FALL 2018 Page 1 HUNTER COLLEGE Urban Review FALL 2018 Page 2 URBAN REVIEW URBAN REVIEW A magazine of the Hunter College Letter from the Editors Department of Urban Affairs & Planning The way planners talk about the urban environment is often limited by the framing of a specific scale of reference. When discussing big ideas, it’s easy to propose big plans with a unitary solution to complex problems whose effects don’t appear at the regional level. And yet, a FALL 2018 focus on only the local can replace any real systematic critique. We STAFF often talk about climate change as a global issue, abstracted from the localized impacts that sea level rise can have on a specific community. Transportation planning discourse is often framed around highway Editors-in-chief Priya Mulgaonkar systems or train networks, without much thought into localized dis- Michael Nicholas placement. Layout & Design Editors The articles in this issue collectively deconstruct the scales at which Priya Mulgaonkar planners can make judgements. Operating from a looser frame of ref- Carly Wine erence allows us to deal with pressing issues more holistically. We see Carlos Mandeville new forms of engaging in and with public streets, from street dance as protest to reimagining the Central Business District of Manhattan as Content Editors accessible to all – and both articles push us as planners to rethink the Aly Hassell function and form of public space in the context of political and social Victoria Garvey struggle. We explore a specific community garden not just as a com- Peer Reviewers munity hub, but also as a place of resistance that reclaims underuti- Aly Hassell lized private property for the public good and forces us to consider the Victoria Garvey true value of an urban commons. Carlos Mandeville Arielle Lawson Planners must continue to question these tendencies of simplification built into the discipline of urbanism. As one of the most powerful Photographer corporations in history threatens to claim 8.1 million square feet in Carly Wine Long Island City, our critique can’t be limited to the results of neigh- borhood studies. Our technical abilities as planners must confront the systems that shape the city, and we must go beyond simply recording urban change in GIS or on a zoning map. URBAN REVIEW Priya Mulgaonkar & Michael Nicholas hunterurbanreview@ Editors-in-chief gmail.com 695 Park Avenue West Building 1611 New York, NY 10065 P: 212-772-5518 F: 212-772-5593 FALL 2018 Page 3 Letter from the Editors Faculty Q&A with Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler 4 by Priya Mulgaonkar Taking Back the Streets: A Universally Designed 6 Manhattan Central Business District by Victoria Garvey Bushwick City Farm: Growing an Urban Commons 10 by Arielle Lawson Emergency Exit: A Photo Essay 14 by Andy Lawson Art for Justice: Street Dance Activism, Social Protest, 16 and Public Space CONTENTS by Brenn Hemmings Música Ligera: Rock, Memory, & Urban Space in 20 Post-Dictatorship Buenos Aires by Carlos Mandeville Regional Climate Planning: Market Solutions 25 or the People? by Michael Nicholas Off the Grid: Neighborhood-scale Resilient Power 28 for All New Yorkers TABLE OF TABLE by Priya Mulgaonkar Looking Back: Freeway Development and 32 Displacement in East Los Angeles by Lexie Korol Page 4 URBAN REVIEW Faculty Q&A with Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler INTERVIEW BY PRIYA MULGAONKAR I’d love to hear more about your career trajectory. What drove you to expand upon your work as a practicing physician to advocate for broader health policy changes? I practice primary care internal medicine very actively and still do part-time primary care in the South Bronx. These days, I mostly focus on policy, because I think like many physicians, I find that the frankly terrible health policy in the US is a major problem. We still have $30 million people with no health insurance at all. This has a direct impact on my practice; when we see such patients, the care we can provide is often very limited. I’ve always practiced at “safety-net institutions”, which can provide very basic care. For many of our low-income patients who can’t Dr. Stephanie “Steffie” Woolhandler was recently named a Distinguished Professor of Public Health afford proper insurance, it is very at Hunter, where she co-teaches a graduate course difficult to get specialty care, or on health policy. Prior to joining Hunter’s faculty, even to pay for the basic care we Dr. Woolhandler served as faculty of the Harvard are providing since it’s frequently Medical School. She also co-founded Physicians not free, and their health suffers as for a National Health Program and is among the a result. Even our patients who do nation’s leading experts on single-payer nonprofit have health insurance still cannot health insurance. Professor Woolander holds M.D. pay for the services not covered. If and M.PH. degrees from Louisiana State University, you ask them about it, they often and maintains a clinical practice in the Bronx. She say they didn’t take medication has authored 150 articles and has collaborated with because they can’t afford it, or Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and they refuse to come in for follow other leaders to develop bold policy proposals for up appointments because they are the national health system. worried about the costs. FALL 2018 Page 5 For any physicians interested in Many of the problems persist. The population health, there are two Affordable Care Act (ACA) did At the State level, we see the same approaches: 1) provide health care reduce the number of uninsured, opponents but also face some directly, and 2) push for policies that but again, we still have 30 million regulatory barriers. State’s need can ensure people have access to people uninsured well into ACA’s a set of federal waivers, some of healthcare. implementation. This policy which can only be granted by has to be understood against US Congress, and some by the What are some of the issues the background of the general Executive branch. We aren’t able to covered in your health policy deterioration of health care in the just have state-level single-payer, but course this semester? US. I’ve done a fair amount of instead, we have to be working at work on medical bankruptcy with the national level. I think we need We cover a lot of payment policy. now-Senator Elizabeth Warren – to be moving on parallel tracks. Just We also cover NYC healthcare, with medical bills are a major cause of because there are barriers, doesn’t a focus on health and healthcare bankruptcy and impoverishment. mean we shouldn’t fight for it. in different neighborhoods, as The ways that health and poverty well the role of large academic are linked – these are the kind of Finally, what advice would health providers and role in health issues that I’ve been concerned with you offer current policy and inequality in NYC. I’ve never taught in my career. planning students at Hunter? urban studies students before, and have enjoyed the difference in What are the major barriers My main advice is that you need perspective that I can learn from. to advancing a single-payer to believe that things can change. There are very specific topics health system in the US? Do One advantage of being my age, related to urban studies and health, you see any hope for a State- you see a lot of change. I went to especially around environmental level single-payer plan here in segregated schools as a kid. Some health – we’re covering water issues New York? medical schools in the US as late in cities, not just Flint and pollution, as 1963, had never admitted a but also general issues in providing The two major barriers in the US single black student. Before 1966, clean water and air in urban are 1) a private health insurance we had no Medicare or Medicaid, environments. We’re also covering industry that is completely and half of our elderly population the opioid crisis and responses. opposed to single-payer, and 2) had no health insurance. You have “Big Pharma,” which has been to believe it is possible, and part of a major opponent of national your job as a professional and as a You helped found Physicians health insurance. Both groups citizen, to make it happen. Change for a National Health Program have lobbied against it with tons of is never easy, or fast, but it does in 1986. In your 30+ years money. The main reason for their happen. ◊ of working for a single- opposition is that in countries with payer health system, how nationalized health insurance, the has medical care in the US national health program is able to declined or improved? engage in hard bargaining that can dramatically bring down prices in medication and services. Page 6 URBAN REVIEW Taking Back the Streets: A Universally Designed Manhattan Central Business District BY VICTORIA GARVEY In the 1920s, public streets in American cities were not planned for automobiles.1 Despite the efforts of citizens and advo- cacy groups to fight back against the idea of dangerous, speeding vehicles cutting through their walkways, planners and transportation engineers rebuilt streets to accommodate personal cars through the first half of the 20th century and be- yond,2 changing the landscape of the city and creating a ripple effect that would influence land use, pollution, sprawl and global planning practices3 in other countries.4 If certain historical, constructivist approaches reveal that citizens largely did not want public streets taken away from them, how did it happen?5 This analysis reveals that the dearth of transportation options (among other factors) slowly motivated individuals to use the automobile as their primary mode of transportation.