Livable Streets as Class War?

social control?

Streetsblog posted its own call to action about today’s hearing on remodeling Chatham Square which, when read in the context of CCRC’s much more detailed analysis, just seems a little flimsy, and flippant at that – Streetsblog groups local response under generic ‘opposition’, and pushes for the present plan as handed down by NYC DoT and friends, despite the fact that the main opposition seems to be from folks who don’t oppose the project, but rather oppose doing it NOW.

This case, and the recent rise of anti-bike lane activism in Brooklyn reveals how certain ‘green’ policies can work as a kind of class warfare, with the New Urbanist trend being only the latest of many architectural salvos for the city delivered from on-high by city administrators to the unwashed/ignorant residents, unable to see the social benefits of a overhaul of their street life.  Honestly, I’m not even totally convinced of the utility of green streets – transportation is a sizable but not immense part of CO2 emissions, and the green-streets improvements feel increasingly like a form of social control purpetuated by New York’s ascendent young, mobile and wealthy urban class with its ‘green’ mores (notably different from a serious environmentalism).

Not to say that ‘livable streets’ policies won’t work, but rather to say that they’ll work better if done in collaboration with the residents of those streets.  Instead of putting out calls for ‘advocates’ to descend on hearings to support “green here, green now.”

Hyper Local Blogging from Chatham Square

from wallyg's flickr

Got tipped off to a great blog by Rob Hollander of Lower East Side Residents for Responsible Development – the group Civic Center Residents Coalition of NYC started a blog about the impending demolition/reconstruction of Chatham Square in Chinatown.  Perhaps as an indication of the poor community outreach done by NYC DoT (or my own ignorance), even though I live right around the corner, I was unaware of the construction project until I heard about it through LESRRD.

And it seems the project has it’s problems: a 3 year  construction timeframe for ultimately minor traffic improvements, a project that will cut off water and street traffic to local businesses during a recession, all while surrounding streets undergo their own renovations – meaning that residents will be subject to 5 years or more of local traffic disruption and construction noise.

The local blogging project seems like a great way to challenge the construction (though it may have appeared a little late), especially if it models the excellent Atlantic Yards Report which has done the most consistent and detailed reporting on that particular fiasco.

Folks interested in getting involved contesting the redesign can start by attending a public hearing on the matter this Tuesday.  Here are the deets, via Rob:

Public Hearing on Chatham Square Redesign
Tuesday, December 2, 2008, 6pm

PS 124, 40 Division Street
(just east of Confucius Plaza/Bowery).
Sign in begins at  5:30pm.

Preserving the Seaport

The Seaport's 'historic character'. from Dan Bruno's flickr.

Is this for real?  The Historic Districts Council of New York thinks that re-developing the failed South Street Seaport would disrupt the area’s historic character.  This is why I think most preservation projects are really dumb – the South Street Seaport is functionally a mall right now, and an empty, boring one at that.  This stopped being a historic location when the fish-market was moved out, and when the waterfront became a luxury housing destination rather than a working class neighborhood – the upscale development that exists there now represents a fundamental rejection of what the waterfront meant for New York.  The landmarking process always comes up in favor of the wealthier upper class neighborhoods – the Lower East Side rezoning that ‘preserves’ 70% of CB3’s white housing but about a quarter of housing for families of color demonstrates how this process works.  Development is the priority until enough people with clout (ie privilege) get angry, and then the Community Boards or whoever suddenly changes tack and supports a rezoning or landmarking.  Bullshit.

Stupid Ads – Chinatown Ed. + Newspaper Dig

Fish. Barrel.

Found at Canal and Mulberry.

Folks really need to think about where they place their ads.  This one, in the middle of Chinatown only makes a little bit of sense because it happens to be overrun with tourists, but it still seems a bit ham-fisted.

Leaving the Ikea Good-Bad debate aside, we can agree the company aims for a pricey demographic – which, to the degree that it remains a working class immigrant community, Chinatown doesn’t really offer.  In fact, with an average income around 20-25k a year, “weaning yourself off takeout Chinese” would take roughly a tenth of a Chinatown resident’s yearly income. That also assumes they have access to housing they can remodel, which probably isn’t true considering rising rents and vast illegal housing set-ups in the first place.

Second – “Chinese delivery” I’m not even sure what to make of this line.  But considering the location in the middle of a historic Chinese enclave, it might have been better to dodge the ethnic-food bullet entirely and just kept it at ‘delivery.’  I don’t know why ‘Chinese’ has become the quintessential delivery-greasy-pathetic food of note, but I’m pretty sure the reasons aren’t exactly complementary.

Speaking of fish in barrels:

I forgot these “no sharing used newspapers’ bins existed.

Bins in Grand Central.

Attention newspapers: when your business model relies on preventing sharing between your readers, prepare for the end.

The Mulberry Makeover

52 Mulberry, under construction. This building is really big.

I don’t know if anyone, you know, noticed, but the south end of Mulberry Street in Chinatown is kinda going through some serious change. Once the epicenter of the Gangs of New York-immortalized Five Points slum, the block below Bayard now looks like a a stripmall with a 12-story middle-finger of a luxury condo in the middle.

The recent developments present two problems: lame street level development and a giant, intrusive condo growing out of the middle of some downright pleasant old school walkups.

First, the condo. I don’t know how this slipped through, but I can’t find shit on this thing – no Curbed posts, nothing in the usually vigilant New York Real Estate media pages. The building’s placard lists Rice Bowl Realty as the owner, and they keep a low profile. All I got searching for them were a few run of the mill safety violations, and middling charges from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development for lead paint problems and failure to install fire alarms. NY State seems to think they’re based at 48 Mulberry, but I’ve found documents in my building that list 850 Meeker Ave in Brooklyn as their headquarters. 850 Meeker is also the address of the contractor, 2CC Contractors, and the address listed on the “Marley” construction trucks parked out front. The architect, Jung Wor Chin was about as inaccessible – their website is ‘under construction’ (and has been since Feb. 2007 it appears), but their other buildings don’t look so appealing (third building down).

The obvious disregard for the surrounding buildings (think Blue Building, though admittedly on a smaller scale) inspires no confidence in the kind or quality of apartments/condos it will hold. If the Chinatown new development trend holds, this will be another lux condo (like 123 Baxter and Hester Gardens) that undermines the economic factors (affordable living conditions) that have made Chinatown in Manhattan possible.

YoBerry and Donuts.

The other problem is on the street. The block below Bayard now features these thrilling attractions: a parking garage! A knockoff Yolata/Pinkberry called “YoBerry” (totally original, yah? – it still costs the same as its namesakes) and for the po-po chillin’ between shifts at the station across the park, a Dunkin’ Donuts! (this is not a joke – I see lots and lots of police in this store.) Hopefully the store for sale towards the north end of the block doesn’t portend a continuation of the faux-upscale and chain store trend.

After going on Rob Hollander’s Five Points walking tour (3pm Sundays across the street from the 1 Centre St. civic building), I actually think this area should be protected as a historical landmark. The downtown slum not only provides a backdrop to some remarkable historical figures (Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, and the backbone of the Tammany Hall political machine), but it also reveals the central role economic exploitation played in shaping New York City – a history of political/economic power that should be kept in mind as corporate power again threatens to overrun fair housing laws and rent protection laws. The decimation of the slum by Columbus Park and the downtown civic developments makes the remaining remnants of the slum all the more important to hold on to.

I like this building.

...but not this one.

The Wasteland on Orchard

On Orchard. From Ventriloquismnyc flickr.

On Orchard Street between Grand and Hester, I found a wasteland. Shutters cover every store on this block, except those under renovation to become all-glass storefronts. Walking in the area nearby I felt a gloom, darkest on this street. The glassy, eye-candy friendly window-fronts disturbed me almost as much as the emptiness of the street as such – they oozed conspicuous consumption, a type of shopping where image consciously and deliberately trumps utility.

New development on Orchard. From Ventriloquismnyc Flickr.

Other shops looked just closed, inexplicably. This area provided only the most glaring example of a blight that covers the Lower East Side and Chinatown. Street level retail shops, closed or moved without comment, dot the neighborhood. In places they make up maybe a third of the stores on a block, other places more. I still feel recently arrived in New York, and when I first started walking through Lower Manhattan, I took its street appearance in stride. Now, as I think and see more, I feel uneasy.

Other changes on Orchard. From Ventriloquismnyc Flickr.

I noticed a trend in the shuttered shops. Their signs looked old, faded, and more often than not used languages other than English. Throughout the Lower East Side and Chinatown, stores with Hebrew, Spanish and Chinese signs stood silent and empty. These said something about where New York has been, more about where it is going. It shows the neighborhood changes as a loss, erasing a diverse past for the supposed gain of a prosperous future.

E. Broadway. from Ventriloquismnyc Flickr.

I recognized the closed stores as a malaise when I walked further South, towards the Manhattan Bridge. Nearing the deepest parts of Chinatown, street life picks up. On East Broadway below the bridge, every store is open. Shoppers fill the sidewalks and shops spill out onto the street with food and goods to see and buy. The character of life visibly changes, filled suddenly with noise and activity. The comparative richness – a variety of kinds of commerce (everything from bus terminals to laundromats), plus a crowd of people blanketing the street – revealed the block on Orchard as a pocket of abandoned sadness in an otherwise vibrant neighborhood.

The most obvious difference between the two areas is real estate. The bridge – with car and train traffic – makes conversation occasionally unbearable, and doubtless spews a uneasy cocktail of environmental hazards into the air nearby. Not to diminish the importance of changes in the LES itself – decades of being the next and last big thing in Manhattan pushed property values too high for many small businesses to sustain. The remaining neighborhood betrayed itself, cutting the legs of affordable rents and a diverse street life out from under the folks that made it the place to be for so many years.

Gentrification means more than losing history. It means a loss of the human elements that make life happen in your neighborhood.