Salon.com recently posted a great slideshow of the most segregated cities in America. The post had a map of the racial breakdown of each city as well as an explanation of the history of segregation in each city. Check out the slideshow in this link.
What's interesting is that even in some of the most segregated cities, there is a new trend of young affluent white suburbanites moving into back into the core of cities and working class and middle class city black populations moving into inner-rung suburbs. While this new trend is causing some existing places to become more diverse as one population slides into a new neighborhood as the group is leaving, what's fascinating is that the new trend is still reinforcing the old trend of segregation. The shifts in population among races are not quite coexisting with each other as they are displacing one another.
And this displacement is causing a lot of ugly fights between new and existing populations throughout urban America. In Philadelphia and Washington D.C., historically black neighborhoods are trying to protect their community's identity from white and now black gentrifiers and in suburban Detroit, elite black suburbs or worried about the waves of working class blacks from inner-city Detroit moving into their communities.
These new tensions are now issues that planners now have to listen to and address. These tensions are no longer just a sensitive issue for the inner-city but now affect suburban planners as well. In my jurisdiction, my office worked on an historic black community (historic in culture but not in the building preservation sense) that began as a segregated community and had faced decades of discrimination. Their struggles in overcoming these obstacles helped cement the community's identity and it was very important that we preserve and honor that community's history. But from a strictly planning sense, none of their history of segregation was going to greatly affect how we planned and designed their future housing developments and open spaces. We could not ignore their history but we could not plan around their history either without a historical landmark or building. There was a disconnect between the community and the planners. To the community, their history was the number one concern. For the planners, designing safe spaces was our number one concern.
This disconnect between preserving the people's history in a community over the preservation of buildings is one of city planning's biggest challenges and up to now one of it's biggest failures. As a whole, city planners do not know how to at least help a community on the wrong side of gentrification. As city planners we almost always side with the gentrifiers because our number one goal is to create better designed spaces and buildings. The influx of gentrification helps remove and redevelop empty debris filled lots, rehabilitates vacant buildings and brings commercial vitality back into neighborhoods. Who wouldn't want that?
Newcomers into gentrified inner-city neighborhoods are often dismayed when they find out that it is the existing long term residents who do not want the positive changes of gentrification. The standard answer for newcomers to existing long-term residents is that they should be thanking them for improving their neighborhoods. The issue for long-term residents is not that they want to live in sub-standard conditions but they are seeking a permanent stake in their community in which they felt they established. Whether that neighborhood is an affluent community or a poor community, long term residents feel that it is their neighborhood in large part because of the history of segregation. A lot of older black inner-city neighborhoods were purposefully segregated and became the only neighborhoods blacks could live in within a metropolitan region.
Despite their struggles these older black communities formed identities that were important not only to the psyche of blacks that lived in that community but to urban black America as a whole...for that time. Over time, these communities have often lost their identities as segregation slowly ended and middle class blacks moved out, leaving some of the working class blacks who couldn't afford to leave feel abandoned. But even with all that said there is still some high reverence for some of these communities no matter how poverty stricken or crime riddled they have become. While saying you are from Harlem or the Southside of Chicago or the 9th Ward of New Orleans may be looked down upon by some, for some in urban black America it is still a source of pride.
And this source of pride, which is wrapped around decades of segregation, self-empowerment, decline and then decades of poverty is what gentrification threatens to end. These communities have seen the life cycles of the black community within those cities and while they may be dying, those that still live in those communities do not want to see it end. So how do we as planners preserve that sense of pride? We all know that cities and neighborhoods go through changes, death and rebirth. Do we interfere with the natural life cycle of neighborhoods? Or is it important to maintain the cultural identity of a place like Harlem from becoming just another nice gentrified neighborhood?
What are your thoughts? Thanks for reading!
Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
What is a World City?
This week the New York times posted a posthumous article from late author, essayist and professor Tony Judt and his love for New York City. Here are some excerpts from the article:
But just what is a “world city”? Mexico City, at 18 million people, or São Paulo at near that, are unmanageable urban sprawls; they are not “world cities.” Conversely, Paris — whose central districts have never exceeded three million inhabitants — was the capital of the 19th century.
Is it a function of the number of visitors? In that case, Orlando, Fla., would be a great metropolis. Being the capital of a country guarantees nothing: think of Madrid or Washington (the Brasília of its time). It may not even be a matter of wealth: within the foreseeable future Shanghai (14 million people) will surely be among the richest places on earth; Singapore already is. Will they be “world cities”?
Judt continues on to state later:
And yet, New York remains a world city. It is not the great American city — that will always be Chicago. New York sits at the edge: like Istanbul or Mumbai, it has a distinctive appeal that lies precisely in its cantankerous relationship to the metropolitan territory beyond. It looks outward, and is thus attractive to people who would not feel comfortable further inland. It has never been American in the way that Paris is French: New York has always been about something else as well.
But just what is a “world city”? Mexico City, at 18 million people, or São Paulo at near that, are unmanageable urban sprawls; they are not “world cities.” Conversely, Paris — whose central districts have never exceeded three million inhabitants — was the capital of the 19th century.
Is it a function of the number of visitors? In that case, Orlando, Fla., would be a great metropolis. Being the capital of a country guarantees nothing: think of Madrid or Washington (the Brasília of its time). It may not even be a matter of wealth: within the foreseeable future Shanghai (14 million people) will surely be among the richest places on earth; Singapore already is. Will they be “world cities”?
Judt continues on to state later:
And yet, New York remains a world city. It is not the great American city — that will always be Chicago. New York sits at the edge: like Istanbul or Mumbai, it has a distinctive appeal that lies precisely in its cantankerous relationship to the metropolitan territory beyond. It looks outward, and is thus attractive to people who would not feel comfortable further inland. It has never been American in the way that Paris is French: New York has always been about something else as well.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Cool Maps: Race Cartography
Michael Jackson was wrong, apparently it does matter if you are black or white according to these maps:
A racial integration map of NYC
From Gawker:
Photographer Eric Fischer's color-coded maps of racial segregation are captivating, particularly once you find your own neighborhood. A look at his work follows after the jump, courtesy of Fast Company's Cliff Kuang.
Eric Fischer saw those maps, and took it upon himself to create similar ones for the top 40 cities in the United States. Fisher used a straight forward method borrowed from Rankin: Using U.S. Census data from 2000, he created a map where one dot equals 25 people. The dots are then color-coded based on race: White is pink; Black is blue; Hispanic is orange, and Asian is green.
Harmony in Detorit
These maps are pretty interesting and show how much progress some cities have made toward integration and how far some cities still have to go. What's interesting is that in some of the more liberal cities like New York City and Washington D.C. there are still hard division lines when it comes to race. In southern cities, where people tend to think there would be more segregation but in southern towns and cities black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods have almost always been in close proximity to one another...even if they were completely seperate. But these neighborhoods would share the same main streets and downtowns as opposed to cities in the Northeast where black neighborhoods have their own seperate main streets, commercial corridors and malls.
A racial integration map of NYC
From Gawker:
Photographer Eric Fischer's color-coded maps of racial segregation are captivating, particularly once you find your own neighborhood. A look at his work follows after the jump, courtesy of Fast Company's Cliff Kuang.
Eric Fischer saw those maps, and took it upon himself to create similar ones for the top 40 cities in the United States. Fisher used a straight forward method borrowed from Rankin: Using U.S. Census data from 2000, he created a map where one dot equals 25 people. The dots are then color-coded based on race: White is pink; Black is blue; Hispanic is orange, and Asian is green.
Harmony in Detorit
These maps are pretty interesting and show how much progress some cities have made toward integration and how far some cities still have to go. What's interesting is that in some of the more liberal cities like New York City and Washington D.C. there are still hard division lines when it comes to race. In southern cities, where people tend to think there would be more segregation but in southern towns and cities black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods have almost always been in close proximity to one another...even if they were completely seperate. But these neighborhoods would share the same main streets and downtowns as opposed to cities in the Northeast where black neighborhoods have their own seperate main streets, commercial corridors and malls.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Live from Bedfrod Stuyvesant
It's the livest one, representing BK to the fullest (c) Notorious B.I.G. Didnt expect Bed-Stuy aka "Do or Die" to have a cupcake store though.
BlackAtlas Expert-at-Large Nelson George takes you on a tour of his hometown, Brooklyn, NY.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
A Day in New York City
The Sandpit is a video composed of 35,000 tilt-shift photographs taken in New York City. Director Sam O’Hare said:
"I have always loved time-lapse footage, and films like Koyaanisqatsi especially, which allow you to look at human spaces in different ways, and draw comparisons between patterns at differing scales. I also really liked the tilt-shift look of making large scenes feel small, and wanted to make a film using this technique with New York as its subject. "
Original Music: composed by Human, co-written by Rosi Golan and Alex Wong.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Harlem: Gentrification or Addition?
The New York Times ran a great article about how Greater Harlem in New York City is no longer majority black. For those who do not know, Harlem was the long cultural epicenter for black folks throughout the 20th century. Not only was Harlem the home to many world renowned black writers, artists, musicians and intellectuals, the Harlem Renaissance helped defined the black experience in America in the 1920's and beyond.
Like most historic cultural ethnic enclaves, Harlem fell on hard times particularly after desegregation and urban renewal policies. The traditional base of black folks had eroded by the 1970's. The well-to-do and the middle class black populations were no longer forced to live in the crowded conditions of Harlem and moved onto better housing in and outside the city. What was left of Harlem in the 1970's was a poor urban community with a rich and long cultural and historical legacy.
Harlem was not the only culturally significant black community that fell on hard times, similar patterns of vacancy occurred in the Shaw-Howard University neighborhoods in Washington D.C., and the Pennsylvania Avenue corridor in Baltimore. The article reports that:
"Because so much of the community was devastated by demolition for urban renewal, arson and abandonment beginning in the 1960s, many newcomers have not so much dislodged existing residents as succeeded them. In the 1970s alone, the black population of central Harlem declined by more than 30 percent.
'This place was vacated,' said Howard Dodson, director of Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. 'Gentrification is about displacement.'"
There are many urban communities today that have incredibly vacancy rates of over 10-20%. Many of these communities are now feeling development pressure after 30-40 years or more of abandonment in some cases. A lot of people in these urban communities fear gentrification but in cases like Harlem where there are so many vacancies, should residents feel threatened by the newcomers if no one is being displaced?
What are you thoughts?
Like most historic cultural ethnic enclaves, Harlem fell on hard times particularly after desegregation and urban renewal policies. The traditional base of black folks had eroded by the 1970's. The well-to-do and the middle class black populations were no longer forced to live in the crowded conditions of Harlem and moved onto better housing in and outside the city. What was left of Harlem in the 1970's was a poor urban community with a rich and long cultural and historical legacy.
Harlem was not the only culturally significant black community that fell on hard times, similar patterns of vacancy occurred in the Shaw-Howard University neighborhoods in Washington D.C., and the Pennsylvania Avenue corridor in Baltimore. The article reports that:
"Because so much of the community was devastated by demolition for urban renewal, arson and abandonment beginning in the 1960s, many newcomers have not so much dislodged existing residents as succeeded them. In the 1970s alone, the black population of central Harlem declined by more than 30 percent.
'This place was vacated,' said Howard Dodson, director of Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. 'Gentrification is about displacement.'"
There are many urban communities today that have incredibly vacancy rates of over 10-20%. Many of these communities are now feeling development pressure after 30-40 years or more of abandonment in some cases. A lot of people in these urban communities fear gentrification but in cases like Harlem where there are so many vacancies, should residents feel threatened by the newcomers if no one is being displaced?
What are you thoughts?
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Big City Attitudes
The stereotypes that you often hear are that small towns are friendly and that big city are rude, unfriendly places. I don’t know if that stereotype is still true in some places or if it was ever true but here on the east coast it’s almost impossible to gauge the small town from the suburb or ex-urb of the big cities. The east coast at times feels like just one giant metropolitan area especially from D.C. in the south to north of New York City in Hartford. The “small towns” that are in between these cities are often never more than 45 minutes to a city beltway or an hour from a city line and they are probably now filled with people who are now making an hour commute of more from the city.
So with this spatial mismatch of people the idea of a true small town to me is lost…or maybe it’s just lost along the I-95 corridor. As a community planner, I know of whole inner-city communities (usually ethnic-nationality or single industry communities) that literally picked up and moved into an outer ring suburb and then picked up and moved again to a further ex-urb. While those communities may have been long separated from their inner-city roots, they certainly maintained their inner-city characteristics, which are both good and not so pleasant at times. Like most northeastern and Midwest cities, there has been a purging of all types of communities leaving the city for it’s suburbs which now blurs the imaginary line of city and suburb leaving little distinction between the two in some parts.
Now when my family first moved to the Baltimore suburbs in the mid 1980’s, there were definitely some “Leave-it to Beaver” type neighborhoods. The neighborhoods where you would drive by and everyone would just smile and wave at random strangers. While appearance wise, those neighborhoods are still around; the people in them are definitely not around anymore. In fact there are very few of those “Leave it to Beaver” type neighborhoods around anymore, even in the ex-urbs. The stereotypical “big city attitude” is found everywhere throughout the east coast and most prevalent in the Mid Atlantic.
But what’s most ironic about “big city attitude” myth is that the nicest people I have met on a day to day basis, whether it be a neighbor or a random stranger are the people actually living inside the big cities. For all the flack that New York City and Philadelphia get for being rude, inhospitable, uncouth places, I have received the warmest greetings from total strangers in these big cities then I ever have in the suburbs of Baltimore and D.C. While it’s true the people living in bigger cities maybe more direct and aggressive, I bet you will be treated more kindly by strangers in Midtown Manhattan of Center City, Philadelphia then you would in downtown Baltimore or D.C.
What’s your opinion on this? Anyone else have any similar or different experiences?
So with this spatial mismatch of people the idea of a true small town to me is lost…or maybe it’s just lost along the I-95 corridor. As a community planner, I know of whole inner-city communities (usually ethnic-nationality or single industry communities) that literally picked up and moved into an outer ring suburb and then picked up and moved again to a further ex-urb. While those communities may have been long separated from their inner-city roots, they certainly maintained their inner-city characteristics, which are both good and not so pleasant at times. Like most northeastern and Midwest cities, there has been a purging of all types of communities leaving the city for it’s suburbs which now blurs the imaginary line of city and suburb leaving little distinction between the two in some parts.
Now when my family first moved to the Baltimore suburbs in the mid 1980’s, there were definitely some “Leave-it to Beaver” type neighborhoods. The neighborhoods where you would drive by and everyone would just smile and wave at random strangers. While appearance wise, those neighborhoods are still around; the people in them are definitely not around anymore. In fact there are very few of those “Leave it to Beaver” type neighborhoods around anymore, even in the ex-urbs. The stereotypical “big city attitude” is found everywhere throughout the east coast and most prevalent in the Mid Atlantic.
But what’s most ironic about “big city attitude” myth is that the nicest people I have met on a day to day basis, whether it be a neighbor or a random stranger are the people actually living inside the big cities. For all the flack that New York City and Philadelphia get for being rude, inhospitable, uncouth places, I have received the warmest greetings from total strangers in these big cities then I ever have in the suburbs of Baltimore and D.C. While it’s true the people living in bigger cities maybe more direct and aggressive, I bet you will be treated more kindly by strangers in Midtown Manhattan of Center City, Philadelphia then you would in downtown Baltimore or D.C.
What’s your opinion on this? Anyone else have any similar or different experiences?
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
The Artwork of Dan Witz
Dan Witz, 1957 born in Chicago, IL, received his BFA from Cooper Union in New York. In the late 70's he moved to New York’s East Village. The artwork of Dan Witz evinces a rigorous conceptual framework. This framework not only opens up a dialogue with graffiti and street art which dominate the urban environment, but also allows for the retention of clear and open lines with the canon of art history.
From the no-wave and DIY movements of New York’s Lower East Side of the 70’s, through the Reaganomics of the 80’s to the flourishing of graffiti art in the new millennium. Whether stickers or paste-up silk-screened posters, conceptual pranks and interventions, or beautiful tromp l’oeil paintings, the medium is inspired as much by the nature and subject of his art as by the mutating urban conditions in which the piece is executed.
From the no-wave and DIY movements of New York’s Lower East Side of the 70’s, through the Reaganomics of the 80’s to the flourishing of graffiti art in the new millennium. Whether stickers or paste-up silk-screened posters, conceptual pranks and interventions, or beautiful tromp l’oeil paintings, the medium is inspired as much by the nature and subject of his art as by the mutating urban conditions in which the piece is executed.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Spending Time With New York Street Advertising Takeover
New York City is covered with illegal billboards and advertisements. One random day, civilians decided to take back the public space by covering over 120 illegal billboards with original works of art.
Don Draper would not be pleased.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Subway Art: 25th Anniversary Edition
During the 1970s and 80s, photographers Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant captured the burgeoning New York City graffiti movement. 25 years and more than a half a million copies later, Chronicle Books is happy to offer their book Subway Art in a large-scale, deluxe format. Learn more at http://chroniclebooks.com/site/
Monday, March 2, 2009
Miru Kim: Making art of New York's urban ruins
At the 2008 EG Conference, artist Miru Kim talks about her work. Kim explores industrial ruins underneath New York and then photographs herself in them, nude -- to bring these massive, dangerous, hidden spaces into sharp focus.
Her artwork also reminds me of a Blackstar song called "Respiration," which treated the city as a living being.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
The Battle for Harlem
An interesting take on gentrification in Harlem. A lot has been written about this in the New York media. I don't agree with all the comments made from both sides of the argument but I will say that change is inevitable. How much change should happen at once is debateble and a debate that is happening in many inner cities of America from D.C. to Chicago to Los Angeles.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
The Breathing City
A great video showing the functions of one city block. This video shows the different processes of city buildings and how they interact together to almost form a living entity once shown together in a time lapse series.
This video shows why a I love cities for their variety and their randomness. This video shows that when in a city we all work may live together but we all move at different speeds. As opposed to the suburbs which can force us to live on the same speed.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Creating Public Works Jobs to Rebuild Cities
Today, the mayors of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami spoke at the Conference of Mayors om Washington today to lobby the Federal Government for what they call, "ready-to-go" infrastructure projects that would provide critical city improvements and jobs.
"Over the last eight years, there's been ... an absence of investment in cities, whether it's the infrastructure, public transportation, bridges, highways, schools, hospitals," Los Angeles, California, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said at a news conference on Capitol Hill. "We are here not for a bailout, but to present a recovery plan."
The news conference coincided with the Conference of Mayors' release of a list of 11,391 "ready-to-go" infrastructure projects that would cost $73.1 billion. The report surveyed 427 cities across the country and includes roads, bridges, schools, city halls and other public works projects. The report says that those projects would create 847,641 jobs.
To read more, click here.
As someone who lives on the east coast of the U.S., I am biased for the Feds to help cities "recover" the infrastructure funding. Anyone who lives in a city on eastern seaboard or in a rustbelt city can tell you that parts of the infrastructure in these cities are old and outdated and would cost billions of dollars to repair. Now I don't need to remind everybody of the calamity that could happen if these repairs don't happen like with the levy walls in New Orleans or the bridge collapse in Minneapolis but fixing these problems now will cost a lot cheap then waiting for the infrastructure to eventually fail.
If the Federal Government were to seriously fund public transportation upgrades and infrastructure it would not only help reduce sprawl and energy but also revitalize cities and create jobs as more people are now more willing to live in cities or closer to cities.
"Over the last eight years, there's been ... an absence of investment in cities, whether it's the infrastructure, public transportation, bridges, highways, schools, hospitals," Los Angeles, California, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said at a news conference on Capitol Hill. "We are here not for a bailout, but to present a recovery plan."
The news conference coincided with the Conference of Mayors' release of a list of 11,391 "ready-to-go" infrastructure projects that would cost $73.1 billion. The report surveyed 427 cities across the country and includes roads, bridges, schools, city halls and other public works projects. The report says that those projects would create 847,641 jobs.
To read more, click here.
As someone who lives on the east coast of the U.S., I am biased for the Feds to help cities "recover" the infrastructure funding. Anyone who lives in a city on eastern seaboard or in a rustbelt city can tell you that parts of the infrastructure in these cities are old and outdated and would cost billions of dollars to repair. Now I don't need to remind everybody of the calamity that could happen if these repairs don't happen like with the levy walls in New Orleans or the bridge collapse in Minneapolis but fixing these problems now will cost a lot cheap then waiting for the infrastructure to eventually fail.
If the Federal Government were to seriously fund public transportation upgrades and infrastructure it would not only help reduce sprawl and energy but also revitalize cities and create jobs as more people are now more willing to live in cities or closer to cities.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Another Inner City NYC Staple...Bodega
FIrst they showed you the negative affects of Cash Checking spots and now the "Internet Celebreities" show you the ill effects of the Bodega or cornerstore.
Inner City Staple...The Check Cashing Spot
Check out this video, which makes light of check cashing stores but does cover the serious negative impacts of neighborhoods that are depedent on cash checking stores instead of banks. The video also shows all the other services that surround cash checking stores that help poor communities squander their money.
Check it out!
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Flashing Lights...A look at City Billboard Signs
For many local and large businesses, signage is crucial in identifying a store's location as well as for advertising to attract potential customers. In any city across the globe, businesses compete with each other to grab customers' attention with billboard signs that can be seen for several blocks away. Over time these billboards signs have become larger, brighter, more colorful, more creative, controversial, celebrity endorsed and lately, digital signs with moving graphics.
Today numerous cities are beginning to question whether billboards have become too distracting to drivers and whether these signs posing a public safety hazard. Before cities begin to think about restricting billboard signs, here is a look at Billboard signs from across the globe:
New York Billboards
Times Square Billboards
Hong Kong
Tokyo
Hollywood
Unknown city
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