification.

What good is affordable housing or attainable work for middle and lower-middle class people if they cannot find affordable places to shop? More importantly than that, people want to feel safe and have a sense of community in the place(s) that they live, work, and shop. However, with the growth of online commerce and retail chains, I am afraid that more local shopping streets and neighborhoods in New York City will become more homogeneous and foreign. Every street will start to look the same, lined with the same big brand name stores, and the people working in these stores will be unfamiliar. The close community relationships we saw in the film last class will cease to exist. In addition, the city not only loses diversity, it loses a safe places to be, the convenience of many different specialized stores, and the social aspects of local shopping streets. We are a co-dependent species. This means that we literally need each other for survival, not just physically, but mentally. We need social interactions to simply keep us sane.

Another point the reading brought up, which I would have never thought of, is that local shopping streets are important to the environment of the city, which is something we might discuss further in our final class project. Local shopping streets are “walkable and bikeable marketplaces that offer easy access to, and redundancy of, basic supplies.” Local shopping streets can contribute to decreasing carbon emissions and more efficient energy use. Last time I checked, Amazon still requires some sort of electronic device to place the order, cardboard and plastic to package the order, and a mode of transportation to deliver the package. Hypothetically, lets say I want to order three pairs of shoes online. I receive them in the mail, try them on at home, choose one pair, and then send the other two back in the mail. What I have done is increase carbon emissions (and other harmful substances from car exhaust) by three times! I recently read a statistic that in Germany alone, every third online order is returned (I don’t even want to consider the statistic for how many orders are returned in New York City). This amounts to more than 250 million return packages per year. What this really translates to is extra deliveries requiring more energy, releasing more toxic chemicals in the air. It is literally better for the planet for us to purchase via local shopping streets!

Media, social communications, and new technologies that offer people innovative ways of learning about, discussing, and purchasing products threaten local shopping streets. This definitely relates to the last unit because advancing technologies (I guess Civic Tech can be considered a threatening force to local shopping streets) and the economy of the city are related to how New York City will shop in the future. Local businesses are important, especially in the city, because they are a medium for upward social and economic mobility. They directly affect rents because the “economic devalorization/revalorization of [the area reflect] the global capital flows.” When local residents own their own businesses, they not only give themselves the opportunity to climb the social and economic ladders, but they introduce social capital into the community. Social capital can be a large driving force in social and economic mobility because the networks and relationships among the people in the area can create opportunities for local residents and shoppers. This allows the city to function effectively and benefit the local economy of the city as well. Unfortunately, when large corporations replace local businesses, these opportunities and possible connections are not so available. The reading also introduced the idea of moral ownership, as best described in Fulton Street. Fulton Street, “one of the nation’s largest African-American communities quickly succumbed to gentrification and like a terminal illness, the effects of gentrification in Fulton Street are still present today. However, the reading noted that African-American communities “have often been owned by outsiders, in many cases ‘middle-man minorities’ such as Jews and late Koreans.” This also complicates the idea of moral ownership. Who does the community best represent? It is an “authentic” community if other minorities own it? Is it fair to the majority of the community?

Another idea that I enjoyed learning about in this reading was the evolution of the “hipster,” which we touched upon when learning about Williamsburg and Greenpoint. However, from this reading, I think I have a deeper understanding of how the arrival of hipsters can change the ecosystem of a community and open the gates of gentrification. They not only affected affordable housing, but also affordable shopping. When an area is gentrified, property value increases, new people move into the area, and the community looks like an entirely different place. The reading explained how this is a process, and granted it takes years, but I am sure that living or experiencing the gentrification first hand makes everything feel like it is happening faster than expected. Nonetheless, the new shop owners or stores will supply their products according to the new residents, as well as set their prices according to the average salary of their residents. How much is Chipotle in New York City? I can first-handedly tell you that the Chipotle in upstate Albany is cheaper than that of New York City. That might be a bad example because the city is a tourist attraction, or it could be because the average wage in the city is more than that in upstate.

During the reading, I found my mind straying to a bunch of different desultory topics. However, I was really thinking about how market forces can drive changes in the city. I was thinking of the struggle between the market and the state, which we have mentioned in earlier topics, but I feel like the stress of the market is so great when it comes to this unit that the state is left with little resources or tools to combat it (I hope I am wrong, or do not know enough yet). I think it is important for the state and city government to put a cap on how many big businesses can open in the city and perhaps put a rent freeze or offer some kind of protection for local business owners. This had me thinking of the importance of protecting what is left of “authentic” New York City and if there is a way to bring back authenticity? And in terms of diversity, I think that larger, big, brand name corporations decrease cultural, social, and functional diversity in an area. This is counterintuitive of the future New York City I hope to see.