Draft:Gentrification of New York City



New York City has massively been expanding its urban fabric and population density, becoming the 16th largest city in the United States. A combination of neoliberal policies, complex geographic location, socio-economic disparities and inefficient strategies, have influenced the ongoing process of gentrification in the city. Multiple megaprojects combined with inadequate city-planning practices have resulted in circulation, community allocation, and equal access to resources being disrupted. As a result, middle- and low-income residents have been alienated and forced to adjust to a complicated and changing urban environment, either directly or indirectly.

History of New York City's development
The history of New York City starts with Manhattan Island, a Lenape settlement brought to Peter Minuit in 1624 during the Dutch colonization of the Americas in what would later become New Amsterdam. The British took New Amsterdam from the Dutch during 1664 and renamed it New York City. New York City's population got larger and more diversified during the next century: Immigrants from the Netherlands, England, France, and Germany, as well as indentured servants and African slaves, were among them.

By the time of the arrival of Europeans, the Lenape were cultivating fields of vegetation through the slash and burn technique. This extended the productive life of planted fields. They also harvested vast quantities of fish and shellfish from the bays of the area and, in southern New Jersey, harvested clams year-round. The success of these methods allowed the inhabitants to maintain a larger population than nomadic hunter-gatherers elsewhere could support. Scholars have estimated that at the time of European settlement, there may have been about 15,000 Lenape total in approximately 80 settlement sites around much of the New York City area, alone. In 1524 Lenape in canoes met Giovanni da Verrazzano, the first European explorer to enter New York Harbor, who called the area New Angoulême to honor his patron, King Francis I of France.

The development of New York City as the urban environment that we recognize today started to take shape with the arrival of the ...

Urban development
New York City has been an iconic example of its exclusive shops, flashy Broadway performances, and high-flying business tycoons, and it's a city that has long captivated people. Gentrification increases property values and changes the social and physical makeup of neighborhoods that were previously thought to be unappealing to newcomers.

Since the 2000s, rezonings motivated by both State and private investments, has created exciting areas of historic importance, entertainment opportunities and high quality residentials which cause the areas targeted for new development are disproportionately low-income communities of color, while areas protected by zoning are disproportionately white and middle- and upper-income residents.

Neo-liberal policies and renovations
The displacement of people in New York City started in the 1970s and 1980s with a significant increase in middle-income housing in the form of rehabilitated single-family dwellings, mostly in historic districts, driven by affluent, educated young professionals with "an increasing desire for the kinds of cultural and intellectual pursuits that are generally found only in the central cities—performing arts, museums, libraries, seminars, and etc." Normal succession appears to be accountable for changes in gentrifying districts in New York City, at least during the 1990s. The final section of the essay discusses the consequences of these findings for planning.

Housing regulation
In the wave of new policies in the 1990s the state stopped promoting public housing and allowed private institutions to lead the housing production.

Effects
The process of low-income displacement in New York City begins with an increase in rent; rent rises to the point that tenants can no longer afford to live in their apartments. Residents are forced to leave their homes in search of a more inexpensive location, yet this is a problem that affects many locations. Many persons who have been displaced face a serious dilemma: displacement can lead to homelessness. The constantly trends with increasing household income, which is compatible with gentrification hypotheses. When income growth is broken down by race, Blacks and Latinos either have no effect on gentrification or slow it down by 2010. These findings back up widespread claims that as gentrification spreads across the city, even middle-class Blacks and Latinos are finding it increasingly difficult to stay in gentrifying areas. For example, Long Island City and Downtown Brooklyn, the two neighborhoods, are now whiter, affluent, and more crowded. "The predicted increase in commercial development never happened," according to the report. Instead, a barrage of high-end, high-rise residential building has altered these areas." At the same time, the public schools in the area are overcrowded.

Another large consequence of gentrification in New York City has been the increase of peripheral and metropolitan development of illegal housing, often at risk zones such as seismic areas, flood zones and dangerous slopes. In 2003, Michael Bloomberg had chosen the "right people" from the business, governmental, and nonprofit sectors. He has created clear criteria and measurement tools to enable performance review. Bloomberg and his former private sector colleagues were leveraging their corporate management skills and extensive knowledge of the private sector to build the organizational capacity required to achieve achievements. Agencies were reformed, key missions redefined, and strategic plans

Upzoning
Neighborhoods in New York City have been upzoned based on the city's fabricated since in the early 2000s, if there's not outright dishonest, promises of increased diversity, affordable housing, little displacement, and other good goals. None of the predictions came true, yet that fact is never mentioned. Worse, the upzoning resulted in the polar opposite: less diversity, fewer affordable apartments, and whiter, wealthier communities.

Sustainability
In 2022, New York City was considered the most polluted city of the United States according to the World Health Organization, mainly due to transport pollutants, affecting gentrification in terms of urban quality of life. Since then, however, the city has invested in a diversity of projects including solar energy, smart constructions, better public transport and spaces and separate collection of waste linked to recycling/incinerating systems.

The implementation of green spaces into urban projects like public parks, roof gardens, protected areas, vegetation in public infrastructure or even private gardens help clean the air, improve human wellbeing, reduce noise, increase the attractiveness of crammed communities and foster interaction across social groups. Compact developments with an emphasized verticality are another approach to creating active spaces with efficient energy use, less driving distances, reduced emergency response time, mixture of homes, services and jobs.