Part 8 (2/2)

Ironically, a variation of this very process can be observed today in, of all industries, bicycle manufacturing. Portland, Oregon, often hailed for its early farsighted public transit policies, built an ever-expanding light rail network, increased densities, and rolled back its greenhouse emissions. It was also early in planning and developing bike lanes. This was in the 1970s when the focus of that city's transportation planning s.h.i.+fted from accommodating the automobile to promoting the revival of ma.s.s transit. Today 3-5 percent of Portlanders commute by bike, the highest percentage in the country, according to the Census Bureau.20 The increasing popularity of biking caused an increase in sales of national brand bicycles produced elsewhere by large corporations. The increasing popularity of biking caused an increase in sales of national brand bicycles produced elsewhere by large corporations.

Now, Portland has an expanding twenty-mile network of bike boulevards, and a growing number of custom-made bike builders. These are the import replacements Jacobs cited as crucial to expanding a local economy. An estimated 10 small shops produce high-end handmade bikes, and approximately 125 bike-related businesses produce racks, components for manufacturers, and clothes. Bike sales and bike tourism keep growing as the city increases bike lanes and bike-friendly amenities. A cycling industry and its offshoots now account for an annual one hundred million dollars and a thousand jobs in the local economy. Ten years ago, a small number of those employees were working for retailers selling ma.s.s-produced bikes-the imports in the process Jacobs described.

The public health- and environment-minded city government recognized an emerging new industrial sector. Now it is working with the small number of bike builders to improve business and accounting skills as well as hosting handmade bicycle trade shows. This is government at its best, nurturing spontaneous and genuine economic development. Often, a.s.sisting small businesses in marketing, accounting, and joint advertising is more beneficial than tax breaks or incentives. For genuine economic growth, nurturing the homegrown business beats luring the mature one from elsewhere with tax breaks and other expensive incentives.

Unplanned economic growth has occurred in New York City over the years, but in most cases that growth has been nurtured by not-for-profit developers or under-the-radar small entrepreneurs, especially in the furniture-making industry.21 The Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center started by David Sweeney, for example, rehabilitated five vacant North Brooklyn buildings containing five hundred thousand square feet, creating s.p.a.ce for more than a hundred firms. Officially, this spontaneous new growth has been handicapped at best and stifled at worst. The Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center started by David Sweeney, for example, rehabilitated five vacant North Brooklyn buildings containing five hundred thousand square feet, creating s.p.a.ce for more than a hundred firms. Officially, this spontaneous new growth has been handicapped at best and stifled at worst.

OFFICIAL LOGIC IS ELUSIVE.

The current official approach to industrial districts in New York is schizophrenic. Officials go through the motions of protecting them, and then undermine them with erroneous planning and zoning policies. On the one hand, for example, the mayor created the Office of Industrial and Manufacturing Businesses and charged it with creating sixteen special Industrial Business Zones offering industries additional services but no legal zoning protection. Zoning in manufacturing districts still allows hotels and big boxes that erode needed s.p.a.ce. Land values escalate because of proximity to new residential and commercial development that the upzoning encourages. Industry continues to be priced out. Incentives are available to relocate into an industrial zone but not to survive if you are already there.

A 2008 study revealed that big boxes are like big vacuums, sucking up local retail dollars and sending them to home offices out of the city.22 In addition, they are huge automobile and truck traffic generators, low-wage job creators, and magnets for more vehicular-dependent businesses. In manufacturing districts, they squeeze out industry. Take, for example, the city-approved-actually encouraged and subsidized-Ikea superstore, the largest in the country, on Brooklyn's waterfront in Red Hook. In addition, they are huge automobile and truck traffic generators, low-wage job creators, and magnets for more vehicular-dependent businesses. In manufacturing districts, they squeeze out industry. Take, for example, the city-approved-actually encouraged and subsidized-Ikea superstore, the largest in the country, on Brooklyn's waterfront in Red Hook.23 Why, one might ask, would the city want to encourage a mile-long site with spectacular harbor views of the Statue of Liberty and Lower Manhattan to be given over to a windowless superstore surrounded by parking? Why, one might ask, would the city want to encourage a mile-long site with spectacular harbor views of the Statue of Liberty and Lower Manhattan to be given over to a windowless superstore surrounded by parking?24 But that is the least of questionable notions apparent in this project. But that is the least of questionable notions apparent in this project.

Peninsula-shaped Red Hook once formed the heart of Brooklyn's rough-and-tumble working waterfront with multiple cargo piers, location for the immortal film, On the Waterfront On the Waterfront (actually filmed in Hoboken). Here is the Erie Basin, the southern terminus of the Erie Ca.n.a.l, and the reason for its vibrant s.h.i.+pping history. In the 1930s, bustling streets and solid housing were cleared to build the Red Hook Houses, a twenty-eight-building public housing complex with 8,000 residents, the city's biggest and most insular. A combination of two- and six-story redbrick buildings, this was the country's first high-density public housing and Brooklyn's largest. Another eighty acres were cleared for an enormous containerport. But after many buildings were demolished and businesses displaced, the project was considerably downsized and land left vacant. To accelerate the area's demise, also under the direction of Robert Moses, the Gowa.n.u.s Parkway was built on the pillars of the former elevated BMT subway line, bisecting South Brooklyn along Third Avenue. The once job-rich waterfront was cut off from the upland neighborhoods and the rest of the borough. More than 1,300 families and 100 businesses were erased and the area sent into a permanent downward spiral. (actually filmed in Hoboken). Here is the Erie Basin, the southern terminus of the Erie Ca.n.a.l, and the reason for its vibrant s.h.i.+pping history. In the 1930s, bustling streets and solid housing were cleared to build the Red Hook Houses, a twenty-eight-building public housing complex with 8,000 residents, the city's biggest and most insular. A combination of two- and six-story redbrick buildings, this was the country's first high-density public housing and Brooklyn's largest. Another eighty acres were cleared for an enormous containerport. But after many buildings were demolished and businesses displaced, the project was considerably downsized and land left vacant. To accelerate the area's demise, also under the direction of Robert Moses, the Gowa.n.u.s Parkway was built on the pillars of the former elevated BMT subway line, bisecting South Brooklyn along Third Avenue. The once job-rich waterfront was cut off from the upland neighborhoods and the rest of the borough. More than 1,300 families and 100 businesses were erased and the area sent into a permanent downward spiral.

After the war, federally subsidized mortgages and the new suburbs did the rest to undermine Red Hook. The 1990 census showed 11,000 people living where 22,000 lived in 1950. Most of them were then and still are on public a.s.sistance. Containerization and the Port Authority's s.h.i.+fting of waterfront work to New Jersey accelerated the decline. The most imaginative idea city planners could come up with for this view-rich acreage of waterfront was luxury high-rises with ferry access to Manhattan so residents didn't have to pa.s.s through the rough neighborhood.

While city planners plotted rezoning scenarios, one man had a different vision. Greg O'Connell, a former cop, started buying Civil War-era warehouses on abandoned piers in the late 1980s. He renovated and slowly converted them for small businesses hungry for the s.p.a.ce. Rejected for financing by banks and with no public money and, in fact, in the face of official government skepticism, O'Connell single-handedly proved experts wrong. More than 120 businesses and 1,250 jobs occupy O'Connell's seven buildings, everything from a gla.s.sworks to a music set-making studio.

I first encountered O'Connell in the 1990s while researching Cities Back from the Edge Cities Back from the Edge, and I included the beginning of his story in that 1998 book. But O'Connell, probably the star example of the civic-minded developer, was really just beginning then. He had transformed only the first warehouse, a nineteenth-century ma.s.sive brick structure with heavy timber frames, some with terra-cotta arches. Subsequently, he renovated more waterfront warehouses and other s.p.a.ces, gave free s.p.a.ce to community groups and community activities, built a public park and walkways along the water using all recycled materials and solar night-lights, and renovated neglected inland residential properties for affordable housing.

Slowly, officials and the public took notice. Artists were moving into Red Hook, priced out of the string of earlier successful artist neighborhoods. Then O'Connell redeveloped a former warehouse for the city's premier fresh food market, Fairway, founded on the Upper West Side in the 1940s. The plan was both brilliant and community sensitive: supermarket on the first floor, prepared-food operations with jobs for local residents on the second floor, and live-work s.p.a.ces on two floors above. And since Red Hook is nowhere near a subway stop and is served poorly by bus service, Fairway-at O'Connell's insistence-developed a shuttle bus going to the public housing where few residents had cars. The city has since improved regular bus service, and a water taxi stops at its waterfront entrance.

By then, it was all over for Red Hook as a fairly priced, remote outpost of the city. Red Hook was on the map. Ikea landed the next choice site. But a very significant and historic business remained on this twenty-two-acre site-a Civil War-era graving dock, one of the few working graving docks left in New York Harbor. Graving docks are used for s.h.i.+p repair and are based on relatively simple technology-a s.h.i.+p floats in, a door closes behind it, and the water is pumped out, leaving the hull exposed for repair. Red Hook's dock was in continuous use from 1866 until evicted by Ikea. In fact, it was where the city's own sanitation and sludge-removing vessels were repaired and one uniquely large enough to handle a 750-foot vessel where others can't.

Ikea went through the motion-pro forma, of course, for every new development-of promising jobs, ”500 or 600” of them, none of which would be promised for local residents. Understandably, even the remote prospect of jobs was enough of an enticement to excite the local job-seeking population.

Now this was curious. This 346,000-square foot facility would be Ikea's largest in the country. But the 311,000-square-foot Ikea in New Haven, Connecticut, has only 350 employees. Why the Brooklyn store would need 50 percent more than that number of employees is inexplicable indeed. (Ikea refuses to disclose the actual number of jobs created and how many are local.) Nearby neighborhood businesses see the Ikea traffic go by, but none of it also comes to them.

Speaking of jobs. The graving dock had 100 well-paying skilled jobs with additional ones added when a supersize s.h.i.+p repair came in. Apart from their own inherent value and higher pay scale, these kind of jobs are better than retail jobs as an economic multiplier for goods and services in the community. Certainly, no economic growth will emerge from Ikea, no innovations or new work. That all happened years ago in Sweden, Ikea's home country. Instead, what is emerging is more big box development nearby where a fabulous old manufacturing building sits. It will probably be demolished instead of creatively reused.

So first we have a spectacular waterfront site given over to a big box. Then we have a singular and significant operating business displaced. Then we lose 100 solid skilled jobs. But there is more, much more.

The graving dock is paved over for a 1,400 car parking lot even though even though two alternative designs showed how Ikea could have the same parking lot just as conveniently on the store's other side, sparing the graving dock. This parking supplements generous parking under the building. Here is yet another cla.s.sic example of where the city could have had both, two alternative designs showed how Ikea could have the same parking lot just as conveniently on the store's other side, sparing the graving dock. This parking supplements generous parking under the building. Here is yet another cla.s.sic example of where the city could have had both, not not either-or, but both big box either-or, but both big box and and big boats. Officials chose not to force Ikea to move the parking lot to achieve both. As of April 2009, the parking lot has been full twice! big boats. Officials chose not to force Ikea to move the parking lot to achieve both. As of April 2009, the parking lot has been full twice!25 Most weekdays it is completely empty. Most weekdays it is completely empty.

Also on the site were two significant rows of historic redbrick warehouse buildings, of the same Civil War vintage as the O'Connell buildings and several designated city landmarks elsewhere on the Brooklyn waterfront. In these buildings could have been the kind of innovative new businesses incubated in O'Connell's buildings and more economically beneficial.

That the graving dock was of great local and national historical significance apparently made no difference to city officials who treat preservation lightly. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Preservation League of New York State, the city's Munic.i.p.al Art Society, and other similarly prestigious organizations appealed to city officials to intervene but were ignored. In fact, it was pointed out that the whole Ikea project was contrary to the Planning Department's own 1992 Waterfront Plan for the site, which strongly called for this piece of the waterfront to remain zoned and dedicated to continued maritime activity. Public access and commercial activity were to happen in other areas of the peninsula, including where Fairway opened. So much for official ”plans” and officially protected economic uses.

All this comes while the city is expanding its use of the waterways for commuting, commerce, garbage transport, ocean liners, and park development. Where will the ferries, tugs, pa.s.senger s.h.i.+ps, and other vessels be maintained and repaired? The city is reportedly investing a half-billion dollars for new pa.s.senger s.h.i.+p terminals, ferry landings, and transfer stations, yet eliminated a functioning graving dock. In fact, now the city is reportedly looking to create three new graving docks.26 Where is the logic in that? A Maritime Support Services Location Study, begun in the summer of 2006 by the city's Economic Development Corporation, noted that the ”port has experienced a resurgence in waterborne transportation” and a considerable increase in the barge and tugboat fleets in recent years. Where is the logic in that? A Maritime Support Services Location Study, begun in the summer of 2006 by the city's Economic Development Corporation, noted that the ”port has experienced a resurgence in waterborne transportation” and a considerable increase in the barge and tugboat fleets in recent years.

So many of these development conflicts are presented erroneously as either-or, take-it-or-leave-it proposals. Invariably, alternatives offered by the public make possible a better combination. But without pressure from city officials or the city council that rubber-stamps these Planning Commission approvals, Ikea and all developers hold fast. The fallacy of designating protection zones while destroying viable places has never been satisfactorily explained. ”Conformity and monotony, even when they are embellished with a froth of novelty, are not attributes of developing and economically vigorous cities,” Jacobs wrote. ”They are attributes of stagnant settlements.”

In the press, the favorite themes are jobs versus home owners, gentrifiers versus the poor, affordable housing versus historic preservation, all individually legitimate issues made out to look like they are in intractable conflict, a compet.i.tion among worthy values. These are easy, formulaic interpretations that include some truths but miss the bigger picture, the picture that ill.u.s.trates the potential for balance that achieves multiple goals, not just blind development goals. Ironically, this comes at a time when new fields for innovation are clear and in need of the s.p.a.ce to incubate. Products and processes are in demand to address the market for green products, environmental cleanup, new sources of energy, building restoration. s.p.a.ce for these economic opportunities continues to diminish. Jane Jacobs foresaw this potential in 1969 at the end of The Economy of Cities The Economy of Cities: ”In highly developed future economies, there will be more kinds of work to do than today, not fewer. And many people in great, growing cities of the future will be engaged in the unroutine business of economic trial and error. They will be faced with acute practical problems which we cannot now imagine. They will add new work to older work.”

Less and less of this is possible in New York City.

7.

THE UPPER WEST SIDE.

What Moses Couldn't Kill A living city is always becoming.SANDY IKEDA, economist Then as now, it is spoken of as THE West Side-sometimes Upper, more often just the the-but in reality it is dozens of communities lumped together under one geographical umbrella, running roughly from 59th Street to 110th. More than a community, the West Side was and still is a state of mind.

The earliest hints of the city's turnaround were first recognized in the 1970s on the Upper West Side, even though signs could also be seen in other parts of the city, notably Brooklyn. But the Upper West Side was in the spotlight with all the ma.s.sive urban renewal clearance projects going on and the presence of Lincoln Center. And the press was, at the time, very Manhattan-centric. Lincoln Center kept the media's attention.

Flanked by two great Olmsted parks, divided by three distinct shopping streets, and served by two subway lines and several crosstown buses, the West Side had solid urban a.s.sets that helped it sustain considerable urban renewal erosion without killing it entirely. What the West Side also had that served as a crucial ingredient of rebirth was a wealth of solid, if badly abused, brownstones-blocks after blocks of them. Renovators started slowly buying them in the 1960s. In 1969, Donald and I bought and fully renovated a four-story brownstone, creating a duplex for ourselves and two floors of rental apartments above.1 7.1 Our brownstone on Eighty-seventh Street. We occupied the bas.e.m.e.nt and parlor floor and rented the top two floors.

Most West Side brownstones had been built in the late 1890s for middle-cla.s.s families but had not fared well over time. They had been broken up into tiny apartments and neglected by absentee landlords. But they were easily converted back to single-family, double-duplex dwellings or other combinations. House tours became a popular vehicle for early ”brownstoners” to publicize the alternative lifestyle they were pioneering. Donald and I happened to go on one, were impressed, and thought a brownstone was the answer to our desire to stay in the city. We were already comfortably settled in a two-bedroom apartment on West Eighty-first Street across from the Planetarium and a half block from the Central Park playground. But the brownstones we saw were extremely attractive and still cheap. A house, backyard, barbecue, sandbox, and still be in the city? What an appealing concept, a compromise for the suburban resister.

I never thought of Donald and myself as urban pioneers, but when we bought the brownstone on the Upper West Side, many of our friends and relatives thought of us as such. How could we not want a house in the suburbs? When the kids started to come, most young couples at that time in the late 1960s headed out. This was the pattern expected of our generation. Neither Donald nor I would hear of it. Donald had been raised in a near-in suburb but wanted to stay in the city, as I did. Other city couples were resisting the outward trend, finding ways to stay in the city.

A NEW URBAN RENEWAL PARADIGM.

Three years later, we were gone, back to apartment house living. It was too much ”pioneerism.” The neighborhood was in a state of flux. Our area of the Upper West Side was under intense pressure from the thousands of legitimately angry West Side residents displaced for Lincoln Center and Lincoln Towers to the south. We were on the southernmost block of the West Side Urban Renewal area that uniquely called for a combination of brownstone conservation on the midblocks and new apartment-house construction on the avenues. This plan was promoted by the City Planning Commission, under chairman James Felt, in contrast to the Moses total-clearance pattern. Here, primarily the avenues were cleared and replaced with both public housing and high-rise, economically mixed apartment houses; the midblock brownstones were, for the most part, spared. These were the same quality brownstones Moses declared irredeemable elsewhere. This was a new urban renewal model, new for New York City and, in fact, for the country.

The AIA Guide AIA Guide notes: notes: The concepts that emerged were radically different from those of earlier renewal efforts. Exploitation of the highest possible rental scales was abandoned. Clearance and rebuilding from scratch, once the only redevelopment tools, were combined with rehabilitation and renovation, particularly of the basically sound side-street brownstone row houses. Steps were taken to ensure an economic and social mix within the district by providing not only separate low-rent projects but also low-rent families within middle-income developments. Finally, the plan provided for phased development from West 97th Street south to encourage the relocation of on-site tenants.2 The idea of a neighborhood of mixed-income housing really appealed to us. But understandable unrest on the part of displaced low-income families to the south had resulted in frequent protests, community conflict, and personal unease. Hundreds of displacees were now demanding replacement housing.

Urban renewal never produced new quant.i.ty as much as it destroyed old. The bulk of what was built, in this case Lincoln Towers just north of Lincoln Center and most of the West Side Urban Renewal area, was intentionally for the middle cla.s.s, beyond the financial reach of the displaced poor. Keeping the middle cla.s.s in the city was the avowed purpose. Thus, the legitimate pressure for more low-income housing made life difficult and unpleasant for many pioneering young families. The tensions, heated community meetings, and angry protests were unsettling, to say the least. Neighborhood stabilization was difficult to achieve. An overall tension in the community impeded the potential for community spirit and comfortable integration. Crime was already a problem. All this discouraged us.

It was a particularly painful situation for me, already juggling full-time work at the newspaper with motherhood at a time when this combination was not common and very difficult. The idea, so accepted today, of taking a few years out of a career to stay home with young children was for me not an option. I would never have gotten my job back. Some of my editors were already leery of having a working mother as a reporter. I was the first at the New York Post New York Post since World War II. Other women reporters were married, but the only other one with children was the fas.h.i.+on editor and she was a grandmother. I did, however, find ways to restrain my career in order to give me more time with my kids. Feature a.s.signments allowed me to leave home late in the morning or come home early in the afternoon. Occasionally, I persuaded an editor to let me write the story at home. I also had wonderful child care, but our babysitter even felt unsafe taking the children to the playground during the day. since World War II. Other women reporters were married, but the only other one with children was the fas.h.i.+on editor and she was a grandmother. I did, however, find ways to restrain my career in order to give me more time with my kids. Feature a.s.signments allowed me to leave home late in the morning or come home early in the afternoon. Occasionally, I persuaded an editor to let me write the story at home. I also had wonderful child care, but our babysitter even felt unsafe taking the children to the playground during the day.

My mother lived around the corner, frequently visited my kids, but she, too, was uncomfortable walking with them in the neighborhood. The acc.u.mulated tensions were too much. I was confident that in another decade, the neighborhood would be fabulous, but in the meantime, we had two daughters to raise and a life to lead. We couldn't wait. I was correct about the neighborhood eventually being fabulous. I was off by only a couple of years. It took a little longer than a decade, but, for sure, today the area's an established winner.

THE ERA OF FEAR.

It is easy to forget the well-founded fears we lived with in the New York of the 1970s. Crime seemed rampant. Fear was the emotion of the day. It motivated many residents to move away. The 1970s saw the explosion of drugs, especially crack.

Gold necklaces were torn off pedestrians. Handbags were s.n.a.t.c.hed, giving rise to the popularity of the shoulder bag. Young kids had the sneakers they were carrying taken away from them as they traveled to and from school. In parks, kids were known to have their bikes taken out from under them by menacing kids. Flower boxes were emptied or taken in total. Cars were constantly broken into or stolen. And bikes were an immediate invitation to disappearance even if locked with a heavy chain. These were facts of life all New Yorkers lived with, not just pioneering brownstoners. But despite the hurdles, slowly but surely, more families were buying brownstones and were taking the risk.

Not us. We tried but wanted out. We jumped at an opportunity in a wonderful Central Park West apartment house, one of the Art Deco twin towers that makes the Central Park West skyline famous. Back to traditional door-man apartment-house living. We sold the brownstone at a loss and have not moved since. That was 1972.

We had experienced petty crime firsthand. Most was nonthreatening. Prowlers on the roof. Unsuccessful break-in attempts. Stolen bikes and plants. But the worst occurrence I recorded in the following story. Ironically, this style of the firsthand story became a New York City journalistic art form in the 1970s-writers detailing their personal encounter with crime. In the New York of today, this experience isn't remotely antic.i.p.ated.

It might seem strange, but the following incident was not what caused our departure. It was more of an acc.u.mulation of things-disappointment in the neighborhood, the hostilities and tensions in the community, the difficulties raising young children under tense conditions, and, of course, daily fear. But many families remained undaunted, and some neighbors and friends from those days are still in place and happily so. And although the following occurrence did not drive us out, it was indeed traumatic.

”Mugged: A Victim's Story”New York Post Daily Magazine, February 6, 1971”You've now had the prototypical New York City experience. You've totally committed yourselves to remaining here and raising your children here. You've renovated a brownstone and now you've been mugged.”--A Friend.It is the ultimate fear we all live with in this city, the fear of being mugged. It is the nightmare that all New Yorkers shared but until it happens to you, it remains just an abstraction, something you've heard about or read about, something that happened to someone else.Then it happens to you and you discover that the reality is more brutal, more psychologically devastating than you imagined possible. You know it could have been worse physically, you know you could have been killed. But you can't imagine how anything could jar your psyche more.It happened to me. I know.It was a weekday evening. My husband and I had just come out of an apartment house on 86th St. between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues. The hour was 11:30. We had only a three-minute walk to our house around the corner on 87th. It was snowing slightly. The ground was slippery. We walked carefully, focusing on the ground.Eighty-sixth is a major crosstown street, rarely deserted, always plenty of cars and buses pa.s.sing by. Upper West Side residents hardly concern themselves with the major thoroughfares; it is the side streets, like the one we live on, that we worry about. They are frequently deserted. Anyone with normal city fears would antic.i.p.ate a mugger lurk

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