Here’s what the Wagner Planner staff is reading. This week: Cultish Bushwick influencers, Asian neighborhoods moving right, and bad bus lanes.
Welcome to the Neighborhood™ (Curbed) – “The vision of this “project” (which is not a cult) is to “bring high-agency, emotionally intelligent New Yorkers within walking distance of one another,” or, as they call it, “clustering.” (Again, this is not a cult.)”
Where New York’s Asian Neighborhoods Shifted to the Right (NYT) – “In recent years, they said, Republican candidates have increased their presence in Asian neighborhoods. They added that Republicans have also benefited from residents’ sense of being overlooked by Democratic leaders and that Republicans’ tough-on-crime stance attracted voters after increased anti-Asian violence.”
Adams Administration’s Bus Lane Shortcomings Are Worse Than We Originally Thought (Streetsblog) – “And even worse: Bus speeds declined to an average of 8.09 miles an hour in 2022 after two years of gains rising to 8.17 mph earlier in the pandemic as the streets emptied out and fewer people drove. The 2022 numbers are slightly up from pre-pandemic numbers of 7.95 mph in 2019.”
More Building Won’t Make Housing Affordable (The New Republic) – “Building more is not a panacea on its own. In fact, it can make the crisis worse without strong policies designed to help low-income people stay in affordable housing.”
NYC is more ethnically diverse, less racially segregated, report finds (Gothamist) – “For any given racial group, some of the biggest decreases occurred in neighborhoods where they once dominated the population. That includes historically majority Black neighborhoods like Harlem, Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, and Flatbush, and Jamaica in southeast Queens; Latino neighborhoods like Washington Heights, Bushwick, and Sunset Park; white neighborhoods like Dyker Heights in southwest Brooklyn, Forest Hills in central Queens, and Pelham Bay in the Bronx; and Chinatown in Manhattan.”
You can reach the authors of this newsletter, Manal Bawazir and Edwin Jeng, at: mb7086@nyu.edu & ej737@nyu.edu
You can reach the editor of this piece, Patrick Spauster, at: ps4375@nyu.edu