Barnard-Columbia Urban Review Spring 2023 Issue 5

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Contents Masthead Letter from the Director of Urban Studies Letter from the Editors

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Articles

Exploring Military Urbanism and Gendered Resistance in Jammu and Kashmir Through Violence, Surveillance, and Western Military Aid Nyah Ahmad, BC ’24

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Building the City of Tomorrow Amid the Climate Crisis: Treading Responsibly on the Path of Eco-Futurism Amy Xiaoqian Chen, CC ’26

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Historical Overview of Qiqihar’s Urban Transformation Eleanor Ding, GS ’24

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Urban Futures: Critique of the “Making New York Work for Everyone” Action Plan Daniella Donzelli Scorza, BC ’24

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Art and Commerce in a Turn-of-the-century Plateau Multiplex Zoe Greenberg, Concordia University ’24

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Behind the Success: A Case Study of Singapore’s Official Narrative of Nature and the Environment Zilan Qian, BC ’24

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Financial Institutions Influencing Urban Shrinkage Eddie Turner, CC ’23

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Mapping Graffiti and the Visual Culture of the Lower East Side Lola Rael, BC ’23

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Gentrification and Exclusion Surrounding Arts-Based Urban Revitalization: A Case Study of Baltimore’s Station North District Daniella Rivera-Agudelo, BC ’25

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Art Submissions Cover Art by Kassia Karras Madeleine Cesaretti, CC ’25 Olivia Delgado, BC ’25

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Maya Felstehausen, BC ’25

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Adeline Rong, BC ’24

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Grace Li, BC ’24

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MASTHEAD Executive Board Co-Editors-in-Chief: Isabel Alberola, BC ’23 & Victoria Tse, BC ’24 Events Coordinator: Maya Felstehausen, BC ’25 Layout Editor: Samuel George, GS ’23 Publicity Director: Nyah Ahmad, BC ’24 Treasurer: Ellie George, BC ’23 Senior Editors Ishaan Barrett, CC ’26 Karen Chavez, BC ’24 Hirsch, BC ’24 Madeline Liberman, BC ’23 Ananya Pal, BC ’25 Celeste Ramirez, BC ’24 Avery Ransom, CC ’24 Araiya Shah, BC ’24 Peer Reviewers Jacqueline Artiaga, BC ’25 Olivia Canterbery, CC ’25 Amanda Cassel, BC ’25 Lowell Cerbone, CC ’26 Madeleine Cesaretti, CC ’25 Adrienne Chacón, BC ’26 Sophia Cordoba, CC ’26 Alex Crow, CC ’25 Sally Kaye, BC ’26 Claire McDonald, BC ’26 Anesi Ojior, CC ’25 Art Director Alice Warden, BC ’23 Publicity Staff Jacqueline Artiaga, BC ’25 Jennifer Guizar Bello, BC ’24 Olivia Canterbery, CC ’25 Olivia Delgado, BC ’25

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Ben Erdmann, CC ’25 Claire McDonald, BC ’26 Anesi Ojior, CC ’25 Web Managers Cianna Boayue, BC ’25 Isabel Bravo-Contreras, BC ’26 Fiona Campbell, BC ’23 Authors Nyah Ahmad, BC ’24 Amy Xiaoqian Chen, CC ’26 Eleanor Ding, GS ’24 Daniella Donzelli Scorza, BC ’24 Zoe Greenberg, Concordia University ’24 Zilan Qian, BC ’24 Lola Rael, BC ’23 Daniella Rivera-Agudelo, BC ’25 Eddie Turner, CC ’23 Art/Visual Authors Madeleine Cesaretti, CC ’25 Olivia Delgado, BC ’25 Maya Felstehausen, BC ’25 Grace Li, BC ’24 Adeline Rong, BC ’24 Cover Artist Kassia Karras, BC ’22

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Letter from the Director of Urban Studies I have the distinct privilege of writing to congratulate and celebrate—once again—the success of the Barnard Columbia Urban Review. I will presume to speak for all of my Urban Studies colleagues and affiliated faculty when I write that we could not be prouder or more impressed by a group determined to share the urban research of Barnard and Columbia undergraduates—and those students eager to publish their efforts and insights in the Review. For me, the purpose of the work we do together in the classroom is precisely this, that you leave your teachers behind and produce and share new knowledge about the world on your own.

This issue of the BCUR perfectly demonstrates the dedication of the Urban Studies Program—students and faculty—to interdisciplinarity, global conversations, and relevance. The articles included take us from the Lower East Side to Singapore and China, the border between India and Pakistan, then back to New York via Baltimore and Montreal. They take up climate change, green infrastructure, and urban nature, personal finance and health, urban investment and transformation, among other things. They engage with the arts as intervention and creatively capture images of the city that compel us to reconsider. That they do so in a single issue, moreover, drives home the nature of Urban Studies as an ongoing and ever-more-intricate conversation.

The contents of the BCUR help us begin to define the “urban” and do so in a way that mirrors the phenomenon itself: constantly changing, everywhere all at once, and intensely specific in its instantiation. As the BCUR publishes its fifth issue, this contribution becomes more and more important, deepening our potential to understand this multifaceted fact of our contemporary world from the many different perspectives and emphases of writers relatively new to scholarly discovery.

Bravo!

Sincerely, Aaron Passell Director of the Barnard–Columbia Urban Studies Program

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Letter from the Co-Editors It is our honor and privilege as the Co-Editors-in-Chief to present the fifth issue of the Barnard-Columbia Urban Review. Now in our third year since BCUR’s founding in 2020, we were dedicated to increasing the Review’s sphere of influence and reached out to numerous departments at Barnard and Columbia, such as Environmental Science, Architecture, and Sustainable Development during our call for submissions. We are excited to announce that we received a record-breaking amount of interest and number of works submitted to BCUR, all of which span across a multitude of disciplines, demonstrating the interdisciplinary nature of urban studies.

As always, we continued to create opportunities for urbanists on campus to gather. In addition to our biweekly meetings, Maya (Events Coordinator), Nyah (Publicity Director), and Ellie (Treasurer) organized numerous events for the urban community such as a welcome night at Hex & Co, a screening of The Florida Project, and a guided tour at the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space in the Lower East Side of Manhattan!

We wanted this edition of BCUR to reflect the fascinating and critical work that students across Barnard, Columbia, and beyond are doing to wrestle with the challenges of a rapidly urbanizing world and to thoughtfully offer solutions. This issue demonstrates the relevance of urban studies across the world, but also advocates for urban solutions that are specific to a place and influenced by the local environment. We hope that when reading through this issue of BCUR, you are left with a sense of curiosity about the way your particular city is built and the social relationships that result.

We would like to express our utmost gratitude for the work and dedication of countless individuals in creating and workshopping the journal from start to finish. Thank you to the entire BCUR executive board and staff, written and visual submission contributors, our peer reviewers, the faculty and staff of the Urban Studies department, the administrative staff of SEE, every past and future BCUR member, and numerous others who have made undergraduate urban research a reality at Barnard and Columbia. We are so proud to be a part of such an inspiring group of urbanists and the work we have accomplished together.

We always welcome and encourage feedback and participation in the future of BCUR, and we sincerely hope that you enjoy this issue.

Sincerely, Isabel Alberola Co-Editor-in-Chief | Barnard College ’23 Victoria Tse Co-Editor-in-Chief | Barnard College ’24

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Exploring Military Urbanism and Gendered Resistance in Jammu and Kashmir Through Violence, Surveillance, and Western Military Aid By: Nyah Ahmad

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The new military urbanism is a concept coined by Stephen Graham in which he exposes how rapidly advancing technology has fueled militarism in urban spaces by creating a limitless environment of warfare. Surveillance and violence can then be carried out remotely through technology and across borders, only heightening the imperial core’s (i.e., Canada, U.S., and Europe) power deployed over cities riddled with conflict in the Global South. Some examples from the last several decades include the U.S. Declaration of the War on Terror and the subsequent passing of the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001. Both increased surveillance efforts in the name of combating terrorism such as the implementation of hyper security measures in airports to the development of technological drone strikes to destroy urban spaces and the people who inhabit them, many of whom are idle civilians. To elaborate Graham furthers that: The new military urbanism is defined as encompassing a complex set of rapidly evolving ideas, doctrines, practices, norms, techniques and popular cultural arenas through which the everyday spaces, sites and infrastructures of cities—along with their civilian populations—are now rendered as the main targets and threats within a limitless ‘battlespace’ (Graham 2009, 388).

By exploring the use of violence employed by right-wing Indian armed forces, gendered resistance as challenging patriarchal power amidst military occupation, and U.S.-funded militarism in Jammu and Kashmir, there can be an exploration of how India has recently utilized military urbanism to further its occupation of this region and leave the potential of self-determination and autonomy for the Kashmiri people an even hazier possibility.

Reflecting on Lefebvre’s notion of the right to the city, the violent dilemma in Jammu and Kashmir has translated into power asymmetries among oppressed Kashmiris, where their experiences under military occupation are not egalitarian, and rather based on gender. Tovi Fenster notes in her work, “The Right to the Gendered City: Different Formations of Belonging in Everyday Life”, how Lefebvre’s definition of the right to the city is incredibly broad and excludes critical power systems that alter the accessibility and feasibility of this theory as praxis for various groups of people. Fenster believes that “his definition doesn’t challenge any type of power relations (i.e., ethnic, national, cultural) let alone gendered power relations as dictating and affecting the possibilities to realize the

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right to use and the right to participate in urban life” (Fenster 2005, 219). While the focus of this paper is not on Lefebvrian theory, exploring the right to the city and one’s right to envision and create the city one yearns to inhabit is extremely limited by military urbanism, which will later be unpacked and explored. Within any context of conflict, war, or military occupation that dwells on urban space, Lefebvre’s notion of the right to the city immediately becomes less realistic, as these situations reveal greater barriers and forces that make survival a daily challenge. The challenges faced by oppressed peoples under military occupation are only conflated by the inherent patriarchal forces rooted in local cultures that affect the way violence, surveillance, and militarism appear in the Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir region.

The military occupation of the state of Jammu and Kashmir began long before it was flooding headlines in 2019 after India revoked Article 370 and before 1947 during the tumultuous creation of borders dividing the Indian nation-state and Muslim-majority Pakistan. Kashmir’s longstanding and ever-going imperial struggle can be traced to before the creation of modern India as, since the time of the Mughal empire, indigenous Kashmiris have never been in control of their land (Halder 2019). Their legacy is warped by the forces of empire and domination that have manifested into a divisive military occupation today. In the wake of the 1947 Partition, to avoid potential military invasions from newly created Pakistan, Hari Singh, the last independent ruler of Jammu and Kashmir, decided to endorse the state to Indian control. However, despite the promise of autonomy in the Indian Union under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru at the time, it instead served as a political facade for India to ensure Pakistan could not gain control of the region while simultaneously furthering India’s occupation of Jammu and Kashmir and targeting its Muslim population (Halder 2019). Given my understanding of and personal proximity to patriarchal systems as a South Asian Muslim woman as well as my Kashmiri maternal ancestry, watching military presence and violence in India-occupied Kashmir unfold day by day makes exploring this topic even more pertinent.

Ever since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his right-wing party, BJP, came to power in 2014, violence against Kashmiris, particularly Kashmiri Muslims, has only escalated due to the pro-Hindu and extremely nationalist sentiments that the party propels.

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allowed the Indian military to justify acts of violence against Kashmiris. Shabir was a wrongfully suspected militant who was detained by Indian armed forces in 1991 and disappeared in custody, according to his family (Zia 2019, 51). His disappearance can be explained by the twenty-eight months of torture and detainment he faced in custody.

Shabir recounts how while he was being tortured, the men beating him up compared Shabir’s physical assault to Kashmiris yearning for freedom as a justification for their desire to “free him from life” (Zia 2019, 50). This method of torture is completely legal under acts like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act of 1991, which grants special authority to the Indian military to maintain order in areas considered “disturbed” (Zia 2019, 52). This colonialist approach to policing and criminality essentially posits the Indian Army above the law in already resource-suppressed areas, like Jammu and Kashmir. This tactic strikingly contrasts the British imperial regime that ruled the subcontinent for over two centuries and enforced extensive policing as one of its three pillars of rule, aside from the British Army and Civil Service (Agrawal 2022). As seen in the recent outpour of media coverage on policing tactics globally, policing has become heavily conflated with militarism due to the employment of violence and bodily force as a de-escalation method for so-called dangerous situations. For a global context, the police enact violence on the African American body in the U.S., the Israeli Defense Forces enact violence on the Palestinian body in the West Bank and Gaza, and the Indian Armed forces enact violence on the Kashmiri body. In all these instances, the identity and the existence of the oppressed body are perceived as a threat to the military occupation and in turn, must be suppressed through violence, allowing the battlefield to act as a never-ending oppressive force on the marginalized body. Military urbanism is not only a global phenomenon, but a global experience, and the violence that consummates the battlespace is a collective experience for oppressed peoples globally regardless of if they exist within the confines of Jammu and Kashmir, the Global South collectively, or neither.

Expanding beyond the scope of an entire urban environment as a “battlefield,” Kashmiris are continuously in battle as they are subject to being targeted on the streets right outside their homes, making their very existence a threat to the militarized forces that flood their habitats. These targeted attacks are heavily predicated on the stereotypical appearances of people inhabiting public spaces. For instance, walking around with a long SPRING 2023 ISSUE 5

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beard and holding a Qur’an is essentially impossible for a Kashmiri Muslim man living in Jammu and Kashmir unless they want to be physically assaulted or detained. The “othering” of the usually Muslim-presenting Kashmiri manifests itself in both tangible and intangible ways as the unquestionable use of violence deployed by armed forces in the area reflects the disposability of and a justified “killability” of the Kashmiri body (Zia 2019, 50). Intangibly, the ongoing violence and surveillance in the area suppress the dreams Kashmiris have held that they one day will have independence. Before delving into Kashmiri resistance, understanding the ways that disposability politics have limited agency among Kashmiris is critical. This level of subjugation and oppression is fostered by the violence and surveillance employed by the Indian armed forces that further hinder the possibility for Kashmiris to see success in their ongoing resistance efforts. This limits their vision of what their city could look like without prevailing military forces and with the liberation of oppressed peoples. As discussed by Shabir, his encounters with the Indian armed forces were not only violent but also mentally manipulative as they turned his desire for freedom and liberation against him.

To grasp how the entirety of Jammu and Kashmir is a “battlespace”, there needs to be an understanding of how conflict and militarization become localized. As Graham notes when discussing the rapid urbanization of security, “the ‘battlespace’ concept, indeed, is pivotal to the new military urbanism because it basically sustains ‘a conception of military matters that includes absolutely everything” (Agre, 2001). Distinct from geographically and temporally limited notions of war like “battlefield,” the battlespace concept prefigures a boundless and unending process of militarization where everything becomes a site of permanent war” (Graham 2009, 389). The conflict in Jammu and Kashmir has no bounds and no end, regardless of what surveillance technology is adopted by the military or who is in colonial power. While the surveillance of the body may not be inherently violent within the “battlespace” in Jammu and Kashmir, continuing surveillance and targeting can result in violence, imprisonment, and even death. In addition, the advancement of technology that has allowed military urbanism to evolve into a boundless battlefield of conflict makes the surveilling of oppressed populations simpler for the local armed forces, who are deployed by a larger overruling structure to enact violence on specific populations in urban spaces. In a rapidly urbanizing world, with technology seeping into all sectors of political SPRING 2023 ISSUE 5

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and social life, simply existing as a Kashmiri in Jammu and Kashmir serves as a political threat to the Indian occupation and fuels the colonial fear of eventual Kashmiri resistance and independence since as mentioned earlier, the people of Kashmir have never been in control of their land.

The “battlespace” in Jammu and Kashmir is fueled by the technology of foreign powers through India’s ongoing and increasingly expanding arms trade with the West, particularly the United States. Since 1950, India has imported the largest volume of arms in the world, and arms spending has only increased since the rise of Modi and the BJP Party in 2014 (Stand with Kashmir 2022). According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, India was the world’s largest importer of foreign arms in 2021 with the Biden administration supplying India with over $2.5 billion in potential arms sales in 2021 (Forum on the Arms Trade). To put it simply, the weapons that the U.S. supplies to India are used to uphold cultural imperialism in the region of Jammu and Kashmir and further the Indian army’s occupation, killing, and suppression of Kashmiris. This economic and material exchange between two global superpowers with two drastically different governing systems reflects an aspect of military urbanism involving new ways of targeting colonized populations in conflict zones. The reality that weapons manufactured by a Western corporation are used to target a colonized population and further a military occupation heightens Graham’s argument that: The

resurgence

of

explicitly colonial strategies and techniques amongst

nation-states such as the USA, UK and Israel in the contemporary period involves not just the deployment of the techniques of the new military urbanism in foreign war zones but their diffusion and imitation through the securitization of Western urban life (Graham 2009, 390).

The deployment of weapons from the West to be used in conflicts overseas simultaneously ensures the safety of those residing in the West, while civilians living in conflict zones are forced to live in an urban battlespace funded and weaponized by the West. For example, despite America directly helping India advance its military occupation in Jammu and Kashmir, America is still viewed as a nation of opportunity, safety, and security in which immigrants from all over the world, including Kashmir, yearn to find peace and prosperity.

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Military urbanism is a vicious cycle that runs its course when people flee their conflict-torn cities for nation-states in the West; the same militarized nation-states that actively contributed to the destruction of their home country or city.

Despite highlighting the ways military urbanism has furthered the military occupation of Jammu and Kashmir and oppression of the Kashmiri people, there are prominent examples of ways that Kashmiris resist this seemingly never-ending conflict that entails extreme threats of violence and bodily subjugation. To understand resistance movements and forces in the region, there must be an acknowledgment of the local cultural contexts that create a gendered resistance among spaces. How are the gendered differences among Kashmiris not only revealed in their oppression but also in the ways they resist colonial violence and cultural imperialism in their day-to-day lives? For the sake of the length and scope of this paper, the argument will be limited to a binary analysis of gender however this is not to ignore or deny the existence of other gender identities in the region that challenge binary and reductionist notions of gender. Coloniality is not an egalitarian experience for all individuals inhabiting an urban space, especially when patriarchal forces often rooted in long-standing cultural values inhabit that space. Fenster challenges the Lefebvrian notion of the right to the city as a universal experience for everyone inhabiting that city by acknowledging the power asymmetries rooted in patriarchy that are oftentimes ethnic, cultural, and gender-related. Firstly, we must define patriarchy within the context of Kashmiri society. Using a general definition of patriarchy defined by bell hooks in her work Understanding Patriarchy, ‘Patriarchy’ is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence (hooks 2010, 1).

This global practice surrounding male domination that exists not only in the home but in urban spaces reflects much of the military dominion that the new military urbanism enforces and that specifically, the Indian Armed Forces employ on the Kashmiri body, both men and women. For the sake of simplicity, the discussion will center around binary

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constructions of gender, however, this is not to diminish the experiences of transgender and gender non-conforming Kashmiris (or the "Khawaja Sara" community), who are also increasingly subjugated not only within the boundless confines of the Indian occupation of Jammu and Kashmir but throughout the Indian subcontinent. With the understanding of the way that ongoing military occupation reflects Graham’s new military urbanism and the disposability politics that emerge, it seems critical to nuance this conversation by understanding how violence and conflict propel patriarchy and affect ongoing resistance efforts.

Much of the violence employed by military forces in Jammu and Kashmir is towards men, as seen in the case of Shabir’s physical torture due to his alleged association with opposing military forces. Within the so-called “battlespace” of military urbanism, Kashmiri men represent a progression into a non-hegemonic masculinity under the military apparatus, which has constrained and curbed their psychological and physical autonomy. Thus, the Kashmiri patriarchy functions under extreme coercion and threat from the militarized government (Zia 2019, 95).

While patriarchal social mores between men and women may continue to prevail in the home, military urbanism in Jammu and Kashmir has allowed the cultural norms that enforce patriarchy to be swept under the rug in urban spaces and replaced the wrath of neocolonial military forces that enact a similar form of masculinized authority on both men and women, even if the modes of violence and surveillance employed are displayed differently between the two groups. Within the limitless and timeless “battlespace” that the new military urbanism enforces, cultural norms among the oppressed peoples become intrinsically linked with the military forces present. The masculine hegemony that the Indian Armed Forces perpetuate in Jammu and Kashmir directly clashes with the masculinity expressed by men targeted and suppressed by these armed forces. This inevitably creates a new patriarchal system that functions within the confines of military occupation, defined by those who hold power within the oppressing structure.

To challenge yet simultaneously align with Fenster’s feminist critique of an egalitarian right to the city, oftentimes the female, subordinate presence can serve as a protective shield against neo-colonial military forces. Not limited to Kashmir, women of all

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matriarchal identities (i.e., mothers, sisters, wives) have offered their physical presence as a means of non-violent resistance or as described by Asef Bayat in his work Life as Politics, a form of resistance that translates into a social non-movement where one’s presence or existence inherently poses a revolutionary threat or defiance to the oppressive status quo within banal urbanity. This form of resistance is oftentimes not organized in a way where the individual or the collective is intentionally following a social resistance movement, but rather the resistance is rooted in survival as the outcome of not doing such would translate into a disruption in the security and safety of the self, of loved ones, and the community (Bayat 2013, 108). Since 1989, women in Jammu and Kashmir, Accompany men in emergencies or routine errands, or when they are summoned by the police, military, or paramilitary, in hopes that they might somehow help diffuse the impending wrath of the forces. The gender dynamic has become telling of the subject position of Kashmiri men relative to the government troops. Rehat, a mother whose son disappeared, said of her husband: ‘Just because he is a man, he will be killed without a word if he tries to go out and confront the soldiers’ (Zia 2019, 95-96).

Expanding on Rehat’s experience, who feels a duty to protect her husband after losing her son, there is a large emotional burden that women must carry with them daily under military occupation. Rehat’s story is only one of a collection of stories and experiences held by many women living under Indian military occupation who lack personal agency but continually resist cultural imperialism. Their desire to keep the men in their lives protected and safe is rooted in the patriarchal nature that women hold a family unit together through a nurturing and subservient nature.

The region of Jammu and Kashmir is one of the most militarized regions in the world, with over 500,000 Indian military officers dispersed everywhere in the urban battlespace outside of homes, on streets, and in a plethora of other commercial areas where civilians work and stay in daily. In this military-occupied region, there is one soldier for every 30 civilians, a ratio that U.S. troops in Afghanistan never came close to (Gazia 2020). This high military presence marks no question that women fear not only for their livelihoods but for their male loved ones who are more likely to step out of the house than

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they are, as explained by existing cultural norms. Consequently, by accompanying men on their daily outings, the chance of encountering violence from an Indian military officer declines; Rehat goes on to explain how as a man, her husband might get irate at a military officer if he is intentionally targeted, which will increase the chances of the military officer interpreting that anger as a threat and employing violence as a method to de-escalate what they would consider a dangerous situation (Zia 2019, 96). Kashmiri women understand and are simultaneously interwoven into the complexities of patriarchy as they are suppressed under its structure, similar to how both Kashmiri men and women understand the complexities of military occupation in Jammu and Kashmir, as they both experience oppression at the hands of an imperial force but might respond to that oppression differently due to cultural norms.

Despite women lacking agency in comparison to men in Kashmiri culture, the ongoing military occupation has revealed the efforts made by women to protect men from the violence and surveillance exerted by present military forces. Kashmiri women have been encouraged by local institutions and people in their communities to engage in resistance efforts, whether it be through street protests or sit-ins (dharnas), either in a central public square or in front of an army bunker or camp (Zia 2019, 96). Oftentimes, these pleas for women to engage in protest and resistance efforts are called upon by men who will announce their requests from the local masjid loudspeaker, employing religiously significant buildings to engage in resistance efforts. These efforts are deemed risky in two ways as the request for women to leave the home and engage in protest already challenges much of the conservative cultural values held by many Kashmiris but is also deemed risky as the women are asked to challenge oppressive power structures for the sake of liberating those suppressed in the battlespace. Kashmiri women play a significant role in engaging with the battlespace in hopes to perform agency through social resistance by, “staging dharnas (sit-ins) for long hours outside military installations or government buildings in the hopes that the arrestees would be freed or that the women would learn of the men’s whereabouts” (Zia 2019, 96). Despite both Kashmiri men and women having to navigate a battlespace where their lives are constantly threatened by forces of violence and surveillance, Kashmiri women, since 1989 but increasingly so in the last six years, have had some success in implementing resistance efforts against one of the most SPRING 2023 ISSUE 5

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militarized regimes in the world. This involves their practice of engaging with social non-movements within a patriarchal system and through physical protest outside the home, which actively challenges traditional cultural values through the unbounded threats of a militarized presence.

Military urbanism is a deeply complex and ever-evolving system that continues to contribute to the destruction of urban spaces and the displacement of indigenous populations globally. By exploring Stephen Graham’s explanation of the new military urbanism through the lens of the ongoing Indian occupation of Jammu and Kashmir, there can be a deeper understanding of how heightened military presence in a particular conflict area limits agency and freedom for the populations being surveilled and targeted. And with the deployment of new military technology from other parts of the world, the vision of independence becomes one that is harder for the oppressed to visualize and easier for the oppressor to manipulate. However, after exploring Tovi Fenster’s feminist critique of Lefebvre’s right to the city through the complication of patriarchal power asymmetries, there was an understanding that while autonomy for the Kashmiri people is extremely limited so long as the structure of military occupation stands, resistance efforts are possible but are incredibly gendered. The existence of gendered resistance movements in Jammu and Kashmir, particularly the practice of social non-movements and physical protest among Kashmiri women, reveals not only how Graham’s concept of military urbanism employs violence and surveillance but also the ways it feeds off the patriarchal systems already ingrained within the community. The “battlespace” that exists within the military urbanism system is further exacerbated by these patriarchal forces, thus revealing that the liberation struggles among Kashmiris in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir will continually be complicated by intersecting forces, such as cultural traditions and gender so long as these oppressive structures stand.

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References Agrawal, Nikhil. “The Army and the Police under British.” UPSC with Nikhil, UPSC with Nikhil, 10 Apr. 2022, https://upscwithnikhil.com/article/history/the-army-and-the-police-under-british.

Bayat, Asef. “Feminism of Everyday Life.” Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East, Second Edition, 2nd ed., Stanford University Press, 2013, pp. 96–114, https://doi.org/10.1515/9780804786331.

Fenster, Tovi. “The Right to the Gendered City: Different Formations of Belonging in Everyday Life.” Journal of Gender Studies, vol. 14, no. 3, 2005, pp. 217–31. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.1080/09589230500264109.

Gazia, Ifat. “In Kashmir, Military Lockdown and Pandemic Combined Are One Giant Deadly Threat.” The Conversation, 20 July 2020, theconversation.com/in-kashmir-military-lockdown-and-pandemic-combined-are-one-giant-deadly-t hreat-142252.

Graham, Stephen. “Cities as Battlespace: The New Military Urbanism.” City, vol. 13, no. 4, 2009, pp.

383–402. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.1080/13604810903298425.

Halder, Tamoghna. “Kashmir’s Struggle Did Not Start in 1947 and Will Not End Today.” Opinions | Al Jazeera, 15 Aug. 2019, www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/8/15/kashmirs-struggle-did-not-start-in-1947-and-will-not-end-to day. hooks, bell. “Understanding Patriarchy”. Louisville Anarchist Federation Federation, 2010, imaginenoborders.org/pdf/zines/UnderstandingPatriarchy.pdf.

Stand With Kashmir [@standwkashmir]. “Who Arms India’s Occupation In Kashmir?” Instagram, 20 April 2022, https://www.instagram.com/p/CclfM1trHaX/. “US Arms Sales to India.” Forum on the Arms Trade, www.forumarmstrade.org/usindia.html. Accessed 23 Apr. 2022.

Zia, Ather, and Piya Chatterjee. “Chapter 2: The Killable Kashmiri and Weaponized Democracy.” Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism in Kashmir, University of Washington Press, 2019, pp. 50–61, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip&db=e025xna&AN=2664504&site=ehostlive&scope=site.

Zia, Ather, and Piya Chatterjee. “Chapter 4: Gendered Resistance in Kashmir.” Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism in Kashmir, University of Washington Press, 2019, pp.

94-114, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip&db=e025xna&AN=2664504&site=ehostlive&scope=site.

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Photography

by Madeleine Cesaretti

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Building the City of Tomorrow Amid the Climate Crisis: Treading Responsibly on the Path of Eco-Futurism By: Amy Chen

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Building the city of tomorrow has always been an intriguing human project—and Saudi Arabia might be just doing it.

The Line is a project launched by Saudi’s crown prince and prime minister Mohammed bin Salmon as a part of his company NEOM’s planned constructions in the northwestern Tabuk province of Saudi Arabia, near the Red Sea. The Line is designed as a linear megacity that would, ideally, hold nine million residents. Two 200-meter-wide by 500-meter-wide barricade-like walls of The Line cut across 170 kilometers of the province, with reflective facades mirroring the surrounding desert, coastal, and mountain terrains.

Like a desert mirage, The Line “disappears” infinitely into the utter extremes of wilderness.

This vision is both revolutionarily futuristic and horrifying. How would one even build something like this in the desert from scratch? Is it livable?

Well, Saudi sure is investing billions of dollars into it—hundreds of billions, if not approaching a trillion—and construction is already taking place.

What perplexes me at first is the strong dissonance between the promised green functionalities of the city (no roads, cars, zero emissions, running on renewable energy) and the greenwashing method that packages and sells the not-yet-built city as a commercial product to attract sponsors, to actually build the city and prevent it from being abandoned or leave more irreversible environmental impacts. Although it is true that contemporary cities like Mumbai and New York indeed are struggling to keep up with growth, is an entirely new city really the solution to all our environmental issues associated with the climate crisis? Urban problems like segregation and gentrification are still likely to persist, even if a city produces zero carbon.

Yet reading multiple articles from popular Western media expressing similar views, I realized such questioning is necessary but not necessarily correct. There is no right answer on how to build the perfect city. Urban “planning” is rooted in experimentation, failures, and trials, and urban development is founded on people claiming and altering their built environments in dynamic and unexpected ways. The question I want to investigate is how this linear, claustrophobic, eco-futuristic architectural form might transform human society and psychology, and whether The Line might be beneficial in mitigating the climate crisis.

Furthermore, whether green capitalism and market incentives support or impede this effort.

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To do this, we need to situate ourselves from the perspective of Saudi Arabia, an oil-rich authoritarian country in the Middle East.

In “Net Zero Saudi Arabia: How Green Can the Oil Oil Kingdom Get?,” Jim Krane spells out that Saudi Arabia has more political and economic imperatives in initiating The Line than environmental ones. The Line is part of the nation’s scheme to revitalize their global influence and leverage domestic decarbonization to establish credibility in the global climate arena (Krane 2022). Hence, Saudi policymakers will be able to better shape the energy transition by retaining a greater long-term role for hydrocarbons, for their benefit. In this sense, The Line does not revolutionize the contemporary neoliberal financial system established by Western institutions but rather conforms to them.

In this thread, many believe that instead of investing capital in something of this scale and impossibility, the government should invest them to create smaller-scale, local but instrumental changes to its current cities. In “Gulf futuristic cities beyond the headlines: Understanding the planned cities megatrend,” Mohammad Al-Saidi and Esmat Zaidan argue that newly planned cities that incorporate the most advanced design and technologies are “manifestations of a competition among global cities to show off stereotypes of modernization and sustainability” (Al-Saidi 2020, 115). These stereotypes are exaggerated and over-dimensioned for their purposes.

Yet, Saudi is doomed if it does not transition its economy, as oil is a depleting resource and is losing traction in the current global market. Having something as publicized, attention-grabbing, and monumental as The Line unites the country and pulls immense investments in developing sustainable technologies. This investment is very much lacking in Western countries. Saudi Arabia is truly investing in the future.

Accepting the project of The Line means overcoming the cognitive dissonance associated with futurism. The definition of “futurism” indicates a state of being distinct, different, and alternative to what is presently familiar and expected. Futurism’s significance lies in ushering in a new era of living under the climate crisis (hence “eco-futurism”) with novel and modern solutions. In her research essay “Interpreting built cityscape: Deconstructing the metaphorical messages of futuristic buildings,” Sirkka Heinonen explains:

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Real futures cause cognitive dissonance because we lack mental frames to understand them, and this applies also to futuristic buildings. In addition, anything truly new is born through experimenting, and thus futurism carries the stamp and element of experimentality. (Heinonen 2016, 164) Heinonen associates futuristic buildings with experimentality and imagination that challenges the human mind conditioned to the past.

To unpack this, we can first learn from the transitional narrative of eco-futurism.

Eco-futurism in relation to modernism, is similar to modernism’s relation with pre-industrialism or agrarianism. In Douglas Sackman’s book “Wild Men: Ishi and Kroeber in the Wilderness of Modern America” set in 1919, Ishi, known as “the last wild Indian,” rode a train down to the megalopolis San Francisco. Ishi and Kroeber felt “at once exhilarated by modernity and also overwhelmed by it. Both were enchanted by all the new kinds of exchanges that could occur thanks to technologies like trains and to the general climate of mobility and fluidity, and both also upheld older patterns and rhythms of connection to place and engagement with nature” (Sackman 2009, 641). In the same way, present humans will end up as the last “modern city-dwellers” in relation to futuristic infrastructure and ideals of The Line. As a new eco-city, The Line adopts a radical integration of new technology, including renewable energy and carbon capture, densified urban living, and a vertically transformed city. Its form and function largely abandon the “older patterns and rhythms” of connection and engagement. Modern means of transportation inherited from the industrial period of cars and roads are replaced with an artificial intelligence system with “zero pollution and zero wait time” improving efficiency and productivity (NEOM). The city’s identity is grounded in a new integrated ecology or sustainability “as a given” (NEOM).

From this perspective, the integration of technology is crucial and inevitable for the modern world’s transition to a future society. The Line evokes a new form of ecologism that emphasizes a technological fix to find harmony with nature, rather than appealing to local primitivism (associated with farming and the agrarian, regional lifestyle). A “new natural contract” is performed (Heinonen 2016, 171). Sure, when the modern human first encounters this strange city, they will feel disoriented and distrustful; but the new

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possibilities of exchanges and symbols of sustainability facilitated by The Line inevitably speak to human utopian dreams and desires. The Line provides an alternative “New World” vision to imagine living in a new, pristine, and undisturbed place of wilderness where issues of urban sprawl or pollution do not exist (Mumford 1966).

However, considerations need to be paid to executing this eco-futurist vision so that the form of The Line does not harm the intrinsic relationship between humans and nature.

The mirrored walls do not reflect a “green metaphor” related to nature and the organic; instead, it is artificial and detached. Although the inner city contains a “metaphoric garden quality” with thriving greeneries, the futuristic façade speaks the opposite. Heinonen evaluates a similar contradiction that was seen in the Lilypad project, a floating eco-city with a name that entails the nature metaphor. Heinonen argues that its execution follows “biomimicry”—imitating the flower shape of a water lily, a jarring and cliché token that does not serve best for sustainability or efficiency (Heinonen 2016).

The Line's self-contained nature alienates and ostracizes the "wilderness" from human settlement. It sits like a linear spaceship, enshrouded by the larger ecosystem of the desert and coasts. The philosophical root of this alienation, as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno claimed, is a “narrow positivist conception of rationality—which sees rationality as an instrument for pursuing progress, power and technological control” (Adorno and Horkheimer 1972). The clean mirrored walls of The Line may impose too much technological rationality and control: trapped within two fixed walls and likely surveilled, people are unable to practice autonomous and dynamic ways of expression and claiming of the space. Through oppressing the “outer nature” of the natural environment, human’s own “inner nature” (creativity, spontaneity, autonomy, vulnerabilities, and longings) is also suppressed.

The reality is that The Line is targeted more as a “global city” centered around innovation, tourism, and trade than equitably mitigating the climate crisis. Yet, if built, The Line will be a place for people who care about technology and the climate to work and live.

Their work will not only be beneficial for Neom itself or Saudi Arabia but for the entire world struggling with the climate crisis. Hence, the capitalistic pursuit of global power and economic transition supports the nation’s commitment to eco-futurism. While Green Futurism has internal contradictions, it is not inherently destined to be unsuccessful.

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Countries need economic imperatives and environmental actions to work in synchrony to drive economic growth on the path to a practical sustainable future. The Line’s extreme technological rationality will still provide a global source of creativity by becoming a technological hub for research and experiments relating to the climate. This is something traditional city models have been so far incapable of becoming.

Pivotal times need radical solutions. It is acceptable to use a crisis rationale in justifying national strategies. We are, after all, in a climate crisis. The Line has many uncertainties and contradictions, but it is growing a large team of architects, engineers, and lawyers who are actively seeking solutions. It would be irresponsible to completely overlook or reject the possibilities of The Line. Leaders should be careful not to replicate the mistakes of architectural biomimicry and its tendency to restrict the dynamism of the city. Instead, Eco-cities should embrace the idea of “green capitalism” for future society by encouraging transformation and new types of social participation.

Until the dream of the city of tomorrow helps to create a new culture amid the climate crisis, the dream can be “tricky, delusive, misleading, but mind-stirring” (Mumford 1966, 53).

Let The Line be a starting point for turning ambitious dreams into reality.

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References Adorno, Theodor and Horkheimer, Max. Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York: Herder and Herder, 1972.

Al-Saidi, Mohammad, and Esmat Zaidan. “Gulf Futuristic Cities beyond the Headlines: Understanding the Planned Cities Megatrend.” Energy Reports 6 (2020): 114–21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egyr.2020.10.061.

Caprotti, Federico. “Eco-Urbanism and the Eco-City, or, Denying the Right to the City?” Antipode 46, no. 5 (2014): 1285–1303. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12087.

Greenfield, Adam. “‘All Those Complicit in Neom’s Design and Construction Are Already Destroyers of Worlds.’” Dezeen, November 4, 2022. https://www.dezeen.com/2022/11/02/neom-the-line-saudi-arabia-architects-opinion/.

Heinonen, Sirkka, and Matti Minkkinen. “Interpreting Built Cityscape: Deconstructing the Metaphorical Messages of Futuristic Buildings.” Futures 84 (2016): 163–77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2016.03.015.

Krane, Jim. “Net Zero Saudi Arabia: How Green Can the Oil Kingdom Get?” Baker Institute, October 27, 2022. https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/net-zero-saudi-arabia-how-green-can-oil-kingdom-get.

Mumford, Lewis. The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1966.

NEOM. “The Line: A Revolution in Urban Living.” https://www.neom.com/en-us/regions/theline.

Sackman, Douglas Cazaux. Wild Men: Ishi and Kroeber in the Wilderness of Modern America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

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Photography

by Olivia Delgado

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Historical Overview of Qiqihar’s Urban Transformation By: Eleanor Ailun Ding

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This paper aims to shed light on the urban shrinkage of Qiqihar, China, as part of a collaborative research effort focused on this prime example of a modern shrinking city in China. Qiqihar is a municipality of prefecture level in China that holds significant industrial importance, as sanctioned by the State Council. Represented in figure 1, it is a major city situated in the west and an important grain commodity base in Northeast China. The city has jurisdiction over seven municipal districts, eight counties, and one city at the county level, covering a vast land area of 42,469 square kilometers (“Baidu Baike,” n.d.). First, I aim to establish a foundational understanding of the pre-shrinkage development of Qiqihar. I present the historical context of the city in three sections: pre-Qing and Imperial China (221 BC–1911), the Republic of China (1912–1949), and the Modern Era (1949–Present Day).

Figure 1 Heilongjiang Province, c. 2022 The importance of a city's history in understanding its current state and potential future cannot be overstated. As noted by Spirn, urban design is not just a matter of space, but also of time, given the constantly evolving nature of the urban ecosystem (2014, 564).

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By examining a city's history and its trajectory of development, urban planners can better anticipate future needs and adapt their designs accordingly.

Against this backdrop, this essay argues that the history of Qiqihar provides a compelling case study that highlights the often-overlooked relevance of cultural influence on a city's evolution and growth. Qiqihar’s Manchu lineage, for instance, challenges the Han culture that characterizes contemporary China. Through a deeper understanding of Qiqihar’s history, we can gain insight into the interplay between culture and economy in shaping a city’s trajectory, as well as the ways in which this relationship can impact a city’s narrative of growth and shrinkage. Thus, placing greater emphasis on the role of a city's history can help us better comprehend the complexities of urban development and transformation.

Pre-Qing and Imperial China (221 BC–1911) Qiqihar’s name has roots in both Manchu and Daur languages. “Qiqi” is thought to refer to a nearby river in the Manchu language, while “har” means defense. In contrast, another interpretation suggests that the city’s name derives from a Daur word meaning “frontier” (Grahamec 2022; Bhutia 2016). Qiqihar was originally settled by nomadic Tungus and Daur herdsmen.

During the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, the region was under the rule of the ancient Suoli country of Northeastern China, founded by the Suoli tribe. This civilization was one of the “nine barbarian civilizations” and was located on the Songnen Plain in the upper reaches of the Nen River, east of the river, and north of the Songhua River (“Baidu Baike,” n.d.). During the Qin and Han dynasties, the territory of Qiqihar was the site of the Buyeo or “Fuyu” State, an ancient kingdom centered in northern Manchuria. Later

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dynasties were characterized by the presence of small, non-united ancient civilizations.

During the Jin and Ming dynasties, the military governed the region.

During the Qing dynasty, the Manchu ethnic group ruled imperial China, and Qiqihar expanded rapidly under their leadership. A station established in 1685 soon became the center of all stations in the western portion of Heilongjiang. It grew into a village, and by the 1700s it was a city that served as the center of trade and commerce between the Chinese and Russians. As Qiqihar’s economy expanded, so did its population, which became more diverse. Despite a ban on Han Chinese immigration, the Chinese-speaking population increased and eventually outnumbered the Manchus by the end of the 18th century. Qiqihar’s thriving economy during the 18th and 19th century contributed to its reputation for activities like gambling (Bhutia 2016; Tsai 2017).

Republic of China (1912–1949) The completion of the Chinese Far East Railway by the Russian Empire in 1903, under the Qing Empire’s concession, marked a significant milestone in the region’s transportation infrastructure (see figure 2). The railway connected Russia, China, and Korea, with three branches converging in Harbin, a city in close proximity to Qiqihar (Liang, n.d.). Subsequently, a network of rail lines radiated from the city to the northern province of Heilongjiang in the 1920s and 1930s, facilitating economic growth and development.

However, the outbreak of the Sino–Japanese War in 1937 had a profound impact on the region. The Mukden Incident of 1931, the seizure of the Manchurian city Mukden (modern-day Shenyang), served as a precursor to the Japanese invasion of the Northeastern region of China, including many major cities (“Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute”, n.d.). Despite the occupation of Qiqihar and the establishment of the

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puppet province of Manchukuo Longjiang, the city remained the provincial capital. During the occupation, Qiqihar emerged as a major military and economic center, further driving its growth and development. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, the democratic government of Qiqihar was established as part of Nenjiang Province (“Baidu Baike,” n.d.).

The city was later placed under the jurisdiction of Heilongjiang Nenjiang United Province and Heilongjiang Province between 1947 and 1949 (“Baidu Baike,” n.d.).

Figure 2 Left. First railway station, Right. Qiqihar streets, c. Republic of China Modern Era (1949–Present Day) In 1954, Qiqihar lost its status as Heilongjiang’s provincial capital to Harbin and became a provincial city (“Placeandsee”, n.d.). During China’s first five-year plan, from 1951 to 1956, the Soviet Union played a significant role in building numerous factories in Fularji District, leading Qiqihar to become an essential center with “eight major factories” producing trains, machine tools, nuclear power equipment, cannons, and shells (Guo 2017). As a result, Qiqihar has endured significant changes during the market economy and reform era, with planned economy factories declining, merging, reorganizing, and being auctioned off, shifting Qiqihar’s focus from heavy industry to green agriculture.

Regarding the urban landscape and city planning, modern-day Qiqihar has very

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wide roads, a population of 5.5 million spread across seven districts and nine counties, and over 400,000 automobiles. However, the urban area has numerous two-way ten-lane roads (“Heilongjiang Provincial Government Network”, n.d.). Although the built-up area of the main urban area is less than 100 square kilometers, the size of the city as a whole is relatively large. Despite its status as a “third-tier” city, Qiqihar, as the second-largest station of the Harbin Railway Bureau and Heilongjiang Province, remains a railway hub. As shown in figure 3 below, public transportation in Qiqihar is a private enterprise, so movement within the city is limited by poor public transportation and a large number of small vehicles.

Figure 3 Qiqihar streets, c. 1982 In terms of economic output, Qiqihar’s agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishery sectors produced a total value of 74.13 billion yuan in 2021, marking a 7.2% increase from the previous year. Additionally, the city plans to invest 7.12 billion yuan in real estate development in 2021, indicating a 46.6% increase from the previous year. While the investment in residential property has grown by 56.0%, and the sales area of commercial housing by 2.9%, the average sales price has decreased by 4.0% (“Baidu

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Baike,” n.d.). Despite these positive indicators, Qiqihar’s economic performance remains relatively modest compared to first-tier cities such as Beijing or Shanghai.

Qiqihar’s historical connections to the Manchu people have endowed it with significant importance in the northeastern region of China. It is worth noting that the region is culturally diverse, which adds to its unique character. Regarding the decline of heavy industry, there are different perspectives in the Chinese media; one highlights the rise of green agriculture and the improvement of the environment, which has been a byproduct of the shift from heavy industry. While these changes have undoubtedly had a positive impact on the area, it is important to acknowledge that they have not come without their challenges.

Nonetheless, Qiqihar remains a significant player in the region and an essential hub for the railway transportation network.

Modern Shrinkage In the early 2000s, significant growth was generated in Qiqihar due to national infrastructure and real estate investment, which enabled the expansion of heavy industry.

This growth was further accelerated by a massive government stimulus following the 2008 global financial crisis (Hancock 2020). However, the shrinkage of Qiqihar can be attributed to a combination of factors such as unproductive companies, weakening consumer demand, and over-investment in heavy industry (Hancock 2020). This has resulted in a dearth of external investment and industry overcapacity, leading to a collapse in the local economy and a subsequent loss of population. As of 2014, Qiqihar’s population had decreased from 5.5 million to 5.3 million, with many young people leaving the city in search of better employment opportunities and quality of life (Hancock 2020).

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According to Qiqihar’s statistics bureau, between January and July of 2014, small businesses in the city have incurred losses, ranging from 20% to 80% (“Qiqihar Municipal People’s Government,” 2015). Additionally, corporate debt is increasing, indicating a potential for further economic decline. Another indicator of the city’s shrinkage is the railway cargo volumes, with Qiqihar Railway Rolling Stock experiencing no new orders and a general slowdown, leading to subsistence wages for its employees (Rose 2014). While the decline in heavy industry is partially offset by improvements in the service sector and real estate, this narrative should be considered critically.

To ensure the long-term sustainability and growth of Qiqihar, it is imperative to address the root causes of its economic decline through the implementation of policies and strategies aimed at improving the productivity and competitiveness of the local industry. This approach not only creates new jobs but also attracts external investment.

Addressing the issue of debt and corporate governance is also essential to guarantee sustainable and responsible business operations. Diversifying the economy beyond heavy industry would reduce dependence on a single sector and make Qiqihar more resilient to economic shocks. These measures would foster a more sustainable and prosperous future for residents and businesses in Qiqihar.

One interesting point of contention is how the general lack of transparency within the Chinese government may be viewed as a direct impediment to the country’s urban development. It is widely known that official statistics are frequently inflated to portray a country’s performance more favorably than the actual situation (Yao 2022). In addition, northeast China’s reputation for corruption discourages private investment as a result of active bribery and ties between officials and state-run companies that emerged during the

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era of planned economy (Hancock 2020). Consequently, these interesting dynamics may shed light on the nuances of various national economic indicators regarding what constitutes a truly shrinking city in China.

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References Guo Xu 郭旭 . “如何评价齐齐哈尔这座城市 ?” 知乎, March 7, 2017. https://www.zhihu.com/question/32766313.

Liang Chia-pin, “History of the Chinese Eastern Railway: A Chinese Version.” Pacific Affairs 3#2 (1930), pp.

188–211 via Wikipedia.

“Mukden Incident.” U.S. Department of State. U.S. Department of State. Accessed November 18, 2022. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/mukden-incident.

“Qiqihar.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Accessed November 18, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/place/Qiqihar.

“Qiqihar.” placeandsee.com. Accessed November 18, 2022. https://placeandsee.com/wiki/qiqihar.

“Qiqihar.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, September 24, 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qiqihar#cite_note-Survey_of_the_City-3.

Rose, Adam. “In Qiqihar, a Glimpse at China's Slowdown.” Yahoo! News. Yahoo! https://news.yahoo.com/qiqihar-glimpse-chinas-slowdown-212233034.html?guccounter= 1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_si g=AQAAAGAx3uK3mRL6ar9qfDs_5pTKaiaONqVICHcO0WNJCv4GnpSblQKNTeE_ oXTLMkVVSJOspZzW5QCBLzvTwcMcysr190Revb3y_4Jjdam0uckW8z260goBpt0fb W9j8iZOCx6latUXWy3L9dLGs4x3BKhUKUPhso5F61Ey4ZR6dagZ. Shao-yun Yang (Department of History, Denison University). “Frontiers of the Tang and Song Empires.”

ArcGIS StoryMaps. Esri, September 28, 2022. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/0cf798878745406fa5719b97ccfc5454.

Spirn, Anne Whiston. “Ecological Urbanism: A Framework for the Design of Resilient Cities (2014).” The Ecological Design and Planning Reader, 2014, 557–71. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-491-8_50.

Tsai, Wei-chieh. "Mongolization of Han Chinese and Manchu Settlers in Qing Mongolia, 1700–1911." Order No. 10283459, Indiana University, 2017. http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses /mongolization-han-chinese-manchu-settlers-qing/docview/1926754490/se-2. 索离族 - 快懂百科. Accessed November 18, 2022. https://www.baike.com/wikiid/3277582696927133984?view_id=b41526s47hc00. “齐齐哈尔_百度百科.” 百度百科. Accessed November 18, 2022. https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E9%BD%90%E9%BD%90%E5%93%88%E5%B0%94/1 51344?fr=aladdin#7. 齐齐哈尔市政府网站. Accessed November 18, 2022. http://www.qqhr.gov.cn/.

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To and Fro by Maya Falstehausen

An Aerial view of Ginza crossing in Tokyo, Japan

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Urban Futures: Critique of the “Making New York Work for Everyone” Action Plan By: Daniella Donzelli Scorza

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MEMORANDUM TO: Mayor Eric Adams City Hall New York, NY 10007 FROM: Daniella Donzelli Scorza DATE: April 15, 2023 SUBJECT: Critique of the “Making New York Work for Everyone” Action Plan

I, Daniella Donzelli Scorza, a resident of Morningside Heights, am sending this letter to express my concerns with two unaddressed phenomena that worsen inequities in the built environment: polarization of the workforce and climate inequality. Earlier this month, you, in collaboration with a cohort of local industry experts known as the ‘New’ New York Panel (NNY Panel), released 40 initiatives as part of the “Making New York Work for Everyone” Action Plan that strives to, “generate inclusive future-focused growth,” in social, political, and economic facets of the city (NYC.gov 2022). Although the proposed plan claims to address the needs of low-wage manual and service workers by implementing infrastructure changes like those earmarked for the public transportation sector, it inadequately confronts the socioeconomic barriers that impede their representation in the global economy, thereby perpetuating systemic inequities. The initiatives also omit action to address one of the most critical environmental hazards New Yorkers face: intensifying heat waves and their disproportionate effects on vulnerable communities in NYC. This letter points to the potential that social justice advertisement campaigns in collaboration with local worker-led organizations have to heighten the valorization of low-wage workers,

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as well as the potential high-performing housing cooperatives have to ameliorate the extent lower-income neighborhoods experience extreme heat.

New York City, considered one of the leading financial centers in the international urban economy, houses transnational corporations that accumulate an immense quantity of wealth and power by dominating master images of economic globalization. As global recognition and representation are paid to CEOs and top positions of leadership in financial and special service sectors, the individuals occupying low-wage, service-focused jobs are significantly devalorized (Sassen 2000, 90). In the view of sociologist Saskia Sassen, “the top end of the corporate economy – the corporate towers that project engineering expertise, precision, ‘techne’ – is far easier to mark as necessary for an advanced economic system than are truckers and other industrial service workers” (Sassen

2000,

82).

This

consensus is made evident by the prioritization of

business-focused economic revitalization efforts; local government brands the City as a valuable site to host headquarters and other top management entities for the leading information industries. According to the Action Plan, the City’s Business Development Office will continue to promote NYC, “as open for business via its ‘Why NYC’ marketing campaign and make the city more inviting by working one-on-one with business leaders throughout their location decision-making process—helping them identify sites for their future space…and pitching NYC at marquee conferences,” (NNY Panel 2022, 59). Place marketing strategies such as these that target and attract international corporations fabricate an urban image and master image of economic globalization that is insulated from the reality of the “multiplicity of economies and work cultures in which the global information economy is embedded,” (Sassen 2000, 80). The invisible and disempowered

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nature of low-wage workers leaves them vulnerable and susceptible to top-down decisions made by powerful corporations and politicians that undermine the protection and operations of this vital segment of our economy.

Those in power forget how much NYC’s economy and livelihood of New Yorkers depend on a thriving industrial sector, which powers our city’s job market, resiliency, and future as a global innovation hub. If you desire to, “Make New York Work for Everyone,” as you claim this Action Plan ensures, it is vital to redirect NYC’s place marketing strategies to also incorporate the needs of industrial workers. In sociologist Kevin Gotham’s analysis on urban branding, “[the] deployment of symbols and imagery,” he asserts, have the power to counter the invisibility that contributes to the devalorization of these workers by, “communicating a sense of community, uniqueness, and place distinctiveness to unite disparate groups,” in a city (Gotham 2007, 844). Optimizing positive impacts from inclusive urban branding strategies will require collaboration with local worker-led organizations like labor unions in the development of actionable social justice marketing that augments their presence in the global economic system.

In the city known for impactful advertisement and publicity, creative ad campaigns such as photographs of low-wage workers in uniform and at work published on billboards in public spaces offer optimal exposure of their importance to economic globalization. For example, a collaboration between the local office and the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) would emphasize NYC’s recognition and support for workers exercising their right to unionize and their dedication to increasing equity within the city’s workforce. Established in Staten Island, the union’s mission is to achieve the right to, “negotiate for a better, safer, and more equitable workplace,” (amazonlaborunion.org 2020). Figure 1 below presents a

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portrait of Chris Smalls, Staten Island essential worker and president of ALU, for New York Magazine that can aid as a creative example to illuminate the faces consistently working to make our global economy thrive. Figure 2 demonstrates a way in which these campaigns can be visibility published across the city: on public bus stops, electric kiosks and charging stations, and the like. Redesigning urban images that augment the presence of underserved communities within service-based urban economies, as these photographs portray, can prompt the distribution of socioeconomic power dominated by the few in top business roles within the global economic system, and establish an integrated and inclusive network of labor forces in NYC. In these ways, the new slogan, “Making New York Work for Everyone” has the potential to become a fundamental feature to reimage the city and forge place-based identities that resonate with New Yorkers.

Figure 1. Chris Smalls, president of Amazon Labor Union. New York Magazine cover, Photograph by Andreas Laszlo Konrath / New York Magazine. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/chris-smalls-amazon-profile.html

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Figure 2. Artist: Edel Rodriguez for Times Square Arts. A digital public service ad campaign, illustrated by top artists, was launched across New York City, featuring expressions of gratitude for essential workers that headed into the city each day during the COVID-19 pandemic. https://artscanvas.org/arts-culture/artists-design-messages-of-hope-and-gratitude-across-nyc

In addition to polarization in the workforce, New Yorkers are facing an unprecedented challenge of extreme heat. Although environmental hazards such as heat waves are derived from global phenomena mainly beyond individual control, deeming them “natural disasters,” their impacts are heavily dependent on the local human environments with which they encounter. The fatalities from the Paris heat wave that torched the city in August 2003 exposed how housing conditions influenced a geography of vulnerability, consisting of, “France’s most isolated populations,” living amongst, “‘chambres de bonne, the former domestic servants’ quarters under the roofs of many of Paris’s buildings… that became a critical hazard for many of the urban poor,” (Keller 2007, 302). While residents of mixed socioeconomic status reside in the same apartment buildings, the infrastructure in which they lived was strikingly different from more affluent residents, presenting a haunting similarity to the everyday ecology of inequality in the city.

A similar dynamic of spatial relations operates during heat waves in NYC, made evident by disparities in access to air-conditioned homes and high-performing air circulation systems.

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According to 2017 data, “In Crotona Park East in the Bronx, 24 percent of households lack air-conditioning. By contrast, in Carnegie Hill on the Upper East Side, one of the city’s wealthiest, whitest sections, 96 percent of households are air-conditioned,” (nyc.gov 2022).

Without reliable indoor cooling or ventilation, hot and humid temperatures can quickly overwhelm the body’s capacity to sweat and shed excess heat which can lead to heat stress and other illness, or even death. Keeping people safe during heat waves will require ensuring that all residents have access to affordable indoor cooling and air circulation systems: this includes renters from impoverished neighborhoods who are confronted with aging housing infrastructure, poor insulation, as well as limited shade on their streets.

The clock is ticking when it comes to adapting NYC’s most vulnerable neighborhoods to extreme heat. According to the NYC Panel on Climate Change’s 2019 report, the annual number of days over 90 degrees Fahrenheit could more than triple in the city by the 2050s (Rosenzweig, Solecki 2019). If city leaders are truly committed to transforming NYC for underserved groups with ethics and equity as leading drivers, high-performing

housing

cooperatives

that

emphasize

community

building

and

environmental protection would play an essential role to mitigate disproportionate vulnerability to heat waves. As sociologist Dolores Hayden emphasized in her analysis of housing design, an “industrial city is characterized by environmental hazards, social degradation and personal alienation,” (Hayden 1980, S172). To address these issues, Hayden presented Homemakers Organization for a More Egalitarian Society (HOMES): a housing design consisting of collective space and accessible community services necessary for economic and environmental justice that broadens conventional definitions of household and family. A similar model can be applied to remedy the effects of heat

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waves in the form of co-ops where individuals and families most vulnerable to isolation, and who recognize the benefits of social networks during environmental disasters, can voluntarily rent units. These co-ops must provide crisis-proofing necessities to protect environmental health: air-conditioned spaces, high-performance windows and sunshades, up-to-date ventilation systems, and emergency energy supplies on hand in case of power outages due to city-wide high-volume AC usage. Moreover, the initiative NYC Cool Roofs launched in 2009 can replace black asphalt with a cool roof coating, reducing roof, internal building, and urban heat island temperatures, and lessening energy consumption for air conditioning (climate.cityofnewyork.us 2022). As residents live in a shared space, vital social networks are formed to exchange updated information on the locations and access to cooling stations, pools, and parks among other public resources. Considering more people are working from home post-pandemic, it is necessary for home design to adapt to extreme summer temperatures and prioritize environmental safety, especially for underserved groups.

Incorporating these solutions described into the Action Plan would ensure a sustainable, fairer, and more prosperous city, one equipped to take on the persisting socioeconomic inequities and external hazards in a bold, visionary, and vigorous manner.

To build a more equitable economy, altering the social vision that characterizes NYC insists on the presence and importance of low-wage workers, as well as recognition of unionization vital that gives voice to underserved New Yorkers. The recent heat waves have been daunting challenges for New Yorkers and exposed the reality that the old way of organizing the city’s life is no longer viable. We call on you to recognize the importance of changing environmental design to address climate inequality and place-based vulnerability.

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Thank you for your time, Daniella Donzelli Scorza

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References Amazon Labor Union. “Amazon Labor Union,” n.d. https://www.amazonlaborunion.org/.

CANVAS Arts. “Artists Design Messages of Hope and Gratitude across NYC,” April 17, 2020. https://artscanvas.org/arts-culture/artists-design-messages-of-hope-and-gratitude-across-nyc.

Environment & Health Data Portal. “Housing Data for NYC.” Accessed December 22, 2022. https://a816-dohbesp.nyc.gov/IndicatorPublic/beta/data-explorer/housing-maintenance/?id=2185#di splay=summary Gotham, Kevin F. “(Re) Branding the Big Easy: Tourism Rebuilding in Post-Katrina New Orleans.” Urban Affairs Review, 2007.

Gottlieb, Martin. “A Decade After the Cutbacks, New York is A Different City.” The New York Times, sec. New York, June 30, 1985. https://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/30/nyregion/a-decade-after-the-cutbacks-new-york-is-a-different -city.html.

Hayden, Dolores. “What Would A Non-Sexist City be Like? Speculations on Housing, Urban Design, and Human Work.” S170–S187. Signs, The University of Chicago Press. Vol. 5, 1980.

Keller, Richard C. “Place Matters: Space, and Urban Form in the 2003 Paris Heat Wave Disaster.” French Historical Studies, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2013.

Sassen, Saskia. “The Global City: Strategic Site/ New Frontier.” American Studies, 2000.

Rosenzweig, Cynthia. Solecki, William. “Special Issue: Advancing Tools and Methods for Flexible Adaptation Pathways and Science Policy Integration: New York City Panel on Climate Change 2019 Report.” Vol. 1439. the New York Academy of Sciences, 2019. https://www.nyas.org/annals/special-issue-advancing-tools-and-methods-for-flexible-adaptation-pat hways-and-science-policy-integration-new-york-city-panel-on-climate-change-2019-report-vol-1439 /.

Phillips-Fein, Kim. “Opinion | We Are Facing a Turning Point for New York City.” The New York Times, sec. Opinion, June 1, 2021 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/opinion/new-york-city-covid.html NY Action Plan: Making New York Work for Everyone. “‘New’ New York.” newnypanel.com.

Accessed December 22, 2022. https://newnypanel.com/ NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice. “NYC CoolRoofs.” Accessed December 22, 2022. https://climate.cityofnewyork.us/initiatives/nyc-cool-roofs/.

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Art and Commerce in a Turn-of-the-century Plateau Multiplex By: Zoe Greenberg

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On the corner of leafy Rue Saint-Hubert, where it meets the end of Rue Napoléon, the casual stroller would find a magnificently extant example of early 20th Century Italian Renaissance Revival design nestled in the heart of Montréal’s Le Plateau-Mont Royal.

Comprising three floors, the corner lot is 346.40 square meters, with a height of three stories. Its southern frontage and façade on Rue Saint-Hubert are 8.94 meters, and its long western exterior wall spans 38.75 meters along Rue Napoléon, stopping when it meets the alley known as Rue Saint-Christophe (Ville De Montréal Property assessment roll 2020; Grand répertoire du patrimoine bâti de Montréal 2020).

Over a series of sunny spring days, as I approached the building, I found myself enjoyably immersed in the grandeur of the street, with its stately double width and arching canopy of mature trees. While there are numerous residences of interest on both sides of the road, 3849 Rue Saint-Hubert immediately stood out, both for its impressive beauty and the large double exposure of its corner lot. The warm color of the stone, the black wrought iron awning above the door, and the curved lintels and arches above the large windows culminating in the terrifically imposing cornice—all combined to form an unforgettable impression of grace and power. When visiting the property in the late afternoon, the shadows cast by the trees along Rue Saint-Hubert and the quietude of the street evoked a pleasant calm, the ideal setting for an elegant dwelling of privilege. I was in the midst of the city in a high population density area, but all was quiet, there was a scent of flowers rising from the tidy neighboring yards, and my awareness of the nearby large Parc LaFontaine mitigated the urban crush. I could easily imagine 3849 Rue Saint-Hubert to have once been the private home of some wealthy, aesthetically confident family expressing their status and good taste during the peak of Montréal’s economic

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ascendancy over the nation. As Canadian industry thrived at the turn of the twentieth century, most of the country’s wealthiest lived in Montreal, and in 1904, a construction boom coincided with the annexation of the suburbs, leading to the erection of numerous haute bourgeois single-family houses adjacent to the Parc (Legault 1989).

I rested my eyes on the façade, composed of warm-toned sandstone ashlar masonry; its central feature was the large front door with a fully-enclosed portico, augmented by a fan-like iron awning. The varied fenestration of the façade, as is common in many classical designs, became gradually less embellished with each ascending floor until it concluded in a powerful, geometric cornice utilizing sculpted modillions that evoke crenelated battlements on defensive medieval architecture (Figure 1) (Canadian Architecture Collection 2001). The viewer is left with the impression of slightly undulating natural forms topped by an unambiguous and unyielding protective mandate.

But upon closer inspection, observing the building over several visits and after digging into Montréal’s considerable public archives that stretch back since the city’s founding in 1642, my initial impression of refinement, wealth, and privilege conjured by the façade gave way to a more sober, grounded reality. From the first visit, I observed that as the building wrapped around Rue Napoléon, the design tone altered radically from the façade to the side and rear of the building, and the style simplified into lean classical forms. The side of the building running along Rue Napoleon was faced in roughly textured brick in an ochre color that was popular in the 1960s building boom in the postwar suburbs, leaving the original ashlar sandstone windowsills and lintels to peek through, uncertain and crumbling. Judging from the arrangement of the sparse, neoclassical fenestration along the long side of Rue Napoleon, three separate dwelling units were

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detectable within the building. Each dwelling unit had an equal distribution of windows in simple proportions, with a public stairwell between, indicating the building had been a multiple dwelling design from its construction. While the apartments appeared to be large and light-filled, they followed a routine, orthogonal uniformity that contrasted with the rhythmic play of natural forms in the delightful frontage.

A continued tour of the lot revealed still more sobering details: further along Rue Napoleon I found a smaller, three-story building of lower elevation and indeterminate purpose attached to the back of 3489 Rue Saint-Hubert. Since the numbered address on the door of this smaller building was 816, I ascertained from the online Ville De Montréal lot listing, which is open to the public, that it was considered part of the same property as the magnificent façade I had just been admiring around the corner. This smaller building was entirely faced in brick, with a light, limestone color on the first floor and red brick on the two above. Similar to the lean, neoclassical forms bordering the side windows of the larger front building, this smaller building’s fenestration had been sparsely designed. It appeared that the large, second and third-story windows had been modified at some point to reduce their height from floor-to-ceiling length to a standardized residential size. The remaining trace of the large windows suggested the back building may have been originally intended to be artisan’s studios or to house light manufacturing at a time when electric lighting was still unreliable in Montréal (Hydro Quebec 2023). Although it had its own entrance, the door was of standard size with no stoop and was tucked in from the street, partially recessed but with no portico, like a modest servant’s entrance (Figure 7). Continuing around the back of the building to enter the quasi-alley of Rue Saint-Christophe, I found two garage doors of recent addition, suggesting that at least the first floor of the back building was

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currently used to store vehicles. However, this more recent purpose gave no clue to its origin; it seemed unlikely to have been designed as a stable due to its triple-story height and unusually large windows.

Giving my full attention to the property’s back face, I found it stood in even greater contrast to its frontage (Figure 8). Most of the back wall had been faced with beige aluminum siding in a utilitarian manner more suited to a commercial building than a cherished residence. There were no charming, flower-filled balconies lining the back of the structure, such as one can typically find in the verdant, sociable alleyways of Plateau; instead, a prominent, multi-floor fire escape jutted out, with home-office printed signs taped to the windows of uniform exit doors on each floor. Rather than invest resources beautifying the back wall, these details suggested an impersonal management authority providing the minimum safety requirements to meet municipal building codes. Large waste and recycling containers overflowed with trash onto a poured concrete yard; a teetering chain-link fence demarking the property line leaned over the neglected space. As my research would go on to reveal, this is where the current use of the building was more bluntly exposed: a commercial enterprise serving short-term rentals for travelers seeking the temporary experience of dwelling in one of Plateau’s most beautiful structures.

Due to the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, my only encounter with a resident or owner came on one visit to the property, when I asked a friend who also enjoys Montréal’s historical architecture to join me. After viewing the contrasting back of the building, we began discussing the disparity between the magnificent, privileged façade and its utilitarian, commercial rear. We agreed that it felt like an example of Montréal’s current conflicted dependence on tourism, an industry that privileges a veneer of

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welcoming aesthetics over a struggling, occasionally improvised infrastructure. A city that was known throughout prohibition as “sin city,” an escape for Americans seeking illicit alcoholic thrills, and that struggled to recover its economic stability after the success of its famous “Quiet Revolution” in the 1960s, which coincided with a rise in sex work and a teeming red light district that lasted into the 2010s. Suddenly, we were startled by the sound of the lower back window swiftly slamming shut. Through it, I could make out a dark-haired woman of late middle age, holding papers in her hand, glaring at us before turning her back. We immediately felt ashamed that we might have offended a resident—or perhaps the building owner—by so loudly and publicly analyzing their property.

Diving into the historical record behind this unique property, multiple sources state that 3849 Rue Saint-Hubert was designed by Eugene Payette (Grand répertoire 2020; Images Montréal Old Houses 2019). Born in Montréal, Payette’s private clientele was not as famous or wealthy as his contemporaries Edward and W.S. Maxwell, who designed some of the country’s most prominent residences in Montréal’s Golden Square Mile, where most of Canada's wealthiest industrialists built their extravagant mansions during Montreal's economic peak. But Payette was responsible for numerous haute bourgeois residences alongside the prestigious Parc LaFontaine, a large English-style urban park.

One of Payette’s signature achievements was designing the nearby massive and imposing neoclassical Ancienne bibliothèque centrale de Montréal, the former central library of Montreal, which borders the eastern flank of the park, built in 1914 (Canadian Architecture Collection 2001; Belisle 2010; Official Old Montréal 2000).

The turn of the 20th century saw considerable investment and rapid property development on Rue Saint-Hubert, in what was then known as Quartier Saint-Jacques and

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is now known as Plateau-Mont-Royal. To elucidate the turn-of-the-century real estate market in Montréal, I searched within the weekly newspaper La Prix Courant’s Revue Hebdomaire’s listing of sales terminating on July 1, 1899, and found the Quartier St. Jacques was listed as having $19,210 in sales. For comparison, the top sales in the city that week were listed in Westmount, which brought twice as much value at $54,909.46.

Sales of lots and completed houses in brick or stone in Quartier St. Jacques remained in the mid-range of real estate sales for that summer, averaging $17,437 per week, while Westmount weekly sales averaged $30,045 (Prix Courant 1899).

To confirm whether or not Payette had indeed designed 3849 Rue Saint-Hubert, I searched the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada 1800–1950 which notes two properties on Rue Saint-Hubert designed by Payette, one in 1907 for Henri Labrecque, and one in 1915, for Alfred Lionnais (Hill 2020). However, as I detail in the figures below, neither Labrecque nor Lionnais were the original owners of 3849 Rue Saint-Hubert (Figures 2–6).

To further research the owner, I examined municipal tax records, which are available online via the Ville De Montréal assessment roll, allowing anyone to enter a building address and view the tax assessment history and ownership record of properties across the Montréal city area for the previous decade. I found an assessment roll number for lot 1202554 that matched with address 816 Rue Napoleon, but unfortunately, this roll number had no relevant documentation available at the provincial land registry, where we can search for ownership records earlier in 2010. There was a document stamped with the lot number 1202554 at the provincial land registry, but it was only recently dated 1956 and has no relation to 3849 Rue Saint-Hubert, instead describing a change in unrelated lot numbers for a completely different address in quartier Rosemont Petite-Patrie. It appeared to be a

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clerical mistake. The last place I would look to confirm the original owner’s name, and the relationship to Payette, would be in Payette’s vertical file at the Center for Canadian Architecture. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I was unable to view it and establish a thorough and official listing of his works (CCA 2020). However, I was able to discover other sources that reveal information about the building’s initial decades aside from its architect and first owner.

Looking into the public records housed at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec enabled me to extract a complex picture of 3849 Rue Saint-Hubert’s early history. I discovered high volatility in the movement of residents, lot numbers, and even street names over the first decade of 3849 Rue Saint-Hubert’s life, attesting to the rapid economic development of the area, the mobility of the population, and perhaps even the struggle of city officials to track and regulate a crazed housing market and the required changes in urban planning (Grand répertoire 2020; Le Prix Courant 1899). While the building today, one hundred years later, appears serene and stable in its environs, in the first decade following construction it would have been surrounded by the noise and dirt of constant construction. The neighboring residents and tenants were constantly resettling, providing a far different atmosphere from the established haute bourgeois residence I took it to be at first glance. Giving a close examination of municipal tax records over the last decade (2010–2020), I detected a persistent instability. The owner since 2011, Gladys Alvarez Calderon, had shifted its tax designation from the category of “6 or more dwelling units” to “5 or less dwelling units”, to its status of “non-residential building” (Ville De Montréal Property assessment roll 2020). When I finally did a superficial search online, I discovered the property had been listed on Sotheby’s International Real Estate, where it

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was described as having “been optimized for short-term rentals” with an asking price of $2,995,000. The building was advertised to contain five units, with “vast indoor space[s],” “12-foot ceilings and impeccably hand-crafted details in the stone and wood construction,” and an inner courtyard (Sotheby’s 2020; Villa Napoleon 2016). The interiors had been renovated numerous times, most recently in 2013, indicating that the property continues to attract investment (Zumper 2013). The listing was changed to “recently purchased” on June 8, 2020, an unusually high selling price in a neighborhood not typically within Sotheby’s market (Sotheby’s 2020). The current owner is listed as 6090621 CANADA INC., a “legal entity” located on Avenue Victoria, the swankiest shopping street in Westmount, which remains the wealthiest neighborhood in the city (Ville De Montréal Property assessment roll 2023).

The dynamically changing demographics of Montreal in the last century, the exigencies of the market and its subjugation to larger political and social changes within Canada, and the rising municipal tax responsibilities of property owners have all contributed to the continued state of unstable occupation. While the property was, under the previous owner Calderon, host to Villa Napoléon, which clumsily advertised itself as a luxury hotel for short-term rentals, its sale suggested the owner’s attempt at entering the hospitality industry was not profitable. While I would personally love to start my day waking up to look out of the grand windows and down Rue Saint-Hubert, lined with trees and quietly populated by so many elegant buildings, I myself could not afford the $350 per night fee; I doubt very few who could afford such a nightly budget would be willing to pay that rate for a long-term stay with so few modern amenities. I can imagine it was a struggle

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to meet the monthly $8,829.00 tax payment (Ville De Montréal Property assessment roll 2023).

The future is uncertain for all such precious, carefully fashioned properties, created during a boom in growth and an era of exceptional bespoke artisanship now over 100 years old. Hopefully, the next owner will be able to balance the challenges of maintaining a property of such grandeur during the coming global economic crisis due to the current pandemic. For 3849 Rue Saint-Hubert is a deceptive gem, with mysteries hidden behind its treasured face. The façade is aesthetically flamboyant, expressive, and ornamental, celebrating the power of art to express ideals. The interior, side, and back are adjusted to the pragmatic realities of commerce. 3849 Rue Saint-Hubert embodies the history of our city Montréal; simultaneously idealistic, aesthetically expressive, and resilient under crisis.

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Illustrations

Figure 1. Façade of 3849 Rue Saint-Hubert. Source: Sotheby’s International Realty Canada, Brokerage.

Figure 2. In Lovell’s guide for 1913, my research unearthed the first listing for a “Lionnais Alf”, residing at 919 Rue Saint-Hubert, the last property before “[rue] Johnson ends”. Source: BAnQ.

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Figure 3. However, an examination of the Goad’s Atlas for 1915 complicates that hypothesis, indicating a different address was established at the corner of Johnson, number 936 Rue Saint-Hubert. Source: BAnQ

Figure 4. In 1926 Rue Saint-Hubert was rezoned, and for the first time we see in Lovell’s directory the current address 3849 Rue Saint-Hubert, still adjacent to Rue Johnson; now the property is titled “Lutetia Apartments” and the residents are listed as “Daoust Jos, Leblanc Mrs J A, Emard Chas”. Source: BAnQ

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Figure 5. The Goad’s Atlas 1926 lists both the new 3849 and the old 936 Rue Saint-Hubert address. It feels safe to say this is the property I am researching today, even though I was unable to determine the original owner. Source: BAnQ.

Figure 6. Finally, in 1928, the address 3849 Rue Saint-Hubert is fixed in Lovell’s listing as adjacent to where “Napoleon (816) intersects”, the property is titled “Lutetia Apartments” and the residents are listed as “Elie Horace, Vezina F X, Labbe Idola”. Source: BAnQ.

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Figure 7. Entrance to 816 Napoleon. Source: Author’s own photo.

Figure 8. Back of 3849 Rue Saint-Hubert, as seen from the alley Rue Saint-Christophe.

Source: Author’s own photo.

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Figure 9. At the same time as Payette was constructing 3859 Rue Saint-Hubert in 1915, he would also have been supervising the construction of the central library. Perhaps he contracted some of the same artisans to carve the stone lintels on 3849 Saint-Hubert as he did for the impressive stonework columns of the Ancienne bibliothèque centrale de Montréal, seen above. Source: Author’s own photo.

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References Bélisle, Jean. “Lesson 3: Stewart Hall.” Online lecture, Montreal: Concordia University, 2010.

Canadian Architecture Collection. The Architecture of Edward & W.S. Maxwell: The Canadian Legacy. McGill, 2001. http://cac.mcgill.ca/maxwells/introtxt1.htm Canadian Architecture Collection. Ross [J.K.L.] House. McGill, 2001. http://cac.mcgill.ca/campus/buildings/Ross_House.html Canadian Centre for Architecture. Search. Eugène Payette: vertical file. Last accessed June 8, 2020. https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/search/details/library/publication/126761 Culture et Communications Quebec. Répertoire du patrimoine culturel du Quebec. Fiche de l'élément Payette, Eugène. 2013. http://www.patrimoine-culturel.gouv.qc.ca/rpcq/detail.do?methode=consulter&id=7847&type=pge#.

Xt7XadVKjIV Goad, Chas E. Co. Insurance plan of City of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, volume III, Montreal. Toronto : Chas.

E. Goad Co., 1915. British Library, Maps 148.b.2.(3.) Media link http://collections.banq.qc.ca/ark:/52327/2246714 Goad, Chas E. Co. Insurance plan of City of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, volume III. Toronto; Underwriters' Survey Bureau Limited, 1926. Ville de Montréal. Gestion des documents et archives. Media Link http://collections.banq.qc.ca/ark:/52327/2244213 Grand répertoire du patrimoine bâti de Montreal. Base de donnees sur le patrimoine Sector. Fiche Du Secteur Rue Saint-Hubert (entre Sherbrooke Est et Mont-Royal Est). Last modified May 18, 2012.

Author’s own translation. http://patrimoine.ville.montreal.qc.ca/inventaire/fiche_zone.php.

Hill, Robert G. Architect, FRAIC, Author & Editor 2009-2022. Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada 1880-1950. Payette, Eugene. Last accessed June 8, 2020. http://dictionaryofarchitectsincanada.org/node/1381 Hydro Quebec. History of electricity in Québec Timeline. 1898–1929 – Corporate Consolidations and Big Projects. Last accessed April 10, 2023. http://www.hydroquebec.com/history-electricity-in-quebec/timeline/corporate-consolidations-big-pr ojects.html Images Montreal Old Houses. 3849 rue Saint-Hubert/Napoléon. September 11 2019. https://imtl.org/montreal/image.php?id=1495 Legault Réjean. (1989). Architecture et forme urbaine : l’exemple du triplex à montréal de 1870 à 1914. Urban History Review, 18(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.7202/1017820ar Lovell, Collection d’annuaires Lovell de Montréal et sa région, 1842-2010. Éditeur Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec,[2019] Retrieved from Bibliothèque et Archives nationales Québec online. https://collections.banq.qc.ca/ark:/52327/3652179 Official Old Montreal website. Designer Sheet Eugène Payette (1874–1959). May 5, 2005 http://www.vieux.montreal.qc.ca/inventaire/fiches/fiche_conc.php?id=66 Le Prix Courant Revue Hebdomaire Du Commerce, de la Finance, de L’Industrie, de la Propriété Foncière et des Assurances Volumes Complet 1899. Éditeur Compagnie de Publication des marchands

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détailleurs du Canada Limitée,1887-1957. Retrieved from Bibliothèque et Archives nationales Québec online.

Sotheby’s International Realty Canada, Brokerage. 3849 Rue St-Hubert, Le Plateau-Mont-Royal, QC. Last accessed June 8, 2020. https://sothebysrealty.ca/en/property/quebec/montreal-real-estate/le-plateau-mont-royal/526747/ Villa Napoleon. Flats. 2016. https://www.villanapoleon.com/flats/rooms/9d239f9d-1f5e-41fd-82d7-93d06d696be5 Ville De Montreal Property assessment roll. Last accessed June 8, 2020. https://servicesenligne2.ville.montreal.qc.ca/sel/evalweb/index Zumper. 816 Rue Napoléon #2. 2020. https://www.zumper.com/apartments-for-rent/14825668/2-bedroom-parc-la-fontaine-montreal-qc

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Photography

by Adeline Rong

‘Tis the Season A zoomed-out view of the apartments on Central Park West, their reflections, and cherry blossoms. People strolling and biking in central park.

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Sunset at Riverside Park 2 Picturing the light of sunset and people relaxing in the park.

Seattle Skyline Photo of Seattle’s skyline taken from the observation deck on a cruise ship.

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Bird, Plane, Aerial Train (left) Photo of an airplane, two birds, and two people sitting in an aerial tram above the California Tower in Balboa Park, Sandiego.

Manhattanhenge (right) summer 2022.Two images were photoshopped together.

Saturday afternoon at Wagner Park Groups of people enjoying the free, open waterfront space in different ways.

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Behind the Success: A Case Study of Singapore’s Official Narrative of Nature and the Environment By: Zilan Qian

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“I think it’s ridiculous that they even count roadside trees and pretty parks and say that oh, this is the amount of green, amount of nature we have. I mean, that’s development not conservation, right?”

–An Anonymous Environmentalist (Han 2017) In Extinction: A Radical History, Ashely Dawson asserts an unresolvable opposition between capitalism and the environment because “capitalism requires people to be destructive of the environment” (2016, 58). However, Singapore, a city-state that has long been known both as a “Garden City” and an economic powerhouse in Asia, seems to be a counterexample of Dawson’s argument. The country has received international recognition as a successful model of urban planning (Chua 2011). This essay will critique this success and examine the official narrative of the Singapore government’s environmental initiatives and policies, focusing on revealing the government’s understanding and approach to nature and the environment. My analysis reveals that, while the slogans of environmental policy have shifted from “Garden City” to “City in a Garden” and “City in Nature,” the government, with the employment of techno-scientific rationality, has consistently portrayed nature and the environment as material products for investment. Additionally, the government has used the public’s passion for environmental issues to condition the population.

The “success” of balancing capitalist development and environmental improvement started from the very beginning of Singapore’s industrialization. Unlike many places where environmental protection awareness started long after the initial industrialization and urbanization, Singapore’s initiative on greening the country started hand-in-hand with the initiative of its industrial development and city building. Upon gaining independence in 1965,1 the nation, with no valuable resources, quickly embarked on state-led modernization and industrialization under the first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. Lee, who claimed it was inevitable for the resource-poor country, also initiated the environmental campaigns at almost the same time. Only two years after separating from Malaysia, Lee introduced the concept of “Garden City” in 1967 and visioned the country to be “beautiful with flowers and trees, and as tidy and litterless as can be” within three years (The Straits 1

Singapore gained its independence from Britain in 1959, merged into the Malaysian Federation in 1963, and two years later withdrew to become an independent country again (Han 2017).

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Times 1967). The country achieved remarkable results: it eliminated the use of ozone-depleting materials by 2002 and recorded the lowest level of water pollution in Asia (Sonnenfeld and Mol 2006).

As the environmental initiatives were implemented alongside economic development under survival pressure, the official narratives around the initiatives also became inseparable from one another. Improving the environment was framed as an investment yielding concrete returns, which are imperative for the nation to survive. In The Straits Times’s2 news section “S’pore to become a beautiful, clean city within three years,” which recorded the announcement of the “Garden City” mission, one-third of the portion was dedicated to listing the benefits of the mission. The portion begins with the statement, “apart from making life more pleasant, it would give Singapore a very good reputation abroad” (1967). The “good reputation abroad” is then explained in concrete economic benefits: “Singapore’s beauty and cleanliness would encourage tourists… promote a growth in the hotel trade” and subsequently “create employment” (The Straits Times 1967).

Moreover, the text converts the abstract notion of international reputation into a measurable employment rate index. The language of the following paragraph drastically shifts from ‘benefit’ to ‘pressure’ by positing Singapore in-between domestic and international pressures. Domestically, Singapore’s population growth had imposed pressures on public facilities and amenities, which were “three to seven times higher than in the 1930s”; Internationally, the newspaper states that Singapore needs to be “a good place to live” to become favored by people from other countries (The Straits Times 1967).

Therefore, “Garden City” becomes not only a profitable project but an imperative for the nation’s survival. Although these pressures may seem like new items on the benefits list, they are alternative versions of the two previously mentioned benefits - namely, the enjoyment of a pleasant life and a good reputation abroad.

Similar to international reputation, the qualitative idea of a “pleasant life” becomes a measurable pressure of population growth and impressive data to describe the increase in demand for developed public resources. Thus, within a few paragraphs, the text justifies the “Garden City” mission as a profitable investment that one must make. However, the 2

The Straits Times is sometimes described as “the mouthpiece of government,” as the content is largely pro-ruling party (Aglionby 2001).

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justifications remain unsound: the only data “three to seven-fold” indicate an extremely wide and ambiguous scale, while the rephrasing of the same points in two languages seems to imply that the author cannot find enough benefits to convince readers.

But what is the ‘beauty’ the “Garden City” mission wants to achieve? From Lee Kuan Yew’s 1967 vision of the country and Singapore’s subsequent environmental campaigns, one element stands out: trees. In the initial narrative, there seems to be a self-obvious belief that beauty is greenness and greenness is trees. Green and beautiful were used interchangeably in the official narrative: while the Prime Minister’s initial words on creating a garden city were to make Singapore a “beautiful and clean city,” the statement was soon followed by the government’s launch of a plan to create a “Green and Clean city” (Han 2017). In a letter addressing HDB3 policy on greenery, a Public Relations officer states that the interest in keeping Singapore green “is fully behind the tree-planting campaign” (New Nation 1972). The greenness discourse is centered around trees. Trees, being selected by the government as a representation of greenness, became a useful medium for the government to exert control over the environment of the nation-state and its people.

Trees were not just trees. They were numbers collected and regulated by the government. From the emphasis on data and measurability in the newspaper from 1967, we already perceived the presence of techno-scientific rationality in the narrative of environmental policy. In his lecture series during 1977–1978, Foucault states that modern governmentality is related to techno-scientific rationality—relying on techniques such as data and models to calculate—as a fundamental mechanism to measure and manipulate territories and populations (as cited by Monterfrio et al. 2020). Extending on this concept, I argue that techno-scientific rationality is not only a concrete tool: it is also a narrative strategy in helping the government formulate its success stories and hence consolidating its future control over territories and population. I shall further elaborate on the government’s employment of techno-scientific rationality with the analysis of the official narrative around greenness and trees.

3

The Housing & Development Board (HDB) is Singapore’s public housing authority. It plans and develops Singapore’s housing estates; building homes and transforming towns to create a quality living environment. It was established in 1960 during the nation’s housing crisis, and delivered and built 21,000 flats in less than 3 years (HDB n.d.).

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Even though greenness seems conceptual and subjective, it becomes measurable and calculable when represented by trees. As early as 1962, two years after independence and two years before merging into Malaysia, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew started tree-planting campaigns (Barnard and Heng 2014, 287). The government office continues to measure, record, and report the numbers of newly planted trees, with growingly impressive data from year to year. With these numbers, the official narrative claims success for their environmental policy. For example, by reporting that “over 55,000 new trees were planted by the end of 1970,” an article published by National Library Board states that the tree-planting program, as an important program in the initial phase of the “Garden City” mission, “was a great success.” The success story is further supported by an increase in new trees planted “from about 158,600 in 1974 to 1.4 million by June 2014” (n.d.). We see here a straightforward form of techno-scientific rationality, as the success of one policy is measured by the simple mechanism of number counting of one specific factor. The hidden logic goes: the more newly planted trees, the more trees in the city; consequently, the city becomes greener, and what is greener is more beautiful, and more successful the policy and hence the government’s rule. Although the logic chain appears solid, we can break it from the very first part. The impressive number of newly planted trees does not mean more trees because it never informs other factors that decide the number of existing trees: how many are cut down, how many survive, and what happens to other trees in the environment. In fact, in the same letter about HDB policy on greenery, the officer assures the public that “those [trees] found not so suitable will be cut down progressively,” for example, the trees that attract caterpillars (1972).

As the officer’s letter shows us, tree-planting is not simply planting trees but selecting what trees to plant. The question then arises: what trees to plant? Of course, the criteria are higher than avoiding caterpillars. The government selected certain trees to cultivate a collective patriotic identity: planted trees should inspire people’s love for trees, and hence the love for the environment and the nation-state. One way to do so was to appeal to the sublime. The Straits Times’s report in 1990, titled “Chok Tong loves nature, but ‘doesn’t have green fingers,’” records Deputy Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong participating in the tree-planting demonstration during Clean and Green Week. The deputy

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Prime Minister expressed that his favorite tree was Tembusu4 because “it is just so majestic, strong, and rugged” (The Straits Times 1990). He also mentioned his love for the Kuras tree, a tropical large tree with buttresses, able to grow up to about 60 meters tall (NParks n.d.). Kuras and Tembusu are lovable because of their heights, strengths, and toughness. These characteristics appeal to the sublime among individual viewers. In his essay Nuclear Sublime, Ferguson claims that the interest in the sublime is in the thing that is “bigger than any individual, and specifically bigger in terms of being more powerful” (1984). The sublime is useful because it helps an individual locate their identity, “to attach himself to a consciousness of his own individuality” (Ferguson 1990).

Even though the Singapore government did not necessarily expect the sublime to create individuality, they did use big trees to create a certain identity among the audience.

After planting a Kuras tree, the Deputy Prime Minister stated that he was “optimistic that the Kuras tree would mark a new environmental phase inspiring the new generation to make Singapore more beautiful and charming” (The Straits Times 1990). In this sentence, trees, the environment, and the government’s mission of beautifying the nation-state meddle together as if they are inherently related. The sublime of big trees inspires the love for trees, the love for trees inspires the love for the environment, and the love for the environment will inspire a passion for the beautification of the nation-state. The statement transforms the passion for environmental protection into a passion for nation-state building. Caring for the natural environment becomes caring for the nation, and environmental consciousness becomes a patriotic identity.

Ironically, there was no mention of the word ‘nature’ in any official narratives from the 1960s to the 1970s I mentioned earlier. In other words, the environmental policy during the “Garden City” era was never explicitly concerned about the idea of nature. However, from the government’s framing of environmental initiatives as a necessary investment, rationalizing the concept of a beautiful environment to the number of newly-planted trees, and using the environment to cultivate national identity, it is clear that in the era of “Garden

4

Tembusu is a native and tall tree (30-40m), with impressive shape of branches. “Older trees have typical U-shaped angular branches that stick out horizontally before making a sharp turn to grow vertically” (wildsingapore n.d.).

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City,” the government viewed nature as a resource that they can utilize in serving the building of nation-state.5 As time passed, the government’s understanding of nature and attitude towards the environment seemed to differ drastically from the “Garden City” stage. In early 2000, the government changed the slogan of “Garden City” to “City in a Garden.” According to Ng Lang, the Chief Executive Officer of National Parks Board,6 this new slogan would mean better greenery plans, preservation of natural heritage, and community involvement in greening efforts (2008). In 2020, “City in a Garden” further evolved into “City in Nature.”

The National Parks Board launches a new mission and proposes a new slogan “City in Nature” (NParks, n.d.) to build “a Singapore where residents will be able to enjoy a livable, sustainable and climate resilient Singapore” under the challenges of climate change and increasing urbanization. The word ‘nature’ started to appear frequently in official coverage and speeches in the era of “City in a Garden” compared to that of “Garden City.” Simply judging from the wording of the two slogans, it seems that the government’s focus shifted from making the human space beautiful to making a peaceful relationship between humans and nature. This can imply an enclosed human space with beautiful man-made greenery, the phrase city in a garden posits human space permanently in a large greenery.

State media hold a “nature-endorsing” perspective, a political attitude towards nature coined by British Philosopher Kate Soper (1998); the government understood nature as some concrete thing that exists in real life for humans to preserve or interact with (Soper 1998). In the speech by Lee Hsien Loong, the Prime Minister of Singapore since 2004 and the son of the first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, titled “The People’s Garden, In Our City in a Garden,” the Prime Minister explained what the new slogan “City in a Garden” implied and the government’s plan to realize the implications (2012). Different from “Garden City,” “City in a Garden” means “connecting our communities and our places and spaces The Singaporean government has always emphasized on “the nurturing of the growth of a Singaporean national identity” to approach nation-building (Quah 1977). Since independence in 1965, the government has ceaselessly tried to construct and revise the national identity (Ortmann 2009). From the 1965 to the late 1980s, economic development was the priority in national identity building. Because of the concern of widespread materialism, this element was later downplayed and replaced by so-called Asian-values to seek shared values across different races and religious groups in the society (Ortmann 2009).

6 In June 1990, the National Parks Board (NParks) was established as a statutory board under the Ministry of National Development to manage and enhance the national parks, comprising Singapore Botanic Gardens and Fort Canning Park, and the nature reserves (NParks n.d.).

5

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through parks, gardens, streetscapes and skyrise greenery” (Lee 2012). The speech mentions ‘nature’ three times. In all instances, nature is related to green spaces. For example, Lee Hsien Loong states that Singaporeans have “many places to enjoy nature” because there are many tropical forests, parks, and even green trees along the road (2012).

However, the new change in slogan and the usage of nature failed to change the overall utilitarian approach towards environmental initiatives. Under the new mission of “City in a Garden,” the government was working hard to “be in touch with nature” by making Singaporean residents never far from “green spaces and blue waters” where “children and pets [can] run around safely,” and couples can take glamorous wedding pictures (Lee 2012). Therefore, the official narrative materialized the abstract nature into perceivable public infrastructures and civic activities, similar to how it materialized international reputation to employment and greenness to newly-planted trees. Although the government changed the slogan, proposed new environmental policies, and reignited the use of the word ‘nature,’ its mechanism of materializing concepts did not change over the years.

Consequently, the obsession with techno-scientific rationality remained. Even the number-recording game continued, except the narrative now added the appeal to expertise to aid the manifestation of rationality. Right after explaining what it means to be a City in a Garden, Prime Minister Lee began to list the ‘success’ the Singapore government’s environmental initiative achieved: “we have more than 3,000 hectares of nature reserves, which is equal to six and a half Toa Payoh towns7” (2012). We have already seen the same kind of techno-scientific rationality of relying on number counting to prove success in recording newly-planted trees back in the 1960s. This time, moreover, the number 3000 is aided with comparison to illustrate its impressiveness. A similar strategy plays out again in Lee’s outline of new environmental initiatives. After repeating the impressive “3000 hectares” Singapore already has, Lee stated that the government “[is] going to add another 900 hectares, another two Toa Payoh New Towns, of park land” (2012). Moreover, beyond numbers, the speech also appeals to expertise in showing the 7

The centrally located town is home to about 105,000 public housing residents, and has 37,900 flats (as of 31 March 2018) (HDB n.d.). It occupies 8.180 km² (city population n.d.).

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professionalism of new policies. The speech listed professions like “URA8 planners,” ‘engineers,’ ‘designers,’ and ‘architects,’ and compared the planning strategies of a new downtown in Singapore with some of the world’s most famous urban planning examples like “Central Park in New York or Hyde Park in London” (Lee 2012).

Besides adopting similar mechanisms in materializing and rationalizing the environment, the speech in 2012 also refers to the environment as an investment in the discourse of environment policy. Unlike using investment as a literary metaphor for the environment in the 1960s, this time, it highlights the real monetary investments in environmental protection. The speech specifically mentioned large corporations—”Far East Organisation, OCBC Bank, ExxonMobil”—as ‘partners’ in generously supporting the government’s environmental initiatives (Lee 2012). It also highlights “the corporations” and “the clients” as two important groups dedicated to improving Singapore’s environment alongside the expertise of engineers, architects, and designers (Lee 2012). By emphasizing the corporations’ involvement in the “City in a Garden” project, the speech presents environmental initiatives as something marketable and attracts investment interests.

Moreover, with the intentional mentioning of the group ‘clients,’ the speech phrases the environment project as some kind of service for others’ consumption. Moreover, with the materialization of nature and techno-scientific rationality, the “City in a Garden” project becomes a concrete and promising product supported by professional knowledge and accurate calculation. Clients can see the product ‘nature’ through actualized trees and parks. Moreover, to prove the project’s success with rationality is to convince clients to incite their future investment, and hence to continue the capitalist circle of reinvestment.

One may excuse the “City in a Garden” project’s utilization of the idea of ‘nature’ because, after all, the project is frank about its intention from the very beginning in its slogan. What is a garden is a human effort to alter the environment for their own benefit.

The shift to “City in Nature,” then, seems to imply the commitment to respect nature and restraining human control over the environment. In reality, however, “City in Nature” is not very different from “City in a Garden” or even “Garden City” in its understanding of nature and approach to the environment. In the National Parks Board’s article “Singapore, a City 8

URA is short for Urban Redevelopment Authority, is a national urban-planning authority on Singapore’s land use planning and conservation (URA, n.d.).

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in Nature”, materialization and techno-scientific rationality again work together to present environmental initiatives as a capitalist product for investment. The metrics used here are the same as the one used in Prime Minister Lee’s address on the mission of City in a Garden in 2012—the hectares covered by greenery and the newly-planted trees: “NParks aims to have 200 hectares of skyrise greenery by 2030”; “NParks will work with various stakeholders to plant at least 170,000 more trees in industrial estates by 2030” (NParks n.d.). More ironically, these two sentences are bolded in the report, implying that they are the main initiatives in the “City in Nature” project.

Moreover, the second bolded sentence mentions the group ‘stakeholders,’ and the report refers to nature parks as “natural capital” (NParks n.d.). Like the mention of clients and corporations in the 2012 speech, ‘stakeholder’ and “natural capital” repeat the process of capitalizing on the idea of nature and the environment, as if environment initiatives

are

some

resources

for

investment.

The

consistent employment of

materialization, rationalization, and the appeal to investment manifests the utilitarianism embedded in environmental initiatives, treating the environment as a resource to be a subject of financial interest and to be capitalized upon rather than a valuable entity in and of itself. Moreover, this kind of utilitarianism is a typical phenomenon in capitalist society.

According to Marx, one fundamental characteristic of capitalism is exactly its reliance on continuous investment (Marx 1978). Capitalists reinvest their returns from previous investments to pursue larger returns, driving “the restless never-ending process of profit-making” (Marx 1978, 334). As utilitarian approaches of materialization and rationalization transform abstract nature into useful resources, the investment process turns them into “natural capital” in pursuit of larger returns in nation-building.

In the endeavor of using the environment to develop the nation-state, besides the consistent use of nature and the environment as “natural capital,” the government has also continued to use them as the appeal for national identity. Following the Deputy Prime Minister’s employment of natural sublime in the “Garden City” era, the idea of community engagement prevailed in both “Garden City” and “City in Nature.” The government advocates for citizens to participate in various environmental projects like tree-planting, garden-building, or park-managing (NParks n.d.). In the National Parks Board’s article, the narrative heavily emphasizes ‘ourness.’ The word ‘our’ is mentioned 26 times over the SPRING 2023 ISSUE 5

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whole report: “Grow our City in Nature together,” “our streetscapes, gardens, parks and park connectors,” and “our efforts” (n.d.). Like the transformation of love for the natural environment to the love for the nation-state, framing environmental projects around ‘ourness’ fuses the natural and national spaces, and caring for the environment is caring for the nation. Moreover, besides conceptually appealing to a collective identity, the government has long used environmental initiatives and policies to condition its subjects.

When stiffer laws on litter were first introduced as a part of the “Garden City” project in the 1960s, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong stated that the uncleanliness of the island was “often the result of a lack of civic consciousness and apathy,” and the laws were meant to make Singapore more beautiful by making “the public educated to a sense of civic responsibility” (The Straits Times 1967). Therefore, cleanliness was bonded to the nation-state identity, and adhering to the government’s environmental policy became a duty of responsible citizens. Since then, the government’s control over the population has become more subtle. The community garden program, run by the government since 2005, encourages residents to create gardens in their neighborhoods. The government standardizes aesthetic expectations of gardens by providing consultations, setting up gardening guidelines, and holding garden competitions (Monterfrio et al. 2020). The standard centers around order and beauty, including making the garden clean and tidy, maximizing greenness, and maximizing the appeal to visitors (Monterfrio et al. 2020).

Unsurprisingly, these standards match perfectly with the government’s vision for their environmental initiatives since the 1960s. Therefore, by encouraging residents to participate in community garden programs, the government indirectly implants its own environmental vision into its subjects’ minds.

Although the change of slogans from “Garden City” to “City in a Garden” and to “City in Nature” seems to imply a more peaceful and respectful attitude towards nature, the government has always been materializing and rationalizing nature and the environment into products for investment and consumption. Moreover, it utilized people’s passion for environmental issues to discipline the population. The case of Singapore again proves the argument that it is possible to be pro-capitalist and green (Morton, 2009).

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green technology projects caused the state to neglect environmental concerns such as biodiversity protection, global climate change, and transboundary environmental crises (Han 2017). Despite all these drawbacks, Singapore’s urban planning as a model has been exported to many Asian countries, including India and China (Chua 2011). The narrative of success continues to prevail not only in Asia but all parts of the world, as Western media also portrays Singapore as “the greenest,” ‘sustainable,’ and “the eco-friendliest.”9 We need a more careful reexamination of the lesson drawn from Singapore’s story and reconsider our optimism of resolving the conflict between capitalism and the environment.

9

See, for example, “Clean, Cool Singapore—Greenest City in the World” (Natural Cool Air n.d.) published by an Australian company, “How Sustainable Cities like Singapore Succeed in Green Urban Development” (Igini 2022) on a United Kingdom’s Environmental News & Data Platform, and “Singapore: The Eco-Friendliest Country in Asia” (Kh 2018) by a United Kingdom’s investment company.

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Beatley, Timothy. 2016. “Singapore City, Singapore: City in a Garden.” In Handbook of Biophilic City Planning and Design, edited by Timothy Beatley, 51–66. Washington, DC: Island Press/Center for Resource Economics. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-621-9_5.

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Chua, Beng Huat. 2011. “Singapore as Model: Planning Innovations, Knowledge Experts.” In Worlding Cities, 27–54. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444346800.ch1.

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Dawson, Ashley. 2016. “Capitalism and Extinction.” In Extinction: A Radical History. OR Books. Ferguson, Frances. 1984. “The Nuclear Sublime.” Diacritics 14 (2): 4.

Foucault, M, Arnold I. Davidson, and Graham Burchell. 2007. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977 - 78. Quoted in Montefrio, Marvin Joseph F., Xin Run Lee, and Elwin Lim. 2021. “Aesthetic Politics and Community Gardens in Singapore.” Urban Geography 42 (10): 1459–79. “‘Garden City’ Vision Is Introduced - Singapore History.” n.d. Accessed December 6, 2022. https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/history/events/a7fac49f-9c96-4030-8709-ce160c58d15c.

Han, Heejin. 2017. “Singapore, a Garden City: Authoritarian Environmentalism in a Developmental State.” The Journal of Environment & Development 26 (1): 3–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/1070496516677365.

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Montefrio, Marvin Joseph F., Xin Run Lee, and Elwin Lim. 2021. “Aesthetic Politics and Community Gardens in Singapore.” Urban Geography 42 (10): 1459–79.

Muzaini, Hamzah, Choon-Piew Pow, Harvey Neo, Shirlena Huang, Noorashikin Abdul Rahman Abdul Rahman, Junjia Ye, Karen P. Y. Lai, et al. 2013. Changing Landscapes of Singapore: Old Tensions, New Discoveries. NUS Press.

New Nation. 1972. “HDB Policy on Greenery,” April 7, 1972. NewspaperSG. “NParks | Dryobalanops Oblongifolia.” n.d. Accessed December 16, 2022. https://www.nparks.gov.sg/florafaunaweb/flora/2/8/2863.

Ortmann, Stephan. “Singapore: The Politics of Inventing National Identity.” Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 28, no. 4 (December 1, 2009): 23–46. https://doi.org/10.1177/186810340902800402.

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“Tembusu (Fagraea Fragrans) on the Shores of Singapore.” n.d. Accessed December 22, 2022. http://www.wildsingapore.com/wildfacts/plants/coastal/fagraea/fragrans.htm.

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Financial Institutions Influencing Urban Shrinkage By: Edward Turner III

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Located in east-central Missouri, St. Louis was founded in 1803 as a United States territory. After it grew into an industrial powerhouse, its fortitude began to dissipate during the late 20th century as population decline and urban displacement were exacerbated due to historically racist economic policies and failed attempts at urban renewal. St. Louis experienced perpetuated practices of economic and social discrimination, which characterizes St. Louis as a shrinking city. Urban shrinkage is signified by economic and social discrimination that creates prosperity for one demographic while marginalizing another demographic within the same city. This can be seen in St. Louis through various economic policies such as redlining, faulty housing codes, and financial ordinances. For example, the polarization is most apparent across the north and south ends of Delmar Boulevard (see Appendix, fig. 1) where, according to census data, north of Delmar is 99 percent African American, with a median income of $22,000 and a median home value of $78,000. On the south side of Delmar, 70 percent of the community is white, the median income is $47,000, and the median home value is $310,000 (Ebeler 2018, 90). Analyzing past discriminatory practices recognizes how vulnerable communities were negatively affected by governmental policy, city planners, and predatory lenders.

Analyzing the work of city planners and their influence on financial institutions by controlling government funding, demonstrates the gravity of urban shrinkage in St. Louis.

This can be seen through the historical relationship between financial institutions and their financial groups who distributed money to local city planners, which created an unstable foundation for St. Louis urban development, intensifying patterns of urban shrinkage. It is important to understand that government funding is scarce, meaning that the demographics and neighborhoods that do not receive funding must use their own money

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to sustain themselves. Since government funding is scarce, the lack of federal oversight over local offices allows for poor marginalized communities to not receive funding which furthers patterns of shrinkage.

Throughout the late 19th century up until 1917, the population of St. Louis exploded due to increased migration because of new job opportunities, which attracted Black Americans. These immigrants migrated to St. Louis during the Great Migration from former southern plantations. The city became an epicenter for manufacturing due to its proximity to the rail transportation systems. This large-scale movement from the South to the North established patterns of systemic inequality due to the lack of legislation that should have granted Black people equal property rights. (Schippers 2001, 3).

During this time, rich upper-class white residents took the guise of private financial institutions by agreeing to collectively purchase real estate in specific neighborhoods to prevent Blacks from moving into those neighborhoods. John Wright, in “St. Louis: Disappearing Black Communities,” used the period of 1900–1925 to set the stage for what would later be a wide separation between Black people, other members of the lower classes, and the wealthy upper class. Before 1917, racist laws acted as a form of propaganda to spread messages of the “negative impact” of Black people living in white neighborhoods to diminish property values. White people used flawed research studies and economics to exclude Black people from the community, creating a disadvantage for Black residents. Robertson, a city on the outskirts of St. Louis County maintained a predominantly Black community that was considered by many to be a pocket of poverty (see Appendix, fig. 2). White people were determined to prevent the mobilization of Black people out of these circumstances so they collectively agreed to take

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ownership of several businesses and properties in Robertson. This form of power gained through ownership perpetuates the damaging effects of redlining.

By keeping Black and lower-class people within their “pocket,” the upper class segregated the educational opportunities by demographic. For example, Robertson schools experienced large class sizes (see Appendix, fig 2). Small classroom sizes are usually associated with private schools, or schools that are only accessible to the upper class, so teachers can focus more on student development. Black and lower-class communities experienced overcrowded classrooms, introducing a new hurdle of social mobilization and creating challenges in the educational system.

Finally, in 1917, the Supreme Court ruled to end racial segregation, which was underscored in legislation and housing contracts. Because the Supreme Court decision of Buchanan vs. Warley focused on equitable property rights, and not affirming equal protection for minority groups, city leaders continued to implement discriminatory practices that were deeply embedded into society. In the 1930s, the government maps color-coded African-American communities to identify their neighborhoods as risky insurance mortgage districts for appraisers, influencing social stratification. The correlation between policy and racial segregation built an unstable foundation for St. Louis’ urban development. The correlation between policy and racial segregation positions the local government as a financial institution. While the federal government creates programs to organize funding to address needs, local governments have the ultimate authority to create local policies. They mediate government funds and their distribution throughout the city, which controls who receives funding and how it will be enforced. St. Louis officials created strategies to identify neighborhoods capable of being revived due to the limited

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resources available to systemically respond to urban shrinkage. The government ultimately misused its power by discouraging equitable insurance valuations which shows the need for more federal oversight over local offices.

The federal government passed the National Housing Act of 1937 which protected lenders and banks from borrower defaults in exchange for a fee. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA), which was created through the act, made low-interest, sixty-year loans to local governments so they could build apartment blocks, which were intended to rent to low-income families. However, the money was given to real estate developers for slum clearance which overpopulated Black people in corners of cities and developed brand new housing stock only affordable to the rich upper-class white community.

More specifically, in 1948 the St. Louis city planners passed The Minimum Standards Housing Enforcement Codes of 1948, classifying neighborhoods into three categories: Well-functioning neighborhoods (elites), middle-class neighborhoods (gray area neighborhoods), and slum/blighted neighborhoods (minorities). Government funding avoided elite and blighted neighborhoods because they did not see a clear return on investment. The Minimum Standards Housing Enforcement Codes Act only enforced housing codes in the gray area neighborhoods so housing stock did not decline. The Act furthered the decay of the blighted neighborhoods where minority groups lived. This gave the government an excuse to target those areas for clearance and reconstruction (Elliot 1983, 352). Later in 1954, city planners passed the St. Louis Rehabilitation program to improve public amenities in the gray area neighborhoods. The results of the Minimum Standards Housing Codes Act of 1948 identified gray area neighborhoods and provided

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$4 million in government funding for parks, community centers, and other public amenities.

Policymakers during the second half of the 20th century (1960–2000) attempted various urban renewal programs, such as the previously mentioned enforcement of housing codes that were aimed to protect the quality and affordability of city housing.

However, these new programs failed and fueled patterns of urban shrinkage in the city (St. Louis Government 2022). Local city officials developed a form of urban triage, through code enforcement, to ensure proper social integration. Yet, the attempt at resource redistribution was not given to the most affluent and poorest neighborhoods but to ‘gray zones,’ foreshadowing blighted zones and urban shrinkage. Its goal was to rehabilitate blighted neighborhoods to safeguard basic public health and safety standards. However, the lack of enforcement in low-income areas promoted the intensification of segregation between affluent and disadvantaged communities. The attempt at urban renewal ended up promoting favoritism in the housing selection process for white residents (Elliot 1983, 10–20). For example, properties continued to follow patterns of blight to qualify for tax breaks under various urban renewal projects: land reclamation, tax increment financing, and enterprise zone laws. The failed attempt at urban renewal was because of previous slum clearance and a failure to properly execute developmental programs (Collin 2008, 156).

The failed attempts at urban renewal in St. Louis through the early 21st century manifested themselves in the actions of elite politicians in the modern day. Elite politicians in St. Louis used Black people’s need for immediate financial relief to further shrinkage in the Black community. While Black people were still recovering from the effects of the

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Great Recession of 2008, they were unable to afford the mortgages on their homes. The city introduced an act that would offer struggling St. Louis City homeowners an option to help avoid foreclosure. The program would extend a loan mediation process to any homeowner who requests it from their bank to buy more time to pay their mortgages (St. Louis Public Radio 2012, 1). Although this would have helped St. Louis residents, especially lower-class Black homeowners, the act can be seen as dangerous to lenders because it would make lenders less willing to issue loans. The act would create long-term opportunities for upper-class whites to further expand their footprint on the city while negatively affecting the Black homeowners.

Firstly, there is an embedded loan that is hidden within the language of the program– the time that will be granted to homeowners comes at a cost. The “time” that is granted is a loan because the payments would not be paused during the time frame of the program. As time went on, Black people could no longer afford to pay for real estate, which allowed upper-class white residents the opportunity to purchase property at a steep discount, furthering the displacement of Black community members.

Secondly, this ordinance hurts homeowners due to the accumulated interest.

Interest rates from a bank perspective (essentially as an investor) can be looked at as a sum of many components: the real risk-free rate (government bonds) + inflation premium (expected annual inflation in the period of the loan) + default risk premium (a premium the bank requires for the quantifiable risk of loan recipient not being able to keep up with payments) + liquidity premium (a premium the bank requires for being tied down to that loan) + maturity premium (a premium for the time it takes for a loan to be paid off). With this program, banks would increase the default risk premium because they would not be

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able to collect the house if the client defaults and would also increase the liquidity premium because the inability to collect the house means that they could not sell it to someone else and save their deal. When paying off a loan, the higher the balance, the less is being paid down on the actual loan. The increased balance for many Black homeowners decreases the monthly principal portion of their payments and increases the interest portion of their payments. Thus, this harms members of the lower-class community because they would pay a disproportionate amount of interest (for the increased risk) compared to higher social classes. This keeps Black people in the renter’s market, further widens the gap between social classes, and reduces the possibility of social mobilization.

The history of legislation has a clear link to the distribution of money in the city of St. Louis. Starting in the early 1900s up to 1917, legislation allowed for explicit racism that affected the relative footprints of upper-class elites and lower-class Black people. After 1917, when racism was outlawed as a criterion for housing equities, there was an influx of private investment and agreements by upper-class elites to use their money for redlining.

The effects of redlining created shrinkage patterns that displaced Black people and placed them in the corners of the city. In the middle of the 19th century, the local government attempted to respond to shrinkage, but the effects of redlining caused legislation to disregard race and socioeconomic status.

The history of redlining still affects the city today. Legislation seen to provide immediate financial relief to Black people serves as a tool to put them in long-term debt.

Eventually, the debt will not be able to be paid off, foreclosures will take place, and the upper-class white people will again further expand their footprint on the city. The

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programs and acts created by local city planners also intensify the segregation between affluent and disadvantaged communities. While the enforcement of housing codes seemed to protect the affordability of city housing stock, local legislation simply does not account for demographic and socioeconomic disparities. Once slum neighborhoods decay to a certain point, cities have adequate reasoning to clear the neighborhoods and rebuild. Slum clearance displaced African Americans and other minority groups by marking up the price of new development to the point that it was unaffordable. The funding that was supposed to revive Black communities was ultimately used to move white elites into these areas and expand their territory in the city of St. Louis, which created patterns of urban shrinkage and shows the need for more federal oversight.

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References Elliott, D.S., Jr. and Quinn, M.A. 1983. Concentrated Housing Code Enforcement in St. Louis. Real Estate Economics, 11: 344-370. https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-6229.00295 Harlan, Chico. 2014. “In St. Louis, Delmar Boulevard Is the Line That Divides a City by Race and Perspective.” The Washington Post. WP Company. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/in-st-louis-delmar-boulevard-is-the-line-that-di vides-a-city-by-race-and-perspective/2014/08/22/de692962-a2ba-4f53-8bc3-54f88f848fd.

Inmost City. October 12, 2017. “Is fractured government dragging down the economy of the St. Louis region?” https://inmostcity.com/ index.php/2017/10/12/ is-fractured-government-dragging-down-the-economy-of-the-st-louis-region/.

St. Louis Public Radio. September 12, 2012. “Lenders Challenge Foreclosure Legislation in St. Louis City.”

STLPR. https://news.stlpublicradio.org/2012-09-12/lenders-challenge foreclosure-legislation-in-s-louis-city.

Wright, John A. 2004. St. Louis: Disappearing Black Communities. Arcadia Publishing.

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Appendix

Figure 1: Racial Demographics of St. Louis, Missouri

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Figure 2: Map of Robertson circled within the map of St. Louis County.

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Photography

By Grace Li

Gulls over the Hudson

Morning Flight

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Radio City

Time Square – 42nd Street

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From the South Facing Window in Sulz Tower

Foliage on Fire

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Mapping Graffiti and the Visual Culture of the Lower East Side By: Lola Rael

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In the concrete jungle of New York City, graffiti emerges as an artistic rebellion, leaving its colorful mark on walls, trains, and the city's cultural landscape, challenging societal norms and redefining urban expression. It first appeared scribbled around the city in the late 1960s and blossomed throughout the 70s during New York’s brutal fiscal crisis.

Subway cars became the ideal target for graffiti artists, as they were originally blank canvases that traveled the city, reaching millions of eyes every day. It was barely a decade before graffiti became treated as an urban quality-of-life issue. When the city began policing graffiti more heavily and directing funds towards its removal, graffiti artists viewed this as a challenge to produce work more quickly than could be washed away. This attitude prevails today: the graffiti we see on the streets exists in a state of precarity, a statement of individualism under threat by government-sponsored removal – and the instrument of destruction is a spreadsheet.

Graffiti became associated with the “broken windows” urban sociological ideology, which was published in a 1982 article “Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety” by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, and became a guiding principle of New York City policing in the 1990s, under Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The theory dictated that by cracking down on minor offenses, like vandalism and loitering, the administration might create an atmosphere of civility that would encourage citizens to take care of their surroundings. While the approach has since been debunked and the city has broadly come away from it in the 2000s, Graffiti-Free NYC program of the Department of Sanitation (DSNY), an official graffiti-removal campaign, is a vestige of this dated ideology. New York City's 311 is a non-emergency phone and online service that provides residents, businesses, and visitors with access to information and assistance related to a wide range of city services, programs, and issues. Through this platform, the DSNY collects reports of graffiti and organizes them into a dataset to dispatch cleaning crews and track their statuses. Viewing graffiti from a “broken windows” perspective, this program positions the art form as illicit vandalism that devalues the environment.

Simultaneously, legal public art, commissioned or otherwise approved by the local government, has been embraced by New York City since the 1990s. In her essay “Alternative Space,” art historian Rosalyn Deutsche is harsh on the arrival of public art in New York City in the 1990s, calling it a tool for redevelopment and gentrification rather SPRING 2023 ISSUE 5

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than an art movement. Deutsche says of legal public art, “while seeming to acknowledge the needs and desires of city residents [it] actually recognizes no role for residents in the creation of the city, limiting participation to officially sanctioned uses of spaces provided for ‘the public.’” Legal public art makes for an interesting counterpoint to graffiti because it validates graffiti’s power. The City of New York recognized the efficacy of visual art as a tool to humanize the environment; legal public art was an attempt to institutionalize and control art in the public sphere. This setup of legal public art versus illegal vandalism aims to claim and neutralize the practice of installing art in the city itself.

Fortunately for the graffiti artists, the Graffiti-Free NYC program moves at a snail’s pace, and reports remain untouched in the database for months before cleaning crews are deployed. While contemplating how I might interrogate this dataset, I considered that I could just go and take pictures of the sites reported. However, I realized I wasn’t just curious about what was being reported, but what kind of picture this dataset was painting about graffiti in New York. This data is not just a set of statistics, but a living document that is being used to carry out a state-funded program. I wanted to learn: what kind of graffiti is being reported? What is being skipped over? What kind of street art do people consider worth reporting, and does this change throughout the city?

First, I decided to pick a neighborhood for a case study because I wanted to look at the graffiti closely and in person. To determine which neighborhood had the most graffiti, I downloaded the 311 DSNY Graffiti-Free NYC report, containing about 4,500 data points. I filtered out the points that had been marked as cleaned, as I was most concerned with active sites. Then, I downloaded a shapefile from NYC Open Data with the city’s official neighborhood administrative boundaries, known as Neighborhood Tabulation Areas (NTAs). Using geoprocessing, I joined the 311 graffiti points to the neighborhood boundary polygons and symbolized the count with a choropleth map. This map revealed the densest concentrations of graffiti sites in Southwestern Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan (Figure 1).

Due to limitations in research time, I opted to zero in on Manhattan by clipping the borough’s NTA polygons from the rest of the city. This clipped map revealed that the East Village, Lower East Side, and Chinatown were the areas with the most graffiti reports in Manhattan (Figure 2). This type of visualization is called a choropleth map, and it uses different colors or patterns to represent different data values for predefined geographic SPRING 2023 ISSUE 5

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regions, such as countries, states, or census tracts. The color or pattern intensity is used to visually represent the magnitude or density of a particular variable or attribute within each geographic region. Choropleth maps are commonly used to show data that are associated with discrete geographic units and are ideal for displaying data that have distinct boundaries, such as political boundaries, administrative divisions, or census units.

To get a more thorough sense of where I could find a graffiti “hotspot,” I turned the choropleth map into a kernel density map (Figure 3). A kernel density map is a type of heatmap that displays the spatial distribution of a variable or attribute as a continuous surface. It uses a smoothing algorithm to estimate the density of data points across the geographic space, creating a continuous surface that represents the intensity or concentration of the variable. Kernel density maps are useful for identifying patterns and trends in data that are not constrained by predefined geographic boundaries, such as point data representing events or incidents, such as crime incidents, disease outbreaks, or wildlife sightings. The choropleth mapping technique was appropriate for comparing the density of graffiti points across neighborhoods, but the kernel density map is more useful for finding high concentrations of graffiti.

I found a few distinct clusters throughout Lower Manhattan, the largest of which was very clearly along the northern boundary of Chinatown-Two Bridges and reached up into the Lower East Side. I layered this map over a base map and, by lowering the transparency, determined that the strip of 1st Avenue (later Allen Street) between 14th Street and Canal Street had dozens of graffiti reports, making it the ideal stretch for my research.

My rationale for picking this 20-block stretch was especially suitable because its surrounding neighborhoods feel very distinct from one another, both aesthetically and socio-economically. My site area is heterogeneous due to factors such as variations in housing prices, historical patterns of development, changes in economic conditions, and social dynamics. 14th St. and 1st Ave., my research starting point, is close to Union Square with its big-box commercial developments and Stuyvesant Town, which has become regarded as moderately upscale housing. My walk took me through the luxe boutiques on the main drag of the East Village, down past New York City Housing

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Authority’s First Houses around Houston St., through an ultra-gentrified chunk of the Lower East Side (LES), and into the depths of Chinatown.

I decided to go about this project by taking my walk and documenting every graffiti site I could find by taking a picture. iPhone images automatically store geolocations in their metadata. All I had to do was upload the images to Google Photos and import the photos into a Google MyMaps map. This allowed me to see the photos mapped out, but also to export the map into a KML, with the spatial data and address for each point. Once I put the KML into GIS, it generated an attribute table that contained the addresses, image names, and spatial coordinates of my self-reported data, and I could represent this data over the DSNY graffiti reports (Figure 4).

To take my analysis a step further, I was also curious to track the nature of how graffiti I saw changed as I traveled and to determine whether the type of graffiti had any bearing on whether or not it was reported. I made a new column in my self-reported graffiti sheet and clicked through the photos, assigning the graffiti sites one or more descriptive tags. After some additional research into graffiti types and projects similar to my own, I decided on the major categories of murals, stickers, paint-marker tags, and throw-ups, which are large tags with block letters, often filled in with paint. By exporting the attribute table and then joining it to my self-reported points in GIS, I was able to use the categories feature and symbolize the points with color codes according to their assigned tags (Figure 5). I also made a pie chart to represent the total number of self-reported graffiti types in each category (Figure 6).

From this map, I was able to make a few observations. First, in general, I reported much more graffiti than was officially reported through 311. That may be in part because graffiti goes up more quickly than it gets formally reported. I made sure to use the most recent version of the 311 data and filtered out all sites that were marked as cleaned and closed. However, I still found it notable that graffiti along this 20-block stretch was profuse, and the reports only accounted for a fraction of the actual graffiti.

Looking at Figure 5, I noticed some patterns in how the types of graffiti differed throughout my study area. The majority of the sites had tags and throw-ups, but there were more tags on the northern end of the area, above Houston St., and more throw-ups towards the southern end, especially clustered between Delancey and Grand St. There are SPRING 2023 ISSUE 5

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also far more stickers above Houston St. The murals I found were clustered around Houston and the upper section of Allen St., above Delancey.

My hypothesis for why the graffiti types might be distributed this way is that it is easier to perform graffiti acts in certain areas than in others. I suggest that this has to do with the amount of surveillance and pedestrian traffic on each block. Tags and stickers are easy and fast ways to mark the environment, while throw-ups take significantly longer to paint. The East Village, the neighborhood above Houston St., is quite wealthy and very active, abuzz with commercial activity until the early hours of the morning. In this area, it is relatively challenging for graffiti artists to do much more than scribble a tag or apply a sticker, especially when being watched by the owners of the upscale espresso bar next door and their surveillance cameras. 1st Avenue also feels relatively tidy and open, and from the sidewalk, one can get a good view up and down the street.

‘Tidy’ and ‘open’ are not qualities that I felt in Chinatown and the southern tip of my study area. I found the buildings to be much more tightly packed together, and businesses to be of a less luxurious nature. I was struck by the air of abandonment as I neared Canal Street; many stores appeared shuttered and possibly out of business, despite it being midafternoon. While marveling at the size and abundance of throw-ups below Delancey, I thought it was immediately obvious that graffiti artists spent much more time at graffiti sites down here. I was not surprised, because these blocks felt desolate and unregulated, as compared to the quaint East Village. The businesses below Delancey are smaller, fewer, and further between. The presence of scaffolding on some sidewalk blocks seemed like an ideal cover for any sort of illegal activity, and there was very little foot traffic, as compared to above Houston. Allen St. is also a boulevard, and the wider streets obscure some vantage points from people walking in either direction.

Murals were concentrated on Allen St., between Houston and Delancey. While the East Village and Chinatown are residential areas, this section of the Lower East Side is less residential and is close to public spaces like Roosevelt Park and the gardens on 1st St. These blocks have a high-end feel, with pricey restaurants and hotels, catering to tourists. I noticed many murals that appeared to be legal art, commissioned, or approved by the commercial tenants of the Lower East Side. I infer that these murals were legal as they were too large and intricate to have been painted discreetly. I also made this assumption SPRING 2023 ISSUE 5

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because the murals adorned commercial buildings, which would have been commissioned by business owners. Owners are incentivized to have murals installed as they “beautify” the building; certain murals can subtly advertise the business within, or perhaps leave the mark of a famous artist.

A further suggestion as to why the graffiti was reported in this distribution by DSNY has less to do with the artists and more to do with the intention of the city to control the aesthetic landscape of the neighborhoods. For example, the East Village has had a reputation for striking a careful balance between gritty but up-market since the ‘90s. I suppose that the city uses the DSNY program to keep tabs on graffiti as a “quality of life” statistic to monitor neighborhoods just like this one and maintain control over the visual landscape. In neighborhoods like Chinatown, I suggest that graffiti is reportedly rampant in part because the city is less interested in cleaning it up. This might be because Chinatown has a less posh image as a neighborhood, and perhaps graffiti is thought to contribute to the neighborhood’s character rather than devalue it.

To explore my question of what was being reported and what was being left out, I looked at my self-collected data points and compared them to the 311 reports. I had documented 18 of 20 instances of graffiti that had also been reported through 311, and yet plenty of points that hadn’t. I compile pictures of the double-reported sites (both 311 and self-reported). I then made a pie chart breaking down which types of graffiti were being double reported by both DSNY and myself (Figure 7). The results took me by surprise.

Tags were the most reported, at 47% of the total double-reported graffiti sites, and these were mostly in the East Village. Stickers and sites with both stickers and tags were the second and third most reported sites, at 23.5% and 17.6%, respectively. Throw-ups only made up 11.8% of reports.

I found this result interesting because of the visual differences between these types of graffiti. Reviewing my photographs, I found both tags and stickers to be significantly less ornate and attention-grabbing than throw-ups, which take much longer to apply.

However, this chart supports my hypothesis that people are more concerned with controlling the northern end of the visual environment, around the East Village than that of the southern end, around Chinatown. Additionally, none of the 311 reported sites that I covered in my research walk were murals. Murals were not the object of 311 complaints.

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This finding sets up an interesting order of graffiti types in terms of what gets reported: tags being the most reported, stickers being in the middle, throw-ups towards the bottom, and murals not at all. I found these results to be a satisfactory answer to my question about reportability.

Something that I saw that helped lead me to these hypotheses was almost a complete lack of graffiti on blocks home to NYCHA developments on the east side of 1st Ave, from 6th St. to 2nd. I was stunned by the stark contrast between the plainness of the brick towers and the chaotic, sticker-encrusted shops just across the street. I realized that the lack of graffiti was due to the surveillance around the complex, but it made me wonder, do the structures in the development still get graffitied, and then cleaned immediately, or are artists scared off entirely? It is worth noting that I noticed a couple of tags along the sidewalk near the development, but the 311 dataset has no graffiti reports along the east side of these blocks. My suggestion is that this is either because the graffiti I observed was new, or perhaps because NYCHA is responsible for graffiti removal on its premises, and thus the housing developments on these blocks would be excluded from the DSNY report.

This project applies a variety of methods we used in Introduction to GIS, like the choropleth and kernel density maps, but it was particularly the skills we focused on towards the beginning of the semester that allowed me to consider the possibilities for mapping graffiti. With a deeper understanding of relational databases, I feel like both of my datasets feel sort of like blank slates that I was able to manipulate, add to, and represent to my heart’s desire.

I was inspired by a few of our readings to assemble my findings into a webpage.

Online mapping projects like The Cut’s NYC Love Map and the Hollaback! Street Harassment Stories maps are incredibly user-friendly and present personal data in a way that tells a story. The website is meant to guide the reader through my findings and bring them along with me on my walk. I wanted to bring all the elements together in a single document and spotlight the interactive element of Google Maps. While I did use GIS every step of the way, I also did rely on Google’s technology and found it supplemented the process.

This project was truly a learning experience for me. The qualitative nature of my data made this a process of trial and error, in finding ways to observe and represent the SPRING 2023 ISSUE 5

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graffiti and perform some sort of analysis. A key methodological issue I faced was working with 311 data. In Introduction to GIS, we discussed the limitations of this sort of community-reported data. 311 data is not reflective of the full extent of a phenomenon in New York; instead, it only includes what the community officially reports. This was not exactly a limitation for me, as I was curious to investigate “reportability” itself.

Something that did prove challenging was using address-based data. The original 311 Graffiti-Free NYC dataset that I was working with named their data points after their street addresses. Street addresses are not straightforward, especially in New York. While on the street, I realized that there were many instances of multiple pieces of graffiti at a single address, making it a little difficult for me to sort the graffiti out. To remedy this, I refer to the graffiti instances as “sites” to honor their clustered nature, and I sorted the sites using description tags, which allow for multiple tags to be assigned to one photograph/point. The overlapping tags were difficult to symbolize using GIS but are most clear to view on the Google Map, “Graffiti Sites by Type.” I was working with both 311 graffiti reports and my self-reported data in spreadsheets that contained each site’s address, as well as their XY coordinates. I experienced a bit of frustration with plotting the data in GIS and Google Maps, as the points plotted a little differently when I used their coordinates rather than addresses. Across the board, I struggled with the imperfection of New York City’s address system, often looking for addresses listed as graffiti sites that I was never able to find or even getting mixed up by the East Village’s intersection of 1st St. and 1st Avenue.

I had hoped to use the “Select by Location” function in GIS to quickly select the double-reported points. I tried to use this tool and had the program select my self-reported points within 20 feet of a 311 report, expecting this to show me the data that I collected that overlapped with officially reported sites. Unfortunately, this strategy was imperfect.

The 311 data was primarily in the form of street addresses, but because my self-reported data was originally in the form of geotagged images, the points were plotted where I took the pictures, rather than at the precise address of the site. Ultimately, it was easiest to go to my Google map with the 311 points and my plotted photographs to find instances of overlap. By comparing the addresses of the 311 points and of my self-reported data, both

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of which are available on this map, and then by double-checking the pictures, I was able to make a list of which addresses and associated images were double-reported.

Another issue I encountered was with weaving photography into my project.

Photography seemed like a natural option to handle such visual data, and taking pictures of the graffiti allowed me to get a sense of how the art is experienced on the street.

However, photography is a fundamentally exclusionary medium, and graffiti is truly ubiquitous in the neighborhoods I looked at. When I set out on my data-gathering walk, I had the goal of documenting every piece of graffiti I found along the way. I realized quickly that this might not be the most strategic method because, on every single block, I could have taken hundreds of photos of every little sticker or Sharpie scribble. Instead, I used my best judgment to capture the major.

All in all, this project was a fun problem-solving challenge and illuminated inquiries I had about how graffiti on the Lower East Side gets reported. Ultimately, I have more questions now than I started with. I am curious about the graffiti removal process itself—do they just clean as much as possible, or can they only clean sites that they have in the dataset? In addition, for this project, I was particularly curious to investigate graffiti following a moment of New York City in crisis, specifically in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Under circumstances that exacerbate urban poverty and leave city residents feeling neglected by the government, I believe it makes sense that graffiti would proliferate as a way to take ownership of the built environment. If I could expand on this project, I would next plan to track graffiti changes over time, especially with the pandemic in mind.

In a more thorough paper, I would also try to incorporate my photographs into my analysis more deeply.

If you would like to see the project webpage, it is accessible online at: https://lolacordeliarael.wixsite.com/mappinglesgraffiti

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Figure 1

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Figure 2

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Figure 2

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Figure 4

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Figure 5

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Figure 6

Figure 7

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References Department of Sanitation of New York. “DSNY Graffiti Tracking | NYC Open Data.” data.cityofnewyork.us, 2022. https://data.cityofnewyork.us/City-Government/DSNY-Graffiti-Tracking/gpwd-npar.

Deutsche, Rosalyn, and Cara Gendel Ryan. “The Fine Art of Gentrification.” October 31 (1984): 91. https://doi.org/10.2307/778358.

O’Donnell, Lilly. “Hollaback and the War against Street Harassment.” www.vice.com, January 13, 2013. https://www.vice.com/en/article/ppq4pm/the-war-against-street-harassment.

Rael, Lola. “Home.” Mappinglesgraffiti, 2023. https://lolacordeliarael.wixsite.com/mappinglesgraffiti.

White, Lisa Miller, Aude. “482 Stories of Hookups, Breakups, and Missed Connections on the Streets of NYC.” The Cut, October 22, 2017. https://www.thecut.com/article/map-sex-and-love-on-the-streets-of-nyc.html.

Wilson, James, and George Kelling. “Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety (from Criminal Justice System: Politics and Policies, Seventh Edition, P 103-115, 1998, George F. Cole and Marc G. Gertz, Eds. -- See NCJ-185991) | Office of Justice Programs.” www.ojp.gov, 1998. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/broken-windows-police-and-neighborhood-safety -criminal-justice.

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Gentrification and Exclusion Surrounding Arts-Based Urban Revitalization: A Case Study of Baltimore’s Station North District By: Daniella Rivera-Agudelo

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In recent decades, Baltimore has turned to various strategies to deal with population loss, land abandonment, and deindustrialization. Tourist-centered revitalization efforts have become popular within the city, with the goal that capital generated from tourism will “trickle down” to other Baltimore neighborhoods. The Station North Arts and Entertainment District exists as an attempt at urban revitalization with various complications surrounding gentrification. Station North was formed in 2002 as a state-sponsored revitalization project that incentivized the development of the arts industry in central Baltimore through economic benefits. The area was designated as an official “Arts & Entertainment District.” (Station North Arts District, “About.”) Within this strategy, arts and entertainment have been deemed highly valuable and profitable and seen as a catalyst for growth due to their attractiveness to outsiders. This article will use Station North Arts & Entertainment District as a case study for examining how Baltimore’s revitalization efforts have prioritized the arts as a potential for economic growth, and although there have been efforts to prevent gentrification—the designation as an Arts and Entertainment District has subsequently excluded Black legacy residents.

A Context for Station North The Station North Arts & Entertainment District (SNAED) comprises three central Baltimore neighborhoods—Greenmount West, Charles North, and Barclay.

Figure 1: Map of Station North shows proximity to higher education institutions, Penn Station, and Jones Fall Expressway (“Explorin’ & Tourin’ Part II,” 2015)

Before the designation of SNAED, these three neighborhoods had a predominantly Black population, with an 88.4% Black population in 1990 and 91.7% in 2000 (US Census Data,

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as quoted by Rich & Tsitsos 2016, 739). Similar to other predominantly Black areas of Baltimore and other US cities, these neighborhoods experienced a severe decline beginning in the 1960s following the era of white flight, deindustrialization, and disinvestment in inner cities (Clift 2014, 55). The combination of the 1968 race riots in Baltimore and the creation of the Jones Falls Expressway in 1962—which intersected through the neighborhoods that now form Station North—made the area vulnerable to urban decline (Treskon 2015, 11). The area subsequently experienced decades of vacant properties, illegal activity, and high unemployment rates. Don Donahue, a resident of Station North, stated that the Charles North neighborhood had open-air drug markets and prostitution when he first moved to the neighborhood in the early 2000s (Castagnola 2015, 55). The illegal activities and urban decline occurring in what is now Station North made the area vulnerable to urban projects that would renew the identity of the neighborhood.

This, however, would occur at the expense of legacy residents.

These conditions of urban decline and the proximity of what is now Station North to Penn Station and higher education institutions made the area favorable for revitalization efforts. City officials and planners saw the potential for capital, jobs, and real estate value to increase in these central Baltimore neighborhoods through the designation of an arts and entertainment district. Station North’s location would allow for tourism due to its proximity to Penn Station, which attracts a flow of predominantly white commuters and tourists in and out of the neighborhood.

Artists as a Tool for Economic Growth in SNAED As stated by the SNAED webpage, the vision for Station North is to “support and advocate for a thriving and diverse arts community by promoting civic and cultural engagement, harnessing and directing resources, and preserving and enhancing the creative vibrancy of the district” (Station North Arts District, “Our Vision”) Resources have been directed and harnessed to incentivize artists to move into the district. The designation of Station North as an arts and entertainment district was followed by various initiatives that were designed to stimulate economic growth and attract artists, arts-related businesses, and visitors. Tax incentives surrounding the establishment of artists and art-related businesses were created and are administered by Maryland’s Department of Business and Economic Development (Treskon 2015, 13). These tax incentives exist in SPRING 2023 ISSUE 5

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three ways: 1) Artists who create and sell art in SNAED do not pay Maryland income taxes on income earned within the district, 2) Property tax incentives for arts-related building renovations or new construction, and 3) Tax exemption for admission and amusement charged imposed by an arts and entertainment enterprise (Station North Arts District, “Tax Credit”). These economic incentives increase accessibility and profits for artists that move into the district. In return, artists create economic stimulation within SNAED by establishing new businesses. The real estate market is also incentivized to cater to the demands of the arts and entertainment district. Such incentives make it clear that the establishment of artists in the district is a priority for SNAED stakeholders.

Other artist-centered initiatives included a new affordable housing complex that provides a comfortable environment for new artists to move to in Station North. The City Arts Apartment buildings were created as new and low-cost apartment-style housing for artists (Rich & Tsitsos 2016, 751). The City Arts website states the following, “Live, work, and play in one of Baltimore’s most exciting locations. From local neighborhood dining at the trendiest of new restaurants along Charles Street to the dynamic nationally recognized DIY art and museum scene, the Station North district has it all including high lofty ceilings and modern finishes” (City Arts Apartments) The language surrounding the City Arts Apartments is geared toward outsiders, labeling Station North as “trendy,” “exciting,” and a place to “play,” romanticizing the district as a potential new home for artists. Station North is portrayed as a neighborhood that solely exists as a site for the arts while ignoring the identity and history of the neighborhood outside of its designation as an arts and entertainment district. There is a clear effort to “sell” Station North as an opportunity for artists—given that many artists may not always have the highest or most stable income, access to housing, and economic benefits to producing art within the district are successful initiatives at attracting the District’s target audience. In fact, the City Arts Apartments have been in such high demand that a second City Arts complex has been created.

Support from Higher Education Institutions

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Several higher education institutions that exist within or near Station North, including the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and Johns Hopkins University (JHU) have played a vital role in the development of SNAED. In 2012, Johns Hopkins created the Homewood Community Partners Initiative (HCPI), a “focused effort around public safety, blight elimination, public education, commercial and retail development, and economic inclusion” in eleven surrounding campus neighborhoods—including Station North (“The Baltimore City Anchor Plan”, 2014). The university explicitly sought to “create a presence” in Station North, as it was a site for relocating its creative programs. Additionally, MICA allocated $60.7 million between 2008 and 2014 to revitalize North Avenue—following this, MICA and JHU established their film department on North Ave in the renovated Charles Theater (Castagnola 2015, 32). The relationship between SNAED and its “anchor” institutions is mutually beneficial: the district receives economic support while providing spaces and opportunities for the college community. While many of these efforts on behalf of the universities are stated to be an attempt to engage with the local Baltimore community, the relationship between higher education institutions and their surrounding neighborhoods is often problematic due to their contribution to gentrification.

Changing Demographics in Station North The designation of Station North as an Arts & Entertainment District has caused clear changes to the demographics of the neighborhood. In 2013 (eleven years after the designation), SNAED supported 366 jobs and $10.5 million in wages (Treskon 2015, 14).

Economic stimulation has occurred as desired, with the subsequent effect of rising costs of living and changing racial demographics in the district. The median sales price of houses in Station North went from $26,250 in 2000 to $100,500 in 2013, the percent of the population 25 years or older with a college degree went from 2.7% in 2000 to 34.9% in 2009–2013, and the median household income doubled for property owners and renters (US Census as cited by Treskon 2015, 20–32). These dramatic changes in demographics impact the accessibility of legacy residents to the district. The housing market and cost of living have significantly shifted, leaving low-income non-artist residents and renters in a vulnerable position.

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demographics can still be identified as gentrification. These changes in demographics impact the lived experience of legacy residents, despite not displacing them, and can be considered problematic due to the implications of a more “desirable” population and the risk of future displacement. Castagnola interviewed Ben Stone, executive director of SNAED, who stated that: “There are not necessarily less minority residents, but there are definitely increased wealthier, educated white residents moving in. Given the number of existing vacancies, he (Stone) does not see physical displacement as a concern yet, but that it could be in the future….He says that cities are living eco systems and change is inevitable, that it’s tough to take a position against change, but that we must be strategic and inclusive to maximize the benefits revitalization” (Castagnola 2015, 49).

While physical displacement is one of the most obvious impacts of gentrification due to its visibility, Station North is actively being gentrified and may soon reach a point of physical displacement. As the demand for real estate continues, there will be fewer vacant properties and less affordable housing for low-income legacy residents. Stone’s comments on the inevitability of change come as rather dismissive to the struggles of legacy residents yet reveal the complexities of revitalization projects.

Critiques from Residents Regarding Station North Revitalizations The artist is ultimately used as a tool for urban growth in the city of Baltimore, incentivized through SNAED initiatives and programs. Meanwhile, predominantly Black residents are excluded from such initiatives and feel that they are not equally valued by stakeholders. The economic prosperity associated with the aesthetics and attractiveness of the arts has left many frustrated due to an over-emphasis on artists over the “average” and/or “legacy” Baltimore residents, who have historically been low-income and Black residents. Meghan Ashlin Rich and William Tsitsos argue that artists tend to have more human capital resources at their disposal yet are more protected by large institutions than poor inner-city African Americans (Rich & Tsitsos 2016, 750). The funding allocated towards SNAED is centered around those who are more likely to generate capital instead of those who lived in the district for decades of decline.

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Such has led to feelings of frustration and exclusion among many low-income and Black residents, as expressed in interviews with Rich and Tsitsos. In an interview, a tavern owner expresses that the community is locked out of Charles North developments. He states that there are “people [who] don’t live here, who don’t work here, but own property here coming and rearranging the chess board, without necessarily acknowledging with any great effort the legacy residents, the people who’ve been here before” (Rich & Tsitsos 2016, 746). Many of those interviewed express similar sentiments, believing that outside stakeholders hold too much power while predominantly low-income and/or Black legacy residents are not prioritized in development projects. Such sentiments show how the designation of Station North as an arts and entertainment district has often prioritized economic growth over the community of central Baltimore. The prioritization of artists has left long-term and legacy residents feeling ignored.

Many residents have critiqued the arts initiatives within Station North for being focused on growth over community benefits. The murals from the Open Walls project, a street art project in SNAED, were specifically targeted by residents interviewed by Rich and Tsitsos due to their purely aesthetic purpose and little value to the residential community.

They state: “Although creative placemaking projects such as Open Walls may make the neighborhood more attractive to tourists and give Station North an international profile, the placemaking strategies used by SNAED are viewed skeptically as having little to do with the actual activities of the residents and business owners within the district” (Rich and Tsitsos 2016, 748).

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Figure 2: One of the Open Walls murals photographed by Clay Anderson, CC ’23

The lack of connection between the Open Walls murals and the interests of the community has frustrated many. The project is an example of how economic growth is prioritized over all—the murals are an opportunity to beautify Station North in a way that attracts tourists.

The murals function as photo opportunities for visitors, creating economic stimulation as they interact with the rest of the businesses and projects throughout the district. Outside of the potential to bring in financial benefits, the murals hold little weight for the community.

They do not offer any direct benefits, resources, or active employment for Station North residents.

The ongoing frustration with the Open Murals project and problems surrounding urban revitalization can be understood through the “Looks Much Better Now!” mural which can be perceived as offensive. The mural was created by Spanish street artist Escif for the Open Walls project, featuring a yellow smiley face followed by the phrase.

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Figure 3: Mural by Escif (“Station North”)

There is not much information available about the reasoning behind the phrase displayed on the mural, an article states that Escif was upset that his original plan for the mural was disapproved; as a response, he added the sarcastic message “Looks Much Better Now!” (Buenos Aires Street Art and Graffiti, 2021). Regardless of the intentions behind the phrase, the mural serves as a physical reminder of the gentrification occurring in Station North. The phrase comes off as antagonizing the previous community of central Baltimore prior to the designation of SNAED. When out of context, Escif’s mural comes off as rather insulting to the legacy residents of Station North, contributing to the tension between legacy residents and artists/stakeholders.

Complexities of Challenging Gentrification Stakeholders have attempted to prevent and manage the gentrification of Station North through community-focused projects. The City Arts Apartments strive to make housing accessible to low-income residents as the cost of living in the district increases.

Such is done so by establishing income limits for tenants. This affordable housing complex addresses a segment of the complexities surrounding gentrification by limiting residency to

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artists. However, while this project aims to acknowledge aspects of gentrification, it contributed to it by prioritizing artists over non-artist legacy and low-income residents.

Another example of a community-focused project is the adaptive reuse of the former Cork Crown & Seal Co. machine shop into the Baltimore Design School, a public arts high school (Castagnola 2015, 43). The transformation of the warehouse, a previously vacant property, to a public school, benefits children in the neighborhood regardless of race and income. The various stakeholders in SNAED attempt to lessen the effects of gentrification by establishing accessibility through their community-focused projects.

Additionally, stakeholders have attempted to keep community members and residents involved in the planning and development processes in the district. An example of this is the Central Baltimore Partnership (CBP), a collective of over 100 partners including property owners, universities and schools, city, state, and federal government, and local businesspeople (Rich & Tsitsos 2016, 745). Although CBP brings together rather powerful organizations, coalitions, and large institutions in central Baltimore, there are attempts at community involvement at the individual level by keeping meetings public and engaging with residents through surveys, social media, and task forces (Central Baltimore Partnership). These initiatives aim to give residents a voice in planning and community development projects within SNAED. Although such initiatives on behalf of community organizations attempt to involve residents in the development of SNAED, legacy residents continue to feel frustrated and ignored. As seen in the tavern owner’s comments on outside stakeholders coming into central Baltimore to “rearrange the chess board” with little regard for legacy residents, there is ongoing frustration surrounding the designation of SNAED simply for its nature as a revitalization project that is led by individuals who are not originally from the area. (Rich & Tsitsos 2016, 746) The problems that arise from the designation of Station North as an arts and entertainment district showcase the complexities of revitalization projects. The demographic changes in the district prove that gentrification occurs despite active attempts to lessen its effects.

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References “About.” Station North Arts District. https://www.stationnorth.org.

“About Us.” Central Baltimore Partnership. https://www.centralbaltimore.org/about-us/.

The Baltimore City Anchor Plan § (2014). https://mayor.baltimorecity.gov/sites/default/files/Baltimore%20City%20Anchor%20Plan%20%28B CAP%29%20-%20June%202014.pdf.

“Baltimore Street Art and Graffiti - the Best Murals around the City.” Buenos Aires Street Art and Graffiti, October 29, 2021. https://buenosairesstreetart.com/2021/10/baltimore-street-art-and-graffiti-the-best-murals-around-th e-city/.

Castagnola, Michael. 2015.“Gentrification without Displacement.” Massachusetts Institute of Technology. https://doi.org/https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/99071.

Clift, Bryan. 2014. “Running with Neoliberalism: The Practice and Politics of Voluntarism, Homelessness, and Sweat in Urban Baltimore.”

“Explorin' & Tourin' Part II.” Baltimore Collegetown Network, October 16, 2015. https://baltimorecollegetown.org/about-us/blogs/around-town/explorin--tourin-part-ii.

“Our Vision and Mission.” Station North Arts District. https://www.stationnorth.org/vision-and-mission.

Rich, Meghan Ashlin. “Artists Are a Tool for Gentrification’: Maintaining Artists and Creative Production in Arts Districts.” International Journal of Cultural Policy, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2017.1372754.

Rich, Meghan Ashlin, and William Tsitsos. 2016. “Avoiding the ‘Soho Effect’ in Baltimore: Neighborhood Revitalization and Arts and Entertainment Districts.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 40, no. 4: 736–56. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468 Station North Arts District. https://www.stationnorth.org/.

“Tax Credit.” Station North Arts District. https://www.stationnorth.org/tax-credit.

Treskon, Mark. Rep. Measuring Creative Placemaking. Urban Institute, November 2015. https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/100998/measuring_creative_placemaking_1.pdf .

“Welcome to City Arts.” City Arts Apartments. https://www.livecityarts.com/.

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