Before taking this class, I had a vague idea what New York really was. I was generally aware that New York is one of the most diverse places on Earth, in terms of culture, ethnicity, and functionality. I knew that New York is a place that always changes. I had this idea that New York seemed like its own world, unique from everywhere else, and independent from the changes of the world around it. I feel I know a lot more about the city and I care a lot more about the issues that plague it.
In many ways it is its own world. New York is home to more than eight million people and growing, with jobs spanning the entire spectrum of modern industry. New York has its own strange political scene where people seemingly on the same side always seem to fight with one another. The city is one of the country’s foremost Democratic strongholds yet to even suggest the city is predominantly liberal would be woefully inaccurate. New York plays host to hundreds of different cultures, all of whom mix and blend with one another, creating a unique cultural identity in each neighborhood. Yet, despite New York’s diversity and its constant ebb and flow of immigration and gentrification, it has somehow managed to maintain a singular identity that has somehow not changed much in centuries. As a person who has lived both inside and outside New York, the city’s uniqueness really shows in the drastically differing attitudes that people inside and just outside the city have of the place. If the recent political ads in Long Island decrying New York’s excesses as an attempt to play on other people’s distrust of New York’s political power means anything, it suggests that people just outside the city tend to see New Yorkers too power hungry and too greedy. That New Yorkers get unfairly a larger share of benefits than those outside. This stands in stark contrast to what people inside the city feel about world: that everyone else including those running the city government are out to get them.
In spite of its touted uniqueness, in more ways than not, New York is largely a product of the world around it and outside forces who wish to influence it. This shows in its changing job market from blue collar to white collar, with manufacturing jobs in the city going the way that all manufacturing jobs across the country have been going: to third world countries due to increasing free trade. The city, known for its strong small business culture, is being squeezed in that sector as well with the ABCs of gentrification and chain stores making larger inroads in the city. Rents are rising due to large outside investment. It began in the 1980s as a response to the “Burning Bronx” epidemic. It’s now continuing on the back of private developers seeing large rent gaps that were previously unavailable due to factories. As a result of the loss of jobs and the rising cost of living, the lower and middle classes are moving out en masse. The city’s cultural identity is also changing due to non-white groups often being part of the lower and middle income classes. But it’s not like the classic New York cultural identity was not at least partially manufactured by outside forces. Decades ago, there was a concerted effort by private developers to push higher income groups, mostly white Protestants, out of the city into the more expensive and lucrative suburban homes while pulling lower income groups due to the lower housing prices in the city. Today, the private developers have come back to retake the city for the richer classes only this time there isn’t a specific place for the people already inside the city to go instead.
The current residents of New York City face an uncertain future. In the view of many inside the city, change has been a plague. It doesn’t help that New York’s past is riddled with artificial change pushed by outside forces and that New York is not known for placing a premium on the old. Ultimately, New York is known as the city that always changes for a good reason. Any attempts to slow down change, particularly gentrification, through affordable housing and social welfare actually go against precedent. Pushing these programs to protect those already inside the city will require the city to change its old ways of simply replacing groups of people to facilitate change. These are things that this course has taught me.
How I feel about the course itself:
I liked it. The weekly readings really helped evolve my knowledge on the subject. I would have preferred if we had gone ahead with making our own website for the presentation. It would have been much more interesting and more unique than the rest of the presentations.
