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Archaeology in New York City

publicagion of the archaeological institute of america

Tags: resources, nyc, list, archa, archaeology, architecture, museums, organization on 2008-06-04 and saved by2 people -All Annotations (0) -About

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Rollback Set in Schooling of The Gifted - May 28, 2008 - The New York Sun

The city Department of Education is rolling back part of an ambitious plan to expand its identification of gifted and talented children by giving all kindergartners a screening test.

Tags: nycdoe, policy, reformers, nyc, schools on 2008-05-30 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Sharon Zukin - Democracy divided: Public space in New York City (11/08/2006) | Re-public : re-imagining democracy - english version

Examining the politics around two of New York’s prominent public spaces, the World Trade Center and Union Square Park, Sharon Zukin traces two faces of the American body politic co-existing in conflict. These diverse spaces suggest that the contemporary embodiment of democracy is truly divided.

Tags: urban, public-space, geography, cartography, nyc, policy on 2008-05-21 -All Annotations (0) -About

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2blowhards.com: Gentrification: Good or Evil?

Tags: gentrification, jacobs, nyc, urban, sociology, culture on 2008-05-19 -All Annotations (0) -About

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The term "gentrification" was coined in 1964 by a left-wing British sociologist named Ruth Glass
The word "gentrification" first appeared in the New York Times in 1972--in reference to London.
Little things such as the use of quotation marks can be important social barometers. 1978, then, is the year in which the Times decided gentrification was an established word.
The Jacobseans (Jacobites?) who would enlist her in the anti-gentrification crusade say that she advocated "unslumming," which is quite different from gentrification.
The "Chicago School" wrote of an "urban ecology" based on the "upward and outward" movement of urban populations in U.S. cities. That is, as people moved "upward"--i.e. became financially better off--they moved "outward" from urban centers.
"doubling back"
The principal upshot of urban renewal and other government programs was to place a severe geographical limitation upon the potentially unslummable parts of cities, and in so doing virtually to guarantee market distortions as "spontaneous unslumming" quickly hypertrophied into what we all now call gentrification.
Gentrification, she says, can be--perhaps must be--a component of unslumming; it must not be the end result of unslumming.
As a philosophical matter, the argument against gentrification soon foundered on the shoals of logic. If it were morally unacceptable for the better-off to revive devalued city property and live in it, then where should they be allowed to live? A process of elimination left either a) the neighborhoods already occupied, b) the suburbs, or c) the rural hinterlands. Under this logic, the number of middle-class city dwellers would be forever fixed at the current level.
Does gentrification force poor people from their neighborhoods?
But Lance Freeman, who teaches urban planning at Columbia, conducted a major study recently. His findings surprised him. The data, he says, tells us that the poor on average actually stay in their homes for a longer period of time in gentrifying neighborhoods than they do in non-gentrifying neighborhoods, even though their rents go up in gentrifying neighborhoods.
But ability to pay is only one factor in residential location, even among the poor.
Gentrification actually increases neighborhood stability, including among the poor.
Third. If general trend now seems to be the opposite to what Chicago school noticed, namely - "upward and in", in other words, less expensive real estate tends to be located farther and farther away from city blocks, what urban construction/utilization policies should follow?
the question of whether stability is, in itself, a positive value.
In fact, the middle class was squeezed out of neighborhood after neighborhood after World War II. They were squeezed out by banks unwilling to make loans for house repairs or house purchases; by builders of expressways and housing projects; and by crime. They were also "pulled" rather than pushed, by federally guaranteed home loans, etc., and also, to be honest, by many Americans' simple preference for new homes in uncrowded neighborhoods in places where one got to spend maximal amounts of time in the cozy confines of one's private automobile. Anyway, it was called "white flight" in the 1960s, and it constituted a very large part of what we used to call the "urban crisis."
Now that some of the middle class that got pushed and pulled from cities has begun filtering back (and it is still a statistical blip, by the way, as vastly greater numbers of middle-class whites opt for exurbia rather than the inner city), some people are finding all sorts of things wrong with it.
One of the best studies is a book called "Scarcity by Design" by Peter Salins, a highly respected real-estate economist who is now the provost of SUNY. It was published in 1993. Salins maintains that a mix of government programs intended to aid both landlords and tenants led to radical misallocations of housing resources and the general withdrawal of rental housing developers from the New York market.
I wonder if the article you refer to on neighborhood turn-over was about or otherwise made reference to Richard Florida, who is very hot in some circles these days as an urban-development guru whose studies indicate that cities should focus their resources on attracting well-educated, young, often transient workforces that consume lots of Starbucks coffee. He thinks stability is highly overvalued.
is that a successful neighborhood generally needs a VARIETY of people to be truly successful over time.
But Jacobs also sees hyper-gentrification as bad for the long-term health of city neighborhoods (and the larger city as a whole) because it is yet another manifestation of stultifying -- and, ultimately, dysfunctional -- uniformity.
In other words, Jacobs, who seems to me to be an essentially up-beat optimistic person, appears to me to be saying, "Enlarge the pie (focus on creating MORE successful urban neighborhoods), don't fight over the divying up of a static or shrinking pie (a viewpoint which presupposes cities that are inevitably static or shrinking).
I see gentrification as both a result of regional transport failures and changing tastes.
Is there any real reason to support rent control? The fear always seems to be that you'd wind up with a desirable center that only the rich could afford, and that poor people would wind up with four-hour commutes to jobs cleaning the apartments of the midtown rich. Is there any reason to think that that would actually be the result?

World Policy Institute - Links

institute and journal of the New School linking to publications, research organizations, educational institutions, media, etc concerned with reforming world policy

Tags: globalization, nyc, academia, journalism, research, resources, links on 2008-05-12 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Demos - A Network for Ideas & Action - About Demos

Demos works with advocates and policymakers around the country in pursuit of four overarching goals: a more equitable economy; a vibrant and inclusive democracy; an empowered public sector that works for the common good; and responsible U.S. engagement in an interdependent world.

Tags: nonprofit, organization, nyc, policy, urban, globalization, economics on 2008-05-12 and saved by2 people -All Annotations (0) -About