On Lower Manhattan and Resiliency Projects - NYC

The latest issue of The Indypendent bravely tackles the rubberband ball of issues as the city proposes its $1.45 billion flood-mitigation plan, East Side Coastal Resiliency Project:

LES residents April Merlin (left) and Yvette Mercedes are helping to lead the charge to save the East River Park.Photo: Sue Brisk.

It raises questions about how other major coastal cities will respond to an escalating global climate crisis and to whose benefit; the legacy of housing segregation; the conflicting priorities of top-down city planning and neighborhood-based concerns; the values we assign private automobiles and mass transit; and the hollowed-out state of democracy in a New York where “the tale of two cities” persists.

Tom Angotti, UR author Zoned Out! Race, Displacement, and Urban Planning in New York City and professor emeritus at Hunter College, charges:

“This is about the consolidation in Lower Manhattan of a giant Noah’s Ark for the wealthy with beautiful waterfront views while the outer boroughs get flooded,” he told The Indypendent. There will only be a place for public housing, he added, “if there are opportunities for private investment.”

WATERPROOFING NEW YORK

Editors: Denise Hoffman Brandt and Catherine Seavitt Nordenson

Contributors: Lance Jay Brown; Nette Compton; Deborah Gans; Jeffrey Hou; Lydia Kallipoliti; Signe Nielsen; Kate Orff; Sandra Richter; Frank Ruchala Jr.; Thaddeus Pawlowski; Janette Sadik-Khan; Hilary Sample; Judd Schechtman; Gullivar Shepard; Michael Sorkin; Byron Stigge; Erika Svendsen, Lindsay Campbell, Nancy F. Sonti and Gillian Baine; Georgeen Theodore

Earlier this year, the city proposed an East River extension to protect Lower Manhattan at a cost of $10 billion. UR co-editor of Waterproofing New York and Director of the Graduate Landscape Architecture at CCNY, Denise Hoffman Brandt, responded in a Salon article:

“Unless you’re going to surround Manhattan with a wall, the water is going to get in somewhere and in some kind of situation,” she said, asking why a more holistic, citywide solution was not being considered. “How’s it going to look when Lower Manhattan is high and dry and the rest of the city is flooded?”

Vanessa Keith, author of 2100: A Dystopian Utopia - The City After Climate Change at CUNY Climate Action Lab (CAL). The event brought together “activists, researchers, and artists to reimagine climate politics through the lens of the city as both the frontline impact-zone and the potential source of grassroots, artistic, and scientific alternatives informed by the principles of climate justice, for A People’s Plan for Climate Action for NYC.”

Watch videos of the day long event, which included UR authors, Vanessa Keith and Tom Angotti, on the Center for the Humanities - CUNY website.

Big Ideas for Small Lots

Terreform cheering on Michael Sorkin Studio at last week’s Big Ideas Small Lots exhibition opening at the Center for Architecture. The exhibition was recently included in The Architect’s Newspaper must-see list for this summer.

Learn more about Sorkin Studio’s proposal:

Hiding in plain sight in New York City are nearly two dozen potential solutions to the city's affordable housing shortage. Small, irregular vacant lots that are residential-ready yet challenging in scale to develop, these 23 city-owned properties are the focus of the 2019 Big Ideas for Small Lots NYC competition, which has named as a finalist The City College of New York Distinguished Professor Michael Sorkin, Director of the Graduate Urban Design program at CCNY's Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, principal of Michael Sorkin Studio, and president of Terreform, a nonprofit urban research center. Greenfill: House as Garden, submitted by Michael Sorkin Studio, is one of five finalists chosen from a field of 444 entries from 36 countries.

From: “CCNY's Michael Sorkin is finalist in NYC innovative affordable housing competition”

See also “New York City Selects Designers With Big Ideas for Small Lots” The Wall Street Journal and “New Exhibit Explores Creative Designs for Tiny, Underutilized Lots in NYC” Untapped Cities.

Zoned Out! Ridgewood and Bushwick

RIDGEWOOD. UR editor and CUNY - Hunter College professor emeritus Tom Angotti, will join the “Community Forum on Luxury Development in Ridgewood” organized by Ridgewood Tenants Union. The forum will take place on Saturday, August 3, 2:30-4:30p at the Ridgewood Branch - Queens Library.

BUSHWICK. Tom Angotti took part in a panel to “discuss methods of resistance with residents and community leaders from across the five boroughs”. More from The Brooklyn Eagle.

The event was organized by Bushwick-based political art collective, Mi Casa No Es Su Casa. A live recording of the event can be found here.

Excerpt from Mi Casa No Es Su Casa’s Change.org petition:

…But rezoning doesn't provide what our community needs and deserves.

It is for that reason that we oppose the rezoning of our community before irreparable harm is done to our neighbors in the name of progress. We know many of the local nonprofits that have engaged in this process and our local council members stand to gain from political favors from the city, but we stand for the people.

We demand that Community Board and Reynoso stop engaging with DCP, and to stop the rezoning of Bushwick.

Please join us in fighting for a people-led plan that will keep us in our homes and in our community.

Left to right: Cynthia Tobar and Pati Rodriguez of Mi Casa No Es Su Casa, economist Lynn Ellsworth, urban policy expert Tom Angotti, local historian Dennis Sinned and Bronx activist Chino May. Photo by Paul Stremple forThe Brooklyn Eagle.

#ICYMI: Zoned Out! author Tom Angotti writes about how New York City’s rezonings reinforce the chronic "color blindness” of city policy.“ “In New York City, Mayor de Blasio’s Rezonings Amplify Inequalities” (Metropolis)

For The Indypendent: “Real Estate Rules, Bureaucracy Obeys, Communities Rise Up”:

Outrageous rent increases. Illegal evictions and buyouts. It’s not just bad landlords doing this. It’s big real estate. And real estate has trusty allies in government. The only thing that stops them is when tenants organize and communities rise up.

….

A major challenge we face is deeply understanding this monster of a permanent government so we can change it. It is not good enough to get a seemingly progressive figure elected as mayor or city council representative. We need more radical community activism. We need more “guerillas in the bureaucracy” to cripple the institutional resistance to real democratic and just alternatives. When brave leaders like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez step forward to run for office, they need more allies in government. Veteran community activists know that a strong “inside-outside” strategy is essential to every struggle against the powerful real estate machine.