Throughout this week’s readings, we get insight into the origins of how New York became the real estate hub it is today, taking us all the way back the collection of private property by wealthy white British settlers in the 18th century, setting in place the system we have for collecting rent that we have today in Blackmar’s “Manhattan For Rent,” the consequential public policy of the early 20th century in Revell’s “Regulating the Landscape,” and the realities of how the city has failed its working class and immigrant communities in De Forest and Weeks’ “The Tenement Problem.”
While it was certainly interesting to see the influence of labor relations (from facilitating a redistribution of property to the middle class to the shift in dependency on slavery in the city, as well as the Haitian Revolution providing a disruption to the Anglo-American understanding of property rights), what I find more compelling is the story told by “Regulating the Landscape” and “The Tenement Problem.” It is truly heartbreaking to see how attempts were made throughout the years to better regulate the tenements in which New York’s labor class lived in that were continually abandoned, leaving many to suffer, while real estate magnates were able to essentially seize control over dictating the formation of the 1916 Zoning Ordinance to their benefit.
I recently started reading Samuel Stein’s new book “Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State,” and so much of this is introduced in the introductory chapter. Starting off with the memory of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the anniversary of which was this Monday, marking the death of immigrant women for the sake of capitalist greed, to the Grenfell Tower fire a few years ago. With 106 years between them, the one thing that remains true is the failure to prioritize building a city equitably for the working class, immigrants, and people of color. Although they are municipal employees, Stein raises the question of how much they are truly able to help given the push to increase city revenue: “If the city is an investment strategy, are they just wealth managers?”
Capitalism, averse to limits being placed on their ability to exploit land and production, will prevent planning that affects this aforementioned exercise, as we examined in Revell’s piece, but we must work towards a place where we fight not for the Amazons, but for those who are continually being displaced, and are running out of places to go. It goes without saying that this will not be provided by the state, but I’m certainly interested in continuing to read Stein’s piece and seeing where he sees city planners fitting into this future, and the potential to right the wrongs of the planners who made way for the crisis of the tenements and the forming of the city to the desires of its elite.
Good for you reading Sam’s book! He does a great job of tying together all of the ways in which capital has outrun democracy in New York’s built environment. Today we are talking about much more nuanced financial instruments and investors than we once were, but the stakes are just as high. I think the city is still reeling from the fiscal crisis, which is itself partly a product of deindustrialization and the nation’s inability to replace the mid-twentieth century economy of prosperity with one just as opportunity-rich for both under-skilled and skilled workers. The PTSD of all of it leads to a kind of city governance that is fully dependent on growth, which can only happen with private investment. It also shows a neglect for the aged, the poor, those dependent on public benefits (including public schools), low-wage earners, the mentally ill — in short, the most vulnerable — because they are seen as the most costly to a growing economy. My prevailing question is: when has the city “grown” enough? When does the city as a public-serving entity get to negotiate as if it has the upper hand, as if it really does serve a heterogenous public?