A Contrarian’s Lament in a Blitz of Gentrification

[M II A II R II K]

A Contrarian’s Lament in a Blitz of Gentrification


By MICHAEL POWELL

February 18, 2010

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/nyregion/21gentrify.html

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SHARON ZUKIN had come to Greenwich Village and the Shrine of St. Jane not as a pilgrim but to wax sardonic. Ms. Zukin, a Brooklyn College sociology professor, stared at the modest red-brick town house on Hudson Street that once was home to Jane Jacobs, whose 1961 book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” celebrated the joyous hodgepodge of New York’s neighborhoods: the working-class tailor and the artist, the Italian grocer and the writer, living cheek by jowl.

Ms. Jacobs, who died in 2006, waged heroic war against planners who dreamed of paving the Village’s cobblestone streets, demolishing its tenements and creating sterile superblocks. Her victory in that fight was complete, if freighted with unanticipated consequences. The cobblestone remains, but the high bourgeoisie has taken over; not many tailors can afford to live there anymore. Ms. Jacobs’s old home recently sold for more than $3 million, and the ground floor harbors a boutique glass store.

Ms. Zukin — whose own book, “Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places,” was published in December — peered through the window at rows of glass candleholders. “Tchotchkes!” she said. “Oh, the sheer ignominy.” Ms. Jacobs’s continuing influence on the city is clear. As Amanda M. Burden, chairwoman of the City Planning Commission, wrote a few years back, “Projects may fail to live up to Jane Jacobs’s standards, but they are still judged by her rules.”

But if Ms. Jacobs is much hailed as an urban prophet, Ms. Zukin is a heretic on her canonization. She views Ms. Jacobs as a passionate and prescient writer, but also one who failed to reckon with steroidal gentrification and the pervasive hunger of the upper middle class for ever more homogenous neighborhoods.

The pattern in places like Williamsburg, Ms. Zukin said, is dreary and inexorable: Middle-class “pioneers” buy brownstones and row houses. City officials rezone to allow luxury towers, which swell the value of the brownstones. And banks and real estate companies unleash a river of capital, flushing out the people who gave the neighborhoods character.

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[Benjamin Hemric]

There were a number of analytical / critical comments that were posted about this article when it was first published in the on-line edition of "The New York Times." If anyone is interested in reading them, click on the link after the words "Read More" in the above article, and then go down the left side of the page and click on the link where it says "Related / City Room: Urban Theorist Questions St. Jane." I have two somewhat lengthy comments in the the thread, comment #9 and comment #14. (My comment #9 contains a confusing typo in the first sentence, which I correct and also add additional thoughts to in comment #14.) Among the other comments, one that I especially recommend is Ernie Garcia's, comment #19.

Briefly, here are two basic objections to Sharon Zukin's comments:

1) Zukin doesn't seem to have read much of what Jacobs actually wrote (or what Jacobs actually said in interviews). Rather, Zukin seems to be discussing mostly what others (particularly others, like herself, who are towards the left end of the political spectrum) have written and said ABOUT Jane Jacobs (and many of them don't seem to have actually read much of Jacobs either).

2) Thus, it seems to me that Zukin doesn't really address what Jacobs actually said or wrote about gentrification (or "the self-destruction of diversity" -- which is the larger issue under which she discusses "gentrification" -- which wasn't a widespread term yet when her earliest books were published). It appears to me that Zukin leaves out, undiscussed, important parts of what Jacobs, herself, had to say about the "self-destruction of diversity" in general, and gentrification, in particular.

3) Zukin is pretty openly Marxist in her book on "Lofts." Jacobs was something of an anti-Marxist. So what Zukin is talking about is not really what Jacobs was talking about -- despite the fact that sometimes the concepts and terminology may be similar.

Benjamin Hemric
April 29, 2010, 4:30 p.m.

 

[Benjamin Hemric]

Correction

Correction:

Whoops! Obviously, I expanded the summary "two" basic objections into "three" basic objections.

Benjamin Hemric
April 29, 2010, 4:49 p.m.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

This was discussed when the Jane Jacobs documentary was aired on TVO. The deification of Jane and her teachings and the misappropriation (IMHO) of her values towards a nimbyist view. Don't want a subway through your backyard? It's not Jacobsian! Don't want intensification to happen in your neighborhood? It's not Jacobsian!

There's a bit of irony in her argument. Increasing land values are a fact of life, I wonder how she'd feel if her investments remained stagnant year over year. Certainly she seems to have a bit of a Marxist view wrt to wanting the gov't to step in to control rent and land values. The point was made that she is the very person that she supposedly 'dislikes', being a middle class person gentrifying an up and coming neighborhood, but I feel they didn't expand on that further.

Finally gentrification is kind of the free market at work and it's kind of hard to stop it without destroying most of the economy (see 2008 collapse), Imagine if houses still cost the $10 000 that they did back when my grandparents arrived here. People would be buying more than one house and likely consolidating properties to create bigger lots thus raising the value of their single properties and thus gentrification again. If we prevent the free market from dictating value (and increases in value) then there is no incentive for owners to maintain their properties, resulting in run down homes and slums. I suppose that's the idea, if everyone can't live in a mcmansion then everyone should live in a mud shed.

 

[Hipster Duck]

^I agree, WH. JJ's views are becoming increasingly misappropriated. Change was a natural dynamic of the city that Jacobs was aware of. She championed former slums for 'unslumming' themselves, and recognized that the role of the city was to have enough generators of diversity that people - not just low income people, but the services and people that thrived in inexpensive, diverse environments - displaced in the unslumming process (as a neighbourhood became more affluent) had a natural place to gravitate to and begin the process anew.

 

[M II A II R II K]

Taller Buildings, Cheaper Homes


May 4, 2010

EDWARD L. GLAESER

Read More: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/taller-buildings-cheaper-homes/?ref=business

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Jane Jacobs is one of history’s greatest urban thinkers. In most areas, Jacobs was a peerless analyst of urban life. She understood the virtues of busy neighborhoods, the economic opportunity that comes from urban innovation and the value of small firms and industrial diversity. She even presciently grasped the fact that cities are good for the environment, a point that I have re-emphasized in a past post. But she wasn’t always right.

Her view of city life, expounded most eloquently in her 1961 classic “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” drew heavily on her own experience living in Greenwich Village. She saw so clearly the very real virtues of moderate densities and older buildings, like those found in the Village, that she became too friendly toward historic preservation and too hostile towards high density levels. I’ll address historic preservation next week and focus here on Jacobs’s unfortunate fear of heights.

Here are some of her own words:

“It follows, however, that densities can get too high if they reach a point at which, for any reason, they begin to repress diversity instead of to stimulate it. Precisely this can happen, and it is the main point in considering how high is too high.”

“For most districts …. The ultimate danger mark imposing standardization must be considerably lower; I should guess, roughly, that it is apt to have at about 200 dwellings to the net acre.”

Her preferred density level seems to have been about 150 housing units per net acre, which means six-story buildings if units average 1,600 square feet. Six stories also seems to be the maximum height that people are willing to walk up regularly, which may explain why it is the norm in many older pre-elevator areas.

Now I don’t have anything against Greenwich Village or six-story buildings, but the perspective of the economist pushes strongly against any attempt to postulate or, far worse, regulate a single perfect density. Indeed, to anyone who respects consumer sovereignty, there is something a little jarring about Jacobs’s question: “What is the proper density for city dwellings?”

Why in the world should there be a “proper density”? A good case can be made that cities succeed by offering a diverse menu of neighborhoods that cater to a wide range of tastes. Some people love Greenwich Village, and that’s great, but I was perfectly happy growing up in a 25-story tower, and I don’t see anything wrong with that, either.

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[Woodbridge_Heights]

Taller Buildings, Cheaper Homes


May 4, 2010

EDWARD L. GLAESER

Read More: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/taller-buildings-cheaper-homes/?ref=business

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Jane Jacobs is one of history’s greatest urban thinkers. In most areas, Jacobs was a peerless analyst of urban life. She understood the virtues of busy neighborhoods, the economic opportunity that comes from urban innovation and the value of small firms and industrial diversity. She even presciently grasped the fact that cities are good for the environment, a point that I have re-emphasized in a past post. But she wasn’t always right.

Her view of city life, expounded most eloquently in her 1961 classic “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” drew heavily on her own experience living in Greenwich Village. She saw so clearly the very real virtues of moderate densities and older buildings, like those found in the Village, that she became too friendly toward historic preservation and too hostile towards high density levels. I’ll address historic preservation next week and focus here on Jacobs’s unfortunate fear of heights.

Here are some of her own words:

“It follows, however, that densities can get too high if they reach a point at which, for any reason, they begin to repress diversity instead of to stimulate it. Precisely this can happen, and it is the main point in considering how high is too high.”

“For most districts …. The ultimate danger mark imposing standardization must be considerably lower; I should guess, roughly, that it is apt to have at about 200 dwellings to the net acre.”

Her preferred density level seems to have been about 150 housing units per net acre, which means six-story buildings if units average 1,600 square feet. Six stories also seems to be the maximum height that people are willing to walk up regularly, which may explain why it is the norm in many older pre-elevator areas.

Now I don’t have anything against Greenwich Village or six-story buildings, but the perspective of the economist pushes strongly against any attempt to postulate or, far worse, regulate a single perfect density. Indeed, to anyone who respects consumer sovereignty, there is something a little jarring about Jacobs’s question: “What is the proper density for city dwellings?”

Why in the world should there be a “proper density”? A good case can be made that cities succeed by offering a diverse menu of neighborhoods that cater to a wide range of tastes. Some people love Greenwich Village, and that’s great, but I was perfectly happy growing up in a 25-story tower, and I don’t see anything wrong with that, either.

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+1

 

[ganjavih]

Fine. If people want to live in 25-storey neighbourhoods, go for it... just don't ruin the well-established small scale neighbourhoods for the rest of us. Some people may choose to live at CityPlace and be perfectly happy there. I wouldn't. I would choose the Annex... and I would like to continue to have that option.

 

[Benjamin Hemric]

Thanks for bringing the Glaeser article to my attention!

To M II A II R II K,

Thanks for bringing the Glaeser article to my attention! Although I read the on-line edition of "The New York Times" regularly, I missed this essay when it first appeared on Tuesday -- and it's an article that I very much wanted to comment on. Just another sign of the "internet era" when a Jane Jacobs researcher in New York City is first alerted to an article about Jane Jacobs that is written by a Harvard professor when the researcher checks a Jane Jacobs post on a Toronto bullentin board / blog!

Although pressed for time (I only had about three hours to put something together), I did get to post a comment while the original blog post was still relatively current. (For those interested, my comment is a "two part" comment, comment #35 and comment #36, on the second page of comments.)

My basic argument is that people are severely misreading what Jane Jacobs ACTUALLY WROTE (and said in interviews, etc.) when they say that 1) Jane Jacobs was anti-high rise "per se," and that 2) Jane Jacobs was anti-high density!!! (I know that Jane Jacobs did on occassion criticize the construction of high-rises -- but this was for specific reasons, not a blanket criticism. In fact, Jacobs thought that high-rises could be "excellent" additions to city districts -- and of course she was probably the "high priestess" of high density.)

Given the rush, I left out some of the best arguments, though, and may try to post them later today.

For those who are interested in a more extensive discussion of this argument, please see my extensive post, from about September 6, 2009, on the excellent (but somehwat in active these days) "City Comforts" blog of Seattle resident, David Sucher. My "City Comforts" post was a more extensive discussion of an earlier, similar, article by Glaeser. (I don't think I have enough "credits" on the Urban Toronto blog yet to be able to post a link, but I'll give it a try. If the link doesn't work, just type in a search box the following words: City Comforts Glaeser Jane Jacobs -- and it should come right up)

Here's the attempted link:

http://citycomfortsblog.typepad.com/cities/2009/09/edward-glaeser-on-jacobs-and-moses.html

M II A II R II K, although I don't know if you agree with this position or not (and suspect that you may not!), thanks again for bringing this article into the discussion (which I see increasingly as being one about the "myths" surrounding the writings by Jane Jacobs)!

Regards,
Benjamin Hemric

 

[M II A II R II K]

More from Sharon Zukin

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Pondering Urban Authenticity: A look at the new book “Naked City"


Read More: http://www.newgeography.com/content/001498-pondering-urban-authenticity-a-look-new-book-“naked-city

Book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/01...=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0195382854

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As the United States shifted from a manufacturing to a knowledge-based economy during the latter half of the 20th Century, former industrial cities suffered population losses to the suburbs and post-WWII boomtowns. Some of these cities were able to stay afloat while others went into permanent decline never to fully recover. Most experienced an increase in crime and a decrease in quality-of-life. Following flight from the city core, an entire generation of Americans, Generation X (born roughly between the early 1960s and early 1980s), was raised in suburban environments which they came to resent as bland and homogenous. Alienated by the conformity of the ‘burbs,, this generation suffered a kind of postmodern malaise which in turn spurred a quest for meaning. Rather than uniting around a single cause like their parents and grandparents, Xers searched for meaning by seeking out a variety of ‘authentic experiences’.

One of the places that more adventurous GenXers sought authentic experience was in gritty but dangerously alluring urban environments. Rejecting the values of post-war America, many looked to the city as a place to reconnect with the hustle and bustle of diverse and ethnic neighborhoods. This was a significant break from what might be seen as aspirational urbanism. Instead of returning to the city for economic opportunity, as had been the case since the inception of the Industrial Revolution, to the move to the city had transformed into essentially a lifestyle choice.

In her new book Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places, Sharon Zukin assess the effects of this phenomenon by taking stock of her home city New York. Zukin, a Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College, asserts that a true sense of authenticity has been lost. In the introduction she clarifies this assertion by stating

“Authenticity is not a stage set of historic buildings as in SoHo or a performance of bright lights as at Times Square; it’s a continuous process of living and working, a gradual buildup of everyday experience, the expectations that neighbors and buildings that are here today will be here tomorrow.”

Naked City highlights areas where gentrification has had the most impact on neighborhood character, including Manhattan’s Harlem and East Village as well as several Brooklyn neighborhoods. Despite their differences, each of these neighborhoods experienced a similar increase in real estate prices during the recent boom years. As is typically the case with gentrification, condo developers – often constructing projects far larger than commonly found in the area’s traditional landscape – descended upon these places once they had proved to be up-and-coming hip spots.

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[Admiral Beez]

Why is gentrification blamed on the middle class? Middle class is hardly the gentry, those nabobs are up in Rosedale.

 

[Benjamin Hemric]

Another interesting article about Zukin and Gentrification

I think many readers of this thread will be interested in the current (May 2010?) online edition of "the Atlantic" monthly. Among other things it includes an interesting essay entitled, "Gentrification and Its Discontents," which is, in part, a critique of Zukin's book. In my opinion, however, the article also incorporates, unfortunately, some of the same myths about Jane Jacobs that Zukin (and others) seem to subscribe to. (For those interested, see my comments at the end of the article in this on-line edition.)

The "Gentrification" essay, by Benjamin Schwarz, is actually part of a larger grouping of articles, etc., entitled, "The Future of the City." In the online edition of this grouping, there are also two other interesting articles that I commented upon, 1) "To Whom Do Neighborhoods Belong?"; and 2) "The Man Who [Supposedly] Reinvented the City."

There's also an article entitled, "Letter from Ottawa."

Here's a link to "the Future of the City" section of this month's "the Atlantic" monthly:

http://www.theatlantic.com/special-report/the-future-of-the-city/

-- Benjamin Hemric
May 18, 2010, 7:30 p.m.