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East Side A New Study Faults Plazas as Public in Name, Private in Look
MICHAEL KEANE is not sure if any New Yorker, however brash and ill-mannered, feels comfortable walking into a restaurant, past the host’s podium and into the outdoor seating area, sitting down at a table set with silverware and unwrapping a brown bag lunch.
The question, for Mr. Keane, an urban planner, has less to do with dining etiquette and more with the fact that the outdoor seating area of the restaurant in question, Caliente Cab Company, at East 33rd Street and Third Avenue in Murray Hill, is a designated public space.
There are more than 500 privately owned public spaces in the city, mainly concentrated in Midtown and downtown Manhattan, where, since 1961, developers have been allowed to build taller buildings if they, in turn, agreed to have such spaces open to all.
But in a recent eight-month study of 77 privately owned public spaces on the East Side, Mr. Keane concluded that 30 of them, including the one at Caliente Cab Company, had obstacles to public access that included padlocked gates, piles of garbage and spikes on supposed seats. Mr. Keane called the Caliente Cab situation an example of “commandeering,” with the cafe’s customers monopolizing that particular outdoor space.
“There are plenty to choose from,” Mr. Keane said of the neighborhood’s public plazas. “Whether or not you can use them when you get there is another story.”
MICHAEL KEANE is not sure if any New Yorker, however brash and ill-mannered, feels comfortable walking into a restaurant, past the host’s podium and into the outdoor seating area, sitting down at a table set with silverware and unwrapping a brown bag lunch.
The question, for Mr. Keane, an urban planner, has less to do with dining etiquette and more with the fact that the outdoor seating area of the restaurant in question, Caliente Cab Company, at East 33rd Street and Third Avenue in Murray Hill, is a designated public space.
There are more than 500 privately owned public spaces in the city, mainly concentrated in Midtown and downtown Manhattan, where, since 1961, developers have been allowed to build taller buildings if they, in turn, agreed to have such spaces open to all.
But in a recent eight-month study of 77 privately owned public spaces on the East Side, Mr. Keane concluded that 30 of them, including the one at Caliente Cab Company, had obstacles to public access that included padlocked gates, piles of garbage and spikes on supposed seats. Mr. Keane called the Caliente Cab situation an example of “commandeering,” with the cafe’s customers monopolizing that particular outdoor space.
“There are plenty to choose from,” Mr. Keane said of the neighborhood’s public plazas. “Whether or not you can use them when you get there is another story.”
March 16, 2008
Gowanus
Where Did All the Truckers Go?
By DEBORAH KOLBEN
...
In the last couple of years, the high-end boutiques, cafes and restaurants that transformed Fifth Avenue have been spilling onto Fourth Avenue. But few residents expected Third Avenue to start going upscale so quickly, and some are already fearful that Park Slope and Carroll Gardens will merge to form one big brownstone Brooklyn neighborhood.
“They’re going to call Gowanus ‘West Park Slope’ or ‘East Carroll Gardens,’ ” Ms. Yurick said with a grimace. “It’s a joke. This is a truck route.”
The first major sign of gentrification on Third Avenue arrived in the beginning of February, when Bar Tano, an Italian restaurant with large glass windows and a bar that serves 40 types of Scotch, opened at Ninth Street in an abandoned storefront opposite a tire repair shop. Entrees include braised short-rib sandwiches with caramelized onions and homemade potato chips for $15, not exactly the plate of chicken and rice on the menu for $4.50 at Sonia’s, a Latino restaurant across the street.
February 13, 2005
URBAN STUDIES
Many Lives, Many Wheels
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
BICYCLES are everywhere in this eight-story building: bicycles leaning in the hallways, bicycles parked in the stairwells, bicycles nestled two deep in the single-room dwellings shared by three or four men.
The sprawling landmark building, at 31st and Broadway, is nestled in the middle of Manhattan's wholesale district. Its central, though unglamorous, location appeals to its most notable tenant population: Chinese deliverymen. An alternative to farther-flung quarters in Chinatown or Flushing, this outpost is only 10 minutes by bicycle to restaurants in Murray Hill, 20 minutes to those on the Upper West Side, 20 minutes to the Upper East Side.
Every morning around 10, the bicycles make an exodus as dozens of Chinese immigrants step out of the building and glide down 31st Street, their spinning wheels gently clicking.
At night, the process reverses. The men return, their bicycles casting long shadows under orange-tinged streetlights. Until last year, dozens of bicycles were chained along the scaffolding at night. Then the building was sold. The new management insisted that no bikes be left outside. So now the bicycles, seats covered with white plastic bags and frames fortified with duct tape, are taken into the cramped rooms.
For these quiet and nearly invisible deliverymen with few English skills, a bicycle is a lifeline. They often buy their bikes from black-market vendors who come by the restaurants. The prices are as low as $30 for creaky old models and as high as $80 for models with better maneuverability.
There is a tacit understanding that these bicycles are mostly stolen. The deliverymen shrug this off. After all, they are very often the victims that the bikes are stolen from.
Many of the men, having paid $30,000 to $65,000 to be smuggled into the United States, have not seen their children for years. Some, with orange-spiked hair and an enthusiasm for video games, are barely children themselves.
Home, which for most is Fujian Province in southern China, is reduced to photographs tucked into wallets, phone calls after work for as low as 2 cents a minute, and a firm determination that one day they will go back.
Most earn $1,000 to $1,500 a month, mostly from tips. "We can't do anything else because we don't speak English," said Chen, 37, who lives with three other men in a 10-foot-by-12-foot room. Two of his roommates are deliverymen: Lin, 55, who hasn't seen his family for 12 years, and baby-faced Little Chen, 22, who just arrived in New York.
In a corner of the room, behind the door, sat two bicycles, and just outside, a third one.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Schedule Information:
Scheduled Time: Fri, Oct 12 - 8:00am - 9:45am Building/Room: Philadelphia Marriott / Room 403
Title Displayed in Event Calendar: Jane Jacobs and Our Urban Myths
Session Participants:
"Here, But Also There: Jane Jacobs's Hudson Street Doppelganger and Our Urban Myths"
*Peter L. Laurence (University of Pennsylvania (PA))
"The Feminine Mystique: Gender and the Myth of Jane Jacobs"
*Jennifer Hock (Harvard University (MA))
"The Nature of Diversity: Jane Jacobs's Urban Ecology"
*Jamin Creed Rowan (Boston College (MA))
"Elementary Republics and Little Platoons: Jacobs's Localism, White Ethnic Revival and the 1970s Neighborhoods Movement"
*Benjamin Mark Looker (Yale University (CT))
Commentator: Christopher Klemek (George Washington University (DC))
DOI: 10.1177/1078087406298118
© 2007 SAGE Publications
Rethinking the Dual City
Alexander J. Reichl
Queens College, CUNY, Flushing, New York
This article examines social polarization in New York City: first, as an objective condition among city neighborhoods; and second, as an issue in city politics. Data on income, poverty, housing, and crime provide little evidence of growing polarization between low- and high-income neighborhoods in the 1990s. However, the data reveal a striking contrast between the spectacular gains of core areas and the widespread stagnation and decline across low-, middle-, and high-income neighborhoods outside the core. Polarization has not proved a viable political issue because it becomes subsumed in racial/ethnic politics; yet the data suggest that progressives might prevail with a dual-city discourse that highlights the significance of polarization for neighborhoods outside the core.
Key Words: social polarization • New York City politics • dual city • neighborhood decline • urban neoliberalism
Exerpt P. 683
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Despite Ferrer’s failures there are indications that a nascent outerborough coalition (one that bridges the racial/ethnic and class divides) stirs beneath the surface of New York politics, awaiting a political movement to represent its interests. For one thing there is some evidence that the outerborough coalition operates as something akin to the “potential groups” described by Truman (1951), which influence policy precisely because officials fear their mobilization. Mayor Bloomberg’s backpedaling on plans to curtail trash collection outside Manhattan, close zoos in Brooklyn and Queens, and eliminate a scholarship program for the city university can be interpreted as efforts to preempt swelling discontent in the outer boroughs. Indeed, midway through Bloomberg’s first term some observers saw a new “borough politics” emerging in opposition to the mayor’s handling of the city’s fiscal crisis (Steinhauer 2003). As one Democratic strategist put it: “[A] Democratic strategy for victory in the [2005] mayoral race has to involve uniting African-Americans and Latinos with Whites in the outer boroughs who are unhappy with Bloomberg and who are upset about taxes and other issues” (quoted in Steinhauer 2003). Bloomberg’s image as a wealthy Manhattanite out of touch with the everyday struggles of middleclass New Yorkers seemed to provide a galvanizing target, and discursive trope, for an outer-borough coalition.
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A Brief History of Neoliberalism [02:02:30]
David Harvey
@ University of Pennsylvania (2006-11-02
From the Urban Studies Program at UPenn: "In his talk, Harvey will draw on his recent book, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005), in which he traces the rise of neoliberal principles based on the theory of free markets and unfettered international capital flows from an obscure economic theory to dominance on the world stage. Harvey shows how proponents of a neoliberal economic philosophy, such as the influential leaders Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, gained the consensus of key figures and economic and political institutions, driven by an aspiration to re-establish class power. He dissects the logic of neoliberalism, revealing its built-in contradictions and the tremendous variation in how it looks from place to place and at different scales. He will talk about how cities have both complied and resisted neoliberalism's discipline."
Lecture begins 00:06:35. Lecture ends and questions begin 01:25:55. Audio goes bad around 01:34:00.
What's wrong with the buildings Frank Gehry wants to put in my neighborhood?
By Jonathan Lethem
Posted Monday, June 19, 2006, at 12:14 PM ET
June 14, 2006
Square Feet
In Major Projects, Agreeing Not to Disagree
By TERRY PRISTIN
...
In New York, however, some critics are wondering if this trend is threatening to distort the planning process. They say the danger is that local groups will agree not to oppose the projects in exchange for favors that may be unrelated to the project's impact on the neighborhood.
...