West side story

Insane real estate demands that resulted from neighborhood development – in which developers “discover” areas to market for wealthier clients, areas usually made beautiful by the poor artists and gay residents who lived there years before – have forced Manhattan to assume the persona of a homogonous suburban strip mall. Bank chains, restaurant chains, luxury condominium chains, chain gangs of hipsters – it’s all lookin’ the same. This is an unfortunate consequence of the real estate market, considering it is the city’s diversity and cultural integration that are the very qualities that make it great.

When did this pattern start? The answer is, ever since the city was created. However, in the American context, there is one event in particular worth mentioning. It was the rise-to-power of Robert Moses. Moses’ grand plans changed New York City shorelines and skylines, redesigned transportation routes that subsequently altered the look of the outer-borough regions, and lay the ground-work for the way New York looks and feels today.

Moses developed an identity as a merciless developer. According to Mandi Isaacs Jackson, writer and researcher on urban history and social movements, Moses was “notoriously fond of bulldozers and ever anxious to clear away ‘slums’ and to replace them with new buildings. Frequently remarking that you cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, he felt confident he was doing the right thing as he ran roughshod over neighborhoods that many residents felt were viable, safe, affordable and friendly.” Despite this image, Moses was seen as a sort of savior of the ailing city in government.

Let’s look at an example. Moses’ biggest slum clearance project in New York was the construction of Lincoln Center. Pre-Lincoln Center construction, the area was packed with tenements, most of which were in need of serious repair. Those living in the tenements: Puerto Ricans, mostly. These were the people who are most famously depicted as the Sharks in West Side Story. But there was also the Broadway theatre crowd, the middle class Jewish and white neighbors, and the super wealthy Central Park crowd. My grandfather served them all when he owned a supermarket in the neighborhood.

Post-Lincoln Center construction, they all left (all but the super-wealthy crowd and some of the middle class residents). No one knows the correct number of people displaced by the project, but Robert Caro estimates half a million. The result was devastating, but few people today know the history. Why? Because Lincoln Center is a success.

Among all the other city projects in the fifties through the eighties, the construction of Lincoln Center is a particularly important example because today, it is beloved, even by me. Enjoyed by students and patrons who attend Fordham University, Julliard, The New York City Ballet and Opera, or who visit the Metropolitan Opera, the center is a gem.

The point, then, is not solely to condemn what is built or torn down as a result of a development project, but how it is done so. Had the site been built in a less congested and under used area, or had it been dispersed over a few blocks, rather than clumped together into five huge superblocks, or had better and affordable housing been built alongside the project in order to accommodate the displaced people, thousands could have stayed in their neighborhood, and my grandfather might have kept his business. The center’s surrounding streets might have been saved from the perverse chains it is now forced to support.

Regardless of how New Yorkers feel about Lincoln Center today, low-income Puerto Rican New Yorkers should not have fallen casualty as a consequence of its construction. There is always another way. That’s true for the many development projects in New York City today. Neighborhoods should change, but change does not have to result in the obliteration of the old, or the affordable, or the non-white. What we need is better urban planning.