The Battle for Gotham (48 page)

I have tried to identify in this book some of the seeds, the precursors, of the regeneration process. I have tried to show that these often modest efforts requiring little public investment but worthy of considerable public respect and encouragement are the real generators of urban resurgence. They should not be carelessly lost. Precursors contrast completely with the highly promoted, unseemly expensive, oversold big-bang projects like stadia, casinos, malls, mega mixed-use developments, entertainment complexes, and the like, all erroneously offered as urban anchors and revitalizers.

What makes the seeds illustrated in this book as interesting as they are effective is the diversity of form they come in, all good examples of Urban Husbandry: community-based action in defense against erosive change; new infill construction of varying scales that weaves into the existing fabric rather than replacing it wholesale; conversion of vacant or underused old buildings whether architecturally distinctive or just solid, irreplaceable quality; historic preservation efforts of community landmarks; multiple small changes in transportation preferences leading to mass-transit improvements and vehicular traffic containment; new people and businesses moving into gritty old neighborhoods that officials label as slums to justify demolition plans; artists seeking cheap space adaptable as work space and residences; farmers’ markets, community gardens, infill agriculture, locally improved public spaces, self-organized activities transforming vacant neighborhood spaces; small innovative arts and entertainment activities emerging in quirky, off-beat places far from establishment circles; environmental justice efforts in low-income, racially diverse communities; new and expanding manufacturing companies, including green manufacturing, adding real substance to the city’s economy; community organizing to defeat a road widening, a highway exit ramp, or, even still today, a highway through a neighborhood; and coalitions opposing a megadevelopment threatening neighborhood scale, social cohesion, economic networks, and architectural character. All these occurrences reflect local citizens’ investment of time, energy, and money to make an area grow and contribute to the larger city. The number and variety are endless. But stakeholders don’t care about a place if they don’t have a role in the process.

These seemingly small, spontaneous actions preview things to come; they are the precursors to positive, often large-scale, change. More numerous and varied precursors exist than indicated here. The challenge is to recognize them in any form, to permit the gradual process of their maturity to unfold, and to nourish them where possible.

Most critical is not to interfere with the precursors, not to mislabel as a slum the emerging but still shabby neighborhood, not to misjudge as blight the weathered, run-down structures and vacant spaces being slowly upgraded and reoccupied with new uses, not to underestimate the self-organizing capacity of local people to respond appropriately to need. Solutions crafted in response to need are very different from formulaic solutions designed from above or afar and alien to local character. The former advances the urban process and promote resilience; the latter fulfills political and real estate agendas unrelated to the place and stifles authentic growth.

This is where a real understanding of the teachings of Jane Jacobs comes in. “Too many people,” she said, “think the most important thing about anything is its size instead of what’s happening.” This requires the appreciation of the small, the new, the start-up, the oddity, the things that could lead eventually to “the next big thing,” she added. When it finally evolves into that “next big thing,” having grown organically, its significance will be about substance, not bigness.

New York City—and cities across the country—lost a wealth of socially viable communities and renewable industrial neighborhoods in the Moses era of massive clearance. This was not because those districts lacked precursors with regeneration potential but because recognition of precursors and their regenerative value was lacking. The focus was on the new, the big, the efficient, and the planned.

But in the 1970s, when the excessive gush of federal funds ceased and when Moses and his imitators lost power, everything changed. Money was not available for new megaprojects requiring demolition of precursor-filled existing places. Community resistance to excessive clearance was increasingly successful. New Moses wannabes also lost power and funding sources.

In the face of these reversals, a new ferment took hold. While the powerful forces that interfered earlier were focused elsewhere, the seeds of innovation sprouted in the most derelict neighborhoods, as identified earlier—from the Lower East Side to the South Bronx. Unrecognized and left alone, those seeds of regeneration took hold. And without the big money for sweeping change, fertile neighborhoods were left to emerge organically. As Harry DeRienzo, citizen leader of the revival of the truly blighted, burned-out section of the South Bronx, said: “We could do it because no one cared or was really paying attention and there was no big money to do anything else.” Such is no longer the case. Progress has been duly noted, celebrated, and expropriated. In fact, in the past decade especially, developers have been cashing in, building on the citizen efforts, in some ways appropriately and beneficially but in others out of character and out of scale.

The lost lesson is this: what local doers did to repair, heal, and regrow their communities and the larger city was tackle the problems and challenges with what Jacobs called “adaptations, ameliorations, and densifications.” Local doers conceived of these “adaptations, ameliorations, and densifications” and made them happen.

Opportunities for this kind of urban resilience are the most important things lost under the bulldozer of large-scale demolition. Nurturing self-organized local efforts is rare. These resilience opportunities are invariably found in the derelict old neighborhoods, not the spiffy new ones. Precursors are difficult, if not impossible, to find in an imposed order, too regimented and costly for the quirky, experimental new. The order that Jacobs argued naturally exists in a vital city comes in the form of a perpetually unfinished, intensely interactive, and informal web of relationships. “Everything interesting happens on the edge of chaos,” Jane said.

Today we observe precursors leading the way to positive urban change where they are able to survive, thrive, and mature. Those precursors reflect the enduring strength of the Jacobs legacy. But lest one be deceived to think Jacobs’s legacy has triumphed, we also observe precursors crushed under the old Moses-style bulldozer of oversized, urbanistically destructive, excessively dependent on public assistance, and economically unjustified. Both legacies survive.

PART I: THE JACOBS LEGACY

Urban Agriculture, Transportation, and Historic Preservation
One could look in many directions to understand precursors. I have chosen three to focus on here: urban agriculture, transportation, and historic preservation. The differences among them are many, but one singular feature unites them: citizen efforts are central to their function as catalysts for positive change. The precursors in all three areas mature into significant agents of change from the bottom up, not the top down. Policies enhancing the precursors changed at the top in response to the actions initiated below, the best kind of political leadership. The beginnings were modest, scattered, and, yes, God forbid, ad hoc, not “planned.” As defined earlier, the smart political leadership and planners recognize the precursors, encourage and nurture them, and allow them the opportunity for full growth. “The cities and the economies we have,” Jacobs observed, “have been created by ordinary people who didn’t have to have a big plan. It is good to remember in the culture that ordinary people can do these things and still do.”

Observation continues to bear this out. All Jacobs’s ideas are, after all, based on observation of what is, what works, and what doesn’t. So whether we look at the diverse assortment of new industries around the city, the rebirth of divergent neighborhoods, or the small, purpose-driven efforts like urban agriculture, environmental justice, or ethnic food production, at the center of the effort invariably is an individual or group of like-minded citizens. None of these or similar efforts were anticipated in any future-directed official document. If a smart, responsive government official or private funder has signed on as a partner, the initiative gains an often unbeatable strength and new momentum.

Most of the popular bromides for urban rebirth reflect little understanding of the fundamental economic process, the underpinning of any strong city. That process encompasses many individual “doers,” many components—often unpredictable—and is always fluid and ongoing. “Those with daring and imagination and no money,” Jacobs said, are the pioneers of regeneration.

If the organic process is working, the city will give birth to the creative class—whether new entrepreneurs or artists—and not need to attract it. If the process is working, the city will grow and expand its middle class, not need to attract it. If the process is working, existing businesses will grow and new business formations will increase, not need expensive tax incentives to attract them from afar. If “adaptations, ameliorations, and densifications” are happening organically, a city won’t need a new edited version of a city to replace the enduring old one.

It is too easy to oversimplify the revitalization process in response to the public desire to understand that process. Thus come the sound-bite or formulaic solutions like “Technology, Talent, and Tolerance,” “Skills, Sun, Sprawl,” “Attracting the Creative Class,” “Transit-Oriented Development,” and “New Urbanism.” These can be useful clues to positive change, but they are not reflective of the larger urban process in which many interdependent elements function. None of these solutions, however, puts as much faith in the ordinary local people—the social capital of our society—as Jacobs did.

I’ve done a little bit of this oversimplification myself. In many question-and-answer sessions following a lecture I’ve given, I’m asked what are the most important things to do to stimulate urban rebirth. The expectation usually is that I’ll get into the stadium versus concert hall versus enclosed mall versus museum debate. But that is only about projects, all of which have only one-shot big-bang impacts and branding value, if they have value at all. A collection of visitor attractions, as I’ve said elsewhere and can’t repeat often enough, does not add up to a real city. Jacobs said it even better, as quoted earlier in this book, about the goslings that don’t come from the eggs of the golden goose.

I could answer the question in many ways. I often choose as the most critical first steps investing in public schools and public transit and rebuilding urban density. Provide those, I say, and the rest will take care of itself. That also may seem too facile a response, like other formulaic-sounding responses. Yet without the first, middle-class families won’t stay or come; without the second, the suburban dependence on the car prevents genuine urbanization; and without density, none of the features of an urban neighborhood, including local retail, services, and entertainment, will have reason to evolve. A low-density collection of car-dependent destinations and commercial sites functions like a large suburb, even if within a city’s borders. A suburbanized city is an oxymoron. Hybrids don’t work. Undo what the traffic engineers did after World War II, I often add. None of it respected urbanism.

While I still think this is valid, today I would answer the question another way. The critical first step is to recognize the precursors and then to know what to do about them. Successes offer the best clues to new solutions. And if you accept the centrality of the idea of people being the best engine of change, then what is critical is removing the kind of impediments that thwart the capacity of people.

Agriculture Reborn in Cities

Again Jacobs: “The past is a very good revealer of precursors. Cities, for example, are reinventing agriculture again. Dropping of chemicals for weed and pest control, composting instead of only adding to landfills, and creating mobile kitchens to harvest local gardens are all city inventions leading to new innovations and growth.” Jacobs observed this in 2004, two years before her death. Even before and certainly since then, variations of urban agriculture have multiplied exponentially around the country. Each unique occurrence is a precursor of positive change and rebirth. Picking up Jacobs’s earlier description of good change and bad change—change that builds up the land versus change that degrades it—these precursors are refertilizing urban neighborhoods, adding strength block by block, community by community.

If ever there was an issue that connects all the others, urban agriculture is it; economics, culture, public health, community strength, and more all feel the impact of the explosive change in food that is heavily rooted in cities. And if ever there was an example of big, in fact enormous, change that comes in small doses, starting locally with citizens, it is the current food revolution.

This is as illustrative as one can be of the self-organizing process that Jacobs describes. And don’t underestimate these precursors. “There are decisions that we make every day about what we eat that can really change the way we live our lives and the way the world operates,” Alice Waters has said.

I’ve tried to keep a list of all the inventive new forms I hear or read about and have been unable to keep up. New ones emerge daily. Rooftops, backyards, flower boxes, empty building lots, parking lots, apartment terraces—every conceivable place has become a garden.

The significance of the extraordinary growth of urban agriculture is enormous. It goes far beyond cities themselves. In
The Economy of Cities
, Jacobs goes to great length to demonstrate that agriculture was born in cities. Farm production moved out of the city center, as that center evolved and grew. Farm tools, machinery, and even chemical fertilizers were all invented in cities, all of which helped farms outside of cities grow. The cities provided markets for the farms. The farms fed growing urban populations, became efficient, and eventually were bought up by the corporate farms that dominate today.