Urban renewal has played a major role in New York City politics since the 1970s. Back then, drug use and crimes rates were at an all time high. The city was essentially bankrupt. In an attempt to draw in new residents, local legislators decided the only clear solution was to "clean up" the city. The change can be seen in NYC's iconic Times Square: once a neighborhood filled solely with strip clubs and brothels, Times Square has been "Disney-fied" over the past few decades, with investors focusing heavily on making it a space safe for families and tourists.
The benefits of urban renewal are visible: reduced crime rates, increased property values, and increased tourism are among some of the largest benefits NYC has seen since it undertook large renewal projects. Forbes noted that co-ops on the East Side of the city "have appreciated ... 30.06% over the last decade," and "condos a whopping 71.1%." Neighborhoods such as Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant (among other historically black, Latino, Asian, and immigrant communities) which had previously been categorized as dangerous slums, are now seeing a surge of new interest. Oftentimes, low-income neighborhoods, particularly in Brooklyn, are seen as viable alternatives to more popular, expensive neighborhoods such as Williamsburg, which in and of itself used to be grouped in the same "slum" category. NYC real estate has been growing in popularity--one Forbes report claimed that over 20 percent of Millenials believed that NYC was their ideal city. As these young professionals have swarmed the area, they brought with them a substantial flow of revenue into the city, and particularly into neighborhoods such as Bushwick, which the city had previously deemed a lost cause. The economic benefits have been clear: according to Knight Frank, "New York's luxury real estate market saw prices jump 18.8 percent--the largest gain among world cities."
While urban renewal can be economically beneficial for the city, it is important to note that the process unduly harms low-income residents and communities. Ethnic enclaves in particular serve as an invaluable resource. They provide individuals with a community that faces similar economic, linguistic, and discriminatory challenges. These communities form in response to either economic or social disenfranchisement. There are informal methods used to bar people of color from moving into certain neighborhoods out of fear that they will lower property values; oftentimes marginalized communities are still shoved together into less "desirable" neighborhoods. However, in recent years, urban areas have begun to focus on "revitalizing" these marginalized neighborhoods in order to maximize their value; as a result, communities end up being displaced as a result of evictions or unaffordable rent increases. This process is known as gentrification--displacing poor or otherwise "undesirable" residents from a neighborhood and replacing them with wealthier residents for the sake of increased property values.
The primary culprits of gentrification are not, contrary to what one might assume, real estate agencies. While they undoubtedly contribute to, and benefit from, the process, the ones who truly wield power in this situation are landlords. In NYC's Chinatown, for example, mounting tensions between residents and their landlords have gained increasing publicity as the neighborhood continues to gentrify. The neighborhood has been around since the 1840s and has recently been a popular tourist destination: it allows individuals to experience parts of Chinese culture without needing to travel all the way to China. Chinatown is also a fairly cheap tourist destination since local businesses tailor their prices to what residents can afford--according to the Asian American Federation of New York Census Information Center, 45% of Chinatown residents in New York make $20,000 or less each year. Many private investors have seen this as an opportunity to turn Chinatown into something profitable; as a result, corporations have been moving into these neighborhoods and subsequently drive out small businesses. These private corporations are often backed by the local government who see the increasing commodification and "revitalization" of Chinatown as something positive for the city's economy. These two forces work together to promote tourism in these spaces.
This focus on tourism over residents has had a profound impact on the neighborhood: according to the Coalition Against Anti-Asian Violence (CAAAV), the number of subsidized housing units decreased from 17,696 to 16,236 between 2003 and 2006 in New York City's Chinatown, and over 75 percent of residents live with serious housing violations. Landlords see the gentrification of the neighborhood as an opportunity to increase their own profits, and are purposefully allowing buildings to fall into a state of disrepair so that they can be demolished and replaced with something more akin to the city's urban renewal plans. Such was the case in the creation of Wyndham Gardens Chinatown--a new hotel that charges between $250 and $400 each night; as a basis for comparison, a rent-controlled apartment in Chinatown is $900 each month.
The most alarming aspect of gentrification is, however, that these neighborhoods were completely ignored by the city because they were not economic powerhouses. Many of the issues that these neighborhoods faced in terms of sanitation, crime, and poverty levels could have been solved through city-funded programs. These residents and their struggles were completely ignored and invalidated because they were deemed an insubstantial portion of the city's economy. While it is important for New York to continue its trend of economic growth, it should not come at the cost of residents who have lived and worked in the city for decades.
