Tobias Armborst, Georgeen Theodore, and Daniel D'oca Of
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NORCs IN NEW YORK Tobias armborsT, GeorGeen Theodore, and daniel d’oCa of inTerboro ParTners Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00145 by guest on 23 September 2021 INTERBORO PARTNERS NORC is a funny word, but we didn’t make it up. On the contrary, the word is recognized by the local, state, and federal government, and has been in use since 1986. Actually, NORC is an acronym. It stands for “Naturally Occurring Retirement Community.” Basically, a NORC is a place (a building, a development, a neighborhood) with a significant elderly population that wasn’t purpose-built as a senior community. What counts as a “significant elderly population” varies from place to place (and from one level of government to the next), but that’s the basic definition. NORCs are important because once a community meets the criteria, it becomes eligible for local, state, and federal funds to retroactively provide that community with the support services elderly populations need (for example, case management and social work services, health care management and prevention programs, education, socialization, and recreational activities, and volunteer opportunities for program participants and the community). As it happens, there are 27 NORCs in New York City, located in four boroughs. NORCs are a national—even international— phenomenon, but the NORC movement began right here in New York City, when a consortium of UJA-Federation agencies THRESHOLDS 40 established the Penn South Program for Seniors in 1986. Let us say a few words about why we’re so interested in NORCs: First of all, the “naturally occurring” part is intriguing. We’re interested in these sorts of bottom-up dynamics, and have explored them in previous projects. Second, we’re interested in NORCs because we like what they do for New York City. Of course, one of the greatest things about New York City is its diversity. New York City is a city that is supposed to tolerate—and maybe even encourage and engender—difference. New York is supposed to be a city where people of different races, classes, and lifestyles coexist. Generational diversity is an important part of this ideal: just as NYC would be undermined by racial homogeneity, so too would it be undermined by age homogeneity. (This threat of age homogeneity is a very real one: Manhattan, for example, is becoming whiter and younger. In fact, in New York City, the percent of the population that was 60+ decreased from 17.5% 190 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00145 by guest on 23 September 2021 NORCS IN NEW YORK in 1990 to 15.6% in 2000—lower than both the New York State percentage, and that of the US. We might criticize Florida for being a geriatric ghetto, but in some ways, Manhattan is in danger of becoming a youth ghetto.) Third, we like what NORCs do for the elderly. People grow old, and instead of moving to a purpose-built retirement community in the suburbs or the sunbelt, they stay in the home and the community that they always lived in. “Aging in place,” as some people call it, poses some challenges, but to NORC advocates, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. As the UJC states, “by all accounts, the vast majority of older Americans want to, or by necessity, will remain living in their own home, even as they grow frail.” Fourth, we’re interested in the fact that almost all NORCs are “towers in the park”—that much maligned mid-century planning typology. While observing NORCs, we quickly discovered that the so-called “tower in the park” is the ideal architecture for a community of seniors: a combination of elevators, wide hallways, communal green spaces, shared facilities, and shopping and socio— services typically on the same block serve the community very well. In recent years, many tower projects have been maligned or taken down because of the belief that such architecture creates estrangement and social problems. When we looked at NORCs, however, we found just the opposite. Could it be that NORCs provide a new “calling” for this modernist housing typology? Fifth, we’re interested in the fact that 19 of the NORCs are in limited-equity housing co-ops, built mostly in the first half of the twentieth century by unions to house their swelling ranks of workers. Because homeowners are forbidden from selling their units on the open market (limited-equity housing co-ops sell units to homeowners for below-market prices in exchange for an agreement that the homeowner will sell his or her unit back to the co-op for only slightly more than he or she paid for it), they have little incentive to sell as the sales price of this type of apartment will not yield enough money to buy a comparable apartment on the market. This combination of homeowners having no economic incentive to leave combined with the fact that the homeowners, as union members and organizers committed to cooperative living and working, were a very “lefty” group, helps explain the emergence of the NORC movement. 191 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00145 by guest on 23 September 2021 While social scientists have produced many important studies on NORCs, architects and urban planners have generally paid NORCs very little attention despite their many architectural, planning, and social implications. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00145 by guest on 23 September 2021 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00145 by guest on 23 September 2021 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00145 by guest on 23 September 2021 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00145 by guest on 23 September 2021 Visit any tower-in-the-park in New York and you are likely to find seniors making good use of the ample green space. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00145 by guest on 23 September 2021 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00145 by guest on 23 September 2021 INTERBORO PARTNERS 1 THRESHOLDS 40 2 198 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00145 by guest on 23 September 2021 NORCS IN NEW YORK 3 socio— 4 1 Penn South 2 Lincoln-Amsterdam 3 Lincoln Guild 4 Morningside Heights 199 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00145 by guest on 23 September 2021 INTERBORO PARTNERS 5 THRESHOLDS 40 6 200 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00145 by guest on 23 September 2021 NORCS IN NEW YORK 7 socio— 8 5 Isaacs Houses and Holmes Towers 6 Phipps Houses 7 Co-op Village 8 Knickerbocker Village 201 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00145 by guest on 23 September 2021 INTERBORO PARTNERS 9 THRESHOLDS 40 10 202 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00145 by guest on 23 September 2021 NORCS IN NEW YORK 11 socio— 12 9 Vladeck Houses 10 Amalgamated/Park Reservoir 11 Parkchester Preservation 12 Big Six Towers 203 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00145 by guest on 23 September 2021 INTERBORO PARTNERS 13 THRESHOLDS 40 14 204 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00145 by guest on 23 September 2021 NORCS IN NEW YORK 15 socio— 13 Ravenswood 14 Queensview 15 Trump 4 Us 205 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00145 by guest on 23 September 2021 INTERBORO PARTNERS Jonathan Crisman put among their friends on the Lower East Describe the first moment you realized Side. That was the start of this project. you were experiencing a NORC. JC Interboro Partners What kind of closed-loop or endogenous In 2006, we were invited to do an phenomena have you observed in these exhibition at common room 2, a space on social systems? Are there any kind of other- the Lower East Side headed by Lars Fischer, worldly perceptions, interactions, or spatial Maria Ibañez de Sendadiano, and Todd appropriations that occur in these habitats Rouhe. The exhibition space was in the that might seem strange elsewhere but seem lobby of common room’s office, a commercial right at home within the NORCs? building in the Seward Park Cooperative complex. As we started planning the IP exhibition, we noticed that the lobby, which One thing that’s great about NORCs is was used by all the people associated with that they are integrated with the city around common room—cool architects, designers, them. Sure, when you’re sitting in the park and artists—was also inhabited by elderly of one or another tower-in-the-park you can people with heavy New York accents and forget that you are in this dense, crowded canes. It turns out that the building is the city, but for the most part, what’s great about epicenter of Seward Park’s senior culture: NORCs is that they aren’t islands. Despite a large-windowed second story office that the fact that there are delivery services, houses the Seward Park NORC Supportive senior shuttles, and on-site entertainment, Services Program, or NORC-SSP. The NORC- most of the seniors who live in the NORCs SSP is a gathering place for Seward Park’s make use of neighborhood services. We seniors: a place to organize transport to the spent a lot of time in NORCs, but we also doctor, sign up for meals on wheels, get a flu spent a lot of time around NORCs, mapping shot, play bingo, take a yoga class, and so on.