A Tale of Two Globals: Pupusas and IKEA in Red Hook

Naked City ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Zukin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
Free Water ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
East River ◽  
Lower Manhattan ◽  
Big Box ◽  
Red Hook ◽  
The City ◽  
The Town

It’s a Saturday afternoon in mid-July and the city is swooning in 96-degree heat and fearsome humidity. You think it will be cooler out on the water than in the subway, so you line up at the Wall Street pier in Lower Manhattan to take the free water taxi across the East River to Red Hook, on the Brooklyn waterfront. The ride is sponsored by IKEA, the Swedish big-box chain that opened its first New York City outpost in Red Hook a few weeks earlier. Because the neighborhood is notoriously difficult to reach on public transportation and IKEA is hoping to lure shoppers whose apartments are starved for Scandinavian modern couches but who don’t own cars, the store has decided to sponsor water taxis from Manhattan. They have a system to discourage free riders from Brooklyn. You get your hand stamped before you walk onto the ferry so the taxi company’s employees, on IKEA’s instructions, can refuse to carry any passenger on the return trip who didn’t come to Brooklyn to make a purchase. Sitting on the top deck of the ferry, you’re caught up in an air of joyful anticipation. The small boat is full, with more than thirty passengers, some of them young children and their parents, all smiling and laughing from the unusual pleasure of being out on the water on a sunny afternoon, and from the pleasure of a shopping trip as well. The kids snap photos with cell phone cameras, everyone admires the Statue of Liberty on the other side of the harbor, and a few passengers point out the artificial waterfalls designed by the Scandinavian artist Olafur Eliasson that have been installed on the river for the summer as a public art project. Though the ride takes less than ten minutes, it’s the kind of entertainment New Yorkers love: a chance to act like tourists on the town.

The Billionaire’s Ambitions

Last Subway ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 49-72
Author(s):  
Philip Mark Plotch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
York City ◽  
Transportation Network ◽  
East Side ◽  
Legislative Session ◽  
Transportation Agencies ◽  
The City ◽  
Grand Vision

This chapter assesses the roles played by New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and New York City mayor John Lindsay, as well as William Ronan, in transforming the transportation system. Ronan, Rockefeller, and Lindsay all realized that improving public transportation was critical to strengthening the economy of the city and the region. They were also well aware of the benefits of a Second Avenue subway, since all three of them lived on the Upper East Side. After Lindsay failed to reorganize the transportation agencies, Rockefeller and Ronan developed their own grand vision for the region's transportation network, and in December of 1966, Ronan stepped down from his post as secretary to begin implementing their plan. At the beginning of the state's 1967 legislative session, Rockefeller and Ronan announced their two-pronged approach. First, they proposed integrating the New York City Transit Authority and the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA) into the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Authority (MCTA). In addition, Rockefeller and Ronan would seek voter approval to borrow $2.5 billion that would be dedicated for roadway and public transportation improvements across the state. In 1967, the governor and Ronan obtained the support they needed to transform the transportation network, a feat that Lindsay had not been able to accomplish.

Case Studies

2019 ◽  
pp. 38-68
Author(s):  
Rebecca Yamin ◽  
Donna J. Seifert
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
York City ◽  
High Class ◽  
Lower Manhattan ◽  
The City

This chapter focuses on two case studies, reviewing in detail the findings of large urban projects that encountered brothel sites. The New York City project addresses the history and archaeology of a brothel in the Five Points neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. The discussion contrasts the reputation of the residents with the evidence revealed by the artifact assemblages. The discussion of Washington, D.C. parlor houses addresses the remarkable assemblage of high-class furnishings and possessions and expensive foods enjoyed in the houses in the heart of the city—houses that served the men of government and business in the nation’s capital.

An Opportunity for E-Democracy in Rebuilding Lower Manhattan

2011 ◽  
pp. 751-758
Author(s):  
Claudia G. Green ◽  
Suzanne K. Murrmann
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Internet Technology ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Citizen Satisfaction ◽  
Lower Manhattan ◽  
Online Format ◽  
Use Of Internet ◽  
The City

Following the events of September 11, 2001 (9-11), the Civic Alliance to Rebuild Downtown New York established a forum for the purposes of gathering citizen opinions on the nature of the rebuilding of New York City’s Lower Manhattan area. Citizens gave their opinions on the development of space for a memorial, performing arts spaces, museums, restaurants, hotels, residences and businesses. This effort was named “Listening to the City.” Civic Alliance organized two types of citizen opinion-gathering strategies: face-to-face focus groups and online dialog focus groups (www.listeningtothecity.org). The purpose of this article is to assess citizen satisfaction with veness of the online format of citizen involvement in making decisions regarding the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan following the attacks of 9-11. The results contribute to our understanding of the use of Internet technology in gathering citizen opinions in urban development and planning.

Back to Work

2018 ◽  
pp. 213-224
Author(s):  
Joseph R. Fitzgerald
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Young People ◽  
First Century ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Student Activists ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Not For Profit ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The City

The final chapter briefly touches on Richardson’s second divorce but focuses on her difficulties finding and keeping employment. After holding a series of jobs in various corporate and not-for-profit agencies, Richardson eventually earned a permanent civil service position with the City of New York, where she worked until the twenty-first century. In one way or another, all her jobs involved some kind of social justice. Over the last five decades, Richardson has paid close attention to social change movements, including Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, and this chapter discusses her thoughts about them, particularly her view that young people have the capability and vision to lead the nation to greater freedom, just as young people did in the 1960s. She advises them to replicate the group-centered and member-driven model student activists employed in the early 1960s and to avoid becoming ideological.

The VC Office and the Concentration of Capital

2020 ◽  
pp. 104-139
Author(s):  
Sharon Zukin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Venture Capitalists ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Investment Funds ◽  
Bases Of Power ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Business Establishment ◽  
The City

Profiling New York–based venture capitalists and VC firms that have been established in the city since the early 2000s, the chapter examines their risky but privileged perch between Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Interviews with VCs are juxtaposed with the post–World War II history of venture capital as a distinctive form of investment and management. The VCs’ equally distinctive commitment to New York is then contrasted with the increasing geographical dispersal of their investment funds to other regions of the world. Meanwhile, the integration of some corporate and VC members of the tech “community” into New York’s business establishment suggests the formation of a local tech-financial elite, updating C. Wright Mills’s critique of the institutional bases of power.

An Opportunity for E-Democracy in Rebuilding Lower Manhattan

2011 ◽  
pp. 1306-1310 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. G. Green ◽  
S. K. Murrmann
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Internet Technology ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Citizen Satisfaction ◽  
Lower Manhattan ◽  
Online Format ◽  
Use Of Internet ◽  
The City

Following the events of September 11, 2001 (9-11), the Civic Alliance to Rebuild Downtown New York established a forum for the purposes of gathering citizen opinions on the nature of the rebuilding of New York City’s Lower Manhattan area. Citizens gave their opinions on the development of space for a memorial, performing arts spaces, museums, restaurants, hotels, residences and businesses. This effort was named “Listening to the City.” Civic Alliance organized two types of citizen opinion-gathering strategies: face-to-face focus groups and online dialog focus groups (www.listeningtothecity.org). The purpose of this article is to assess citizen satisfaction with veness of the online format of citizen involvement in making decisions regarding the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan following the attacks of 9-11. The results contribute to our understanding of the use of Internet technology in gathering citizen opinions in urban development and planning.

Saving the Subway

Last Subway ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 96-123
Author(s):  
Philip Mark Plotch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
York City ◽  
Operating Costs ◽  
Budget Cuts ◽  
The World ◽  
Downward Spiral ◽  
Subway System ◽  
The City

This chapter describes how, in the 1970s, the New York City subway system continued the downward spiral of fewer riders, budget cuts, and reduced service, which led to a loss of more riders, further budget cuts, and even worse service. Despite carrying fewer passengers, the transit system's operating costs kept increasing. David Yunich's successor at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), Harold Fisher, failed to address the MTA's slide, although he claimed that his programs were making public transportation travel more efficient, comfortable, and safe. By 1980, New York City's subway riders had more to complain about than ever before. New York City's subway system was not just unreliable, crowded, and filthy; it was also the most dangerous in the world. Moreover, the ongoing deterioration of the subways was threatening the city's economy. The chapter then focuses on the role of house developer Richard Ravitch as MTA chair. Ravitch had no interest in restarting the Second Avenue subway, and the project was a low priority for many of the communities it would serve. Instead, under Ravitch's leadership, the MTA took care of the abandoned tunnels below Second Avenue. More importantly for the future of the neighborhoods that the Second Avenue subway had been designed to serve, Ravitch rescued the existing subway system and the city along with it.

Nature, the City, and the Family Circle: Domesticity and the Urban Home in Henry George's Thought

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-335
Author(s):  
Lawrence M. Lipin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Single Tax ◽  
Urban Elites ◽  
The Family ◽  
Physical Consequences ◽  
Transportation Technologies ◽  
The City

This essay provides a reexamination of Henry George by focusing on how ideas about gender and nature informed one of the key objectives of the George movement: the transformation of the Gilded Age city into a metropolis of working-class suburbs tied together by single-tax funded public transportation. George was hardly a conservationist, and his understanding of nature was very different from those urban elites who sought to preserve nature. He simply did not accept the conservationist notion of depleted resources, which was inconsistent with his natural law belief in a boundless nature, a point that in turn grew out of the producerist emphasis of his political economy. Yet, George appreciated the need for a nonproductive relationship with nature, and he and his followers articulated this in terms of developing a healthier and more moral domestic environment. He applied such thinking to his political efforts in New York City during the mid-1880s, condemning the moral as well as the physical consequences of overcrowding that he blamed on land speculation. George enthusiastically embraced emerging transportation technologies as facilitators of mass residential decentralization. In so doing, he articulated a vision of a thoroughly reconfigured city that integrated nature into family life by enabling the development of a more spread-out metropolis.

From a Compact City into a Metropolis

Last Subway ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 10-26
Author(s):  
Philip Mark Plotch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Rapid Transit ◽  
Construction Costs ◽  
Transit System ◽  
Population Spread ◽  
Lower Manhattan ◽  
Subway System ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers

This chapter discusses how the creation of an urban transportation system transformed New York City. After private railroad companies built tracks for elevated railroads (Els) above the city's streets in the 1870s, the city's population spread out and grew rapidly from Lower Manhattan. To continue growing, however, the city had to build electric-powered rail lines, underground, that would travel faster and further and would accommodate even more people than the Els. Thus, the City of New York paid the construction costs for its first subway and in 1900 entered into a long-term lease with the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) to build and operate it. In 1913, the City of New York entered into contracts with two companies—the IRT and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT)—to build more lines in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. However, in the early twentieth century, New York's politicians took a shortsighted approach to the transit system. Instead of raising fares, they raised false expectations that New Yorkers could have high-quality subway service with low fares. The repercussions would last for generations. The chapter then looks at the establishment of the Office of Transit Construction Commissioner, the construction of a city-owned and city-operated “Independent” (IND) subway system, and the planning for a Second Avenue subway.

Living Local in the East Village

Naked City ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Zukin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Digital Cameras ◽  
Japanese Students ◽  
Italian American ◽  
Greenwich Village ◽  
East Village ◽  
Lower Manhattan ◽  
The City ◽  
Shoe Store

You’re waiting to meet the Japanese college students at 10 A.M. on the corner of Broadway and Astor Place. It’s a cool and drizzly day in June, passersby are buttoned up against the chill, and at this early hour downtown doesn’t have its usual buzz. When the students show up, you’re surprised to see they’re all young women, led by a middle-aged male professor who has some contacts in the city. They’re excited to be in New York, especially in Greenwich Village, and they whip out their digital cameras when you show them the colored tiles that Jim Power, the otherwise unemployed “Mosaic Man,” has spent the past twenty years gluing onto lampposts in a single-handed effort to beautify the neighborhood. They giggle in soft, high voices when you point out the Japanese pastry shop around the corner. “Beard Papa’s,” you hear them say to each other. They know the name of this chain from home. But they don’t know about local institutions such as Astor Place Hair Stylists, which occupies a basement in the building behind you, with its multiethnic team of eighty barbers who use their old-school expertise with the clippers to style the most eye-catching, gravity-defying Mohawks of the Lower Manhattan punk scene. In the 1980s young men used to make the pilgrimage to Astor’s barbers in the East Village from the suburbs and overseas, walking in with a shaggy mane and walking out with a towering crest, sprayed and lacquered and often dyed an unnatural black or red or green that went much better with their black leather jacket and metal studs. Opened in 1945 by an Italian American barber, the salon is still family owned and run. Now it shares the block with a branch of Cold Stone Creamery, the ice cream chain, Arche, the French shoe store chain, and a big Barnes & Noble bookstore. Neither do the Japanese students know that the Walgreen’s drugstore on the corner was until recently Astor Wines.

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