Community

Too big to succeed

In this July NYT op-ed, Columbia sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh argues that the only way to save HUD - and urban housing policy - is to tear the agency down and rebuild it with a different mix of programs and priorities. Perhaps with an eye towards walkability, accessible parks, and retail space?

Oh, sorry, I’m confusing Venkatesh’s article with HOPE VI. The parallel isn’t too hard to draw, and any conversation about the shortcomings of HUD - and the contestability of its interventions - inevitably involves HOPE VI, a fifteen year-old program to tear down the worst high-rise projects and rebuild them as new urbanist, mixed-income and mixed-use communities.

I read the piece last summer with some interest, but missed the vigorous discussion within the urban planning community. I’ve just discovered Randall Crane’s urban planning research, “essays on urban studies.” Crane* is the Vice Chair of UCLA’s esteemed urban planning program, and contacted Xavier De Souza Briggs at MIT for his reply, which included the following:

hope 6 plays out very differently from place to place. it isn’t fair to dismiss it as a mere give-away to developers or a program for displacement across the board. there are wonderful hope 6 developments, there are responsible and hardworking affordable housing developers delivering real innovation, and resident relocation improved in a number of cities after the flaws started to get documented a decade ago.

Having done a bit of research on HOPE VI at UEP, I was fascinated by this whole exchange, but am also well out of my depth here, so will leave interested parties to click-through to the professionals.

* Off topic, but according to Crane’s bio page, he was PhD advisor to Charisma Acey, who wrote the fantastic “Space vs. Race: A Historical Exploration of Spatial Injustice and Unequal Access to Water in Lagos, Nigeria,” which was published in last summer’s special issue of Critical Planning, focused on spatial justice. Her article, like many in that issue, helped form the practical foundation of my thesis.

Take this down: New Yorker Fest

Unprocessed notes from the Town Hall on Race and Class in America to kick off the New Yorker festival last night. These are my best attempt at transcription from the balcony of a darkened theater, but should only be taken as paraphrase. Posting this is the height of laziness, but I’m not sure what my critical reaction is at this point. I’m mulling it over, and hell - maybe I’ll even write something up here when I’ve got it together. For now:

“…all of this was held afloat by easy credit. Easy credit has been our nation’s substitute for decent wages.” -Barbara Ehrenreich

“Running a deficit defunds the left. They’ve learned how to kill social spending.” -Thomas Frank

[Speaking of placing black civil rights struggles, Dr. King, and historicizing the present] We have to have people who are willing to tell the stories, so you don’t just jump in without the context and start looking at x, y, and z. And that’s part of the discourse we’re not having.” -Cornel West

[On the ‘Culture Wars’ and discontent of the conservative heartland] “Why can’t my team have that sense of grievance?! People are seething and Palin speaks to that. They’re fucking furious!” - Frank

“[Barack Obama] is not the product of a native Black American experience.” - John McWhorter

“Martin [Luther King] has been deoderized since they had the holiday for him. If you can’t mention Martin who can you mention? There’s a difference between a quest for truth and justice, and power and the White House.” - West

“[Race is] already part of the mix. That’s part of what it is to be American, the question is when does it drop? If it comes down to Ohio, and it’s 49% Obama and 40% McCain and the Bradley Effect takes over and people get into the booth and say, ‘I-I-justcan’tdoit,” then we can say…” -West

The New Yorker has a recap, too.

"And just to hear and from and see these good New Yorkers who are rebuilding not just this are but helping to rebuild America has been very, very inspiring and encouraging."

— Palin takes questions from press corps for first time As Tina Fey said, this is fun for now, and I look forward to never having to hear her name again after November 5th.

35,000 sq ft, 72 rooms, one nuclear family at 190 The Bowery. Forget that he paid $100k for it in the sixties, just click through for the sheer scale and style of what they’ve done to the place.

New York Magazine

IND Eighth Avenue Line, whut whut. →

I never realized the lines had such a taxonomy!

Designer Eddie Jabour redesigns the MTA Subway map. I disagree with Jason, I think this is clearer, more elegant than the current map, though it takes some adjustment. I don’t like that he’s using a straw-man pixellated version of the well-done current map, though. Pictured is my old stop at the center - Broadway-Nassau. 2_lowermanhattan_compa0002

Peace in the City: Fifth Avenue Presbyterian

No matter how you come to show up on the beautiful Midtown stoop of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian, it will have been a bit of a walk, and a blustery one from the NRW or the FV trains on a winter’s Sunday morning. The greeters at the neo-Gothic doors to the sanctuary know that, however, and when I arrived late to the service on consecutive weeks, they gave me a firm handshake and a knowing sort of smile, “It’s okay.” At an appropriate pause in the service, I would be let into the sanctuary to find a spot in the long, curved pews that fill this capacious sanctuary.

It’s a large church that comfortably fills the floor and balconies with well-dressed, Park Avenue-type congregants twice every Sunday (9:30 and 11:15), and they pull in the talent to match it. There were guest homilists both weeks: the Rev. Dr. Barbara Lunblad and Rev. Dr. Cleophus LaRue; both teach preaching at esteemed seminaries and both are engaging, insightful, and inspiring speakers. Their personalities filled the sanctuary, and their measured ecumenical approaches to the Bible were perfectly Presbyterian (though neither of them is).

FAPC is the kind of place that Protestant tourists go on a Sunday morning (I did, on childhood visits to the city), it’s sandwiched between H&M and Harry Winston in perhaps the glitziest part of Midtown (57th and 7th) and is just up the block from the New York’s most famous place of worship, St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The leadership here knows their place: serving the well-to-do professionals of Manhattan, and they gear the myriad small groups towards the target audience: twenty- and thirty-somethings, newcomers to NY, professionals. I counted some two dozen deacons carrying well-laden offering plates up the aisle - an impressive sight. At least some of that money goes towards the homeless shelter the church runs year-round (and has fought to keep up, despite the “types” it attracts to the area), and seems to have an active, engaged group of members.

As we sang the closing hymn from the Presbyterian Hymnal and received the benediction, I looked up above the pulpit to take in the view: an animate choir, a historic organ, and so many New Yorkers in their Sunday best, greeting one another on their way up to coffee hour. FAPC is a very large and historic, but it’s hardly out of date. The church clearly cares about its family, even if some among them can’t seem make it on time. What a comforting start to my search.

Up Next: Greenwich Village’s First Presbyterian Church NYC

Peace in the City: An NYC church-hunt

St Patrick’s Cathedral,
originally uploaded by Farl.

Starting this afternoon soon, I’ll be blogging my experiences and impressions of the churches I’ve visited and will continue to visit on my journeys through subway tunnels and into pews as I attempt to find a warm, welcoming, relevant, ecumenical, progressive, and familiar Protestant congregation here in New York City. You would think it shouldn’t be very hard what with eight million people milling about, but every church has its strengths and its weaknesses. I’ll elucidate those diverse personalities fairly and succinctly to the best of my ability and hopefully provide a resource to future sojourners looking for an open spot and open hearts to settle down with in the Big, Big Apple.