It’s hard to imagine New York City without the packed subway cars, long lines, and overwhelming tourist crowds that felt essential to daily life. Once the fear of the COVID-19 pandemic has waned, the city, like others around the world, will become clouded and fundamentally altered even after economic prosperity has been restored. In what feels like a revolving door discussion, except now perhaps asked with a sense of urgency, what do we want cities to be like in the years to come?
How New York City, the first COVID-19 epicenter in the United States, will rebound to a sense of stability and normalcy, is a question that financial, political, institutional, and cultural leaders are still pondering. It’s a delicate balance of tip-toeing the line for economic stimulation while also controlling the spread of the virus, but as businesses have shuttered, tenants struggle to pay their rent, and tourism is suppressed to a minimum, there is still much uncertainty about what life in New York City will look like in the future.
The COVID-19 pandemic is also paired with the social unrest driven by the Black Lives Matter movement and has exposed many harsh realities about inequality in all aspects of life that are only exacerbated by the impacts of the built environment. As “the city that never sleeps” continues into its fifth month of a sudden slumber, maybe it’s time to take a step back and examine the economic injustices, gerrymandered housing policies, and lack of healthy public spaces that have drawn thick lines throughout New York City- separating the healthy from the ill, the super-wealthy from those facing severe financial hardships, and those who the societal systems benefit from those that it punishes. If this forced pause gives us anything, it’s the opportunity to renew the city and instill better policies to create a more equitable future for all of its inhabitants.
After the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, the financial collapse in 2008, and Hurricane Sandy in 2012, there was talk that New York City would never be the same. While that projection did alter our daily lives, with enhanced security measures at airports and more advocacy for climate change and waterfront remediation, this time feels like New York City will truly emerge with a much different spirit- but for the better.
It’s no surprise that the current state of the city is revealing the relationships between public health, social injustice, and urban planning policies that have created the perfect storm for both disaster, but also an opportunity for change. Perhaps the origins of this can be pointed back to the 1930s when the Federal Housing Administration was created to insure mortgages and also began the controversial practice of redlining. If the FHA deemed a particular neighborhood in the city to be too “chancy”, the banks wouldn’t lend there. They documented this by maps drawn up by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation who indicated green areas as “in demand”, which at the time meant that they were almost exclusively white. The neighborhoods where minorities lived were considered ineligible for FHA backing and were colored in as red- coining the term redlining later in the 1960s.
Redlining is no longer enforced by the government, but many of these neighborhoods still have some of the highest poverty rates although New York City is blanketed with an image of wealth and venture capitalist-backed development. On the other hand, many of these formerly “high risk” neighborhoods are rapidly gentrifying creating one of the largest gaps between the rich and the poor in the country. This has pushed minorities farther out of the city and into areas with less accessible healthcare, underfunded school districts, food deserts, and where the tide of New York City’s money doesn't quite reach. This impact is infamously demonstrated in Brooklyn, where historic brownstone homes suddenly became multi-million-dollar townhouses. As the size of New York’s economy and real estate runs in parallel to the whim of the markets, the income levels of a majority of New Yorkers continue down a path of disconnect.
Despite all of this, social and political grassroots efforts by the city are working to pull these neighborhoods out of the crisis by rethinking what it means to reinvest in communities and preserve affordability. There’s also a push towards a blend of incomes in neighborhoods that also feature vibrant public spaces, community centers with adequate access to healthcare, and opportunities for commercial businesses to flourish. With the city on a complete pause and the harsh realities of the inefficiencies and failures of plans that have been put in place, it’s time to reflect on the lessons learned from this pandemic and our social inequalities, starting with the color-coded maps that once defined who should live where and why. If redlining truly is the root of the problem, then now is the chance to reconsider and erase the way that New York City was once planned to create a more equitable future for all.
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