Bloomberg’s Buboes

Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York posted this image from a 2004 brochure given out by the city’s department of Economic Development.  It carefully maps out the areas Bloomberg plans to overhaul during his term.  Note the concentration in the outer boroughs – with a particular focus on Staten Island. Bloomberg is looking to Manhattanize the outer boroughs and spread ‘development’ as class war – that is the other half of what is at stake in the Term Limits vote today.

Where Did My City Go? Gentrification on the Creek and the NYC Connection

I love Austin Texas. In ways I can’t quite say. Perhaps my favorite part of Austin is the Shoal Creek bike path, which runs North-South through Central Austin from the river to 38th street or so, meandering along the creekbed through parks and nature areas.

Every time I go home, I find another change: last year condos began rising next to the creek as the waters rose during a wet summer; in the winter I returned to taller but still visibly incomplete buildings, and a creekbed filled with trash and dams blocking the browning water to allow access to construction vehicles. When I went back this time, the trash was gone, but the condos stood complete, lording over the downtown skyline they now dominated.

Unlike New York, Austin has never had serious residential density in downtown. Austin has always been a low-rise city, with the exception of State Government buildings and the occasional glossy business tower. In the last 3-5 years, luxury condos filled into downtown and nearby neighborhoods: driving from the airport, I counted at least 6 new high rise condo developments – a big number considering the total lack of residential infrastructure downtown (schools, laundromats, parking, etc. etc.), and groundbreaking nature of the developments, pioneering an previously totally commercial area.

Generally, I’d like to applaud badly needed high-density development in a sprawling city (Austin and San Antonio – 100+ miles away – increasingly look like a single city), but everything about these developments make me uncomfortable. For one, they sell the urban fabric of Austin as a nightlife city of artists and musicians, but sell-out the people that make that fabric possible. Artists moved to Austin because cheap rents allowed a critical mass of people to agglomerate and make a self-sufficient ‘industry’ out of themselves. Austin could have continued to support that industry, while remaining a center for government (ATX THE CAPITAL CITYYYY) and a home to the University of Texas, and done just fine for itself – there’s a solid tax base for social services, a sense of community, all is well.

Instead, the music and alt-hip-bohemia became a selling point to non-creative industries, primarily high-tech and chip manufacturing. City government got fancy new digs and started heavily promoting the moniker “Live Music Capital of the World,” even to the point of theming the city’s new airport on the slogan.

The problem is that these new industries have been gradually leaching out the people and places that made Austin feel like home. Downtown, the center for bars and shows, feels increasingly like the West Village – bohemia under glass, reliving its glory days in cruel simulacra of an authentic creative environment. The city has flooded with high-tech yuppies that raise the cost of living, and eventually rents, for everyone else.

Equally pressing, chip manufacturing is particularly dangerous in a place like Austin. The city sits on the recharge zone for the immense Edwards Aquifer, which provides excellent drinking water for about half of Texas. Silicon chip manufacture requires immense amounts of water and creates ungodly amounts of acidic waste. AMD, Samsung and Motorola have sucked water from the aquifer at the cost of lower-flowing springs (including Barton Springs, perhaps the best place in the world – see picture above), and ever-drier creeks that used to be all-access swimming pools in the hot summer months.

With every urban overhaul, someone benefits. Without a doubt, real estate interests have cashed in to huge payoffs, as the city dons its new, glossier finish. The point I’d like to make is that the changes occurring in Austin closely follow those in New York, and elsewhere: economic elites are filling out city centers, at the cost of lower class folks that make the city run in the first place. (A service-economy driven urban core in Austin would be particularly unsustainable for the folks working in it, considering the city’s shiiity public transit and rising gas costs)

Found in Austin. A sign of the times.

These changes are happening everywhere. They also feed off each other – the advertising-entertainment of shows like Sex in the City in New York become the model for urban living elsewhere. The surest sign that my old home has become an over-priced yuppie urban oasis? Realtors have started naming themselves after the swankiest of the swanky neighborhoods in New York, with the hope of that New York glitter rubbing off on their new downtown developments:

New York City Anti-Gentrification Movements – A Catalog of Failure

Youre not alone. Now act. from Steve Rhodes flickr photostream.

I’m putting it out there: folks fighting for fair housing and lower rents in New York have dropped the ball.  Just in the past few months, we saw a series of inept, boring or ineffective protests calling for better rent controls, preservation of historic neighborhoods, and a stop to huge government led gentrification processes, all to no avail.

First: at the Rent Guidelines Board meeting that finalized drastic rent increases for rent stabilized tenants (the largest since 1989), activists opposing the hike attempted the OK strategy of disrupting the meeting by blowing whistles – OK, except when considering that strategy failed already in 2006, and the most activists got out of the meeting was meaningless pontificating by Christine Quinn and Scott Stringer (whose job description seems to be nothing more than meaningless pontificating)

Second: The Die Yuppie Scum protests – a two parter, targeting… well, something that folks just don’t like about the Bowery.  These protests seem like an effective strategy (menacing landlords), but taking into consideration the overbearing influence of the NYPD on the protest’s actions and direction, the latest iteration of the Slacktavist’s rage looked and felt more like a parade of the old LES preserved behind bars than a real threat to neighborhood change.  These protests tried too much of the “Stop! No!” style that ignores the incredible cultural cachet of the new-New York, and the organizational difficulties of assembling a good fightin’ crowd for battle with the police these days.  The “Die Hard” protest did a fine job ginning up interest through theatricality, but the execution fell flat on anything other than interesting sloganeering.  The upshot: I don’t think anyone is betting against a further Varvatos-ification of the Bowery.

Third: Chinatown/LES rezoning and protest.  I think this is an interesting story – in the beginning, anti-gentrification folks rallied for the rezoning, with testimony in early zoning meetings focusing on NYU, the bar-ification of the East Village, and the need to include anti-tenant harrassment planks in the rezoning proposal.  Then, somewhere along the way, things got lost.  The Bowery and 3rd Ave, originally targetted for downzoning got written out of the proposal, allowing for a continued up-sizing and up-scaling of a key thouroughfare for the east side.  Inclusionary zoning made its way to Delancy, Houston and Avenue D, paving the way for more lux development.

And most importantly, folks outside the propsed rezone area saw the writing on the wall and realized they were next should the neighborhoods covered limit development.   That began the backlash. There were screaming fights at Community Board 3 meetings, direct accusations of racism, and more.  At the same time, community organizers for people left out of the rezoning have refused to target landlords, instead calling for a ‘me too’ mediocre response to a big problem, leading up to… this -  Another sign waving, speech making ‘protest’ asking to ‘preserve’, standing in front of a civic building.  Their demand makes only limited sense – even if rezoning happened for all of CB3, it would give no guarantee of low income housing, and more likely sneak in more inclusionary zoning or worse – turn Chinatown into the West Village, a historic neighborhood under glass.

To me, the LES/CB3 rezoning debacle points out the inherant flaws of approaching zoning and real estate from the perspective of preservationism – it favors affluent communities (73% of CB3’s white residents are in the rezoning), and fails to take into account the social justice componant – namely, spillover effects that potentially displace other communities.  It also shows the flaws of a government-focused approach, producing a problematic rezoning law, and a probably more problematic response to that rezoning.

The one brightspot is the Union Square pavilion fight, where community activists seem to have turned the tide a bit, stopping the resturant in the short term, and lauching the Community Improvement District idea in the longer term.  With a narrow focus and popular opinion clearly agains the proposed changes, this was perhaps a winning battle from the get go.

Still, it shows the usefulness of theatricality, and a serious engagement with the culture of New York – the Union Square ‘CID’ employs historical figures intimately connected to New York – George Washington, Emma Goldman, etc. – to make an argument about preserving a contemporary space.  That’s not enough – they also take it a step further and mix in the Reverand Billy factor, using participatory street theater and well planned media actions to draw attention to their cause.

Here’s the upshot – anti- gentrification and fair housing advocates need to do a better job ju-jitsuing the myths, lies and media mockups surroundign New York.

Don’t preserve the past, turn it into an argumetn about the future.  Like Andy Warhol?  Well, he certainly couldn’t rent out that nice loft space any more, thanks to gentrification – maybe if there was serious funding of housing for artists, New York could stumble upon the next Warhol in the rough.  Same with CBGBs.

Don’t just condemn the people selling New York, make their pitch part of yours.  How about Sex and the City?  A tough one – clearly a product designed to sell glitz and glam New York – but who designs all those clothes?  Not just Donna Karan, there’s a hoarde of underpaid staffers and interns making those fashion choices possible – they certainly can’t get by in a red hot real estate market.

Even government ad campaigns to sell the city can be flipped – all those Welcome to New York, Just Ask the Locals ads?  Bet you DeNiro, Chuck Close and Julianne Moore didn’t start out in $3 Million apartments.

Rising rents in New York are driven by the cultural product of the city – the skyline and nightlife sold in dozens of movies, hundreds of TV show episodes, and by the government of New York itself.  That image has gone global, and makes it possible for foreign investors to pour capital into the city by puchasing buildings wholesale (as is happening in el Barrio), or buying up apartments for vacations (as is happening… well, everywhere).  Cheap rents and rent control made New York’s globe-spanning cultural products possible in the first place.  (think grafitti, Jay-z, SoHo artist lofts, Punk Rock, New York’s literary avant guarde, etc.) Fair housing and anti-gentrification movements will only get off the ground and into serious change by starting with the popular idea of New York and using those cultural norms against the rapid transformation of New York City into a playground of the rich.

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.