NORCs in

Tobias Armborst, Georgeen Theodore, and Daniel D’Oca of Interboro Partners

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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 , 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: , 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%

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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.

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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

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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 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 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. interactions between NORC residents and We saw this ground floor lobby as a the surrounding neighborhoods. We were

thresholds 40 space of encounter among the building’s very busy! Visit northern Chelsea between different constituents: the architects and Seventh and Ninth Avenues and you’ll see designers who worked in the building, it for yourself: lots of senior citizens at the exhibition visitors who came to see common pharmacies, movie theaters, delis, and so on. room 2 shows, and the NORC-SSP seniors The most exciting thing is when a NORC-SSP who used their community room to take care forms a relationship with a neighborhood of their health needs and to socialize. We institution, like when students from FIT came built our exhibition around trying to increase to Penn South to work with seniors on their the interaction (positive friction?) among apartment interiors. these groups, and in particular, the NORC-SSP people and those who came JC to the exhibition. What is happening to these In many ways, this space embodied developments as residents, for lack of ideals of “the good city.” As an urban space a better term, move out? What kind of in which people of difference have chance constituency is moving in? encounters, it is just the sort of space that the homogenization of Manhattan is IP endangering. Believing that there is a value What happens to the developments to having different types of people rub when residents move out really depends on shoulders in the same space, we started to the development. Unfortunately, many of the investigate how this group of seniors—in that limited-equity housing co-ops that house face of a meteoric rise in real estate values NORCs have opted to go market. What this and increased living costs—managed to stay means is that when a unit becomes available,

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the unit goes to the highest bidder. However cross a street. Another interesting issue is when an apartment becomes available in the relationship between the unit and the Penn South—whose tenants have opted to household. Many units were first inhabited remain a limited-equity co-op market—it by families, and over time, the households goes to whoever is next on the waiting list. shrank, as children moved away and As Penn South—like other limited-equity co- spouses died. Nowadays, a single elderly ops—have income limits, the unit is likely resident could be joined by a child moving to go to someone who wouldn’t otherwise back or a care-giver living part time in the be able to afford to own an apartment in unit. Thinking about how the residential units Chelsea. The challenge for NORCs is to might be retrofitted or adapted to flexibly retain their elderly population, since they risk accommodate these changes is a yet to be losing their NORC status (and hence their fully investigated design opportunity. funding), once they go below 50 percent senior. As very few people ever leave limited- JC equity co-ops, this is less a problem for them; Your work has tended toward what however, it is a major concern for places that one might call “everyday urbanism”—and have gone market. along with it, tended toward participatory, bottom-up approaches. What would you say JC to someone critical of participation—say, Do you have any kind of design agenda Markus Miessen (who is also in this issue)— or projective thoughts on how to approach or some skeptical as to whether things are as the NORC? Or is this purely an incidence of rosy as the images you present? seeing something interesting and wanting to give it attention? IP We’re working on a book called The socio— IP Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion: it’s far from NORCs help the elderly age in place, rosy. The book is a sort of dictionary of 101 and thus help maintain the city’s generational “weapons” that segregate and integrate. diversity, which we also think is a good What’s depressing is how much easier it thing. But NORC funding has decreased has been to identify the former. The amount significantly in recent years. So on the one of creativity that our architects, planners, hand, we see our work as advocates, where policy-makers, developers, real estate we make the case for NORCs by using brokers, and neighborhood associations easy-to-understand storytelling techniques. have put into keeping “undesirables” out Visualizing the history of NORCs and of communities that have good schools, illustrating the values they bring to both good jobs, escalating property values, their residents and the city at large is a clean air, and all the other things that we design project itself and is definitely part all want and deserve equal access to, is of our agenda. nothing short of astonishing. The result is Of course, there are plenty of physical metropolitan areas with twenty-year life design opportunities, ranging from expectancy differences between the poorest, increasing accessibility to developing more blackest neighborhoods and the wealthiest, flexible unit arrangements. With regards whitest neighborhoods. The result is cities to accessibility: a lot of NORCs and a lot of whose high school graduation rates are 40 the neighborhoods where you find NORCs percent lower than those of the suburbs that have some work to do here. It could be surround them. as simple as replacing stairs with ramps We do believe in bottom-up, (stairs tend to be a problem in some of participatory approaches, but obviously, the older NORCs, such as Parkchester), such approaches aren’t all that is needed to redesigning intersections to slow down address some of the larger problems that we cars, or increasing the time a senior has to face. To make our metropolitan areas more

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equitable, we’re not averse to big, top-down, non-participatory policies. Wealthy, white suburban communities like the ones you find in Westchester County, NY aren’t going to participate in “affirmatively furthering” fair housing, not without the threat of penalty. That is to say, there’s a time and a place to be rosy, and a time and a place to be mad as hell. thresholds 40

Images, drawings and text courtesy Interboro Partners.

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Interboro Partners is a New York City-based architecture, planning, and research firm. Interboro has won many awards for its innovative projects, including the MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program, the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices and Young Architects Awards, and the New Practices Award from the AIA New York Chapter. Interboro’s forthcoming book The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion will be published by Actar in 2012. Interboro is Tobias Armborst, Daniel D’Oca, and Georgeen Theodore.

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