Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate

foreword by Peter Marcuse urban studies/environment Tom Angotti New York for Sale Community Planning Confronts Global New York for Sale Real Estate Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate Tom Angotti foreword by Peter Marcuse New York for Sale New York Tom Angotti is Director of the Hunter College Center for Ò In New York for Sale Tom Angotti places his deep knowledge of New YorkÕs development policy, his years of active personal involvement, and his strategies for achieving greater Community Planning and Development and Professor of Urban Remarkably, grassroots-based community planning ßourishes equity within a sustained narrative. The book is welcome reading for everyone who has Affairs and Planning at Hunter College, City University of New York. in New York City—the self-proclaimed Òreal estate capital of the followed his incisive commentaries on development conßicts in the city over the years. His He is the author of Metropolis 2000: Planning, Poverty, and Politics, worldÓ—with at least seventy community plans for different acute observations of the threat to community residents underlying the drive for Ôglobal the coeditor of Progressive Planning Magazine, and a columnist neighborhoods throughout the city. Most of these were developed competitivenessÕ and his analysis of the tactics available to progressive community planners for the online journal Gotham Gazette. during Þerce struggles against gentriÞcation, displacement, and constitute essential reading for everyone concerned with using planning as a means to environmental hazards, and most got little or no support from obtaining a more just and democratic city.Ó—Susan S. Fainstein, Department of Urban gov ernment. In fact, community-based plans in New York far out- Planning and Design, Harvard University Graduate School of Design number the land-use plans produced by government agencies. In New York for Sale, Tom Angotti tells some of the stories Ò New York for Sale is the book that progressive planners have been waiting for. It dynamites of community planning in New York City: how activists moved the myths of consensus planning and participatory planning while simultaneously offering beyond simple protests and began to formulate community plans hope for social and environmental justice via struggle, conßict, and genuine participatory to protect neighborhoods against urban renewal, real estate MD DALIM #980946 08/29/08 democracy.Ó—Leonie Sandercock, Professor in Urban Planning and Social Policy, University mega-projects, gentriÞcation, and environmental hazards. of British Columbia Angotti, both observer of and longtime participant in New York community planning, focuses on the close relationships Ò Too many books focus merely on the problems of center cities or propose planning solutions Angotti among community planning, political strategy, and control over only applicable in greenÞeld sites. Angotti chronicles a signiÞcant alternative—the 100 or land. After describing the political economy of New York City real more community-based plans developed in New York City since the 1960s. This is an estate, its close ties to global Þnancial capital, and the roots important and compelling story of Ôurban policy from the bottom up.ÕÓ—Ann Forsyth, Depart- of community planning in social movements and community organ- ment of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University izing, Angotti turns to speciÞcs. He tells of two pioneering plans forged in reaction to urban renewal plans (including the Þrst com- CYAN Ò New York for Sale is an insightful excursion through the neighborhoods of the neo-liberal munity plan in the city, the 1961 Cooper Square Alternate Plan— city. Progressive yet dispassionate, this book is not simply an invaluable critique of the a response to a Robert Moses urban renewal scheme); struggles MAG depredations of urban capital, it is laced with sensible and necessary prescriptions for the — for environmental justice, including battles over incinerators, reassertion of the right to the city by those who make their lives here.Ó Michael Sorkin, sludge, and garbage; plans ofÞcially adopted by the city; and YELO Director, Graduate Urban Design Program, City College of New York plans dominated by powerful real estate interests. Finally, Angotti Urban and Industrial Environments series proposes strategies for progressive, inclusive community plan- BLK Cover photograph by Tom Angotti ning not only for New York City but for anywhere that neighborhoods want to protect themselves and their land. New York 978-0-262-01247-8 for Sale teaches the empowering lesson that community plans can challenge market-driven development even in global cities with The MIT Press | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142 | http://mitpress.mit.edu powerful real estate industries. New York for Sale Urban and Industrial Environments Series editor: Robert Gottlieb, Henry R. Luce Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy, Occidental College For a complete list of books published in this series, please see the back of the book. New York for Sale Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate Tom Angotti The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. For information about special quantity discounts, please e-mail <[email protected]>. This book was set in Sabon by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong Printed on recycled paper and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Angotti, Thomas, 1941– New York for sale : community planning confronts global real estate / Tom Angotti. p. cm. – (Urban and industrial environments) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-01247-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Community development—New York (State)—New York. 2. Marginality, Social—New York (State)—New York. 3. Gentrifi cation—New York (State)— New York 4. Land use—New York (State)—New York. I. Title. HN80.N5A627 2008 307.1′216097471—dc22 2008016470 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Emma Contents Foreword: So What’s Community Planning? ix Peter Marcuse Preface xiii List of Acronyms xvii Chronology of Major Planning Events in New York City xxi 1 Community Planning without Displacement: Strategies for Progressive Planning 1 I Understanding Real Estate and Community 2 The Real Estate Capital of the World 37 3 From Dislocation to Resistance: The Roots of Community Planning 81 II Community Planning Stories 4 From Protest to Community Plan 113 5 From Environmental Justice to Community Planning 131 6 Making the Plans Offi cial 153 7 Community Planning for the Few 179 III The Future of Progressive Community Planning 8 Progressive Directions for Community Planners 225 Notes 247 Selected Bibliography 277 Index 283 Foreword: So What’s Community Planning? Peter Marcuse So what’s so great about community planning? If it’s everything Tom Angotti says it is, then why isn’t it better recognized, debated, practiced, and fought for? And what is it, anyway? Is it just community-scaled planning—below the level of the city and above that of the neighbor- hood? Planning has to be at all scales. What’s so surprising about that? To start with what it is: Angotti is very clear in his text and examples that he has a broad defi nition in mind, and he often uses the phrase progressive community-based planning to indicate it. All four words count. Not every community plan is progressive: some are exclusionary, and Angotti gives examples. Planning for a luxury, predictably white, gated community is not progressive, in any sense of that term. There may be debate about the exact meaning of progressive, but there isn’t much at the extremes of what is and what isn’t progressive. Concerns for social justice and equality, a focus on those with greatest needs, and an empha- sis on use values over exchange values all come into play. In any case, the mere fact that the word community is invoked, without the progressive, doesn’t defi ne the terrain. Neither does scale: community planning is not simply one level of planning among others, although it is that too. Many (probably most) problems of communities come from the outside and need action at a broader level—from city to nation to global—to get at the causes. And one can plan at the scale of the community from the top down. One can feed community-level data into a technically oriented city planning department and fi nd a community plan coming back down. That doesn’t deserve to be called community planning, and Angotti wouldn’t admit it as such. He would insist on the based in the concept community-based. This is a tricky concept. He doesn’t mean, necessarily, community- based as an organic intellectual might, although he would certainly x Peter Marcuse acknowledge the importance of the Gramsci concept. It certainly means more than some minimal level of community participation in which the community simply provides information to an outside planner. It means planning that has its basis in the interests and desires and fears of the community and that allows the planner to identify with the community in her or his work. So a professional planner can be working for a city planning department or a local community board on the same project. Whether the outcome is community-based will depend largely on that planner’s relationship with the community in which the planner is based. And planning, the fourth term in the defi nition, is essential. Not every activist struggle on behalf of an oppressed community is planning. The tools, skills, and experiences that professional planners have or should have can be put to use in the service of communities in need and can be transmitted to their proposed benefi ciaries in the process.

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