URBAN REVIEW Dystopian Urbanism Fall 2020/Winter 2021 Urban ReviewHunter | Hunter College | Fall 2020/Winter 2021College i URBAN REVIEW FALL 2020/WINTER 2021 DYSTOPIAN URBANISM Editor in Chief: Associate Editor: Kevin Ritter Rachel Bondra Writers: Article Editors: Charles Christonikos Salome Gvinianidze Francesca Fernandez-Bruce Helen Skirchak Stephen Hanrahan Kevin Ritter Jenn Hendricks Rachel Bondra Sus Labowitz Tess Guttières Max Marinoff Ben Foster Aleksander Miletic Sean Sonneman Craig Notte KC Alvey Kathleen Ross Gabriel Lefferts Ben West-Weyner Jess Greenspan Lily Zaballos Michael Horwitz Faculty Advisor: Interviewers: Matt Lasner Rachel Bondra Kevin Ritter Madeline Schoenfeld Urban Review | Hunter College | Fall 2020/Winter 2021 ii TABLE OF CONTENTS EDITORIAL STATEMENT: "Things Are Bad" by Kevin Ritter p. 4 PLANNING THE DYSTOPIAN CITY by Kathleen Ross p. 6 SECTION ONE: DYSTOPIA & POWER DATA AS REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT by Sus Labowitz p.13 THE PANOPTIC GAZE: Can the U.S. Constitution Prevent Unlawful Searches and Seizures in Smart Cities? by Craig Notte p. 18 NYPD: POLICING UNCHECKED AND UNBOUND The Silver Bullet We Must Retire by Ben West-Weyner p. 24 THE COMPLIANCE SANDWICH by Max Marinoff p. 32 Urban Review | Hunter College | Fall 2020/Winter 2021 1 SECTION TWO: ECOLOGICAL DYSTOPIAS LEFT IN THE DUST: Privatizing Cities by Jenn Hendricks p. 39 THE CASE FOR THE GOWANUS CANAL by Alek Miletic p. 44 NUCLEAR DOUBLE-THINK: The Dangerous Decision to Close Indian Point Energy Center (IPEC) by Charles Christonikos p. 51 SECTION THREE: RESILIENCE / REFUSING DYSTOPIA FROM HOT LUNCH TO GRAB AND GO: Lessons in Resiliency During the COVID-19 Pandemic by Lily Zaballos p. 60 ON THE EVE OF EVICTION: Looking for Lessons in a Koch-Era Crisis by Francesca Fernandez-Bruce p.67 AN INTERVIEW WITH MEHDI HERIS by Rachel Bondra and Madeline Schoenfeld p. 73 AN INTERVIEW WITH JIMMIE WOODY by Kevin Ritter p. 78 SOLIDARITY, NOT CHARITY: Mutual Aid Efforts During COVID-19 by Stephen Hanrahan p. 83 CONTRIBUTOR BIOS p. 89 Urban Review | Hunter College | Fall 2020/Winter 2021 2 DYSTOPIAN URBANISM Photo by Kevin Ritter Urban Review | Hunter College | Fall 2020/Winter 2021 3 EDITORIAL STATEMENT "Things Are Bad" The past year has been rough, and things are only getting Yet cities also took steps to reckon with the nation’s long tougher. As policy makers and planners, we have seen history of white supremacy this year. Nationwide protests, dozens of massive shifts that promise to upend cities as following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, we know them. highlighted not just individual extrajudicial murders at the hands of police officers, but also the ways that policing, During the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic spread as an institution, is a historically and currently racist through the country like wildfire—not to mention, of course, construction. While Black Lives Matter protests endured actual wildfires ravaged large swathes of the West Coast. heavy and militarized police retaliation throughout the Certain segments of the population have fled cities in summer months, law enforcement’s response to the search of less dense neighborhoods and fresh air; fleeing overwhelmingly white crowd that stormed the Capitol residents took their incomes with them. Many people also Building on January 6, 2021 was disappointing. Police found themselves without work due to the pandemic; the officers took selfies with insurrectionists; some law Federal Reserve recently reported that twenty percent of enforcement personnel opened the gates to let the mob the nation’s lowest-paid workers are now unemployed. in; many off-duty police officers were in the crowd, even While eviction moratoriums have been extended in many flashing their badges to Capitol Police as they stormed the parts of the country, a new epidemic of housing insecurity building. Law enforcement’s racist double standards were will surely follow as soon as the moratoriums are lifted on full display. and renters are unable to pay back-rent. As many workers find themselves unemployed or working from home, and The rise of tech corporations has opportunistically individuals follow public health advice to avoid crowds, accelerated during a time of crisis. Amazon’s foothold has only expanded this year as people stay at home and order by Kevin Ritter products online; the tech giant provides backbreaking jobs, but at low hourly wages and without benefits. After the recent failed coup attempt, tech corporations tried public transit ridership has plummeted. Record-low to curb future right-wing violence by deactivating the ridership prompts service cuts as city and state officials accounts of conspiracy theorists and Donald Trump, and threaten fare hikes, the burden of which will almost eliminating rightwing social media platform, Parler, from certainly be carried by low-income essential workers. As Google and Apple’s app stores, and by canceling its cities face declining tax revenues, budget crises loom at contract with Amazon Web Services. While such decisions the same moment that their residents are in dire need of will hopefully curb would-be insurrectionists in the short social services. Federal aid to cities and individuals has term, the move signals alarm for the future. As large tech been sporadic and inadequate. This situation has forced corporations further consolidate their power, they subject cities and states into an untenable situation—reopening the digital public sphere to opaque, often algorithmic segments of the economy in order to mitigate the massive policies designed, not by lawmakers accountable to financial hardships the pandemic has wrought also has the people, but by tech executives beholden to their the effect of increasing infection and death rates from the shareholders. virus. Urban Review | Hunter College | Fall 2020/Winter 2021 4 Essentially, things are bad. The world feels dystopian—even apprehension about nuclear power than with any coherent more so now than when the Urban Review released a call green energy policy. for pitches for a themed issue titled “Dystopian Urbanism.” Of course, the dystopia we find ourselves in now (of The final set of articles looks at strategies that mitigate or racist policing, a massive housing crisis exacerbated by build a way out of dystopia. Lily Zaballos looks to New a pandemic in which Black and Latinx communities see York City schools’ quick pivot to providing grab-and- devastatingly worse health outcomes, and right-wing go meals during the pandemic as a lesson in resiliency white supremacists keen on extrajudicial violence) is and responsiveness for urban food systems generally. not necessarily a new one. Our current dystopia has its Francesca Fernandez-Bruce draws on the Koch era’s historical roots in the white supremacy that is impossible homelessness crisis to understand the escalating housing to untangle from the United States’ founding. crisis during the pandemic and provides hope for a future with housing for all. An interview with new UPP professor In this issue of the Urban Review, contributors take up the Mehdi Heris posits the power of data analysis as a tool question of “dystopia,” and specifically its implications for equitable planning and policy. An interview with in urban policy and planning. Kathleen Ross opens the Cleveland-based artist, Jimmie Woody, highlights his issue in an essay advocating for a dystopian imaginary as Woody Arts Incubator Project, which aims to address some a tool to puncture the veil of capitalist realism, the feeling of the cultural inequities in the Cleveland region. Finally, that there is no way out of the capitalist hellscape we did Stephen Hanrahan engages with mutual aid efforts not ask to live in but in which we find ourselves living, during the pandemic, looking at the ways that community nonetheless. solidarity can fight against and mitigate the state’s failures. The first set of articles takes up the question of power in This issue takes up “dystopia” not from a place of fatalistic the urban sphere. Sus Labowitz and Craig Notte, in their nihilism, but from a stance that only through seeing and essays, take up the ways that smart cities may present articulating the problem can we begin to find our way out. significant privacy issues as tech corporations and the state begin to wield instrumentarian power across public urban space through smart infrastructure that harvests both cell phone and biometric data. Ben West-Weyner explores the “untenable” police occupation of New York City, and the department’s extensive recent history of racist violence. Max Marinoff examines the “compliance sandwich,” the pandemic-initiated executive order that bars must sell food alongside alcoholic beverage orders; the order that does little to actually slow the spread of COVID-19, merely acting as a small part of an ineffective patchwork of legislation. Next, authors take up ecological dystopias. Jenn Hendricks looks at new developments in Nigeria and Egypt that proclaim themselves as “green cities,” but in reality are developments designed for the mega-rich that deepen local inequality. Alek Miletic examines the Gowanus Canal, a polluted Superfund site; its forthcoming rezoning may seriously threaten the remediation efforts that have been made to clean up the Canal. Charles Christonikos, in his essay, explores the closing of the Indian Point Energy Center, a nuclear power plant, and the ways that its shuttering is far more tied up with societal Urban Review | Hunter College | Fall 2020/Winter 2021 5 PLANNING THE DYSTOPIAN CITY In his novel The City & the City, urban fantasy writer Thus, the worker consents to her exploitation by viewing it China Miéville depicts two distinct cities that exist simulta- as inevitable. neously in the same location.1 Citizens of each city must, at Acknowledging the dystopian streaks in con- all times, carefully ignore the existence of the other, a skill temporary society—and particularly in the contemporary perfected from an early age.