Nathan Newman wrote:
>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.
-You're ignoring a whole lot of background, about 20-25 years worth - -the subsisized projects across from the northern tip of Central Park -that was quite consciously conceived as the gentrifying beachhead -(see Neil Smith's classic article on the gentrification of Harlem), -the renovation of the Apollo Theater using Urban Development Corp. -bonds, the creation of the enterprize zone on 125th St, etc. It's -been a few years since I looked at this stuff closely, but I am sure -you will find a pattern of recent tax breaks and other subsidies -behind this superficially spontaneous turn of events.
The whole UMEZ enpowerment zone of course has been used to encourage development in the area, but that's hardly the result of just the big bad planners; there's been lots of community mobilization demanding the jobs and other benefits involved. And you make restoring the (non-profit) Apollo Theater sound like an ominous plot, rather than Harlem getting a fair share of development dollars that usually just go to for-profit rich folks.
Yes, there has been encouragement of economic revival in Harlem, which helped attract more folks, but are you arguing encouraging new housing is a bad thing? The problem is rather that the planning has actually been pretty minimal, with a few small incentives and not more massive commitments to building larger buildings with more affordable units.
And behind everything in the inexorable demand of more residents chasing too few units in the City.
Nathan newman