New Yorkers talk about real estate the way most people talk about the weather. We know each others’ mortgage interest rates, rental costs, and amenities. We calculate our affective ties based on neighborhood-to-neighborhood subway travel and make lifelong commitments based on rent stabilization. How did we get to be this way? This course examines the long history of real estate and land use in New York through the lens of the Lower East Side/East Village. As part of our classroom-based research, we will also collaborate with the Cooper Square Community Land Trust, a growing and revolutionary East Village institution, to investigate new ways to re-consider land not only as an exchangeable commodity, but as a social, cultural, and natural urban resource.
You may wonder, then, why is one of the images on the homepage one of green fields and stone houses, rather than bustling city streets? The answer to that has to do with how this archipelago (plus the land-locked Bronx) has been cultivated, colonized, and interpreted over the past 450 years—and by whom. In this course, we study how land came to be considered property, how that process helped and hindered New Yorkers’ lives, and how those of us making our way in this 21st century global city can create a more just relationship to land.