Book Review: The Suburbanization of New York
The Suburbanization of New York: Is the World's Greatest City Becoming Just Another Town? edited by Jerilou Hammett and Kingsley Hammett, published by Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. (Amazon)
In the fourteen essays written for this book, the predominant sense is that today New York just ain't what it used to be, be it twenty, or thirty, or fifty, or even one-hundred years ago. The first- and second-hand accounts of, among others, SoHo in the seventies, TriBeCa in the eighties, and Times Square in every decade since the Depression paint a vibrant picture of New York City -- particularly Manhattan -- that was equal parts lively and dangerous. While many of the writers here pine for the former, they could easily do without the latter, and this desire is just one of the many difficulties confronted by New York's current incarnation as a fashionable, service-oriented, global city that is slowly being infiltrated by many of the mechanisms it helps create or oversees.
A nostalgia for the pre-gentrified SoHo or Tribeca, or the pre-Disneyfied Time Square -- or even the pre-Ipod, pre-cell-phone manners of pedestrians -- isn't the only feeling that pervades these essays; if it were, it would make the book more memoir than critical study of an important moment in the city. We also feel the presence of the automobile on the streets of New York, in the documentary-like photographs of Martha Cooper, in the yearning for privacy that the automobile provides even while walking the crowded streets of Manhattan. We feel the malling of the boroughs, as big box retailers infiltrate the city they used to avoid, and as independent stores are pushed out by national and international chains until Fifth Avenue resembles a high-end mall or 125th Street slowly loses the essence of what makes Harlem, well, Harlem. We feel the homogenization of race and class, as minorities and lower classes "flee" to the edges of the boroughs, pushed out by a "reverse flight" of middle and upper class, white collar suburbanites and others willing to pay the astronomical rents of Manhattan and, increasingly even, the other boroughs We feel the police presence that gives residents the safety they yearn for, at the expense of certain democratic freedoms.
Reading these essays, it's clear that New York is at a moment when it could become a fortified playground for the ultra-rich, serviced by low-wage workers living at the periphery. Of course this scenario isn't the only one, but it's one favored by current and previous political administrations and the powerful financial sector. But reading these essays, it's also clear that New York, in one way or another, has always been faced with challenges that have pointed towards it becoming something it (supposedly) doesn't want to become. The art scene in SoHo that is reminisced in these pages could not have been foreseen by 19th-century dockworkers or even those sitting high in Tammany Hall. But its existence is just one of the many exceptional parts of New York that happened for various reasons.
What's most upsetting, and difficult, about the current "happening" is how much it's being underwritten by other people in other places, by retailers from the American Midwest, by Hollywood studios, by oversees financiers, by people and organizations that might never enter the city or, worse yet, don't like the city to begin with. It's a situation that is bound to experience some backlash, and this book, I think, is but one part of that. It's a call-to-arms, if you will, that we don't have to accept everything "as is," that things should be questioned, that people still have a role in how their environment is shaped, how it unfolds. Perhaps this book, while focusing on a specific place and time, can be seen -- like New York itself -- as a microcosm of the rest of America, (the rest of the world even?), which finds itself struggling to contain and control this beast it's unleashed in the name of individual freedom but at the expense of community.
In the fourteen essays written for this book, the predominant sense is that today New York just ain't what it used to be, be it twenty, or thirty, or fifty, or even one-hundred years ago. The first- and second-hand accounts of, among others, SoHo in the seventies, TriBeCa in the eighties, and Times Square in every decade since the Depression paint a vibrant picture of New York City -- particularly Manhattan -- that was equal parts lively and dangerous. While many of the writers here pine for the former, they could easily do without the latter, and this desire is just one of the many difficulties confronted by New York's current incarnation as a fashionable, service-oriented, global city that is slowly being infiltrated by many of the mechanisms it helps create or oversees.
A nostalgia for the pre-gentrified SoHo or Tribeca, or the pre-Disneyfied Time Square -- or even the pre-Ipod, pre-cell-phone manners of pedestrians -- isn't the only feeling that pervades these essays; if it were, it would make the book more memoir than critical study of an important moment in the city. We also feel the presence of the automobile on the streets of New York, in the documentary-like photographs of Martha Cooper, in the yearning for privacy that the automobile provides even while walking the crowded streets of Manhattan. We feel the malling of the boroughs, as big box retailers infiltrate the city they used to avoid, and as independent stores are pushed out by national and international chains until Fifth Avenue resembles a high-end mall or 125th Street slowly loses the essence of what makes Harlem, well, Harlem. We feel the homogenization of race and class, as minorities and lower classes "flee" to the edges of the boroughs, pushed out by a "reverse flight" of middle and upper class, white collar suburbanites and others willing to pay the astronomical rents of Manhattan and, increasingly even, the other boroughs We feel the police presence that gives residents the safety they yearn for, at the expense of certain democratic freedoms.
Reading these essays, it's clear that New York is at a moment when it could become a fortified playground for the ultra-rich, serviced by low-wage workers living at the periphery. Of course this scenario isn't the only one, but it's one favored by current and previous political administrations and the powerful financial sector. But reading these essays, it's also clear that New York, in one way or another, has always been faced with challenges that have pointed towards it becoming something it (supposedly) doesn't want to become. The art scene in SoHo that is reminisced in these pages could not have been foreseen by 19th-century dockworkers or even those sitting high in Tammany Hall. But its existence is just one of the many exceptional parts of New York that happened for various reasons.
What's most upsetting, and difficult, about the current "happening" is how much it's being underwritten by other people in other places, by retailers from the American Midwest, by Hollywood studios, by oversees financiers, by people and organizations that might never enter the city or, worse yet, don't like the city to begin with. It's a situation that is bound to experience some backlash, and this book, I think, is but one part of that. It's a call-to-arms, if you will, that we don't have to accept everything "as is," that things should be questioned, that people still have a role in how their environment is shaped, how it unfolds. Perhaps this book, while focusing on a specific place and time, can be seen -- like New York itself -- as a microcosm of the rest of America, (the rest of the world even?), which finds itself struggling to contain and control this beast it's unleashed in the name of individual freedom but at the expense of community.
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