Detecting Amenity Zones and Applying Urban Morphology to New York
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Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna DOTTORATO DI RICERCA IN ECONOMIA Ciclo XXIII Settore scientifico-disciplinare di afferenza: M-GGR/01 THE PHYSICAL CITY AND THE URBAN STRUCTURE: DETECTING AMENITY ZONES AND APPLYING URBAN MORPHOLOGY TO NEW YORK Presentata da: Dott.sa Elisa RAVAZZOLI Coordinatore Dottorato Relatore Prof. Andrea ICHINO Prof.ssa Silvia GADDONI Esame Finale Anno 2011 To my source of inspiration, To New York “ [..]Concrete jungle where dreams are made of, There’s nothing you can’t do, Now you’re in New York, these streets will make you feel brand new, the lights will inspire you, lets here it for New York, New York, New York [..]” ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to thank Alma Mater Studiorum- University of Bologna , particularly the Department of Economics, which sponsored the Ph.D program in Economics - Curriculum Culture and Politics of the Territory, for its institutional and economical support. Without the sponsorship my field research and my studies in the United States would have not been possible . I first thank my supervisor Prof.ssa Silvia Gaddoni for her steady support during these three years. Exceptional thanks go to Prof. Michael Conzen from the University of Chicago (USA). I thank him for inspiring me with his writings and our conversations, and for introducing me to the urban morphology community. During these three years he has offered me many insightful and precious suggestions which I will never forget. By challenging me, he motivated my research and pushed me to do better. This thesis would not appear in its present form without his support and his help making everything as accurate as possible. Another special thank goes to Richard Greene, from Northern Illinois University (USA) who, besides teaching me how to apply GIS to the field of urban geography, shared his scientific work with me and introduced me to the concept of High Amenity Zones. This concept, which he theorized in 2006, has become the fundamental essence of my Ph.D research and a major source of interest. I will be always thankful to him for this reason. I thank Samuel Zipp from Brown University (USA) for his availability for tutoring part of my project, and Seth Spielman also from Brown University for his precious GIS technical advice and stimulating conversations. I thank Sarah Williams from Columbia University (USA) who gave me the opportunity to be part of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation community, and to Prof. Robert Berglund who accepted my candidature as a visiting scholar. Thanks to their support I had the opportunity to carry out an important part of my field research and take advantage of the Avery Library, where I found the necessary material for my urban morphology research project. A special thank goes to Prof. Eliott Sclar from Columbia University for his availability and enthusiasm. He believed in my research project and at any “down moment” urged me to continue. I am thankful for his support. Many thanks also to all the librarians who guided and assisted me in finding the material I needed, to the artist community in Long Island City and to all the fascinating people I met in the United States whose knowledge and openness enabled me to familiarize myself with the urban realm I was investigating. iii Finally, I wish to express my greatest thanks to my parents, Mario and Adriana, because they have always believed in my capabilities and encouraged my explorative nature. A kind thanks to my grandmother, Elisabetta, for her love. Very special thanks go to my partner, Fabrizio, for his continuous encouragement, for believing in me and loving me. With his patience and kind words, he is the only person able to bring a semblance of calm to a spirit in constant motion. I thank my friend, Federica, because in these three years she has always been present when I have needed, and all my closest friends for their warm words of encouragement. I also thank all friends I made during my study periods whom I have never forgotten. Last, I wish to thank myself for the passion, the enthusiasm and the determination I always put in my work. Despite all the critical moments I remained committed to this project. Elisa Ravazzoli March 7, 2011 iv PREFACE This work is the product of three years of intense independent research and learning, the majority of which was carried out in the United States at the University of Chicago (Chicago, IL), Brown University (Providence, RI), and Columbia University (New York, NY), where I collected the necessary material and conducted field research. The results of this research have been presented at two international conferences. The research on the Amenity Zones of New York was presented at the Meeting of the Association of American Geographers (Washington D.C., April 2010) as a research paper, while the study on the Physical Analysis of the City: Atlantic Avenue was presented at the International Seminar on Urban Form (Hamburg, August, 2010) as a working progress paper. To the best of my knowledge, this thesis does not contain material previously published or written by another person except where due references have been made. v ABSTRACT The city is a collection of built structures and infrastructure embedded in socio-cultural processes: any investigation into a city’s transformations involves considerations on the degree to which its composite elements respond to socio-economical changes. The main purpose of this research is to investigate how transformations in the functional requirements of New York’s society have spurred, since the 1970s, changes in both the city’s urban structure and physical form. The present work examines the rise of Amenity Zones in New York, and investigates the transformations that have occurred in New York’s built environment since the 1970s. By applying qualitative measures and analyzing the relationship between urban amenities and the creative class, the present work has investigated changes in the urban structure and detected a hierarchical series of amenity zones classes, namely, Super Amenity Zones (SAZs), Nodal Amenity Zones (NAZs) and Peripheral Amenity Zones (PAZs). This series allows for a more comprehensive reading of the urban structure in a complex city like New York, bringing advancements to the amenity zone’s methodology. In order to examine the manner in which the other component of the city, the physical form, has changed or adapted to the new socio-economic condition, the present research has applied Conzenian analysis to a select study area, Atlantic Avenue. The results of this analysis reveal that, contrary to the urban structure, which changes rapidly, the physical form of New York is hard to modify completely, due to the resilience of the town plan and its elements, and to preservation laws; the city rather adapts to socio-economical changes through process of adaptive reuses or conversion. Concluding, this research has examined the dialectic between the ever-changing needs of society and the complexity of the built environment and urban structure, showing the different degrees to which the urban landscape modifies, reacts and sometimes adapts to the population’s functional requirements. Keywords: Urban Geography, Amenity Zones, Urban Morphology, GIS Spatial Analysis, New York. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements iii Preface v Abstract vi Italian Summary 1 PART I — OBJECTIVES Chapter 1: General introduction 6 1.1 The resea rch aim 9 1.2 The method 11 1.3 The structure 11 PART II — THE AMENITY ZONES OF NEW YORK Chapter 2: The context of amenity zone research 13 2.1 Introduction 13 2.2 New York goes postmodern 14 2.3 Theoretical background and concepts 18 2. 3.1 Postmodern life -style 18 2.3.2 Creative class 20 2.3.3 Urban amenities 21 2.3.4 Gentrification 23 2.3.5 High amenity zones 26 2.4 Conceptual groundwork 29 Chapter 3: The amenity zones method 31 3.1 The study area: the city of New York 31 3.2 The aim of the research 32 3.3 The method 33 3.3.1 Spatial analysis 38 3.4 The datasets: Zagat Guide and Reference USA 39 Chapter 4: Measuring amenities geographically 42 4.1 The geography of urban amenities in New York 42 vii 4.1.1 Leisure am enities 43 4.1.2 Cultural amenities 52 4.2 Green amenities 56 4.3 Creative job centers and creative neighborhoods 63 4.4 Urban amenities and creative class 74 Chapter 5: New York’s amenity zones 77 5.1 The amenity zones of New York 77 5.1.1 Su per Amenity Zones 83 5.1.2 Nodal Amenity Zones 86 5.1.3 Peripheral Amenity Zones 88 5.2 The future of amenity zones 89 Chapter 6: Discussion of amenity zones findings 91 6.1 Implication and improvement of the research 91 6.2 Research future imp rovements 92 6.3 Closing remarks 94 PART III — THE PHYSICAL ANALYSIS OF THE CITY: THE CASE OF ATLANTIC AVENUE Chapter 7: The context of morphological research 96 7.1 Introduction 96 7.2 Conceptual groundwork 97 7.3 Theoretical framework 98 7.3.1 The historical geographical approach to urban form 98 7.3.2 Studies on urban morphology 100 7.3.3 Selected studies 103 Chapter 8: Morphological methods 108 8.1 The study area : Atlantic Avenue 108 8.2 The aim of the research 108 8.3 The method 109 Chapte r 9: Morphological analysis – physical form 113 9.1 Atlantic Avenue historical development 113 9.1.1 Atlantic Avenue from the origin through the twentieth century 113 9.1.2 Atlantic Avenue: the present set in concrete landscape 120 9.2 The Analysis of Atlantic Avenue’s physical form 121 viii 9.2.1 The grid 121 9.2.2 The street layout 122 9.2.3 The blocks 125 9.2.4 The lots 126 9.2.5 The building