Nathan Newman wrote:
>The real problem driving gentrification is not planning in the city but the
>lack of planning for the last few decades.
-Do you really believe that? Did you ever look at the 1987 plan, New -York Ascendant? A lot of what's happened over the last 20 years is in -there. Moving the CBD westward in Manhattan and eastward into the -coast of Queens, gentrifying Harlem, upscaling the Brooklyn -waterfront. There's been plenty of planning - just the wrong kind.
Those are hardly major "plans", just looking at where there was the nearest room for new development with an expanding population. Even Harlem is complicated since its development has been a cross-current of local economic development boosters trying to get jobs, those rehabbing gutted brownstones, and the developer types.
My neighborhood on 123rd St. is pretty much typical-- most of the street were abandoned brownstones which are all in rapid process of being converted over to three-unit buildings selling for almost $2 million, across the street is a low-income high-rise apartment owned by a local church which will be levelling some smaller buildings and parking lot to make way for high-rise apartments selling closer to market rate, and 125th St around the corner where a slew of new chain retail stores have moved in. The neighborhood is a pretty complex mix of incomes but the overwhelming pressure is from people (like myself) fleeing higher rents in lower Manhattan, which drives up the rents. We're paying $1575 for a one-bedroom apartment and we may quickly get priced out ourselves. There's been some city planning involved, but most of it are small investors -- my landlord is a nice yuppie minister who runs a house church out of his first floor unit -- buying old units, putting some bucks in and raising rents.
One of the better developments out of the recent mayor's race is that both major candidates made building large numbers of new housing units a top priority. De facto there's been no planning to deal with massive rises in New York's population for the last couple of decades, so at least the City leadership is beginning to engage the problem in a more serious manner.
Nathan Newman