I think that this debate about how local shopping streets will change overtime has much to do with similar ideas expressed in conversations dealing with ethnic families moving out of living spaces in neighborhoods and the face of neighborhoods changing overtime. Local shopping streets in the past were comprised of lines of small businesses that provided local residents with every type of product that they needed or would need in the near future, and more. These shops were run by locals who knew the neighborhood and whose social interaction added to the charm and social fabric of these neighborhoods. These types of local shopping streets have since diminished and been replaced by big chain stores that have taken the the personal feeling out of shopping that small businesses work to preserve. They are also being replaced by the evolution of technology because it is becoming easier for people to eliminate the need to actually physically go to a store and buy items they need faster and more efficiently. The price of this efficiency, of course like in every human aspect that efficiency affects, is the loss of a human element. I think that the changing face of local shopping streets is completely inevitable because of how much technology is becoming interwoven with almost every aspect of our lives. I think that this issue relates back to the conversation the class had in the past where we discussed the meaning of diversity, and one point that was brought up was that even though the old fabric of the neighborhood becomes replaced, the “new” residents and new businesses become the diverse group of the future of the neighborhood, so to speak. The individual aspects that are seen as new and changing in the neighborhood will become the “old” aspects of the neighborhood in the future.
Category: Readings
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.
Media’s Role in Changing Shopping Streets
I think one of the most important things Professor Zukin mentions in her book is the role of the media and the internet in the creation and vitality of certain areas. I think most internet tools end up being very hard to understand in terms of their impact on cities. Yelp can help keep stores in more remote areas busy with customers. It can also open people up to new experiences in taste and culture. However, Yelp is often the scout of a larger gentrifying force. If a bunch of 20 somethings that just moved to a city read about something on Yelp and make a journey to an area to try it, it sets off a chain reaction. (I’ve done this to get Nepalese food in Jackson Heights, but you know , I’m leaving myself out of this) Maybe those millenials fall in love with the “quaint” and “diverse” (using quotes because I would say immigrants and working class don’t look for diversity in their neighborhoods, or at least not what it has come to mean to the gentrifying class) area and want to take a look at the real estate.
I was in Tacos El Bronco in Sunset Park last week. It’s a famous place mostly because of it’s food truck and it’s cheap prices. (The first time I went there was at 3 am walking through Brooklyn and it was a much different experience.) It is a really great place for tacos and basically any other kind of Mexican food. I was visiting after I attended a community board meeting focused on gentrification and homelessness. I saw in the store a mix. There was a lot of Spanish families and couples out to eat, there was some Asian teenagers and some Middle Eastern teenagers. There was also a surprising large number of white hipsterish looking people sitting all around and coming in to pick up. I thought about the future of this place. I know that Sunset Park is on the verge of some huge changes and I wonder how long it will take for Tacos El Bronco to either adapt, (become fetishized and overpriced) close or move. The people who move into the neighborhood will begin telling their friends about this “great little spot” near their “great new place” and it will become a phenomenon. In a few years they’ll be making more money but maybe they’ll have alienated their original base in the community and it will feel like a less vital enterprise. A restaurant that is of the ethnicity of one of the groups of the neighborhood it inhabits is much more important than a purely commercial venture meant to take advantage of economic trends and brands. A Chipotle has no use beyond its seemingly endless supply of burritos, there’s a place for Chipotle, but not a domineering place. New York’s ethnic neighborhoods are being taken over by people who have turned authenticity into something that can be bought. Tacos El Bronco needs to be protected and that means Sunset Park needs to be protected.
Affordable Housing Plan
Capitalism works because there are always ebbs and flows. There was white flight and there was crime, then there was a revival now there is over-saturation. The same people who had to live through the blight and the crime are being driven out by the sons and daughters of the whites that fled in the 70’s and 80’s. It’s not fair for them and its not fair to anybody who wants to live a affordable life in New York. We have just become too much of a cultural and economic icon for the tide to be reversed by people’s decisions. The commercial sector takes notice of cultural and political changes and uses information to make money. That’s why Brooklyn has blown up and that’s why it has become so expensive. It’s part of a real estate bubble like in any other place, there is going to be a rise and there will be a fall. This does not mean that landlords and developers should get to walk all over people. Bloomberg was very developer and landlord friendly because he himself was a man of commerce. Now De Blasio is trying to make himself into the great progressive crusader against the affordability crisis. He knows he has to work to do within the confines of the market and that means working with developers but not favouring them. In the future I think that the best the city can do is try to make sure that people are not abused by their landlords and by developers. That means strengthening tenant unions (something De Blasio mentions in his ESN plan but does not emphasize) and giving community boards more of a real voice in what goes on in their areas.
Like the Professor mentioned in class, it was the Poles in Williamsburg that decided to start charging more for the newer people rather than only renting to other Poles, they made a decision to benefit from the forces of the free market and they paid the price. There is really nothing that can stop the forces of the market and De Blasio’s plans are really just a straw roof for the people that know that the dreaded hipsters are heading their way. Unions work very well for industries and are the one of the greatest social aspects of our society that protect people from the arbitrary nature of the market. Tenants who form together and make themselves powerful, even by getting lawyers or getting themselves into the government, will be able to actually to protect their homes. Realistically, the only way to stop people from wanting to move into your area is by going after the super gentrifiers that are now pushing the hipsters out of Park Slope and Williamsburg. The people are being pushed down into Eastern and Southern Brooklyn and will continue to flow and change rents until they realise the New York the moved here to live in does not exist anymore because they have gotten rid of what they grew up dreaming about. That’s a different way of saying that they will have buyers remorse because coming in somewhere just as the financial bubble is about to pop is no fun. Time is on the side of the tenants because this bubble has been building since the 90’s but for now my recommendation is to build a defense around grassroots political organisations and prepare for the arrival of the developers and wait for band aids from the city.
