Barnard-Columbia Urban Review Spring 2024 Issue 7

Barnard Columbia Urban Review

Spring 2024 Issue

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Artwork

FRONT COVER

Iman Taha

UNTITLED (PEDESTRIAN); UNTITLED (CURTAIN WALL); UNTITLED (FACADE)

MONUMENTS OF ADHERENCE & RESISTANCE

Bayley McDaniel

UNTITLED

Zoe Pyne

BACK COVER

Zoe Pyne 1

EXECUTIVE BOARD

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

NYAH AHMAD, BC ’24

MAYA FELSTEHAUSEN, BC ’25

LAYOUT EDITOR

AMANDA CASSEL, BC ‘25

PUBLICITY DIRECTOR

JACQUELINE ARTIAGA, BC ’25

EVENTS MANAGER

GISELLE (GIGI) SILLA, BC ’24

TREASURER

JENNIFER GUIZAR BELLO, BC ’24

GENERAL BODY

SENIOR EDITORS

ELEANOR AILUN DING, CC ’26

MARGARET BARNSLEY, BC ’24

ISHAAN BARRETT, CC ’26

SOPHIA CORDOBA, CC ’26

LILLY GASTERLAND-GUSTAFSSON, BC ’25

ANANYA PAL, BC ‘25

PEER REVIEWERS

JACQUELINE ARTIAGA, BC ‘25

MARTHA CASTRO, BC ‘27

LOWELL CERBONE, CC ’26

SUSANA CRANE, BC ’26

FRANKIE EISENBERG, BC ’26

HELEN GOODMAN, BC ‘27

ALIA KHANNA, BC ’27

ASHLEY MEDEL, CC ’25

AVA LYON-SERENO, BC ’26

VICTORIA TSE, BC ‘24

AUTHORS

YUMTSOKYI BHUM, BC ‘24

AMY XIAOQIAN CHEN, CC ‘26

FARUK ECIRLI, UPENN ‘27

JENNIFER GUIZAR BELLO, BC ‘24

MADELEINE MARTIN, BC ‘27

JARED MURTI, USF ‘24

THEA PAN, BC ‘26

DANIELLA RIVERA-AGUDELO, BC ‘25

AIMAR ROSARIO ÁVILA, BC ‘25

ART CONTRIBUTORS

BEN ERDMANN, CC ‘25

BAYLEY MCDANIEL, GS ‘25

ZOE PYNE, BC ‘26

COVER ARTIST

IMAN TAHA, BC ‘25

BACK COVER ARTIST

ZOE PYNE, BC ‘26

STAFF WRITERS

ISHAAN BARRETT, CC ‘26

FRANKIE EISENBERG, BC ’26

VERA (V.V.) JANNEY, BC ‘26

WEB MANAGER

MADELEINE MARTIN BC ‘27

PUBLICITY STAFF

TENZING (CHO) CHOSANG, BC ‘26

VERA (V.V.) JANNEY, BC ‘26

EMILY LIN, BC ‘26

CLAIRE MCDONALD, BC ‘26

EVENTS STAFF

LAILA ABED, CC ‘27

AVA LYON-SERENO, BC ’26 66

Ben Erdmann 68

Letter from the Director of Urban Studies

It is with pleasure and pride that I write—again—to celebrate the release of a new volume of the BarnardColumbia Urban Review. As much as “pleasure” and “pride” are key to that sentence, I want to emphasize the “again” above all. Student publications are not always long-lived, because they require continuity in a context of constant change. It is not easy to find the next group who will be eager to run the show when the current group graduates and it is not easy to gracefully hand it over. BCUR has accomplished this and more. While also an excellent outlet for student research, BCUR has transcended its origins as a publication and become a collective, a community of shared interest in the urban—of precisely the kind our program aspires to. Leave it to students to figure out how to make this work!

What will likely strike you first about the articles in the seventh issue of BCUR is their geographic diversity. The student researchers included here are investigating urban dynamics in Colombia, Istanbul, Puerto Rico, San Francisco, Manhattan, and the Bronx, with attention to diasporic populations in some of the places closer to our campus. This points to their attention to the diversity of urban phenomena and experiences and demonstrates the importance of doing what Professor Smith might call thinking “elsewhere,” even when thinking about places nearby. You might equally notice a concern for social justice—the words “vulnerability,” “injustice,” “racialization” and “racial capitalism,” “homelessness,” and “power relations” stand out in even a quick look at the titles. Finally, you might also detect the enduring importance of New York City itself to the Urban Studies Program in the city of New York.

It is hard, as I write this, not to slip into unattractive self-congratulation. You all, after all, are conspicuously embodying the goals that we share for this program—already! But I cannot persuade myself that we (smearing my colleagues by association) have done much more than facilitate the interests and energy that you brought with you into our classes and into the major. Let me say again then how pleased and proud I am to celebrate the efforts of the authors, editors, and all who contribute to the process of creating BCUR and to the community that surrounds it.

Sincerely,

Aaron Passell Director of the Barnard–Columbia Urban Studies Program

Letter from the Co-Editors

We are delighted—and especially relieved—to present as Co-Editors-in-Chief the seventh issue of The Barnard-Columbia Urban Review. It’s hard to believe the time has come to present this issue as we wrap up the academic year. This spring, we received a record number of written submissions, publishing nine papers in this journal, along with student-created visuals dispersed throughout the journal. We remain foregrounded in our presence as one of the few publications that are a part of Columbia University Apartheid Divest and hope to only expand our organizing efforts within and beyond the institution in the coming future. Our weekly newsletter and Instagram page have remained active throughout the semester and we published four new staff articles this semester, all of which can be found and read on our updated website, www.bcurbanreview.com.

In addition to our biweekly meetings, we organized events such as an excursion to the Queens Museum; a film screening of The Last Black Man in San Francisco ; a Zine Night in the Barnard Zine Library; and an Urban Studies Senior Thesis panel. This would not have been possible without the organization and support of Jacqueline, our Publicity Director; Amanda, our Layout Editor; Gigi, our Events Manager; and Jennifer, our Treasurer. BCUR is far more than a student-run publication, and we are constantly reminded of that through all the hard work invested to foreground ourselves as the only social and professional network of students with like-minded passions surrounding urban studies on campus.

The front cover of this semester’s edition includes an intricate multimedia collage by Iman Taha that reflects various urban structures and elements. The written work in this publication highlights students’ critical, multidisciplinary approaches to global and translocal urban research. From addressing urban environmental justice in neighboring boroughs; investigating urban space in international cities; to intersecting frameworks of critical theory in urban environments, our contributors explore the crucial urban social, political, and material phenomena of the present. We also welcomed two undergraduate submissions from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of San Francisco, expanding our journal to student contributors across the country! Interspersed between our written pieces are visual works, all of which are united by the photographers’ attention to the built environment.

We want to express our utmost gratitude for the work and dedication of countless individuals in bringing this journal together. The work we do truly is a collective effort. A big thank you to the BCUR executive board and general members; written and visual submission contributors; our peer reviewers; our senior editors; the faculty and staff of the Urban Studies department; the administrative staff of SEE; every past and future BCUR member; and countless others who have supported our endeavors with BCUR every step of the way. We are so proud of the community we have been privileged to foster through our work—both within the Urban Studies cohort and beyond.

As the Co-Editors-in-Chief for BCUR this academic year, we are eternally grateful for the opportunity to embrace this role and expand the organization. We have accomplished so much this year as an organization and we know that BCUR’s only trajectory from here is a positive one. As we pass off our positions to the new Co-Editors-in-Chief, our only wish is for BCUR’s continual growth and impact across the university—and across the world—particularly for those passionate about urban studies. We sincerely hope you enjoy this issue as much as we do. Creating it was a cosmic labor of love from start to end. And as always, Free Palestine.

Sincerely,

Nyah Ahmad Maya Felstehausen

Co-Editor-in-Chief | Barnard College ’24

Co-Editor-in-Chief | Barnard College ’25

CYCLICAL SPACE ON LINEAR LAND: TEMPORARY URBAN SPACE AND VULNERABILITY TO GROWTH AND DISSOLUTION

BY YUMTSOKYI BHUM Barnard College ‘24

INTRODUCTION

This study is inspired by the work of the Copenhagen-based company, arki_lab, and the Boston-based non-profit, Culture House, both of which specialize in coordinating planning-stage community involvement through intentionally short-term projects. I had the opportunity to meet the founders of both organizations while studying in Copenhagen in Fall 2023, and after learning about their common model for local engagement, I was drawn to the concept of how structures with planned impermanent trajectories might not only serve to accommodate the ever-evolving, pressing needs of residents, but also challenge the dominant definition of a successful urban space as one with steadily increasing land value. In search of connections between temporality and community engagement, I turn to two frequently cited pieces by authors of different eras, professions, and regions: Philipp Oswalt’s (2013) Urban Catalyst and Henri Lefebvre’s (2004) Rhythmanalysis. Reading Lefebvre’s study and categorization of urban daily life in tandem with Oswalt’s (2013) survey of terrains vagues in post-reunification Berlin illuminated for me the incongruence of addressing cyclical human needs with physical structures that are governed by linear notions of property value. Intrigued, and with the good fortune of being only a train ride away, I visited the Berlin neighborhoods surrounding some of the temporary urban spaces studied by Oswalt (2013). The differences between Oswalt’s (2013) description and my 2023 observations raised for me the question: why, and by what means, are some sites created by interim users subsequently regarded as useful steppingstones for more permanent development—and permitted entry into the city’s linear structural history—while others remain within the same unfixed temporal trajectory as before? I explored these questions by visiting two sites that were born in similar, yet distinct, circumstances; both exist today under dramatically divergent leadership structures: Arena Berlin and Radical Queer Wagenplatz Kanal. More specifically, I visited Arena Berlin in the neighborhood of Kreuzberg, where the now commercialized concert-hall once operated informally, and two sites that Radical Queer Wagenplatz Kanal has occupied, including both its current location and its previous location along the Spree River. At Arena Berlin I attended a “Qweer Market” held in the space during its most bustling time of day: night. Not only did a young crowd queue for Qweer Market, but also for the venue’s adjacent nightclub and for other, unaffiliated surrounding venues. For reasons that will be explained below, the grounds of Radical Qweer Wagenplatz Kanal were less accessible. So while I document demographic and social patterns of Arena Berlin based on in-person observations, for Radical Queer Wagenplatz Kanal I mainly rely on their extensive website postings. During my visits I recorded observations of the surrounding neighborhoods in all the aforementioned locations, especially to document signs of new, formal development. Paradoxically, some temporary urban spaces with trendy

manifestations of counterculture are co-opted by the very growth-oriented models of neighborhood-building which they symbolically, even if inadvertently, subvert. I will be utilizing research from urban scholars on how applications of tactical urbanism have diverged from its roots to understand discourse on what and who makes a city attractive. To analyze recent private and governmental involvement in temporary urban spaces, I will reference past scholarship’s already-established theoretical and economic distinctions between what informal economy and informal space risk upon being institutionally regulated. In the following literature review, these concepts will be explored in terms of their interconnectedness, and will then be applied to the two case studies of temporary urban spaces in Berlin. The discussion of the case studies will address the question: how might a space’s vulnerability to private and government appropriation eventually manifest in its evolving physical and ideological forms?

LITERATURE REVIEW

Born out of necessity, temporary urban space should not be considered an active resistance to so much as a subversion of a city’s obsession with land value. Prominent urban theorist Harvey Molotch (1976) positions the influence of urban landowners as a central force in shaping city policies, a structure upheld by both the state and private enterprises that seek to increase the values of their properties by attracting demographics that they deem desirable (i.e. “the growth machine”). Recently, there has been a trend among these two sets of players to mobilize “creative” urban aesthetics as a means of attracting a wealthier socioeconomic class, as discussed by Richard Florida (2012) in his book, The Rise of the Creative Class. For instance, he mentions a monthly arts festival that the Las Vegas-based tech firm, Zappos, funds as an “urban-renewal” effort (Florida 2012). While some urban scholars contend that such projects only serve to make city planning more inclusive, others disagree, claiming that they instead end up displacing the very residents from whom their ground-up designs were inspired. This literature review will further discuss the private-sector and government appropriation of resident-based tactics, as well as the criticism that it has generated from urban scholars, architects, and urban economists alike. Building on this analysis, this paper will examine two once-temporary urban spaces in Berlin as imperfect, yet relevant case studies for applying and drawing out existing literature and theory regarding temporality and commodification of land in the urban, built environment.

In his piece, Rhythmanalysis, Lefebvre proposes rhythm as a method of analysis for gauging the flow of one’s own bodily experience simultaneously to that of one’s external happenings (Lefebvre 2004). Distinct paces—quick, legato, rushed, etc.—of one’s internal and external experience are understood precisely in terms of their interaction. Embodied repetition is how these paces, which are integral to rhythm, manifest. Lefebvre refers to absolute repetition as “only a fiction of logical and mathematical thought,” because, if “A= A (the sign reading ‘identical’ and not ‘equal’),” then “the second A differs from the first by the fact that it is the second…Not only does repetition

not exclude differences, it also gives birth to them” (Lefebvre 2004). He argues that rhythm complicates otherwise purely mathematical or scientific analyses because it embodies repetition, therefore detecting differences both within and between patterns of day-to-day life (Lefebvre 2004). For example, if a city-dweller who walks down a particular street every morning has an early appointment one day, her rush might make her feel as though the crosswalk lights are especially slow or passersby especially relaxed. In this way, situational perception is more accurately described with a relational lexicon because of how the understanding of a new situation or environment so often stems from comparing it to a past one.

The terms “cyclical” and “linear” are widely used by theorists to categorize conceptions of time (Lefebvre 2004; Madanipour 2017). Lefebvre’s analysis of rhythm positions the “cyclical” as more relational and the “linear” as more dualistic. Broadly, cyclical manifestations of time are linked to biological, natural systems, like the circadian rhythm, while linear descriptions of time are related to man-made, progress-oriented systems (Madanipour 2017). In the context of urban theory, however, scholars have also applied cyclical time to social patterns. In his 2017 study, Cities in Time, Ali Madanipour writes, “through cultural practices, a common sense, cyclical concept in biological life is extended to human societies as a whole, observed in the succession of kings, recurrence of floods and earthquakes, [and] emergence and decline of cities” (Madanipour 2017). These events are rhythmically cyclical because their actors collectively encounter and adapt to biologically-imposed changes, whether these be the death of a ruler or destruction due to natural disaster. Madanipour even includes a city-level scale of impermanence, being the “emergence and decline of cities” (Madanipour 2017). In doing so, he argues that human, social processes are not exempt from the culminating impacts of earthly, natural processes. Abandoning reverence to a no-longer situationally suitable order, “the cyclical is social organization manifesting itself” (Lefebvre 2004). A linear concept of time, in contrast, is rooted in forces that control day-today routines for the sake of consolidating a communal sense––but top-down definition––of progress (Lefebvre 2004). Thus, it is more susceptible to being dictated institutionally. An example of linear time integral to this paper is the commodification of land and how it sets urban standards of progress to consistently appreciating land values. Madanipour argues that linear conceptualizations are “decontextualized from people and places… understood by mathematical and technological methods” (Madanipour 2017). Because the linear lens is “decontextualized,” ––ideologically imposed onto rather than biologically stemming from humans and their environments––a subject who employs it to understand the history and future of a physical space is likely less cognizant of that space’s interconnecting rhythms (Lefebvre 2004).

Tactical urbanism is an adaptive measure that exposes and addresses the shortcomings of “decontextualized” linear urban strategies. Oli Mould defines “Tactical Urbanism” as “small-scale activities undertaken by local citizens that redesign their urban area to be more ‘liveable’” (Mould 2014). One apt example are the “parklets” built by the non-profit organization, Street Lab, during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. In current literature regarding tactical urbanism, “tactics” are framed as resident responses to an urban landscape’s current rhythm, whereas “strategies” seek to command a future one into being. In “What City Planners Can Learn from Interim Planners,” theorist of temporary urban spaces, Peter Arlt, quotes military general

Carl Von Clausewitz (1780–1831) as having defined tactics as “the art of landing blows in the other’s realm” (Arlt 2004). Tactics are implemented on any property other than the actor’s non-existent own, and are therefore unconfined by spatial or temporal boundaries. If tactics comprise “the art of the weak,” then strategies are the art of the powerful, or of, as articulated by Clausewitz, the “realm”-owners (Arlt 2004). Strategists design their own future environmental conditions, whereas tacticians adapt to current, already-defined conditions.

Temporary urban spaces are manifestations of tactical urbanism that are especially in tune with cyclical rhythms, which urban linear strategies fail to accommodate evenly. Drawing from the studies of Phillip Oswalt in 2013, Claire Colomb in 2012, and Ali Madanipour in 2017, this paper defines temporary urban spaces as city-born tactics that are physically constructed in socioeconomic contexts, which serve to foundationally oppress their formal, permanent implementation. To refer to the creators of temporary urban spaces, Arlt offers “the interim user” as an alternate term for that of “the weak” actors of urban tactics (Arlt 2004). Temporary urban spaces provide non-concrete frames for unevenly accessible amenities, activities, and services. Because temporary urban spaces 1) are built to respond to current resident needs (hunger, community, shelter, etc.) and 2) must engage with impermanence, they align more with cyclical rhythms than do tactical urban structures that are embroiled in landownership, not to mention corporate, profit-oriented strategies.

Temporary urban spaces grow on the grounds of linear urban rhythms, arising from them and bringing light to them. The dissolution of these spaces can catalyze critical attention to linear rhythms, as a temporary urban space is prone to disband for reasons such as a lack of funding, a shift in the need that it serviced, or the city use or corporate purchase of its land. This last scenario can lead to a permanent space that is inspired by the very purpose of the same location’s previous temporary space. The intricacies of this process will later be examined through the case study of Arena Berlin, a concert venue that was formalized by city government but initially organized by interim users. To approach this analysis critically one must consider discourse among urban theorists and architects about which actors should be entitled to implement tactical urbanism, including the creation or molding of temporary urban spaces. Arlt argues that the city should learn ways to move formal planning strategies towards a more “tactical discipline,” in which visions for the city are paired with the present rather than the future (Arlt 2004). In consideration of how this rhetoric has been mobilized, Mould warns, “Despite its origins in community-led, activist, unsanctioned and even subversive activities, TU [Tactical Urbanism] is becoming (if it is not already so) co-opted by prevailing ‘neoliberal development agendas’” (Mould 2014). While the formalization of temporary urban spaces amplifies solutions that residents have identified are needed in city planning, at the same time it also “co-opt[s]” them, making them vulnerable to serving a city’s economic development.

To better understand the origins of temporary urban spaces, they should be studied alongside economist Saskia Sassen’s concept of “The Informal Economy” (Sassen 1994). She affirms Mould’s “tactical” informal economy by stating that “The scope and character of the informal economy are defined by the very regulatory framework it evades” (Sassen 1994). When read through the lens of tactical urbanism, the regulatory framework strategizes and the informal economy adapts. In the United States, the overlap between the informal economy and temporary urban spaces is linked to the

disparity of income levels brought on by the post-Fordist era, starting in the 1970s (Sassen 1994; Oswalt 2013). The informal economy is a network through which low-income city residents sell unregulated services to the service workers of the formal economy, who cannot afford what is offered by the formal realm in which they work (Sassen 1994). These informal exchanges often manifest in more temporary urban spaces, such as flea markets and food stands (Sassen 1994). Increased urban vacancies caused by the post-Fordist era’s shift to labor outsourcing and an information economy further encouraged temporary urban spaces, providing them physical grounds for interim-user occupation (Oswalt 2013). Sassen and Oswalt agree that in municipalities that experienced a rise of the information economy, increased economic polarization and its subsequent spatial manifestations contributed to the spread of the informal economy, and eventually, temporary urban spaces.

Saskia Sassen argued in 1994 for the regulation of the informal economy, but in her conversation with Philipp Oswalt—recorded in Urban Catalyst (2013)—, Sassen expresses how her diverging perspective on informal, temporary urban spaces hinges on an appreciation of terrains vagues (Solà-Morales 1995). While interviewed, Sassen references terrains vagues—which means “wastelands” in French—as spaces that “allow many residents to connect to the rapidly transforming cities in which they live, and subjectively to bypass the massive infrastructures that have come to dominate more and more spaces in the city” (Oswalt 2013). Sassen concludes that, “from this perspective, pouncing on terrains vagues in order to maximize real estate development would be a mistake” (Oswalt 2013). Here, Sassen argues that the formalization of space cannot, in its current capitalist form, simultaneously incorporate and preserve terrains vagues because real estate is part of an institutional system that terrains vagues inherently subverts. While both urban scholars highlight the informal economy and informal planning as inspirations for a less linear form of city planning, the two forms of urban tactics differ because interim users are not primarily motivated by profit-making, whereas participants in the informal economy are (Arlt 2004). Analyzing these two interrelated concepts alongside each other highlights that the risk in formalizing temporary urban spaces lies precisely in their sedimentation and commodification, qualities that are antithetical to their cyclical, situational, and tactical purposes when deployed in the informal economy.

Conversations like Sassen and Oswalt’s underscore the increasing prevalence of governmental and corporate interest in enacting tactical urbanism, and in doing so beg the question: what investments are the profit-seeking forces of a city making when funding an asset that is not inherently economic? Claire Colomb explores this in her book, Staging the New Berlin, through the example of the Berlin government’s push in the early 2000s to globally advertise tactical urbanism happening around the city (Colomb 2012). One example she details is Strandbar Mitte, the first of many beach bars during its time. These beach bars could be considered urban tactics as well as participants in an informal economy because they were “leisure-oriented,” “temporary uses” that popped up in empty sites in relatively low-rent, vacant neighborhoods (Colomb 2012). Rather than dissuading this illegally implemented space, Berlin spotlit it, in what she describes as an attempt to cater to “[t]he consumption practices of, in particular, professionals involved in the cultural and knowledge-based industries” (Colomb 2012). Today, many of the once-informal beach bars, including Strandebar Mitte, still exist as

tourist destinations. Colomb conjectures that because a faction of people looking for work and homes is attracted to innovative urban practices, cities can successfully advertise tactical urbanism to commodify spaces that were once outliers to the city’s linear rhythm (Colomb 2012).

Richard Florida attributes these private and government interests in tactical urbanism to the increased prevalence of the “creative class” (Florida 2012). He defines the creative class as a socioeconomic categorization born out of the post-Fordist shift to an information economy whose companies ultimately seek creative and innovative employees (Florida 2012). He further emphasizes young, single workers of the creative class as especially desirable for cities to attract and retain due to their high-paying jobs, few fiscal obligations, and desire to socially experience the city (Florida 2012). In general, the creative class has the means to contribute to the local economy while also imbuing liveliness into the city fabric. On attracting a creative class, Florida writes that it should be done “not all at once and from the top down—most of what defines and shapes creative communities emerges gradually over time,” and instead through “smart strategies that recognize and enhance bottom-up, community-based efforts” (Florida 2012). Temporary urban spaces, which are not relatively long-lasting, but nevertheless “community-based,” complicate Florida’s suggestion; he implies that a temporary space does not have the power to influence a city’s demographic in the same way that a permanent space does, but encourages permanent spaces to be designed with methods similar to those of temporary urban spaces, specifically for the purpose of attracting well-paid young people (Florida 2012).

Attracting this worker demographic was exactly the goal of the two architecture projects conducted by the architecture firm ZUS in response to vacancies and safety concerns in the area around Rotterdam’s Central Station (Van Boxel et al. 2018). The first project described by the firm in their report, “City of Permanent Temporality,” is Luchtsingel, a walking bridge that connects Pompenburg, a city plaza undergoing major development, to Rotterdam’s central district. The firm states that although the demolition of the bridge was written into its budget, hope remained that “proactive investment in public space would lead to investment in private real estate” (Van Boxel et. al 2018). Attracting investment in private real estate was the goal of ZUS’s 2013 project, 24Hofpoort. This project turned Hofpoort Tower into a “24-hour city” to study ways Rotterdam residents might use its spaces as part of a test stage for the building’s redesign.

While both Luchtsingel and 24Hofpoort started with a community-oriented design process similar to one that a tactical, temporary urban space might follow, both projects only used the temporary structure to linearly increase monetary value by attracting a creative class to Rotterdam. This is true of Hofpoort Tower in particular, which was accessible to all residents during its temporary “testing stages,” but not after 24Hofpoort was partially sold to a Czech investor. This international developer turned “the building’s lower seven floors into flex-work offices,” spaces signature of the alternative working structures favored by finance and tech-related employers of the creative class (Boxel 2018; Florida 2012). Luchtsingel has also shifted from its once temporary implementation; developers of office and shopping units in Pompenburg relay plans to “retain the temporary Luchtsingel as a permanent feature” (Studioninedots 2023, “Pompenburg - Studioninedots”).

As evidenced by 24Hofpoort, when landowners of city spaces

use tactical urbanism as inspiration for ways to attract the wealthy creative class to a city, they undermine tactical urbanism’s purpose of making neighborhoods more accessible to more marginalized residents. As argued by Harvey Molotch in “The City as A Growth Machine,” landownership is an economic investment in not only a parcel of land, but also in its adjacent parcels, which together form a neighborhood (Molotch 1976). Of the interconnection between urban landowners, he states that “one sees that one’s future is bound to the future of a larger area, and that the future enjoyment of financial benefit flowing from a given parcel will derive from the general future of the proximate aggregate of parcels” (Molotch 1976). Because tactical urbanism is desirable to a socioeconomic demographic that is willing to pay for it, its features have been increasingly commodified and therefore increasingly inaccessible for low-income residents. Molotch’s theory of interdependent land parcel values explains how co-opting tactical urbanism has the potential to increase the value of an entire neighborhood, especially of land most proximate (Molotch 1976). Oli Mould criticizes this “neoliberal” real estate method, stating, “it represents the latest cycle of the urban ‘strategy’ to co-opt moments of creativity and alternative urban practices to the urban hegemony – it is the new Creative City” (Mould 2014).

Insofar as land value is driven by desirability, the longevity of formal urban spaces will be inextricably linked to how effectively their messaging and advertising attract a plentiful and wealthy demographic. While multiple factors can contribute to this achievement, high on the list is the trendiness of a space’s intended use. Richard Florida claims trendiness is attained when a city closely embodies not resident-level, but creative-class-level needs and wants, a cityscale reflection of the adage, “dress for the job you want, not the job you have” (Florida 2012). To better encapsulate the desires of the desired class, the architecture firm ZUS enacted the strategy of using experimental, short-term urban implementations as test stages for informing more permanent structures. The aim to control both the audience and timescale can help sharpen an otherwise blurry distinction between formal, short-term spaces, like Luchtsingel and 24Hofpoort, and informal temporary urban spaces. Whereas the tactical methods of the latter sense and respond to existing rhythms in a city, the strategies of the former impose on it a linear projection of time rooted in landownership, which reaches toward a demographic and economic goal.

But these differences between audience and timescale which delineate the informal and formal are not necessarily static. Claire Colomb exemplifies this in her description of previously temporary urban spaces in Berlin. The demographic of these spaces, after being marketed by the city to attract tourism, transformed from interim-users to young out-of-towners with access to disposable income (Colomb 2012). The spaces that were advertised and recorded by Colomb were specifically ones that held economic purposes or were connected to what Sassen might call Berlin’s informal economy (Colomb 2012; Sassen 1994). The beach bars Colomb studied, for example, even before being regulated, had potential to facilitate economic activity in a neighborhood. When a beach bar attracts paying customers, the visitors may also notice and visit neighboring establishments; all aggregate land-parcel owners benefit. The more influence that the informal economy has on a temporary urban space, the more the space can lend itself to linear urban rhythms, despite the extent to which it once stemmed from addressing cyclical resident needs.

The potential for profitability indicated by the presence of informal

economic activity in informal spaces has not gone unnoticed by both private and governmental landowners. The consequence is that these entities appropriate what they deem as trendy deviations from normative means-making and place-making processes. As touched on by Oswalt and Sassen, this process of formalization threatens the existence of authentic terrains vagues. The following case studies investigate how this vulnerability to private and governmental appropriation corresponds with a space’s ongoing physical and ideological malleability. To examine the specific pressures that these spaces face, this paper will rely on Colomb’s and Florida’s descriptions of aesthetically ground-up, yet in essence corporatized, urban efforts for attracting the creative class. To describe varying interim-user responses to these pressures, this paper will utilize the military general Carl Clausewitz’s contradistinctive definitions of “tactics” and “strategies,” as they are contextualized in urban theory by Arlt’s and Mould’s discussions of tactical urbanism. The terms “cyclical” and “linear,” drawn out by Lefebvre and Madanipour, will be used to distinguish between the separate rhythms, or embodied patterns, behind these interacting forces. “Cyclical” will describe tactics that evaluate and adapt to imbalances in the urban ecosystem which threaten biological human needs of shelter and community, and “linear” will characterize the strategies that govern the city with fixed goals of financial gain. The following case studies and discussion will rely on and continue to interrelate these concepts developed by past scholarship.

CASE STUDIES

Discourse regarding temporary urban space largely consists of architects who formalize it and document their processes. It is pertinent to critique these methods of formalization to ensure that they do not override the social infrastructure (Klinenberg 2015) built by a community’s residents. Philipp Oswalt concisely articulates this dilemma from his perspective as an architect: “in view of this Sisyphean task, we will be bound time and again to dissolve existing formalizations and formalize informal practices and integrate them into established structures” (Oswalt 2013). In Urban Catalyst, he examines the role that urban scholars and planners have played and should play when working with ground-up designs for urban spaces, but he approaches his analysis from a different stance than Richard Florida’s in The Rise of the Creative Class from 2012 (Oswalt 2013). Whereas Florida focuses on the economic assets that innovative planning can offer cities and private companies, Oswalt discusses how cities have interacted with temporary urban spaces in ways that have either enhanced or stunted their non-commodified nature and cyclical rhythm.

This paper will continue the study of two temporary urban spaces mentioned in Oswalt’s 2013 book Urban Catalyst, Radical Queer Wagenplatz Kanal and Arena Berlin. Radical Queer Wagenplatz Kanal remains as a temporary urban space today that has occupied three different locations over the last 30 years, while Arena Berlin was once a temporary urban space that has been privatized under a long-term land lease by the Berlin government. Though they were born in similar contexts, the two projects have evolved drastically differently. A paper called “Temporary Use of Vacant Spaces in Berlin” by Ikeda Mariko from 2018 provides an in-depth study of the influx of temporary urban spaces that arose in 1990s East Berlin, the context in which both Arena Berlin and Radical Queer Wagenplatz Kanal originated (Mariko 2018). In 1989, the Berlin Wall, which had previously separated East and West Berlin, was disestablished, and free passage between the two Berlins was renewed. Following this

event, a combination of many vacant properties, confusion over property rights, and a shift of industries in East Berlin led to a suddenly high concentration of temporary urban spaces (Mariko 2018). In her interview with Oswalt, Saskia Sassen comments on the lack of topdown infrastructure in Berlin during this time of rebuilding: “Ironically, the lack of development kept the city going as a cultural center after the Wall came down” (Oswalt 2013). RQWK and Arena Berlin are case studies of the alternative, community-based movements that brought fresh, cultural vibrancy to Berlin.

CASE STUDY #1: ARENA BERLIN

Arena Berlin’s massive, warehouse-like main hall stands as a reminder of its original purpose as a 1920s bus depot. Its detailed architecture nostalgically reflects its design during the city’s “Golden Age” of economic stabilization and increased attention towards the fine arts. The primary use of the bus depot’s building changed for the first time during the Third Reich when it was used as an arsenal for Nazi soldiers. In the following years, it was used as a refugee camp, and then, in 1989, as a bus depot once again (Arena Berlin 2023, “History”). The physical form of the bus depot’s main hall remains today, and is versatile due to its vast, unobstructed interior and surrounding smaller buildings. In particular, when barred from access after its transition back to a bus depot, in 1993, tactical, interim uses stemmed from what were then Arena Berlin’s adjacent administrative buildings (Arena Berlin 2023, “Home”).

Philipp Oswalt documents Arena Berlin’s stages of transformation in Urban Catalyst from 2013. Up until 2013, a man who had been part of occupying Arena Berlin since 1995, Falk Walter, managed the space privately since the year 2000 (Oswalt 2013). Having changed leadership three times in about 10 years, Arena Berlin has consistently stayed a hub for performance arts since the 1990s. But varying structures of leadership and occupation have resulted in varying performers and audiences. In the 1990s, while the main hall was in use as a bus depot, a community of artists began to use the hall’s surrounding structures as spaces for artists to live and perform. While this part of Arena Berlin’s history is briefly mentioned in Oswalt’s records in his 2013 book, it receives little attention from other sources. Arena Berlin’s website excludes it altogether, only beginning its account of the space in 2000 (Arena Berlin 2023, “Arena Halle”). A reason for this could be that the wider interim user community was largely muffled by Falk Walter’s non-profit organization, Art Kombinat, which emerged from, but did not encompass, the entirety of the space’s users. As more and more interim users in the Arena joined Art Kombinat, the organization began implementing new capitalist structures—such as renting out parts of the building—leading to what Oswalt poses as one of the first structural shifts of the Arena’s use as a performance space (Oswalt 2013). He further states that though these efforts were not economically successful under Art Kombinat’s leadership, they drew attention to the potential that the space had as a formal, commodified performing arts venue (Oswalt 2013).

Today, Arena Berlin appears in articles ranging from those advertising a contemporary performance by the Berlin Philharmonic (Cooper 2018), to those advertising a newly touring synth-rock act, Unhelig (Ferguson 2010). Largely by the crafting of Falk Walter, Arena Berlin is now undoubtedly—arguably primarily—a commercial space, marketed as hosting up-and-coming artists, with the main hall rented out for corporate events and talks (Oswalt 2013). The Arena underwent a full renovation over 20 years ago but is still structured

as a conglomeration of smaller buildings surrounding one main hall. Instead of flexible spaces for interim users, the smaller buildings now take the forms of a restaurant and bar, gala spaces, and techno club whose building, despite the renovation, preserves the structural integrity of its original use as a “boiler house” (Arena Berlin 2023, “Home”). While visiting Arena Berlin in November 2023, I found myself amid the aftermath of one of its events and was able to witness the massiveness of the space and the impact it has on its surrounding environment. Under a street sign, demarcated only by the word “Arena” written over an arrow (see figure 1), a line of trucks and vans attempting to turn towards Arena Berlin spilled out onto the busy main street, lining up to pick up rented equipment and furniture (see figures 2 and 3). I was struck by the irony of how the building still corralled an influx of vehicles to its street, depending on these vehicles for its operations, even after a long and varied ownership history since its origins as a bus depot.

Mirroring the Arena itself, its surrounding neighborhood has also undergone a host of transformations in the past thirty years that have contributed to building elements that Richard Florida dubs paradigmatic of the “Creative Community” (Florida 2013). Notably, Oswalt observed that in Kreuzberg, the neighborhood across the Spree River from Arena Berlin, creative industries were on the rise: “fashion schools, record labels, clubs, design studios, and handicrafts workshops are part of a powerful development initiated in large part by the Arena” (Oswalt 2013). A walk around the perimeter of the Arena today supports this statement. The brick facade of the building’s perimeter extends towards a pier, from which cranes and modern apartment and office buildings crowd the skyline of the opposite riverbank. Between the pier and Kreuzberg towers a sculpture of two silhouettes in the middle of the river (see figure 4). Kreuzberg was not always so extravagantly developed. In Claire Colomb’s 2012 discussion of the ways in which alternative cultural aspects in Berlin have been advertised to attract creative residents, she states, “Berlin’s ‘ordinary’, socially and ethnically mixed neighbourhoods (such as Kreuzberg), and their ‘authentic’ as well as alternative and counter-cultural life, have increasingly been portrayed as tourist attractions or potential settings for young creative entrepreneurs in marketing campaigns and publication” (Colomb 2012). From an evening’s scan of the city space surrounding the Arena, new developments and an active nightlife model as fruits of the labor of the promotional campaigns that Colomb describes (see figuress 4 and 5).

The occupancy of the Arena has vacillated between private and interim forms over the past thirty years and is now private once again. Falk Walter was able to facilitate the most recent shift from interim use to formalized, private occupancy through a 35-year lease. This lease was awarded to him and Art Kombinat by the city of Berlin after Art Kombinat hosted a massive music festival in the late 1990s. This long-term lease was intended to continue the space’s use as a cultural center, though this was only one of the multiple profitable ventures undertaken by Walter. Oswalt states, “The length of the lease was the deciding factor that catalyzed the use and development of the area as a whole” (Oswalt 2013). As Richard Florida observes, attracting the creative class happens “gradually, over time,” and this necessary time was allotted to Falk Walter via government subsidy (Florida 2012). In the instance of Arena Berlin, the interim users who hosted a large-scale, 46-day music festival (Oswalt 2013), and could therefore demonstrate the space as profitable, were able to continue occupying it, while other interim users were all but erased from the

space’s present form and archived history.

CASE STUDY #2: SCHWARZER KANAL AND RADICAL QUEER WAGENPLATZ KANAL

The history of the residential community originally called Schwarzer Kanal, or “Black Kanal,” is long and multifaceted, but consistently situated in the non-linear rhythm of temporary urban spaces. In 1990, Schwarzer Kanal was a squatted, trailer community that occupied a vacant plot of land along the Spree River, near the center of the city of Berlin. The city government permitted Schwarzer Kanal to occupy the land without interference until 2002 when it turned the

land over to Hochtief, a development company, at that time constructing a service worker union. After negotiations, Hochtief agreed to grant Schwarzer Kanal medium-term rights to move to another one of their undeveloped plots in a nearby neighborhood known for office real estate (Oswalt 2013). This new location was spatially divided by two plots, Köpenickerstrasse and Michaelkirchstrasse, and so were the members of Schwarzer Kanal. As they were divided geographically, an ideological rift simultaneously formed; issues concerning sexist community members led Michaelkirchstrasse to become a settlement for “women-lesbians” while Köpenickerstrasse remained “mixed.” Eventually, in 2010, Schwarzer Kanal moved to

Figures 2 and 3: Cars and trucks pulling into Arena Berlin

Figure 1: Street sign 150 meters away from Arena Berlin

Figure 4: View across the Spree River from Arena Berlin’s neighboring pier.

Figure 5: Hoppetosse boat, bar, and club next to Arena Berlin

Neukolln, where they remain today. In 2013, the original three-year land use agreement under which they relocated expired, and, after over three more years of re-negotiating and informal occupation, a new lease with the government was established, which halved their permitted land area. According to the website’s latest news update in 2021, these are the current grounds for their occupation (RQWK 2021, “New Shoes for Kanal”). In this most recent location, the name of the project has changed to “Radical Queer Wagenplatz Kanal,” or RQWK, by which they commonly refer to themselves and will be referred this paper for sake of brevity (RQWK 2016, “History of Occupation”). Throughout these shifts in location, the membership

size, mission and demographics of RQWK have all adapted flexibly and reflexively, too.

As their new name indicates, RQWK has become a home for otherwise historically marginalized people. However, the community openly reflects in its public statements that this has not always been the case. As previously mentioned, the first major division of RQWK occurred both spatially and ideologically in their second location in 2002, when they were divided into Köpenickerstrasse and Michaelkirchstrasse (see figure 6). But RQWK states that the community’s battle against sexism during that time did not extend to exclusivity based on gender conformity. Eventually, this too was debated, and

Figure 6: Map of Radical Queer Wagenplatz Kanal’s locations

Figure 7: Image of an event at Radical Queer Wagenplatz Kanal (Radical Queer Wagenplatz Kanal 2024, “Gallery”)

Figures 8 and 9: Construction of the Autobahn, overpass located under 300 meters away from Radical Queer Wagenplatz Kanal

the result was another change in RRQWK’s demographics (RQWK 2016, “History of Occupation”). As Michaelkirchstrasse continued as a “cis woman and lesbian-only place” throughout 2002–2007, the residents of this location also began to tackle more intersectional issues of oppression by making strides to be more inclusive towards trans people. RQWK states that this happened only after difficult discourse, but that their community eventually became a home, as well as an event space, for Trans Berlinites (RQWK 2016, “Political Statement”).

Still, at this stage, a significant majority of the collective remained white and German. This changed after RQWK was forced to move to their new location in Neukolln, where they were granted by the Berlin government a few years of guaranteed land rights and the subsequent ability “to reflect more intensely on the structure of the project (e.g. in relation to classism, racism, transphobia…)” (RQWK 2016, “Political Statement”). The RQWK website states that the internal investigation into racism and exclusionary aspects of the residence started in the summer of 2014 by “BPoC that came to live in the place and were not willing to deal with the racism” (RQWK accessed 2023, “History of Occupation”). Now, granted after a mass exodus of disapproving residents, RQWK has a majority BIPOC, LGBTQ+ demographic, and publicly specifies intersectional and reparative ways of living as crucial to their mission (RQWK 2016, “Political Statement”).

“Schwarzer Kanal” has been able to evolve into “Radical Queer Wagenplatz Kanal,” and the primarily Black, Indigenous, People of Color and Queer space that it is today because it has cyclically grappled with permeating, oppressive social norms without being limited by the fear that a continuously changing, and sometimes shrinking, community will detract monetary value from the land which it occupies. Thus, RQWK has, in all its iterations, kept space for critical reflexivity. In their latest online statement, “Political Statement of Radical Queer Wagenplatz KANAL,” RQWK proclaimed, regarding the impact that temporariness has had on their community, “whenever it is about changes, the first reaction is resistance. Deconstructing and/or [losing] power are consequences of this – which privileged people who have benefited from the structure before, are not used to. Changes confront people and make positions more visible” (RQWK 2016, “Political Statement”). This comment was made in reference to the members of RQWK who left after BIPOC residents’ critiques of the community began to be taken seriously. Rather than market their space to attract and retain a consumer base, RQWK takes a more cyclical approach, uplifting demographic change as a tool for exposing and “deconstructing” power dynamics.

This research on RQWK aims to examine how tactical occupation manifests in a community uninvested in the linear, profit-motivated strategies of advertising, interest in adjacent land parcels, and curating economically profitable demographics. In that “tactics” resist and contrast “strategies,” the use of the term “tactical urbanism” in relation to RQWK implies that the temporary aspect of the community’s structure is a method of adaptation rather than a goal. This is important to note because the existence of RQWK not only serves the needs of community-building and creativity among low-income, queer, non-white residents of Berlin, but also primarily serves their needs for shelter. RQWK, despite its various projects, is primarily a home for people who are affected by a looming threat of displacement (see figure 7). Though not unique to the community, or even to the city of Berlin for that matter, the correlation between socioeconomic status and vulnerability to displacement is potent in the history of moving locations that RQWK has had to undertake.

This vulnerability manifests in a protective and isolated atmosphere, making the space, arguably, the opposite of advertised. After sending a message to the email address listed on RQWK’s website, as well as to their Instagram social media account (though their last post was in 2021), I did not receive a response from the community in regard to my request to visit the space or speak with a member. I decided to walk to the address anyway, which was listed publicly on their website and only 20 minutes away from Arena Berlin, in case it was open to visitors. It was not. When I arrived at around 5:30 pm, the gates were closed, though a couple of residents walked in and out. The surrounding fence was tightly slatted, offering almost no visibility of the community from the sidewalk. At that point, sensing clearly that RQWK’s priorities were purely residential for that time, I walked around the neighborhood on the street, Kiefholzstraße. The land that RQWK occupies in 2023 is a small plot of dense woods that interrupts a peripheral urban landscape otherwise dominated by wide roads and construction sites. Most notably, about four minutes from the community is an overpass that overlooks a newly paved and not-yet-opened portion of the German Autobahn (see figuress 8 and 9). Graffiti on the sign for the construction project reads “Stop Versigelung,” a German phrase that translates to “Stop Sealing.” “Sealing” is referred to by several German sources as a practice for strengthening highway pavement that increases the heat that asphalt attracts and limits the permeability of rainfall, increasing the risk of flooding in the surrounding neighborhood (Berlin.de 2023, “Versiegelung”). RQWK’s new location is rife with aspects that are

Figure 10: Ver.di headquarters on Köpenickerstrasse Figure 11: Graffitied facade of Køpi

widely considered unattractive to potential homeowners and renters, as evidenced even by the graffitied demand.

RQWK itself is one such unattractive aspect, according to Claire Colomb’s Berlin-based claim regarding the representation of temporary urban spaces in media; she states, “only certain types of entertainment-related, ludic temporary uses are portrayed. Trailer sites and alternative living projects deemed too radical and politicized are, unsurprisingly, not featured” (Colomb 2012). Her description of how the city and its companies tend not to advertise “radical” spaces, like RQWK, blatantly contrasts with Arena Berlin’s hefty media presence. This difference indicates that the city’s landowners prefer to platform profitable displays of counterculture over ideological ones. It is simultaneously true that RQWK does not consistently advertise itself, sheltering its residents with a nondescript location and lack of media presence.

I also visited RQWK’s original location, on Köpenicker Straße along the Spree River, to discern how the site had developed since the community’s first eviction in 2002. On a plot of land that was once home to 25 residents (RQWK 2023, “History”), now stands a massive office complex called “Ver.di,” the headquarters for Germany’s service trade union (see figure 10). At about 2 million members (ver. di 2023, “Über Uns”), the union is sizable in both numbers and in physical structure. Though Ver.di is only accessible to union workers and not the general public, I was able to see its open-layout design by peering inside through a Spree-facing glass facade. The high ceiling covering the building’s wide-open and empty atrium was also glass, blurring the division between inside and outside. Across the street is Køpi, another 1990s-born squatter community that still occupies its building without a lease, and is reportedly currently appealing the eviction of its outdoor “wagenplatz” homes. The site of Køpi, like RQWK’s Neukolln location, is surrounded by construction. The property next to Køpi is currently cleared for construction and surveilled by people in a windowed cargo box on its grounds. On Køpi’s construction-facing brick wall is the graffitied phrase: “HANDS OFF OUR HOMES” (see figure 11). Evidently, the dissonance between tactical urbanism—“landing of Blows on another’s land”—and new construction is still prominent in the original neighborhood from which RQWK was displaced.

Perhaps the most blatant, tangible difference between RQWK and Arena Berlin today is the visibility of the people that they service. Successful advertising of Arena Berlin is a feat measured linearly and accomplished exponentially; the more members of the creative class that the space attracts, the more attractive the space is to the creative class. This conclusion is supported by Richard Florida’s 2012 theory that the creative class values socializing with its fellow members, and also from observing a line that formed around the venue for a pop-up “Qweer Market.” While visiting Arena Berlin, I stood in a 5-minute-long line at 5:00 pm that became well over 30 minutes long by 6:00 pm. The line was for Arena Berlin’s market space, where “Qweer Market,” a market for queer art and zines, was being held (Qweer Market 2023, “Here we are today 13:00–21:00”). Whether it be through word of mouth or catching the attention of passersby, the sudden growth of the line—for a market that had been running the entire day—seemed to me an apt metaphor for the general advertising strategy of the Arena: exhibit and commodify subculture to attract more and more people. This is not, of course, a critique of Qweer Market, which platforms LGBTQ+ voices and art, but instead, an observation of Arena Berlin’s success in transforming a building

once inhabited by squatters and interim users to one that people pay for and line up to enter, whether it be to see the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra or shop at the annual Qweer Market.

In contrast to Arena Berlin RQWK implies, even in its name, a desired demographic that they welcome, and does not encourage vast numbers of visitors. RQWK has held some events such as a winter festival and a birthday party for the community in the past (RQWK 2022, “KANAL WINTER SOLI FESTIVAL”), but has not publicized one since December 2022. Additionally, RQWK emphasizes that admittance is conditional—for straight, cis-gendered, white visitors in particular—in the messaging of their online presence (RQWK accessed 2023).

Their website specifically asks:

White and white passing individuals who participate in the living project are understood to carry a responsibility of helping build the space and take on some of the various labor tasks involved in the upkeep of the project, without centering themselves or their narratives as a form of historic reparations and praxis. (RQWK 2023, “History of Occupation”)

In this statement, RQWK posits their priorities as primarily contextually developed and communally upheld, rather than emerging from the top-down strategy of pandering to plentiful patronage.

DISCUSSION

Referring to their day-to-day embodiment of an ideal community as their “living project,” RQWK’s ideology is based in the everyday lives of residents as well as contextualized in varied histories of marginalization and trauma. RQWK asks its members to acknowledge their privileges, and it offers a space to practice minimizing the harmful impacts. RQWK’s website emphasizes that “all people, regardless of racial or gender identity, are equals in the space, especially when it comes to decision-making” (RQWK accessed 2023, “History of Occupation”). This statement, in conversation with their living project, highlights how the community views historical oppression not as a force of the past, but as actively deleterious today. RQWK therefore poses privilege as necessary to address in order to work toward a community of “equals.”

RQWK resists what authors Barca et al. refer to in their article, “The End of Political Economy as We Knew It?,” as “growth realism,” or the idea that, as a means to any collective future, there is no alternative other than to strive towards economic growth (Barca et. al 2013). The word “realism” indicates the propensity that the perspective has to naturalize a system that was socially imagined into being. Barca et al. propose what they deem an inherently political term, “nomadic utopianism,” as an ideological alternative to growth realism (Barca et. al 2013). Nomadic utopians are necessarily political because they do not succumb to institutional restraints when working toward embodying their ideals. Instead, they adapt organizational structures cyclically as their circumstantial perspectives morph. In this way, the constant flux of nomadic utopianism contrasts with the growth realist’s linear conceptualization of utopianism, which plans concrete steps for achieving a future goal (Barca et. al 2013). Arena Berlin, on the other hand, has adopted the growth realist perspective under Art Kombinat’s leadership and assisted by a government grant. It has thus shifted away from temporary urban space, by its definition in this paper, to a space that conforms and enables the capitalist structure of landownership described by Harvey Molotch in 1976.

The contrast between these two case studies suggests to me that

the term “temporary urban space” may need to be reconceptualized as a space that will inevitably change ideologically, spatially, or ideologically and spatially. The origins of Arena Berlin can still be considered a temporary urban space even though its new form exists in the same location because the use of the space has switched from being flexible, evolving, and need-based, to linear and heavily monetized. From the moment that its profit potential was recognized by forces with the means to invest, Arena Berlin was formalized, exploited, and advertised. There are two frames through which to analyze this transition: 1) the space was less vulnerable to aggregate landowners because it had capitalist potential and therefore potential for longevity in physical existence and 2) the space’s original interim users were more vulnerable to profit-seeking individuals because the latter had more powerful, monetary means to co-opt its use.

When city governments and private entities co-opt the infrastructure for tactical urbanism and temporary urban spaces without adopting their cyclical ideological and emic rhythms, tactics for urban “liveability” are appropriated as strategies for accumulating land value. Increasing attention towards tactical urbanism has been widely attributed to the prominence of “creative class” (Florida 2012), but the origins of temporary urban spaces are discussed more site-specifically. In the case of Berlin, scholars position temporary urban spaces at the intersection of East–West reunification and terrains vagues, conditions which in coincidence laid the grounds for nomadic utopianism by means of re-envisioning landownership. Under RQWK’s interim users, the community became grounds for nomadic utopianism, while Art Kombinat of Arena Berlin used the space’s former temporary status to experiment with methods for kickstarting profitability.

Architect Rance Mok in 2010 discusses a specifically spatially enacted form of nomadic existence, that of the urban nomad, and states that the term “nomad” originated as a colonialist categorization of indigenous pastoralist tribes (Mok 2010). Discussing the term’s connotations today, Mok states, “a Nomad is deemed different from the norm by way of his spatial practice” and that “his relationship to the land seems less defined than that of the propertied system” (Mok 2010). RQWK’s community’s safety and social action are endangered by displacement, so moving locations should by no means be implied as its purposeful goal. But, even if not on purpose, between RQWK’s “living vision” and physical structure two cyclical rhythms intertwine; as RQWK’s structure changes and moves, the community, as reflected by a number of its public statements, self-reflexively names its prejudice, works to address it, and then re-examines for new ones to eradicate.

Temporary urban spaces that are appropriated with the intent of economic growth are susceptible to the mechanisms through which landownership ascribes power in cities. While Arena Berlin was commodified and remained stationary along the Spree River in Kreuzberg and RQWK was displaced from its Spree-adjacent property, within their life spans, both of the plots’ surrounding neighborhoods have transitioned from terrains vagues to newly developed office buildings, bars, concert halls and apartments. Whether Arena Berlin and RQWK’s relative commodification and displacement were causal or resulting factors of neighborhood change is a question for future research, but this paper will extend to conjecture that it was potential for profitability that made Arena Berlin physically resilient, yet inevitably prone to a hegemonically imposed linearity, and a lack of profitability which resulted in RQWK’s consistent displacement, but also its persisting nomadic utopianism.

The many times that RQWK has had to move in comparison to Arena Berlin evidences that landownership can disempower non-economically motivated communities in cities. Temporary urban spaces take various forms—gathering spots, performance venues, outdoor film screenings, etc.—and each form is vulnerable to landownership to a different extent. Informal homes that aim to protect marginalized peoples by implementing cyclical rhythms of reflexivity are simultaneously less at risk for co-option through permanent implementation and more vulnerable to displacement because they cannot be marketed to the creative class. Because a space that is unmarketable to the wealth-bringing class that cities desire is a threat to real estate value, it is forced into building, moving, rebuilding… into a cyclical manner of existence. A study of formalization and landownership in the context of temporary urban spaces reveals that a dialectical rhythm most in touch with resident needs is not favored by current, urban, hegemonic systems. As originally interim-user-generated spaces are perceived as feasibly profitable, they acquire a shot at longevity but simultaneously lose flexible ideological compatibility with the communities that envisioned them.

CONCLUSION

This paper juxtaposes the linear strategies that have preserved artists’ use of Arena Berlin with the cyclical tactics that have preserved Radical Queer Wagenplatz Kanal’s nomadic utopianism. These two aspects of the case studies, a specific space’s use and a community’s collective ideological flexibility were both originally born from community-based decisions. However, under state and corporate seizure of land, they became mutually inhibitive within each temporary urban space. This conclusion is well-contextualized in existing scholarship that has detected a pattern of urban government and private entities utilizing terrains vauges to attract members of the creative class. Complimenting Claire Colomb’s study of how these entities mobilize advertising strategies, this paper contributes ethnographic evidence of Arena Berlin’s extensive self-promotion and RQWK’s lack thereof. Specifically, Arena Berlin’s heavy advertising and attendance for its “Qweer Market” connects Colomb’s work on informal spaces in Berlin to Saskia Sassen’s urban economic theory by pointing to how some spaces utilize counterculture messaging as a source for generating income through seemingly informal means. While both RQWK and Arena Berlin hold space for queer residents of the city, the commercialization of the latter only does so for queer residents who are also members of the economically mobile creative class described by Richard Florida.

In future studies on temporary urban spaces, interviews with interim users would add invaluable insight into the process and obstacles of temporary urban place-making with nomadic utopian ideals. The interim-user perspective is particularly underrepresented in the current literature on temporary urban spaces, especially because many of the authors on the subject are architects, themselves designers of formal structures. In this piece too, no interim-user perspective was included. So, although this research revisits two sites surveyed by Philipp Oswalt in 2013 a decade later, it maintains Oswalt’s limited, outsider perspective on them. Perhaps for Oswalt and certainly for me, the absence of input from interim users was not for lack of asking via email and social media. Especially after conducting this research, it does not escape me that RQWK’s lack of response may be indicative of concerns about divulging information regarding its community.

Contextualized in existing scholarship on temporary urban spaces,

this paper’s case study of RQWK speaks to how cyclical forms of community-building evade the ideological linearity of commercialized urban land. In fact, an urban space’s ideological non-conformity poses a risk of its displacement, and therefore increases its likelihood of being temporary in a spatial, structural sense. The case study of Arena Berlin exemplifies an alternate scenario of a temporary urban space that was uprooted ideologically, rather than spatially. By adopting a for-profit agenda, Arena Berlin secured its location and structure, but lost its cyclical rhythm. Arena Berlin’s marketing pursues its capitalist goals deceptively, through strategies that advertise creativity and mask underlying linearity. Arena Berlin is one example of many projects designed by architects, planners, and companies who draw inspiration from temporary urban spaces (i.e. 24Hofport and Luchtsingel). Given the prominence of such projects and their capacities to cause displacement, interim-user perspectives should be incorporated in urban planning and literature for the explicit purpose of promoting cyclicality. The overarching findings in this paper highlight this need, as they illuminate an incompatibility between durable uses of the urban built environment and the flexible values and thought processes of the people it organizes. The applied and theoretical aspects of such an addition to the field of temporary urban spaces would discursively tie less linear values to land-use, and therefore encourage interim-user communities and newly designed structures to primarily support resident needs.

yhb2108@barnard.edu

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HOUSING SOLUTIONS FOR INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS (IDPs) IN COLOMBIAN CITIES

BY DANIELLA RIVERA-AGUDELO Barnard College ‘25

In the wake of the Colombian armed conflict, millions of rural farmers and civilians were forcibly displaced from their homes by paramilitary and guerrilla groups. The conflict lasted for five decades and resulted in changes to national security, a growing influence of illicit drug groups, and a total of seven million internally displaced persons (IDPs). An internally displaced person is defined as a person (or group of people) who “have been forced to flee homes or places of habitual residence as a result of or to avoid, in particular, the effects of the armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights, or natural disasters” (Bennett 1998). The main contributing factor to IDPs in Colombia was violent events through the seizing of land by armed forces, which were then used for illicit logging, illegal crops, increased cattle ranching, and more (Andersson 2021, 8). To deal with the massive influx of IDPs to urban areas, the Colombian government addressed the spatial concerns of displacement through housing initiatives that aimed to prevent informal settlements. I seek to explore how the housing initiatives created by the Colombian government impacted the relationship between IDPs and the lands of their original and new homes, and how the projects reflect the government’s ideological priorities.

URBAN SPACE IN RELATION TO THE ARMED CONFLICT

The major Colombian cities—Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, and Barranquilla—can be understood as spaces that reflect the conflicts, disputes, and ongoing practices of the armed conflict and national issues. Starting in the mid-20th century, the influx of rural to urban migration developed in a mostly informal manner; it is estimated that about seventy percent of new houses in Colombian cities were planned through informal squatter settlements and invasions (Silwa and Wiig 2016, 12). Many, but not all, of the migrants in the city were fleeing conflict zones, as shown in figure 1. Additionally, IDPs oftentimes had less formal education, making it more likely for them to be unemployed if not working in the informal sector (Silwa and Wiig 2016, 12). The socioeconomic disparities of IDPs were often further exacerbated by the greater spatial formations of the city, most notable in the capital city, Bogotá. The most common form of land acquisition for informal settlements involved an agent who would claim, subdivide, and resell the land in parcels to migrants to develop their homes through self-building—later known as “pirate urbanizations” (Camargo Sierra 2015, 137). Both factors, education and land division, contributed to the production of built space that occurred in a predominantly self-built manner, further qualifying the informal and often precarious nature of the urban developments that IDPs reside in.

The repercussions of the Colombian armed conflict are present in the greater formation of Bogotá, as exemplified by the disproportionate development of informal settlements in the South of the city. The armed conflict began in 1964; within the decades of the 1960s and 1970s, approximately a quarter of the city was developed in an informal manner, generating approximately 62% of the total informally

Figure 1. Map of internal displacement and migration to major cities in Colombia. Map by Franco Calderón, April 2019. “The Production of Marginality. Paradoxes of Urban Planning and Housing Policies in Cali, Colombia.”

urbanized land in the city within these two decades (Sierra 2015, 138). Bogotá was ultimately planned in a segregated manner by both North-South and center-periphery divisions. As seen in figure 2, the greater conglomeration of informality sits in the southern periphery of Bogotá. Consequently, the segregation of IDPs in Bogotá, and in many other Colombian cities, is not only social and economic but also spatial due to the geographic locations of informal settlements. Although many, if not the majority, of informal settlements are now legally recognized and integrated into the city, the North-South and center-periphery divisions remain today. Residents of informal settlements in the southern periphery of the city often face longer and more expensive commutes to the city, exposure to environmental contamination that contributes to health problems, and overall stigmatization from the status quo (Rueda-Garcia, 19-20).

On a brief personal note, I had the opportunity to conduct research in the summer of 2023 in informal settlements of Bogotá which mostly focused on land use planning issues surrounding environmental risk determinations. The majority of my research occurred in Las Amapolas, a small neighborhood in the San Cristobal locality in the outermost southeastern periphery of Bogotá. I connected with a few grandmothers in the neighborhood who were among the first ten families to purchase subdivisions of land to develop their homes. They shared stories from their childhoods, where they migrated with their families as a child (one of them without her parents) to the capital city due to formal displacement by armed forces. These grandmothers honored their campesina (“peasant” farmer) backgrounds by forming

community gardens in their backyards that connected them to nature while in an urban environment. The road shown in figure 3 was the greatest example of spatial segregation that I encountered. A tree had fallen during a landslide and damaged the road, which remained damaged and ignored by the city for twelve years, shutting down the neighborhood’s only formalized road into the city and accessibility to public transportation.

GOVERNMENT’S MOTIVATIONS FOR HOUSING INITIATIVES

The Colombian government was faced with exponentially-growing cities that brought vulnerable populations into urban areas of the country. As previously explained, the majority of growth directly following the armed conflict was in an informally planned manner. While there are legitimate concerns surrounding informal settlements—such as the lack of resources, sensitive populations, and crime rates—these settlements are also stigmatized due to their self-built natures. From a capitalist perspective, informal settlements are both material and visual representations of the vast economic

inequalities required to sustain profitability, which simultaneously fail to contribute to the formal economy due to their informal networks. To address these economic concerns, the Colombian government focused on the development of the Vivienda de Interés Social (VIS) program, a social interest housing program.

The development of social interest housing aligned with the concept of vivienda digna, dignified housing, which became increasingly popular in the broader context of human rights in the late 20th century. Dignified housing can be defined as housing that meets “construction quality standards, appropriate physical space, and provision of basic services such as water, sewage, and electricity, among others” (Bolívar-Silva and Galindo-León 2015, 28). The term entered the mainstream humanitarian field with various United Nations recommendations for the development of dignified housing as a means of mitigating social problems (Bolívar-Silva and Galindo-León 2015, 28). In the context of growing urban informality, dignified housing points to a more structured and regulated form of human settlement. It provides a means to socially integrate IDPs into the greater urban

Figure 2. Map of informal development in Bogotá by decade. Map by Andres Guillermo Blanco, 2010. The Formal Determinants of Informal Settlements in Bogota, Colombia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.

Figure 3. The Las Amapolas barrio (neighborhood) in the San Cristobal locality. Photograph by Daniella Rivera-Agudelo, June 2023.

environment by providing them with basic living standards within the infrastructure of the housing itself.

From the late 1990s to the 2010s, the Colombian government created many housing initiatives as a means of addressing urban informality and the housing deficit. The policies that came from various neoliberal politicians included price control on urban land, the formation of land banks, relocating families from high-risk areas, real estate development, and urban renewal (Bolívar-Silva and GalindoLeón 2015, 50). Many of these policies aimed to reduce the presence of urban informality by forcibly displacing their respective residents from informal to formal parts of the city. While these strategies were framed as ways of improving the lives of IDPs, they are reflective of the overall neoliberal priorities of many Colombian politicians. The focus on urban renewal and control of dynamic urban space can be understood as the broader political narratives of the mayors of Bogotá from the late 1990s to 2010s (Bolívar-Silva and GalindoLeón 2015, 51). These initiatives often overlooked the complexities and societal implications of their attempts at urban transformation, such as the arguably forced relocations of families—many who were IDPs or descendants of them—in informal settlements into government-sponsored housing.

FREE HOUSING PROGRAM AND IDPs

Housing initiatives went beyond subsidies for families, and eventually involved the development of free housing for victims of the armed conflict and forced displacement. The Colombian government created the Victims’ Law in 2011, which aimed to “reduce the injustice and social inequality through economic and moral reparation” (Bolívar-Silva and Galindo-León 2015, 14). The law identified the need to address housing issues for IDPs which led to the development of the 100,000 Viviendas Gratis initiative, or 100,000 Free Housing Program, in 2012. The initiative was funded by federal and local governments, and at times involved subsidies from the private sector (Bolívar-Silva and Galindo-León 2015, 14). The development of free housing was designed to benefit victims of the armed conflict and their families.

Access to free housing has significantly changed IDPs’ lived experiences and relations to the urban environment. Many IDPs share that living in cities provides them with the employment and educational opportunities that they otherwise would not have access to in their rural places of origin (Bolívar-Silva and Galindo-León 2015, 17). The formation of free housing adds a greater degree of permanence to IDPs’ residence in urban areas. Formalized housing offers a more solidified and established form of housing in comparison to informal settlements, which could potentially face greater challenges and disruptions to their place in relation to the city. In this case, formalized housing solutions are viewed as a potential for further integrating IDPs into the dynamics of urban life while mitigating struggles faced in informal settlements.

There are many flaws reported in the integration of the Free Housing Program and the social aspects of IDPs lived experiences in the developments. A study that involved the residents of the Rincón de Bolonia development in Bogotá underscored the various concerns that have resulted from the initiative, examining one of many housing developments created in Bogotá. The program had about a ten-year waiting period between the application and moving in. The development was far from the city; once residents settled in,

https://x.com/minvivienda/ status/992900516467363841?s=46&t=putf7q2NDFF-ER-Sb8ofbA.

various security concerns rose due to increased presence of drug cartels, lack of support from local police, inadequate roads, and a lack of access to public services. (Andersson 2021, 35-36). Further, despite residing in a free and formalized residence, IDPs still face issues surrounding accessibility and safety. The circumstances in Rincón de Bolonia are representative of the greater stigmatization and spatial segregation of IDPs in the Free Housing Program. While free housing may address affordability and structural concerns (with self-built housing), it does not necessarily address the broader implications of being a victim of forced displacement. The program offers a more radical form of providing shelter in comparison to the previous Vivienda de Interés Social (VIS) program, yet continues to ignore some greater systemic and spatial problems that negatively shape the lives of IDPs in urban environments.

The lack of addressing broader societal issues surrounding IDPs through the formation of the Free Housing Program is further reflected in the ways in which design has impacted the quality of life of IDPs—or lack thereof. Despite being rooted in humanitarian values serving to benefit and improve the wellbeing of vulnerable populations, many of the developments created from the Free Housing Program are cut short in their inability to create caring and community-centered spaces through architectural design. A study on the barrio Buena Vista II in Santander reveals the lack of architectural solutions created to address the social aspect of IDPs’ quality of life. The results show that the development significantly lacks spaces for cultural expression and social interaction. Through site visits and encounters with local residents, the study determined that a culture and sports center where residents could share common interests in the vicinity of their neighborhood could be a potential design solution for the raised social issues. (García, Satos, and Hernández Suárez 2020, 141). The creation of these spaces in a community that significantly lacks the social infrastructure for community building and placemaking could transform the quality of life of IDPs.

CARING FOR IDPS THROUGH DESIGN

Insufficient community spaces and opportunities for placemaking further reveals the broader issues in policymakers’ approach to creating housing solutions for IDPs. The emphasis on providing a

Figure 4. Rincón de Bolonia, in the Usme locality of Bogotá. Posted by Minvividenda @minvivienda, X, May 6, 2018. “En el marco de la estrategia de Cultura…”,

physical or economic solution for a massive vulnerable population, while neglecting the socioemotional needs of IDPs, makes it difficult for such developments to thrive. In the case of dealing with traumatized and marginalized populations, caring architecture could be implemented to further address socioemotional needs. “Caring” or “healing” architecture centers the humane aspects of inhabiting spaces in the design process (Nord and Högström 2017). This practice would acknowledge that integrating IDPs into urban spaces goes beyond the practical physical spaces in which they reside. Housing solutions could therefore transcend functionality and become spaces that foster a sense of community and belonging, addressing a portion of the emotional and well-being needs for victims of trauma. Integrating cultural spaces within the housing developments can play a role in alleviating IDPs’ sense of displacement and disconnection from the cities they reside in, and potentially even contribute to a reduction in crime rates or stigmatization.

IDPS’ LASTING RELATIONS TO RURAL HOMELANDS

The solutions created by the Colombian government under the Victims’ Law may contribute to the changing relationship between IDPs and their rural homelands. The law included the creation of the Free Housing Program and the development of the Land Restitution Program, which would return previously seized rural land to IDPs or exchange legal and social benefits to the victims for their land (Silwa and Wiig 2016, 14). The program was significantly unpopular due to IDPs’ general interest to stay in urban areas of the country. Surveys conducted before the creation of the Free Housing Program had already shown that no more than approximately 11% of IDPs were interested in returning to their homelands (Andersson 2021, 15). As previously stated, many IDPs valued the economic and educational benefits of residing in a city, with a vast consideration of the generational opportunities that could result from a more permanent housing settlement in these urban areas. The creation of free housing most likely further contributes to the lack of interest in moving to rural parts of Colombia, as found by Silwa and Wiig. Despite the fact that so many issues exist throughout the development, including design concerns and their inability to improve quality of life, the overarching relationship between IDPs and the land that they have historically and presently resided in showcases a preference for urban environments.

The Colombian government’s housing initiatives, particularly under the 2011 Victims’ Law, have attempted to provide solutions to the needs of IDPs while failing to recognize greater societal and segregational issues and the socioemotional needs of victims. These housing solutions have impacted the relationships between IDPs, their rural homelands, and their new urban homes by increasing the permanence of urban residency. Attempts at housing solutions such as social interest housing and the Free Housing Program attempt to mitigate the impacts of forced displacement, with a reflection of the government’s concerns over informal settlements. Caring design practices into the housing developments created under such programs could be a tangible solution towards addressing longer-term themes relating to the societal and socioemotional needs of IDPs.

dr3176@barnard.edu

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Ayala-Garcia, E. T., Hernández-Suárez, C. A., & Ayala-Santos, R. . (2020). El papel de la arquitectura ante los problemas de calidad de vida de la población víctima del conflicto armado colombiano. Encuentros, 18(01). https://doi.org/10.15665/encuent. v18i01.2156.

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Blanco, Andres Guillermo. The Formal Determinants of Informal Settlements in Bogota, Colombia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 2010. https://ecommons.cornell.edu/server/api/core/ bitstreams/7343d790-157e-46d1-93ae-e91f2401dbbd/content.

Bolivar-Silva and Galindo-Leon, “Demand for Social Interest Housing and Effectiveness of Incentives for Family Subsidy Policy in Bogota from 2000 to 2010,” Cooperativismo y Desarrollo 23, no. 106 (2015). http://doi.org/10.16925/co.v23i106.1123

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Nord, Catharina, and Ebba Högström. “Introduction.” In Caring Architecture: Institutions and Relational Practices, edited by Catharina Nord and Ebba Högström. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017.

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THE TOWN, SQUARED: BUILT SPACES IN REACTION TO RACIALIZATION

BY MADELEINE MARTIN Barnard College ‘27

The social construction of town squares is an urban planning tool that is meant to spatialize, as well as realize, social order. The town square channels the power of community, but in the same sense, acts as a touchpoint for the control of the masses. In Minneapolis and Atlanta, town squares have popped up as points of protest, as a reaction to a violent event that hit the global newscycle in May of 2020. When George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, George Floyd Square and Cop City began to grow as conceptual ideas, both of which protested against, and pulled to, reflections on race, spatiality, and community. The town squares, both built and reactionary, hold considerably different means to address the unity of communities. The two spaces recognized through the lens of town squares allows for a consideration of protest, people, and persistence, as representations of different reactions to the perversion of racialization.

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered by the Minneapolis Police Department after a cashier called the police over a false claim that the money Floyd intended to pay with was counterfeit. His murder incited millions to protest the unjust treatment that Black people face by police, the video of his murder holding the histories of racialization and persistent violence that pervade American consciousness. It was a modern day lynching caught on tape; a group of four police officers took down a Black man because of an accusation a white store clerk made about the legitimacy of Floyd’s existence in that space. A Black man was seen through the assumption of criminality, which manifested itself as the dehumanization and violence that killed him.

In the weeks following his murder, thousands flooded the streets of American cities, protesting the continued unjust treatment of Black Americans in the United States. The intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue became a living vigil, grieving the grounds where George Floyd took his last breath. In the creation of a space that was birthed from violence, there is a uniting reminder of the strength that comes out of community care. George Floyd Square (GFS), as it has become known, is home to an urban garden, a community closet, medics, and a team of community leaders committed to fighting for justice. They crossed the racial boundaries summoned by the treatment of Floyd. Monuments, murals, and prayer spaces uphold the “garrison of resistance” (Howard 2023). It was the foothold of a force for justice, a defense against systems of racial injustice that had employed itself in violence. The area is populated with neighbors who come to hold a space, as a constant reminder that with no justice, there cannot be peace. Conversation, connection, and community cultivation grow under the renamed Speedway gas station sign, reading “People’s Way.” It is the contemporary creation of the town square.

A town square, as a space, is a built public area that functions as a meeting point for a city. The social and political role of a square evolves with the needs of the population, with its

centricity as a social and political space shaping ways that an urban space interacts (Zakariya 2014). Within urban environments, the prevalence of town squares and robust public areas are proven to increase local economic prosperity, promote public and environmental health, and garner communities (Braubach 1979; Carmona 2018). Examining space and place through the town square shows the blocks that are the home of political movements, iconoclastic urban aesthetics, and alternative urban memories that help define cities and their people (Bekar). These open spaces are home to local vendors, art, protest, and green spaces, but the significance of the town square expands past the streets they are bound by. Community spaces are necessary for building a more complex, innovative urban area, one that is historically held as a space of information dispersal and connection. The social discourse that comes out of access to a public space is a necessary piece of the regulation of emotions and commitment to meeting the needs of community members (Mesa-Pedrazas, Nogueras-Zondag, and Duque-Calvache 2023).

Town squares aren’t always accessible, as studies have found that Black and low-income communities are less likely to live in neighborhoods with well maintained public spaces (Love and Kok 2021). The formalization of the public space also holds a level of exclusivity that pervades systems of social oppression. Local governments opt into “redesigning urban space around consumption, pleasure, and affluent residency,” rather than utilizing localized understandings of community needs (Gordon 2022, 16). A public space retains an expectation of an aesthetic and mobility for those who access it, which often comes at the expense of minority and lower-income communities. The town square becomes a monument to white security and quality of life, against the threat of an unregulated, truly diverse space. A public square comes with an expectation of whiteness and wealth, the presence of unhoused community members is antithetical to the beauty that the bourgeoisie expects from a space (Robillard and Howells 2023). The discourse on aesthetics and poverty in the built environment is one that limits access and promotes violence and exclusivity against those who are not white and wealthy; a public space is privatized, a town square is squared off. Historically, the town square is built at the intersection of exclusivity and hierarchy, basing policing on the quality of aesthetics, based on submitting to complaints filed by widely white populations (Herring 2019). A town square isn’t identified as a threat until it harbors real community, regulating bodies and connections.

There was something distinctly different about the creation of George Floyd Square (GFS), however. GFS stands as a prism to reflect the ways that racialization pervaded and violated a community, and instigated the creation of both a space of mourning and rebuilding. What was written into the weeks, months, and years of protest following Floyd’s murder was the creation of a home that was built by the structures of race (Morrison 2012). GFS is an anchor, it is both a representation of the brutalization and persistence of racialized violence and the re-patronization of

stolen spaces—a decolonization of the streets that hold a genealogy of racism. The violence reflects the histories of colonization in modern spheres, where spaces of Black existence continue to be taken away with violence of white power and fear. GFS was seen as a threat to institutions of power; the aesthetics and quality of life of white town squares; and as a rebellion against racialized violence. Just as Chauvin held the historicized violence intrinsic to his violence within him as a tool for harm, GFS holds the historicized violence as a point to reconstruct a square to build a community of protest and resistance.

The spatial construction of GFS was built in resistance to citywide action to brush over the need for a space to mourn and honor another life lost to police violence. Once a four way intersection, community organizers at GFS created a round-a-bout to force a slower paced, more reflective movement in the area that was continually deconstructed by city work crews (Du and Harlow 2021). Clearouts of the space at 4:30 am, just a year after Floyd’s murder, came with the messaging of a need to return to normal, a rebound to prior systems, and an end to grief. GFS not only represented a community that came together out of protest of the state’s actions and historical systems of oppression, but also a revolution in the role of town squares; a public space that honored the needs of a community outside of white aestheticism and superiority, contesting with the expectations of the municipal government. 38th and Chicago is at the intersection of four neighborhoods, where population is, on average, about 30% white, one of the most diverse areas in a 60% white and non-hispanic city (City of Minneapolis). The existence of GFS was predicated on uplifting and centering non-white experiences and needs, toppling historical expectations of a public space and a memorial (Mitchell 2023).

“No Justice, No Streets” was the echoed sentiment when it came to the defense of the space, a statement that came with a list of demands. In the Justice Resolution, leaders of GFS and related organizations centered the demands with the reminder that “the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) is complicit in the ongoing undermining of public safety and trust for the residents in the George Floyd Square Zone,” and reminders of the shortcomings of the justice system in prior cases of police violence. It was essential to note that “the George Floyd Memorial is first and foremost a place of protest, not commissioned by the City but by the people against the City,” and that the city had no authority in the removal, destruction, or reconstruction of the intersection (Justice Resolution 2020). Demands include governmental and police accountability, economic support, and the stability and autonomy of the area (George Floyd & Anti-Racist Street Art). The municipal government was disparaging and ignoring the pleas of their citizens, who fought for a true public space that met the needs of the public.

In this same moment, a movement to shift away from a reliance on public safety through policing would create an intensified reaction with the conceptualization of Cop City. Mass protests had taken the country by storm after Floyd’s murder, and the general public became wary of the militarization of the police, and an overwhelming majority of Americans began to support police reform policies (Vox). The police and militia stood on the offensive, escalating violence by using chemical sprays, concussion grenades, and foam tipped bullets against protestors

(AP News 2022). The creation of a counteroffensive as a police force bred the idea for a police boot camp to practice anti-protest counteractive tactics, with military training from the Israeli Defense Forces (Noble 2023).

Cop City is an Atlanta Police Foundation project to create a militarization facility on a 381 acre wide forest, with a plan to train police in urban warfare. According to Kwame Olufemi of the Community Movement Builders, the facility includes “shooting ranges, plans for bomb testing, and will practice tear gas deployment,” and is a system that is based in teaching “military-like maneuvers to kill Black people and control our bodies and movements” (Stop Cop City 2021). The plan to plot urban spaces and prepare to counteract protests with the force of a military lets the reality of no planned end to violence sink in. Systems of the state are building structures to combat protestors, tools of war being set against citizens resisting racism.

One of the more concerning pieces of Cop City is its structure as a mock town. To designate the living spaces of citizens as a center for violence normalizes actions of violence and terror. A mock city has been planned, the layouts likely including homes, intersections, fake business fronts, and a town square, all to prepare for the state’s enemy: the protestor. The significance of violating these spaces as a means for debilitating protest gets into the complexities of these protests. What came after Floyd’s death was the unification of people against structures that perpetuated and allowed for historicized racism to be housed within bodies of power, within the law and state. The construction that the police should be inherently against and threatened by the protest movements should remind the public of their purpose; a body supported through the state to foster violence and exclusivity, privatize public space, and expel people who do not fit the aestheticized American ideal. In short, the police create the imagined town square that is so quintessential to the ego of the American politico. When a group disrupts the contained order of that square, the power held by the state and those who seek to uphold a white capitalist social contract are threatened, and react with the intensity and violence harbored within structures like Cop City.

The creation of the two town squares, George Floyd Square and Cop City, that were born from the same act of violence hold vastly different stories. The responses to a murder rooted in the continuity of racial oppression, othering, and exclusion from spaces led to the expansion of a narrative, that GFS is not just one block, and Cop City is not just one facility. The transformation of spaces to become heralds of the manifestations of racial dynamics in the US highlights different disparities. With every space reclaimed, there is an opposition that derives its power from state and military forces. GFS is a space that transforms protest, builds community, and works to end the systems that created it. If the state did not see racial justice and a united marginalized class as a threat, Cop City would not have emerged to destroy and counter such a space. What is left unrealized by the creation of these homes of racialized biases is that the town square of GFS expands past 38th and Chicago. It is a rejection of the axioms that created it, it is defiant past physicality. The prevalence of Cop City is to punish, remove, and deny this space. It comes out of a historic motivation to punish Black communities, through the overexertion of governmental power.

Cop City is a symptom and root of a punitive state. Exercising the power that is intrinsic in the punishment, criminality, and incarceration of Black and Brown people is a push at the exertion of power over marginalized classes. Punishment and criminalization illustrate danger and exclusion, pushing down what Angela Davis considers the relationship between the military and prison industrial complexes as “not only concerned with the transference of technologies from the military to the law enforcement industry,” but the extent of the structural similarities where “both systems generate huge profits from processes of social destruction” (Davis 2011). Military and carceral systems both grow in and out of this punitive state, with a distinct target towards Black Americans. Those who believe to benefit from this criminalization are the same people who seek a pristine private town square, looking for an echo chamber of political silence and capitalistic hierarchies. In creating these spaces, the removal of the threat to the white American exceptionalist is within the continued narrative of criminality; by painting racial justice movements as threats to public interest, the public is forced to lie in complacency with the state that claims to keep them safe. The American public safety system keeps only its white, wealthy citizens secure, and only protects them from the threat of a fall to the supremacist state. In defiance, GFS holds space. Hosting art installations from local artists, vigils for lives lost to police violence, and honoring community needs all become linked in the space and mind. The geographies of GFS speak for itself; it is, as McKittrick argued Black women do, “negotiating a geographic landscape that is upheld by a legacy of exploitation, exploration, and conquest” (McKittrick 2006). It fights for a space against prejudiced neighbors, a futile local government, and the American ideal of whiteness. GFS, a space held for a man who was killed at the behest of the state, is a revolution for taking back, reclaiming, and harboring racial spaces. In some ways, it is a door of no return, representing the space that sparked one of the largest movements in American history, a solemn reminder that you can’t go back to a time before this violence (Buchanan 1970; Brand 2001). In other ways, it is a home meant for the creation of a town square built for the people, by the people, enunciating race while protesting the violence that clings to it.

George Floyd Square and Cop City, created in the wake of the same violence, embody the contemporary reactions of racialized violence, oppositional to one another. The power of the two as hosts to town squares is what expands the need to critically dissect the role it hosts in racial and sociological studies. GFS is the reclamation of space, deconstruction, and revolution; a town square that is built for all people, against the exclusionary histories. In contrast, Cop City hosts a town square that is built to be against people, to deny people space and agency. The reconstruction of town squares through a lens of spatial transformation as reactions to racialization builds an understanding of power and dominance; racist and anti-racist; structures of protest; people; and persistence.

mcm2346@barnard.edu

REFERENCES

“24 Demands George Floyd Square,” George Floyd & AntiRacist Street Art, https://georgefloydstreetart.omeka.net/items/ show/2342.

Abigail Robillard and Stephanie Howells, “‘100% They Are Destroying Our Beautiful Town’: Toxic Conversations About Homelessness on Public Facebook Community Groups,” Eur J Crim Policy Res 29 (2023): 379–395, https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10610-023-09553-x.

Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (Seven Stories Press, 2011).

Ángela Mesa-Pedrazas, Roberto Nogueras-Zondag, and Ricardo Duque-Calvache, “The New Town Square: Twitter Discourses about Balconies during the 2020 Lockdown in Spain,” Cities 143 (2023): 104595, https://doi.org/10.1016/j. cities.2023.104595.

Chris Herring, “Complaint-Oriented Policing: Regulating Homelessness in Public Space,” American Sociological Review 84, no. 5 (2019): 769–800, https://www.jstor.org/stable/48602115. City of Minneapolis, “Minneapolis Neighborhood Demographics Dashboard,” Minneapolis Neighborhood Demographics Dashboard - City of Minneapolis, https://www. minneapolismn.gov/government/government-data/datasource/ neighborhood-demographics-dashboard/.

Daanika Gordon, Policing the Racial Divide: Urban Growth Politics and the Remaking of Segregation (New York: New York University Press, 2022), 16.

“Data for Progress Vox,” Vox, https://www.filesforprogress.org/ datasets/2021/6/dfp-vox-police-reform-legislation-toplines.pdf.

Dionne Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return (Chicago: Vintage Canada, 2001).

Hanna Love and Cailean Kok, “Beyond Traditional Measures: Examining the Holistic Impacts of Public Space Investments in Three Cities,” Brookings, November 9, 2021, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/beyond-traditional-measures-examining-the-holistic-impacts-of-public-space-investments-in-three-cities/.

Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui, and Jugal K. Patel, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” The New York Times, July 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/ interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html.

Makbulenur Bekar, “Symbol (Ized) Town Squares,” Journal of International Social Research 11, no. 61 (2018): 437–43, https:// doi.org/10.17719/jisr.2018.2933.

“Justice Resolution” (August 7, 2020), https://drive.google. com/file/d/1imey1mzBoCnmhaV1JhQ5GPy1dfqeTEL8/view.

MANHATTAN CHINATOWN AS AN ENCLAVE: DIALECT DYNAMICS,

INTERGENERATIONAL COMMUNICATION, AND SUB-ETHNIC POWER RELATIONS

BY THEA PAN Barnard College ‘26

INTRODUCTION

At 5:30 PM, October 4th, 2023, I ventured into Sara D. Roosevelt Park. Upon exiting the subway station, I was immediately greeted by the subtle scent of the sea emanating from a nearby Chinese seafood market. Products were stacked precariously high, forming towering displays that seemed to defy gravity. From delicate swallow’s nests to aromatic medicinal herbs, and pickled vegetables to sun-dried silverfish and shredded squid, the sheer items spilled out from the confines of the shops. The park, serving as a gateway to Chinatown, bustled with a mix of voices speaking various languages and dialects, creating a vibrant atmosphere. The heartbeat of this urban space was the lively chatter of vendors bargaining with passersby. Hearing a “crunch,” I accidentally stepped into a cluster of random, discarded paper bowls, a tangible reminder of the urban landscape’s authenticity. While Chinatown’s sanitation woes were well-known, this park bore the scars of neglect most prominently. Food remnants lay scattered, and abandoned wrappers and clothes clung to the ground. The once-bold red paint on the park’s walls had faded into a patchwork. However, none of these deterred the elderly citizens from an evening stroll, nor did they deter the children from building sandcastles at the playground. In this juxtaposition of neglect and resilience, Sara D. Roosevelt Park emerged as a living testament to the intricacies, endurance, and vitality of Chinatown.

As one of the largest parks in the Lower East Side, Sara D. Roosevelt Park is situated between Chinatown and Little Italy. Spanning seven city blocks, this park stands out from the picnic-friendly landscapes of Central Park or other “ShangriLa” lush with greenery. It serves as a casual gathering spot where visitors can easily drop in and seamlessly become part of Chinatown’s landscape. Its proximity to subway stations makes Sara D. Roosevelt Park a crucial entry point connecting the Lower East Side, or the whole of New York City, to Chinatown, where thriving commerce and street vendors line the park’s periphery. Additionally, the park primarily attracts a demographic consisting of Asian Americans, particularly those of Chinese descent, who are often over 50 years old. It also draws Asian kids and teenagers, along with a smaller representation of Hispanic and African American populations and several multi-ethnic homeless people. Within this urban space, a multifaceted range of recreational and economic activities unfolds, including power walking, square dancing, smoking, gambling-oriented card games, street food snacking, and the exchange of second-hand clothing.

In this context, Sara D. Roosevelt Park works as a lens for me to investigate the linguistic, sociocultural, and economic dynamics within Chinatown. This essay sheds light on the reinforcing nature of Chinatown’s “enclave” community, with a

specific emphasis on the exchange of language and dialect and cross-generational interactions. Especially, I observe and focus on the topics of language and dialect exchange and cross-generational interactions between parents and children. In addition, I primarily target two sub-ethnic communities of Mandarin- and Fujianese-speaking Chinese-Americans among generations as my main subjects of research. In this essay, specifically, I investigate how the phenomenon and nature of Chinatown as an “enclave” community, linguistically, economically, and socially, is enhanced by the prevalence of dialect use. Furthermore, I examine the intergenerational communication difficulty for Fujianese heritage residents, based on the socioeconomic standing and immigrant background of the group. Eventually, I will bring up a future proposal addressing Chinatown’s sub-ethnic relationships and its internal power dynamics.

SETTING AND METHODS: SETTINGS AND FIELDSITE OVERVIEW

Sara D. Roosevelt Park was an elongated strip-shaped park, it was divided into areas with distinct functions: a soccer field; basketball and racquetball courts; and a children’s playground. Initially, I anticipated observing Chinese square dancing on the soccer field, but I did not encounter any square dancing activities during my 6-week visit. Therefore, I shifted my focus toward two sections of the site, predominantly, the soccer field and the children’s playground. Firstly, the soccer field seemed to be aged: the meadow and surrounding trees exhibit signs of a lack of maintenance. Two trees have been affixed with private laundry lines, while the turf on the soccer field had been overturned slightly, revealing the underlying color of concrete beneath. On the soccer field’s periphery, there were mostly elderly Chinese men, aged 50 and above who occupied the benches within that area; along with other park-goers who took a walk. For the children’s playground, the site featured various swings, elevated structures for climbing and swinging, and a sandbox. Even though this is a popular playground for kids, the condition of the facilities was concerning: One side of the swing revealed a severed iron chain. Despite this, two young girls persisted in their playful antics around it, as if the visible damage lent the swing an enhanced fascination. Demographically, there were always around 5-15 children with a predominant portion of Chinese kids and around 0-10 percent African American kids. The talks between children were peppered with street lingo like a 10-year-old boy repeating “Y’all know what I’m saying?” as his catchphrase. Outside the Children’s Park, a row of benches were occupied by around 10 female elderly citizens, with the remaining 30 percent being middle-aged adults and a few elderly men. Hinting at familial ties, the children may be the grandchildren of the elderly women and the offspring of the middle-aged group, while the kids’ grandfathers preferred the nearby Soccer Field for smoking. For both settings, my presence seemed distinctive and exceptional—positioned as

the sole young Asian woman (categorized as neither a senior citizen nor a young child) in this space, I attracted numerous glances, even when I sat on a ping-pong table in the corner silently, engrossed in my jottings.

METHODS AND FIELDWORK

I conducted participant observation as the main methodology, sometimes I tried to interact or conversed in small talk with people further, and noted down documentation of both observed conversations among participants and those involving myself. Additionally, I also took photographs of streets, conditions of the park, goods of street vendors and shops, and so forth with the purpose of attaining a comprehensive ambiance and some specific details of the field site. During my regular weekly visits to the park, I observed a consistent pattern of behavior among parkgoers. Middle-aged and elderly males predominantly engaged in leisure activities such as sitting on benches, smoking, playing cards or chess, and observing the games of others. I interpreted this men’s gathering as a leisurely, voluntary habit centered around chit-chats and smoking for recreation. Other individuals opted to engage in strolling along the park’s pathways. Despite my attempts to immerse myself in activities like note-taking, photography, and enjoying street food, a significant proportion of parkgoers, approximately 70-80%, exhibited noticeable curiosity and scrutiny towards my presence. Half of them wore furrowed brows, while the other half exhibited curiosity, but all were cautious. I interpreted that my presence as part of this demographic was unusual. In addition, the languages the vast majority of the parkgoers exchanged were dialects, possibly Minnanese or Hakka, and a small portion of Cantonese, rather than English or Mandarin. The prevalence of dialects created a barrier both to my comprehension and my efforts to interact with them. In my several attempts to initiate greetings or conversations with local residents, approximately 60% of the instances yielded minimal responses, often limited to mere nods or disregard. The remaining interactions were brief, typically extending no further than simple exchanges of greetings. For instance, I once attempted to smile at a group of 4 elderly women walking towards me. They appeared uncertain and startled, with only one of them offering a hesitant smile in return. I greeted her with, “Hello, how is it going? (nin hao, nin guo de ru he)” in Mandarin, and she also responded with a brief, timid, “Hi (ni hao).” With that, they continued their walk. Yet, even as they moved further away, they constantly glanced back at me. Among themselves, they seamlessly shifted from Mandarin to a coastal dialect, leaving me like an outsider awkwardly. Notably, when engaging in Mandarin discourse with individuals, subsequent to their initial response in Mandarin, they adeptly transitioned to their respective regional dialects for intra-group communication. This recurrent linguistic shift left me feeling largely disoriented, akin to an outsider throughout the majority of my interactions.

I originally assumed that Chinatown was primarily founded on shared ethnic affiliations, which allowed me to find linguistic and cultural belonging as a Chinese. However, my experience, of being somehow excluded or unwelcomed, makes it evident that the community’s identity was not solely built on racial homogeneity but was more intricate and fluid. For example, a Chinatown identity may derive from the shared usage of the

same dialect, originating from a specific region in China of the same dialect, age, mutual participation in common park activities (strolling, playing chess, etc.), or the familiarity that comes from being neighbors. In situations where both parties, myself and the Chinatown residents, could potentially perceive themselves as ‘Chinese’ or ‘Asian American with Chinese heritage,’ the expected inclusiveness within the identity of being ‘Chinese’ was not always realized. The sense of inaccessibility in Chinatown is not solely predicated on a linguistic barrier but also on a perceived reluctance to engage with interruptions or inquiries from me and a noticed passive attitude overall.

The dialect barriers that hindered my fieldwork functioned as an intangible obstacle, transforming Chinatown into a self-contained enclave where residents could communicate effortlessly within its confines, while rendering communication nearly impossible outside of it. For instance, alongside Sara D. Roosevelt Park, also within the whole of Manhattan’s Chinatown, it is a common sight to find bakery shop employees, many of whom are not proficient in English, demonstrating their fluency in the local dialect invariably. This dialect proficiency is a recurring requirement for recruitment in the majority of family-owned restaurants and local shops, explicitly stipulating ‘Fluency in dialect and Mandarin required.’ Additionally, a significant portion of these eateries specialize in dishes originating from the Fujian region. Furthermore, Chinatown’s dynamic community life extends to a multitude of associations and incorporations, typically organized by trade, religion, or profession. The organizations such as the American Fujian Chinese Association and other “alliances” and “coalitions” are scattered densely within Chinatown, which frequently host social gatherings, including Mahjong sessions for middle-aged Fujianese community members until late at night. In this context, essential aspects of life, ranging from dining to entertainment, collectively contribute to establishing a self-sufficient society for dialect speakers. The extensive use of the dialect in Chinatown allows residents to sustain their daily lives without needing proficiency in English.

Additionally, this linguistic preference has also introduced a barrier to cross-generational communication, particularly between the elderly and their grandchildren. In the Park’s Playground area, the elderly citizens often serve as grandparents to the children at play. Notably, the younger generation predominantly engage in interactions with one another in English, even often infused with colloquial and street vernacular. By contrast, when the grandparents wish to communicate with the children, especially prompting their going home, they predominantly employ the local dialect, such as Fujianese or Cantonese, with a minority opting for Mandarin. In response, the children consistently reply to their grandparents in English, culminating in a form of cross-lingual communication where both parties seem to exhibit mutual understanding. One example could be a grandfather and two of his grandchildren. While the grandfather stood near the children’s jungle gym for exercise, his leg propped over the railings and his fist tapping his leg, he watched over his grandchildren, a 3-year-old boy and a girl of approximately six. He stood erect and tall, leaned slightly forward, and continued to tap his legs, but the focus of his gaze was firmly fixated on the two playing children. His persistent calls to the children garnered no immediate response, still, he continued to shout, “Come on, let’s

go, hurry, it’s getting late.” When the kids ventured too far, he raised his voice and repeated, “Come on hurry up! I’m leaving, if you don’t go, I’m leaving. Your mom is calling you back!” All of his yelling was conducted in Mandarin. Yet, he never really lowered his leg from the railing; there was no intention of departing. Additionally, the children, shuttling between the slides and the miniature fortresses, giggled and playfully responded to their grandparent’s calls, “No no no, please don’t go,” all in English. Even though they spoke in entirely different languages, their mutual understanding seemed to transcend any linguistic barriers. Additionally, parents here often serve as intermediaries or facilitators in intergenerational communication. They tend to communicate with the children in English, although not necessarily in native level proficiency, and then switch to dialect when engaging with the elderly, effectively bridging language gaps. For instance, for a middle-aged man, the role of overseeing the kids’ activities as a father was particularly noteworthy during one of my observations. While engaging with the children, he exhibited a natural shift to English, despite his proficiency not appearing particularly native. However, upon returning to converse with the elderly citizens sitting on the benches, he adeptly reverted to Cantonese, uncovering his linguistic versatility to maintain multiple generational connections. Under a similar context, another research in the Chinatown of Philadelphia (Zhang 2010) claimed that “high social enclosure, low-end occupation and modes of incorporation, plus the lack of interaction and tolerance between different ethnic groups, made English acquisition almost a ‘mission impossible’” when describing the elderly citizens in Chinatown. Similar situations occur in New York. Specifically, the average age at which Chinese immigrants in New York City typically move to the U.S. is 46 (González-Rivera 2017), which may be another factor impacting their limited English learning and willingness to learn.

LINKING THE STUDY TO OTHER RESEARCH: OVERVIEW OF INTERCONNECTED RESEARCHES

San Francisco Chinatown: Transnationalism, identity construction, and heritage language maintenance (Staicov 2019): This study delves into the intricacies of how Chinese Americans’ identities are shaped, including elements such as the influence of Cantonese and other dialect proficiency, ties to the homeland, and affiliation with the local Chinatown, with a focus on generational factors. Additionally, the study aligns with my research regarding the shared research population, the topic of Chinese American self-identification and the “Chinese-ness” heritage, and similar research locations. Notably, the author emphasizes investigating the transnational practices of the first and second generations of Chinese Americans in Chinatown (San Francisco), which is complementary to my research void during my interview. Specifically, the author draws a strong correlation between Chinese Americans’ self-identification and the frequency and purpose of back-and-forth travel between the U.S. and China. Through my conversation with my interviewee from Manhattan’s Chinatown, correspondingly, I arrived at a shared conclusion with the author. The younger generations, particularly the second or third, tend to ground their connection to Chinese culture more locally, rather than engaging in extensive transnational practices. Moreover, this cohort is more inclined to identify themselves

as Chinese or Asian Americans rather than solely as Chinese immigrants.

Language Maintenance and Language Shift Among Chinese Immigrant Parents and Their Second-Generation Children in the U.S. (Zhang 2010): This Philadelphia-based study explores two distinct Chinese American groups in University City and Chinatown, highlighting a linguistic disparity between a two-generation Mandarin-speaking cohort in University City and a Fujianese cohort in Chinatown. Similarly, this study shares a common research population, location, and linguistic topic as me. Additionally, Manhattan’s Chinatown also highlights a distinct concentration of Fujianese heritage over other cohorts. Furthermore, the author claimed that second-generation offsprings’ varying conceptions of heritage language and English have been greatly influenced by their parents’ linguistic trajectories, socioeconomic position, and settlement patterns. Unlike Mandarin-speaking children who actively resist language loss, Fujianese children experience minimal preservation of their heritage language due to complex sociocultural dynamics and power differentials between English and Fujianese languages. Moreover, the study’s findings illustrate the communication gap across generations within Sara D. Roosevelt park. Here, primary school-aged children effortlessly converse in English, while their parents predominantly speak Fujianese with limited proficiency in English. This observable intergenerational disparity in language use is likely influenced significantly by the parents’ social status and restricted language acquisition patterns within the enclosed Chinatown environment.

Chinatown Chinese: The San Francisco Dialect (Dong et al 1980): This study generalized the evolving nature of the Chinese language within the Chinatown of San Francisco, asserting it to be in a perpetual state of flux. Consequently, this ongoing linguistic transformation gives rise to a distinctive local dialect, characterized by a fusion of elements, neither exclusively Chinese nor English. This particular insight validates my presumption that Chinatown operates as an enclosed community that is essentially founded on linguistic distinctions. The author examines various contributing factors to this phenomenon. These elements include the particular locale of Chinatown; generations; one’s friendzones and associates; one’s Chinese Language background; education level and exposure to the English language. Likewise, these factors align with the topics I explored in my conversations with the research population at Sara D. Roosevelt Park in NYC.

Meeting on the Margins: Cantonese ‘Old-Timers’ and Fujianese ‘Newcomers’ (Beck 2007): The author of the study rejects the stereotyped Chinatown as a homogeneous ethnic group, instead, his research delved into the concept of sub-ethnic differences in Chinatown of Liverpool, Britain, especially focusing on the Cantonese and Fujianese communities, two big proportions of Chinatown residents. Parallely, the Manhattan Chinatown also shares this population composition. Moreover, the Cantonesedominated Liverpool Chinatown has established robust social networks rooted in the Cantonese linguistic tradition. Combined with the involvement of the Immigration Service, new irregular Fujianese immigrants have inadvertently channeled toward exploitation and marginalization. This discovery offers insight into the intricate power dynamics among different dialect-speaking cohorts within Manhattan’s Chinatown. Importantly, it contributes perspectives to my future research plan, particularly

in understanding the observed divisions within Cantonese or Fujianese American associations, characterized by sub-ethnic distinctions.

DRAWING OTHERS TO MANHATTAN CHINATOWN

Concurring with Staicov’s perspective, Chinatown constitutes an “ethnic enclave” (Staicov 2016), signifying a community that largely isolates itself from mainstream society, with preserved heritage culture and language. Mnahattan’s Chinatown, like others globally, features diverse sub-ethnic groups, sharing a ChineseAmerican identity but divided by dialects including Mandarin, Cantonese, and Fujianese. This linguistic diversity results in a situation where “Chinese languages” (Staicov 2016), collectively referring to dialects, dominate various facets of life. Additionally, as noted by Dong and Hom (Dong et al 1980), the Chinese language in Chinatown evolves as a living organism, creating a distinct Chinatown language that transcends both Chinese and English. This language development, marked by unique local idioms, establishes a linguistic barrier, further encapsulating Chinatown as a bubble-like community. The sense of inaccessibility described aligns with my visits to my field site in Chinatown. The distinct ethnic features of the Chinese Americans as a majority, along with the prevalence of non-English language specific to Chinatown, continuously reinforce its unique enclave-like nature. Within the various cohorts of dialect speakers, notable intergenerational communication gaps frequently emerge. In the park, children predominantly converse in English, presenting a contrast with their parents. In interviews with three mothers, fluency in both Mandarin and English while conversing with their primary school-aged children is consistently demonstrated. Conversely, among Fujianese-speaking parents, a prevalent characteristic is limited English proficiency. In addition, their offspring also seem to lack heritage language proficiency. Zhang indicates in his study that the preservation of the heritage language among Fujianese children is minimal, a result of intricate sociocultural dynamics and power imbalances between English and Fujianese languages (Zhang 2010). In this instance, the language shift experienced by Fujianese children, transitioning from the minority language (Fujianese) to a more dominant language (English), may be a consequence of the assimilation pressures exerted by the dominant group. In the Chinatown framework, while Fujianese heritage parents’ active engagement remained in the local community, their children experienced greater exposure and pressure to integrate into U.S. society beyond the enclosed Chinatown, particularly through attending school and socializing. Meanwhile, the Fujianese immigrant cohort as a whole is more likely to have a disadvantaged socioeconomic status. In Beck’s study in Liverpool, Britain (Beck 2007), the Fujianese community is home-centric, focusing on its Chinese village. They constantly relocate for work opportunities since their main objective is to make money to send back to their families in Fujian. Likewise, the Fujianese population in Manhattan’s Chinatown are mostly workers with high fluidity, possessing an inadequate socioeconomic standing, and limited access to formal education, which further contributes to the lack of maintenance of the Fujianese language in their offspring.

PROPOSAL FOR FUTURE STUDY

An unexplored topic throughout the fieldwork and also a vacancy pointed out by other research is the further investigation of the internal power dynamic of the sub-ethnic relationship within Chinatown. For instance, the relationship between Cantonese, Fujianese, and Mandarin-speaking cohorts. Contrary to historical trends observed in Liverpool, where Fujianese immigrants were marginalized, Manhattan’s Chinatown has experienced a revitalization and expansion fueled by the influx of Fujianese immigrants since the early 1980s. This has resulted in the establishment of satellite Chinese communities across New York, contributing significantly to the ongoing prosperity of a variety of regions, such as Flushing, Queens, and 8th Avenue, Brooklyn. Unlike past studies, this future research aims to capture the nuances of sub-ethnic relationships that have developed, with a particular emphasis on the tolerance and cooperation observed between different cohorts within Chinatown, and also provide an overview of the internal dynamics of Chinatown polity. Specifically, this proposal has three main objectives. Firstly, I seek to analyze the level of sub-ethnic tolerance within Manhattan’s Chinatown, specifically exploring the relationships between Cantonese, Fujianese, and Mandarin-speaking communities. Second, I will examine the thriving Cantonese and Fujianese associations or commercial organizations within Chinatown, identifying how they contribute to, or reflect, the existing power dynamics. In addition to this, I will also explore their immigration story and origin. Lastly, the research aims to draw comparisons with Beck’s study on Liverpool Chinatown and other Chinatowns worldwide, highlighting the divergent trajectories and uncovering insights into the factors contributing to sub-ethnic cooperation in Manhattan.

To achieve these objectives, a multi-faceted methodology will be employed. Considering the language barrier and overall “inaccessibility” I encountered at Sara D. Roosevelt Park, I will carefully re-examine and select alternative field sites that facilitate extended and profound conversations, enabling the establishment of strong connections with research subjects. In this context, I am considering incorporating local Chinese churches, temples, and the biweekly night market, which are locations characterized by heightened human traffic, as potential and crucial field sites. Notably, at the end of my fieldwork, I successfully established connections with several Chinese interviewees who actively engaged with the local church community. Additionally, one of these individuals is a 46-year-old Fujianese immigrant, named Hong, who attended the church regularly primarily for Saturday’s English class: his identity fully aligned with my research subject. In this case, Churches appeared to serve as concealed conduits fostering connections between new immigrants and Chinatown, facilitating a smoother assimilation into both the local Chinatown community and the broader societal fabric of the United States. The temples and night markets represent two additional options that necessitate a more extensive time commitment for future exploration and investigation.

Moreover, I will proactively engage with local authorities and community leaders in Chinatown to solicit their support in navigating the community dynamics, as they may be more willing to assist compared to other passersby. This collaboration will facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of the social fabric within Chinatown systematically and historically. In addition, the

core of the future investigative approach of ethnography lies in the implementation of in-depth interviews, which might take 20 minutes to an hour, aiming to cultivate profound connections with local interviewees and mutual trust, instead of participant observation.

In addition to being an academic initiative, examining the internal power dynamics of sub-ethnic relationships in Manhattan’s Chinatown is a step toward developing a thorough understanding of the socio-cultural fabric of this dynamic community. Researchers, community leaders, and legislators may find the study useful in understanding the dynamics underlying the distinct coexistence of various sub-ethnic groups within the larger Chinese community in New York City.

CONCLUSION

Despite the persistent stereotypical portrayal of Chinatown as an exotic locale known for its culinary and recreational attractions, it is crucial to recognize its core identity as a residential area for its inhabitants. This residential community grapples with multifaceted challenges, encompassing both infrastructural and demographic aging, isolation from neighboring blocks, and instances of neglect. Amid these challenges, Sara D. Roosevelt Park emerges as a resilient space. This exploration of Manhattan’s Chinatown, with a focal point on Sara D. Roosevelt Park, has provided valuable insights into the linguistic, sociocultural, and economic intricacies within this lively enclave. Despite visible signs of neglect and sanitation issues, the park serves as a harmonious setting where elderly residents and children coexist, seemingly undeterred by the physical conditions of the park. The resilience observed in Sara D. Roosevelt Park symbolically embodies Chinatown’s enduring vitality amid external challenges, revealing key community-wide findings and recurring themes.

Firstly, the prevalence of dialects, notably Fujianese, Cantonese, and Mandarin, creates a linguistic barrier that contributes to Chinatown’s encapsulated nature. Residents effortlessly communicate in dialects, forming an exclusive enclave where linguistic distinctions shape social interactions and community life. Within this context, Chinatown emerges as a distinct ethnic enclave, characterized by its isolated cultural identity and dialect prevalence in daily life. Moreover, the observed communication gaps between generations, especially within families, highlight the complex interplay of language dynamics. While younger generations predominantly communicate in English, older family members often use dialects. This phenomenon signifies a generational shift, influenced by factors such as assimilation pressures and socioeconomic status.

Meanwhile, an array of questions has been raised. As Chinatown grapples with the inevitability of aging infrastructure, as seen in Sara D. Roosevelt Park and its nearby shops, how will this community navigate the delicate balance between the preservation of its historical identity and the imperative for modernization? Will, and how will the aging population— dialect-speaking immigrants—in Chinatown influence its sociocultural fabric and impact intergenerational dynamics within the community? Especially when we know that the offspring of the dialect speakers mostly attend schools outside of Chinatown, becoming not Chinatown residents, but New Yorkers.

qp2141@barnard.edu

REFERENCES

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Dong, Lorraine, and Marlon K. Hom. 1980. “Chinatown Chinese: The San Francisco Dialect.” Amerasia Journal 7 (1): 1–29. https://doi.org/10.17953/amer.7.1.q5326526546k8707. González-Rivera, Christian. 2017. “The Aging Apple: Older Immigrants a Rising Share of New York’s Seniors.” Center for an Urban Future (CUF). May 2017. https://nycfuture.org/research/ the-aging-apple.

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TRUCKS, FUMES, AND GROCERIES: A TALE OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

— TRACING TRUCK EXHAUST IN

MOTT HAVEN-PORT MORRIS, SOUTH BRONX, NEW YORK

BY AMY XIAOQIAN CHEN Columbia College ‘26

Low-income and Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) communities have historically been alienated into sacrifice zones. A sacrifice zone is a geographical area permanently altered by economic disinvestment and disproportionate environmental burden. The Mott Haven-Port Morris neighborhood in the South Bronx is a sacrifice zone. Alongside residential units and schools are three major expressways, numerous manufacturing factories, multiple waste transfer stations, and four gas-burning “Peaker” power plants. These physical infrastructures in the built environment send multiple signs of environmental racism when we trace the historical narrative behind their siting. The intersection of highway infrastructure in the neighborhood creates an epicenter for diesel truck traffic, producing constant air and noise pollution that increases asthma rates and decreases quality of life. Notably, the circulation of food driven by e-grocer FreshDirect has amplified truck exhaust in recent years. This paper intends to illustrate the lived experience of the Mott Haven-Port Morris people, using different data types to tell a real story of environmental racism and injustice right next to our Columbia campus.

Demographically, Mott Haven-Port Morris neighborhood is a 98% BIPOC community. Around the highway intersection, Census Tract 19 circling the South Bronx boundary has a 53.39% Hispanic or Latino population and 37.42% Black or African American population. Census Tract 27.01 has 69.54% Hispanic or Latino population and 31.37% Black or African American population based on the 2017 American Community Survey data (5-Year Estimates).

INDUSTRIAL SITING AND AIR POLLUTION

Now we can start unraveling the first piece of the tale: industrial siting and air pollution. The radial area highlighted in figures 2 and 3 shows the Mott Haven-Port Morris neighborhood area I will focus on. The area contains the intersection of three major traffic infrastructures: the horizontally crossing Major Deegan Expressway, the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge to Randall’s Island, and the Bruckner Expressway going up north. Major pollution sites are illustrated in orange in figure 1, while major social housing and schools in the area are highlighted in cyan in figure 3, demonstrating their disturbing proximity.

The FreshDirect warehouse occupies an area of 11 football fields and has a state-of-the-art facility to generate high grocery delivery capacity and efficiency. As shown in figure 1, the warehouse sits adjacent to the highway intersection and other diesel truck-intensive businesses, such as the FoodFest Depot and the FedEx Ship Center, rendering the

Figure 1: Annotated map of a part of the Mott Haven-Port Morris neighborhood. Features three major traffic infrastructure: the horizontally crossing Major Deegan Expressway, the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge to Randall’s Island, and the Bruckner Expressway going up north. Major polluting sites including the FreshDirect warehouse, FedEx Ship Center, power plants, and truck traffic from the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center (Chen 2023)

Figure 2: Annotated map of a part of the Mott Haven-Port Morris neighborhood. The South Bronx Charter School for International Culture and The Arts and the NYCHA Mill Brook Houses are enclosed in cyan (Chen 2023)

neighborhood waterfront a gray industrial zone owned by private entities. In 2020, FreshDirect delivered 100,000 grocery boxes to customers’ doors each week (Business Insider 2020). About one thousand FreshDirect delivery trucks go in and out of the neighborhood daily across the two expressways and local roads, creating significantly increased truck and vehicle flow and upticks in air and noise pollution.

Data and traffic modeling from research institutions

Figure 3: Data collection sites in Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health’s study, including locations used for traffic counting, air quality measures, and noise measures around the FreshDirect warehouse. (Shearston et al. 2020).

Figure 4: Table of descriptive statistics for measured truck and vehicle counts before and after the opening of FreshDirect in the South Bronx Mott Haven-Port Morris neighborhood. In both Site 3 and Site 4 as labeled in Figure 4, an increase in traffic flow is observed, leading to more congestion and noise and air pollution. (Shearston et al. 2020)

quantify these effects. Between June 2017 and May 2020, researchers at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health collected traffic, air quality, and noise measurements at eight sites near the warehouse, including four residential homes and a public housing complex (NYCHA Mill Brook Houses) as labeled in figure 4. They observed an overall traffic increase between ten and forty percent, with a more significant increase during overnight hours. The higher volume of traffic increases noise by 0.06 decibels A-weighted (dBA), leading to a lower quality of life due to worsened sleep. Increased diesel exhaust would increase black carbon air pollution by 0.003 μg/m3. Figure 5 shows air monitoring and noise monitoring sites and traffic counts as influenced by the opening of the FreshDirect warehouse (Shearston et al. 2020). Similar effects are propagated by truck traffic from

the nearby Hunts Point Food Distribution Center. The Hunts Point Produce Market brings 15,000 diesel semi-trucks driving through the neighborhood to deliver food, causing higher traffic congestion (Gonzalez 2021).

To illustrate the lived experience of a typical resident in the neighborhood, I want to present two additional pieces of data. First is a photo collage with screenshots from Google Map Street View and a collection of photos on the web of the neighborhood. This collage emphasizes the epistemological experience of the community, of which there is a jarring juxtaposition between industrial pollution and the essential social fabric of the neighborhood. You see the South Bronx Charter School for International Culture and The Arts and the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) Mill Brook Houses, right next to the driving routes of diesel food trucks and gas-burning Peaker plants.

A student group in Columbia’s Building Climate Justice: Co-Creative Coastal Resilience Planning class had a different idea when they made the ArcGIS StoryMap, named: “Mapping the Air: Illustrating Air Pollution Burden and Providing Recommendations for its Measurement in the South Bronx” (Mapping the Air 2023). After talking with South Bronx Unite, the students wanted to humanize the lived experiences of the South Bronx community by using portable personal air quality monitors called Atmotube PROs to map three typical routes in the neighborhood: a child in elementary school that suffers from asthma, a working adult, and an elderly person as shown in figure 6. The data they presented is concerning as some of the worst air quality measurements are found in proximity with school and parks and along routes that a child might take in their day-to-day life. Children are more likely to develop conditions such as acute respiratory infections, asthma, and decreased lung function caused by exposure to poor air quality.

PUBLIC HEALTH IMPACTS

To give a fuller picture of public health impacts due to truck exhaust and industrial siting, I will draw on data from the Climate and Environmental Justice Screen Tool (CEJST). CEJST is a federal level screening tool first released in November 2022. Issued by President Biden under Executive Order 14008 in January of 2021, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) started to develop CEJST. The tool has an interactive map and uses datasets that are indicators of burdens in eight categories: climate change, energy, health, housing, legacy pollution, transportation, water and wastewater, and workforce development (About: Climate and Environmental Justice Screening Tool n.d.). According to CEJST, the two census tracts in the neighborhood are determined as disadvantaged because they are overburdened and underserved. In figures 8 and 9, transportation data —diesel particulate matter exposure, transportation barriers, traffic proximity and volume— and health data—asthma, diabetes, heart disease, and low life expectancy—are presented as the two census tracts near the highway junction.

In Mott Haven, diesel particulate matter exposure and asthma rates are in the ninety-seventh percentile compared to other neighborhoods. In 2020, the annual rate of asthma

Figure 5: Photo Collage and Illustration of Mott Haven-Port Morris neighborhood. The main pollution sites are integrated into the urban fabric of the neighborhood, with the South Bronx Charter School for International Culture and The Arts and the NYCHA Mill Brook Houses as major educational and residential communes nearby. Photos sourced from Google Maps Street View, edited with Adobe Photoshop and Procreate (Chen 2023)

6: Design of daily routes for an elementary school student, a working adult, and an elderly person (Mapping the Air 2023).

Figure

emergency department visits for kids aged five to seventeen in the Mott Haven and Melrose area were significantly higher than in other community districts, as shown in figure 10. For kids and teenagers living and going to schools and parks in the area, air pollution can also be detrimental to their cognitive and physical development. Increasingly, research has suggested that air pollution does not just affect lungs but also influences childhood behavioral problems and even IQ. In “How Air Pollution Alters Brain Development: The Role of Neuroinflammation”, published by the Translational Neuroscience journal, the study presents lines of converging evidence showing how several samples of children populations living in large cities around the world suffer to some degree neural, behavioral, and cognitive changes associated with air pollution exposure (Brockmeyer and D’Angiulli 2016). Another study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, found that children whose mothers experienced higher nitrogen dioxide (NO 2) exposure during pregnancy, particularly in the first and second trimesters, were more likely to have behavioral problems. Higher exposures to small-particle air pollution (PM 2.5 ) when children were two to four years old was associated with poorer child behavioral functioning and

Figure 10: Map showing the annual rate of asthma emergency department visits (age 5 to 17) in New York, with data from the NYC Environment & Health Data Portal (Environment and Health Data Portal 2020).

cognitive performance (Science Daily 2022). Poorer cognitive performance could lead to lower academic achievement as children struggle with concentrating and learning, with longterm impacts on memory and attention.

HISTORY OF REDLINING AND COMMUNITY RESISTANCE

The history of environmental pollution in Mott Haven-Port Morris has been linked with discriminatory zoning. The neighborhood was marked “RED” in the Redlining maps created by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) as part of its City Survey Program in the late 1930s. As shown in figure 11, the Bronx neighborhood is classified to have the “detrimental influ

ence” of “Industrial encroachment. Elevated R.R. Heavy Traffic. High Congested” and was predicted to have a “downfast” trend of desirability in the next ten to fifteen years. Hence, poor lending opportunities led to disinvestment, causing the area’s housing segregation and economic desperation. In 1939, the six-lane Major Deegan Expressway was constructed, and in 1962, the six-lane Bruckner Expressway— both increasing diesel traffic

-

Figure 7: Results of the PM2.5 pollution level collected with Atmotube at locations among the routes (Mapping the Air 2023). Figure 8: Tract information 1, annotated (CEJST).

Figure 9: Tract information 2, annotated (CEJST).

Figure 11: Historical Redlining Map (Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America) Map by Andres Guillermo Blanco, 2010. The Formal Determinants of Informal Settlements in Bogota, Colombia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.

(Columbia Public Health 2022).

In 2013, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) assigned Port Morris as an Industrial Business Zone. Besides three highways and five bridges, New York State and City encouraged FreshDirect with more than $150 million in subsidies in 2014 to relocate their diesel trucking warehouse to the South Bronx waterfront, bringing more industrial contamination to Mott Haven-Port Morris when the area was already heavily polluted by toxic Superfund sites and diesel truck emissions. In the “South Bronx Environmental Health and Policy Study” twenty years ago, the EPA found that particulate matter in the area frequently exceeded federal limits and that asthma levels directly correlated with diesel truck emissions from the area’s highway and industrial facility saturation. Despite FreshDirect’s promise of converting to electric trucks, it seems to be more of a public-facing statement for its brand identity than a commitment to electrifying its fleet to reduce environmental and health harms. After all, FreshDirect wants visibility on the “freshness” of its groceries to their customers than the air pollution, noise pollution, and negative health effects caused by its grocery delivering trucks.

Local journalism reveals the empty promise of FreshDirect. Welcome2TheBronx is a news site founded in September 2009 by Editor and Senior Writer Ed Garcia Conde (Welcome2TheBronx n.d.). With a local ambition to fill the digital void in mainstream media and combat decades-old stereotypes about the borough, the news site publishes detailed coverage and reporting on a wide range of topics in the Bronx, from arts and culture, preservation issues, to affordable housing, gentrification, and feel good stories about Bronx residents. Since 2009, it has grown to become a credible and meaningful information source, acknowledged by the New York City Historic District Council; the Avery Library Historic Preservation and Urban Planning web archive; and cited in over five hundred articles across major mainstream media news sites like The New York Times, The New York Daily News, and The New York Post. In 2012, due to Superstorm Sandy, over one hundred FreshDirect trucks were damaged and dumped on the Mott Haven-Port Morris waterfront. Conde writes that during that time, FreshDirect had a chance to

12: Port Morris Industrial Business Zone

purchase one hundred electric trucks to comply with their promise and they did not. In 2014, due to local concerned citizens taking photographs of new FreshDirect trucks, Conde was able to investigate and report on fifteen brand new diesel trucks being purchased by FreshDirect, most of them having “certified clean idling” stickers meaning that the trucks do not pollute when they are stationary, but still spew out diesel fumes when they are being driven around. Conde calls out FreshDirect’s lies as well as politicians and organizations that receive ads and sponsorships from FreshDirect which support its continuous “life-threatening” operation (Conde 2014). Moreover, the history of redlining and disproportionate health burdens have spurred a strong momentum of community organizing. Since its founding in 2012, local organization South Bronx Unite has been fighting the FreshDirect relocation. They testified at public hearings, organized demonstrations and marches, attracted media attention, wrote op-eds, reached out to local legislators, and filed a lawsuit against the city and the State in 2013 because of their failure to conduct an adequate environmental review of the site—choosing to use a 21 year old environmental impact statement—in the attempt to boycott the plan (South Bronx Unite n.d.). Although these efforts failed to stop FreshDirect, it ignited community resistance to discriminatory zoning and fueled the fight for cleaner air, greener spaces, and better jobs in Mott HavenPort Morris today. WE ACT for Environmental Justice also

Figure

(NYC Planning)

co-organizes South Bronx Unite Toxic Tour to reveal the sites of environmental racism and injustices in the South Bronx, one of the routes shown in figure 14.

These acts of local journalism to create community-owned data and community organizing send a clear message: South Bronx will not allow itself to remain a silent sacrifice zone. Environmental reparations involve putting stricter regulations on polluting corporations; bringing green and future-proof jobs and education programs to the neighborhood; and improving public infrastructure and public health. Community, academic, and municipal institutions need to work together in creating better futures of living and working in the community.

In February 2024, 93-year-old Ruth Gottesman, made a historic $1 billion donation to the Bronx’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine to provide free tuition for all medical students. According to a press release from Einstein College of Medicine, “This donation radically revolutionizes our ability to continue attracting students who are committed to our mission, not just those who can afford it. Additionally, it will free up and lift our students, enabling them to pursue projects and ideas that might otherwise be prohibitive,” said Dr. Yaron Tomer, the Marilyn and Stanley Katz Dean at Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Conde 2024). Students who aspire to be doctors can attend medical school in their own borough for free. This will hopefully have a transformative impact on health care outcomes in the neighborhood and repair the historical legacies of environmental racism and injustice.

xc2671@columbia.edu

REFERENCES

“About - Welcome2TheBronx TM .” n.d. Accessed May 3, 2024. https://www.welcome2thebronx.com/about/ “Asthma Data for NYC.” n.d. Environment & Health Data Portal. Accessed May 3, 2024. https://a816-dohbesp. nyc.gov/IndicatorPublic/data-explorer/asthma/.

Brockmeyer, Sam, and Amedeo D'Angiulli. “How air pollution alters brain development: the role of neuroinflammation.” Translational neuroscience vol. 7,1 24-30. 21 Mar. 2016, doi:10.1515/tnsci-2016-0005

Business Insider Video. 2020. “How FreshDirect Delivers 100,000 Grocery Orders across NYC Each Week.” Yahoo!News. December 28, 2020. https://news.yahoo.com/freshdirect-delivers-100-000-grocery-140000901.html?guccounter=1.

“Campaign Against Fresh Direct.” n.d. SOUTH BRONX UNITE. Accessed April 4, 2024. https://www.southbronxunite. org/campaign-against-fresh-direct.

Conde, Ed García. 2014. “FreshDirect Breaks Promise To Convert To Electric Fleet; Buys 15 New Diesel Trucks.” Welcome2TheBronx TM (blog). December 18, 2014. https:// welcome2thebronx.com/2014/12/18/freshdirect-breaks-promise-to-convert-to-electric-fleet-buys-10-new-diesel-trucks/. ———. 2024. “Historic $1 Billion Donation Made to The Bronx’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine to Provide Free Tuition.” Welcome2TheBronx TM (blog). February 28, 2024. https://welcome2thebronx.com/2024/02/28historic-1-billiondonation-made-to-the-bronxs-albert-einstein-college-of-medicine-to-provide-free-tuition/.

Gonzalez, Jovan, Veronique Lankar, and Yelda HangunBalkir. 2021. “AIR POLLUTANTS AND CHILDHOOD ASTHMA IN THE BRONX.” Journal of Undergraduate Chemistry Research 20 (3): 38–42.

Henderson, Lidia. 2020. “NYC Clean Trucks Program: Cleaner Trucks for a Greener New York City.” ACTNews. June 3, 2020. https://www.act-news.com/news/nyc-cleantrucks-program-cleaner-trucks-for-a-greener-new-york-city/.

Hilpert, Markus, Marianthi Kioumourtzoglou, Columbia Mailman School, Steven N. Chillrud, and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University. 2022. “South Bronx

Figure 13: Collage of local resistance efforts to the relocation of FreshDirect to the South Bronx (Chen 2023)

Figure 14: South Bronx Unite Toxic Tour - WE ACT for Environmental Justice (South Bronx Unite Toxic Tour n.d.)

Traffic Congestion Worsens, Raising Health and Safety Concerns.” Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. April 8, 2022. https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/ news/south-bronx-traffic-congestion-worsens-raising-healthsafety-concerns.

Nelson, Robert K., and University of Richmond. n.d. “Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America Bronx, New York; Area D6.” City Survey Files, 1935-40, National Archives. https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/map/NY/Bronx/ area_descriptions/D6#loc=13/40.8224/-73.8673&adview =full.&mapview=polygons.

New York City Department of Health, Environment & Health Data Portal. Asthma data. Asthma emergency department visits (adults). Accessed at https://a816-dohbesp. nyc.gov/IndicatorPublic/data-explorer/asthma/?id=2380 on 05/03/2024.

New York City Department of Health, Environment & Health Data Portal. Asthma data. Asthma emergency department visits (age 5 to 17). Accessed at https://a816-dohbesp. nyc.gov/IndicatorPublic/data-explorer/asthma/?id=2379 on 05/03/2024.

Quinlan, Parker E. 2020. “As Virus Spreads, Mott Haven Residents Worry about People with Asthma.” Mott Haven Herald, April 3, 2020. https://motthavenherald. com/2020/04/03/as-virus-fears-grow-for-people-with-asthma-doctors-say-exercise-good-judgement/.

Shearston, Jenni A et al. “Opening a Large Delivery Service Warehouse in the South Bronx: Impacts on Traffic, Air Pollution, and Noise.” International journal of environmental research and public health vol. 17,9 3208. 5 May. 2020, doi:10.3390/ijerph17093208

“South Bronx Unite.” 2022. https://static1.squarespace.com/ static/5fd030e7e589ab2987f36f75/t/631f6bc6cd348c57b9fac134/1663003597953/SBU+Opposes+CBDTP+Proposal++Sep+2022.pdf.

South Bronx Unite Group. 2023. “Mapping the Air.” ArcGIS StoryMaps. November 27, 2023. https://storymaps.arcgis. com/stories/7e1aec72c9ec426ca5cccd60f0bcda81.

Torres, Richie. 2023. “Let the Bronx Breathe Clean Air: Capping the Cross Bronx Expressway and Expanding Offshore Wind Will Help the Borough’s Health,” April 28, 2023. https:// www.nydailynews.com/2023/04/28/let-the-bronx-breatheclean-air-capping-the-cross-bronx-expressway-and-expanding-offshore-wind-will-help-the-boroughs-health/.

University of Washington. "Link between air pollution and child brain development strengthened." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/07/220714145232.htm (accessed May 3, 2024).

US Council on Environmental Quality. n.d. “Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool.” Council on Environmental Quality. https://screeningtool.geoplatform.gov/ en/#3.35/23.28/-100.28.

Walshe, Sadhbh. 2015. “‘Environmental Racism’: Bronx Activists Decry Fresh Direct’s Impact on Air Quality.” The Guardian, March 9, 2015, sec. US news. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/09/ fresh-direct-south-bronx-clean-air-environmental-racism.

WEACT for Environmental Justice. 2023. “South Bronx Unite Toxic Tour - WE ACT for Environmental Justice.” WEACT for Environmental Justice. October 19, 2023. https://www. weact.org/south-bronx-unite-toxic-tour/.

EL LABERINTO: THE IMPACT OF COLONIALISM ON PUERTO RICO’S EDUCATION SYSTEM AND SOCIAL MOBILITY

BY AIMAR ROSARIO-AVILA Barnard College ‘25

INTRODUCTION

Colonialism has created a blueprint of destruction and loss in Puerto Rico’s education system. Investigating Puerto Rico’s education system and its colonial past and present affirms what scholars, like Boricua Rocio Zambrana, assert; Puerto Rico remains a colony rather than a commonwealth of the United States. In the 2021 book Colonial Debts, Zambrana argues the implementation of U.S. policies created a predatory economic system by monetizing the island’s subordination that only excels when the island is in a state of crisis. This predation survives in a neoliberal market where private control, specifically U.S. investment, is prioritized as a tool to deliver public services—and education is no exception.

Historically, Puerto Rico’s education system has functioned to manipulate the fate of Boricuas by classifying them as second-class citizens on their land. A decade before officially colonizing Puerto Rico, education stakeholders from the U.S. conducted missions in Hawaii, the Philippines, and Indigenous communities in the 48 states to “civilize” people after colonizing them by forcing the English language on these communities (Amherst College 2018, 42). English became a tool for belonging to U.S. culture and suppressing Boricuan identity. If English was one of the most widely used languages, the language ceased to be a way to merely communicate and transformed into universal capital. After the Spanish-Cuban-American War of 1898, Boricuas were socially perceived as second-class citizens and the education system imposed on them served to maintain this hierarchy for students; K-5th graders were tested on their ability to write and speak English. By speaking the language, Boricuas were expected to assimilate and live like U.S. citizens.

Assimilation would entail advocating for the protection and survival of Puerto Rico under U.S. law since the U.S. could offer socioeconomic and political stability often controlled by the private domain. The funding of public services by private entities emboldens the praxis of colonialism. From personal experience, in the 21st century, Boricuan youth are made to believe that the only way to progress as a nation is to culturally assimilate under a colonial state or U.S. annexation. This pedagogical approach serves as a tool rooted in colonial dynamics of power to categorize civility. Thus, education ceased to be a fundamental right and served an imperial power structure—as a system to control the consciousness of Boricuas. In my project, I inquire:

1. In what ways has the colonial relationship between the U.S. and Puerto Rico impacted the educational system in Puerto Rico over time?

2. How have Puerto Ricans mobilized in response to this colonial history and current education reforms?

Through interviews with education stakeholders and GIS mapping, this work assesses the progression of privatization as a form of colonial authority in Puerto Rico’s education system by revealing how colonialism, operating through legislation and educational practices, limits any meaningful efforts to achieve social mobility and dismantle

the oppressive systems that have chained Puerto Rico’s past, present and future.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

On November 25, 1897, Spain approved self-government for Boricuas with the Carta Autonómica (Library of Congress n.d.). Prior to Puerto Rico’s first elections in March of 1898, the Spanish-American War progressed, and this autonomy was stripped by the U.S. When Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris in 1899 it solidified U.S. jurisdiction over Puerto Rico’s economic, social, and intellectual prosperity, ushering in a new colonial era (Zambrana 2021, 54). As an island in the northeast of the Caribbean Sea, Puerto Rico furthered U.S. military interests. The U.S. gained military posts in towns bordering almost every region on the island, in towns like Mayagüez, Aguadilla, Aibonito, Cayey, Ponce, and San Juan, and on the island of Vieques (Library of Congress n.d.). Maintaining these military installations gave the U.S. significant control over the sugarcane, tobacco, and coffee industry. Claiming control over these industries boosted the U.S.’ international stature as a world power and simultaneously seized Borinquens’ autonomy.

The annexation of land propelled Boricuas to internalize a disconnection between themselves and their community character. Following an era of wanting to civilize Boricuas, language became a weapon to stereotype Boricuas as lazy individuals which parallels the historic characterization of “savages,” unfit to self-govern. These caricatures arose from an agenda of assimilation which worked to systematically distance other Boricuas from their right to autonomy and further monopolize the island’s resources for foreign domains that remain to this day (Zambrana, 2021, 58). The Supreme Court’s Puerto Rico v. Sanchez Valle ruling of 2016 and legislation like the Foraker Act of 1900, the Insular Cases of 1902-1922, the Jones Acts of 1917 and 1920, Law 600 of 1950, Puerto Rico Oversight Management and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) of 2016, and Education Reform Act of 2018 have functioned to further usurp any semblance of political and economic autonomy for Boricuas over their island. These laws created legal pathways for economic exploitation which both reified the island’s territorial status whilst undermining Boricuan identity. For decades, this system of monetary exploitation functioned as a point of social contention among Boricuas.

The search for economic development in Puerto Rico found its crux in the curation of benefits for foreigners through neoliberal policies. Act 20/22 of 2012 created legislation where foreigners could receive tax exemptions for businesses to promote the economic participation of foreigners on the island. Tax incentives were enabled by a reallocation of funds meant for the public education system like the University of Puerto Rico, public municipal services, living wage programs, and real estate prices to favor private investment and projects (Zambrana 2021, 9). In 2016, the enactment of PROMESA began to tether colonialism to the education system as the progression of privatization allowed the government to monopolize land and public resources. As of 2021, Puerto Rico holds $74 billion in bond debt —$49 billion is from unfunded pension obligations—and filed for bankruptcy under Title

III of PROMESA (Zambrana 2021, 9). Pietrantoni Méndez & Álvarez (PMA), an Act 20 beneficiary law firm, directly benefited from debt on the island by serving as a legal advisor for around 56 government bond insurances worth over $40 billion (Dennis 2020). With debt looming, the U.S. passed a law that created the Fiscal Oversight Board for Puerto Rico, otherwise known as La Junta to locals, to work in conjunction with the Puerto Rico Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority (AAFAF). Together these agencies manage government resources concerning the island’s boastful billion-dollar debt and promote risk management in the education system with Julia Kehler as the Secretary of Education (Wessel 2022).

Rises in foreign investment on the island, exacerbated by Hurricane Maria, inflated U.S. dominion, especially in the education sector. In 2023, the Puerto Rico Fiscal Agency announced the island was classified as a 98% opportunity zone for foreign investment in low-income communities, specifically zones in Old San Juan, Guaynabo, Condado, and Roosevelt Roads in Ceiba (Puerto Rico Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority n.d.). These calculations were purely based on the tax exemptions under Act 22 as municipalities give a 25% to 75% increase in tax exemptions along with a 25% tax exemption for a municipal license, net income for business activities, personal and/or real estate ventures, and municipal construction taxes (Puerto Rico Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority n.d.). The catering of tax exemptions to private developers has eased the growth of debt on the island at the cost of the potential for equitable growth for its inhabitants.

At this stage, foreign investment guided the future of the education system. Former Secretary of Education Julia Keleher, appointed by La Junta, closed 428 public schools and created the Education Reform Act in 2018, otherwise known as LREPR. This was meant to redefine the educational future of Boricuas (Rubiano Yedidia et al. 2020). Within this new administration, education reform set the parameters of mobility in the nation as the Education Reform Act outlines that education should “exchange and adopt ideas from all sectors of Puerto Rican society” (LREPR 2018, 2). Legislators asserted that the economy would only prosper with strong educational foundations in modern society by saying education is “one of the most important factors to a nation’s production” (LREPR 2018, 2). Article 2.04, titled Duties and Responsibilities of the Secretary of Education, states the Secretary must enter into agreements, contracts and conventions with agencies or instrumentalities of the Government of Puerto Rico or its municipalities, as well as with agencies and instrumentalities of the federal government or the state and/or local governments of the U.S. or with persons or private entities, for the purposes of implementing this Law and achieving its purposes (LREPR 2018, 31).

This legislation proves partnerships between the private and public sectors are considered “instrumentalities” in the overall progression of the island. Thus, there was a push at the government level to pull in private investment which government officials themselves used for their own wealth. After Julia Keleher was arrested for embezzling money from the education reform, schools remained shut down and were sold to limited liability companies (LLCs), forcing students out of the island and continuing the current education crisis (Virella 2022, 96). As a result, Boricuas’ access to education ceased to be a fundamental right, becoming instead a means of profit.

The Education Reform Act of 2018 mirrors the historic inability of the law to protect the rights of Boricuas, while the bill aims to put the best interests of the students above all so that they can receive a

quality education that allows them to fully develop their abilities and become full adults contributing to the wellbeing of our society from all areas (LREPR 2018, 1).

Lawmakers created this legislation to offer more autonomy to municipalities and to empower an equitable education system by implementing more charter schools in Puerto Rico. The act of putting “the best interests of students above all” holds strong ties to foreign investment, as schools like Vimenti in San Juan have investors like the Harold Alfond Foundation from Maine and Colibri Learning from Canada and Major League Baseball (Vimenti n.d.). Whether or not these organizations receive tax exemptions from these donations is unknown, but the bill does not clarify the administration of these charter schools. The bill does ratify that investment would largely depend on the reallocation of public funds, but archives on charter schools show discrepancies. For example, Vimenti school’s DE profile says $6,112 was the cost per student in 2020, while the Department’s Budget Office states the cost per student in 2020 was $3,241—a school where 93% of the families enrolled in 2020 are low-income and 22% have one unemployed parent (Díaz Ramos 2022). Island-wide, 57% of children lived in poverty (Kids Count Data Center 2023) and 65.6% of students came from single-mother households in 2020 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services n.d.). If the Education Reform Act is meant to increase funding for the learning development of kids in low-income areas, where did the $2,871 go, and what factors are at play in how the Act is currently operating? This is where my research comes in.

RESEARCH METHODS

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The rhetoric used by government officials like the Secretary of the Department of Education, Eliezer Ramos Parés, shifted from “closed” schools to “consolidations” or refers to plans to close schools as plans “to rebuild the educational system” (Díaz Ramos & Encarnación Martínez 2022). Further investigation into what classifies as a “consolidation” is needed to identify an economic opportunity or progression through government-sponsored privatization of the real estate market through consolidated schools. To fulfill this project’s aim to analyze the variability of neoliberal-colonial structures of education and real estate developments, I chose an inductive approach to my research by conducting archival research, a series of interviews with various educators and politicians, and using GIS mapping.

Maps are an exemplary tool for assessing spatial history. By framing the diverse transformations of a given space through time within a certain praxis, maps are a significant technology for identifying and curating distinct socio-political narratives. Software like Geographic Information Systems (GIS) allows individuals with diverse technical backgrounds in data mapping to take part in the practice of historizing spaces. Geographic discourse can empower the identities and lived experiences of underrepresented people by taking into account the institutionalized power that leads to loss. Simultaneously, as geography scholars conclude:

As a political technology, mapping has long played a key role in the world-making practices of colonialism through the appropriation, demarcation, naming, and partitioning of territory as part of the process of colonization and the assertion of imperial rule over peoples and places (Rose-Redwood. et 2020).

Maps historicize certain narratives by curating a critical assessment

of spatial human socialization. Spatial representation through a colonial lens calls for an active awareness of the paradoxical nature of land rights vs. the perception of progression or development. By comparing the findings of GIS mapping and interviews from educators in the field, legislation, and non-profit organizations I aim to marry the data to personal experience while maintaining the nuance between both. Thus, in the interview process, I wanted to create coded themes on the perception of Boricua identity regarding land ownership, community involvement in education, and government response to crisis and loss. To understand the nature of the education system from professionals in the field, I interviewed one private high school English teacher, Chana Torres Dávila, and a Head Start Coordinador in Corozal for students with special needs, Pablo Juan Rubio (who worked from 1992 to 2020). To gain a federal background I interviewed Lcd. Joel Vázquez Rosario, legislator of San Juan, and Omar Ayala Gonzalez, Co-Founder of Urbe A Pie. They offer a perspective on the conjunction of communal education efforts and the loss of Boricuan autonomy.

MAPPING AND DATA COLLECTION

The data collection process for this project was tedious and selective considering the convoluted nature of the Department of Education’s records of school closures. For this investigation, a “closed school” refers to a school no longer operating and vacant by order of the Department of Education, and “scheduled closure” or “planned” refers to schools placed on a consolidation list by the Department of Education. The degree of closure is following how accessible schools are to students. After the Center of Investigative Journalism (CPI) published an article in January 2022 about the additional closure of schools under the new infrastructure plan from the Education Reform Act of 2018, the Department of Education removed access to an

interactive map that offered the consolidation plans of schools on the island and other transactions of school closure across districts in the island (Díaz Ramos & Encarnación Martínez 2022). All traces of the interactive map were blocked on all search engines like Safari, Firefox, Google, and Yahoo during this research process. The list of closed schools used on the second map was found via two main data sources; First, a CPI form archiving the list of scheduled closures from the Department of Education after it was revoked, and second, a list of government transactions of abandoned schools approved by the governmental Committee of Real Estate Appraisal and Disposition (CEDBI). Confirming the location of the schools and their status was through a manual verification process.

For the first map, the list of public schools from the CEDBI and CPI included information on their municipality and name. In two separate Excel files, one for scheduled closures and one for closed schools, I manually added their address from Google Maps to ensure their location and cross-referenced them to the County Office, the Public School Review, the National Center for Educational Statistics, and Escuelas de Puerto Rico to get the longitude and latitude. As a considerable amount of data was being manually controlled, cross-referencing the address and coordinates verified each school’s coordinates to translate the right GEOID on GIS for each closed public school. The base layer is data from the June of 2023 American Community Survey (ACS) 2020 5-year estimate tables, specifically the Geographic Mobility by Poverty Status of Boicuas who moved from the U.S. Considering that data from 2020 is not as accessible given the effects of earthquakes in January in Puerto Rico and COVID-19, the school and census data were placed together to bridge the dichotomous nature of the year. The coastline scale for the Puerto Rico shapefile used was created by the National Atlas of the U.S. (National Atlas of

Figure 1. Geographic Mobility: School Closures Over Total Estimate of People Who Moved to the U.S. in 2020

the United States 2023).

The second map shows the schools currently operating: public, private, and charter overlayed with vacancy rates. Access to data on private bilingual and charter schools was obtained in combination with Google Maps and government sites like the Directory of Public Alianza Schools, public charter schools. The list of public schools was gathered from the U.S. Department of Education Public School Characteristics of 2020-21 shapefile, which was updated on April 29, 2023 (Department of Education 2023). Vacancy rates were calculated using Housing Units Census Data accessed through Social Explorer 2021 ACS 5-year Estimates using the expression (A10044_003: Vacant/A10044_001: Housing Units) x 100. Both were under the Equal Count mode.

DISCUSSION

EDUCATION REFORM AND AMERICANIZATION

Like the imposition of the English language did, education reveals how the promise of economic prosperity in Puerto Rico instilled a permanent relationship of Americanization to manipulate Boricuan autonomy. The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 encouraged schools in the U.S. and Puerto Rico to promote English by reallocating funds to support English programs (Lefty 2021). After declaring Puerto Rico as un Estado Libre Asociado (ELA), the expansion of U.S. education on the island was driven by the “batalla de la producción” from Operation Bootstrap in the 1950s to increase the presence of English and vocational schools on the island (Lefty 2021). The globalization of English and its prominence on the island created a currency system to measure intelligence and respect by shifting the island’s linguistic diversity. Schools were designed to increase the proficiency rate of

English under Anglo-Saxon ideals of what knowledge should represent and increase knowledge of industrial production skills through vocational school.

Education policy like the Bilingual Education Act, in the context of Puerto Rico, reflects historical practices of civilizing and modernizing Boricuas with a U.S. imperialistic economic system. Operation Bootstrap was one of the earliest pieces of legislation to ostracize and strip Boricuas of economic autonomy as it gave U.S. companies complete tax exemption and cheap labor from people who graduated from these vocational schools (Lefty 2021). The Auxiliary Secretary of Education Osvaldo Rodríguez Pacheco argued “education is almost the entire answer to the problem of the Island’’—remarks based on the progression of job opportunities (Lefty 2021). From 1932 to 1957 around 104,300 students began engaging in vocational education like sales, electric work, file clerking, bookkeeping, and stenography (Lefty 2021). The enforcement of English in schools and the commodification of a neoliberal market on education hijacked every aspect of Boricuan culture. Codifying English as a superior language enforced intersubjective categories of labor, race, and culture.

Fiscal mismanagement of education bled into 2012 under the pro-statehood guidance of ex-Governor Luis Fortuño, who drove “Generation Bilingual” in schools. The Department of Education expected students to graduate by 2022 with a mastery of both English and Spanish by organizing schools to prioritize teaching English. As scholar Funie Hsu highlights, this prioritization allowed students to “seize the opportunities of the global world,” furthering the development of the neoliberal global market (Hsu 2015). In return, teachers are prioritized based on their ability to incentivize neoliberal educational practices—education becomes a tool of empowerment and a means to produce human capital for the progression of civility through the

Figure 2. Number of Schools Open in Puerto Rico Over Vacancy Rates 2017-2021

development of charter schools.

In 2018, the Education Reform Act aimed to ameliorate the inequitable distribution of education through charter schools. The key distinction between charter and public schools is their management. Charter schools are publicly funded through legislative contracts but operate independently from state regulations and curriculum thereby allowing more autonomy in the administration of schools (National Center for Education Statistics n.d.). The demand for charter schools increased as parents wanted choice over learning styles and school management for their children. The rise of school choice created a market for more options that were not exclusively private schools. Between 1998 and 2002, a total of 125 charter schools were established by the U.S. Department of Education, before the island-wide establishment of charter schools post-Maria (Burris & Pfleger n.d.). Again, in 1996 and 1999 the DOE gave two grants of over $5 million to open two new charter schools (Burris & Pfleger n.d.). Thirteen years later, amid school choice in 2015, Puerto Rico was “not payable” according to Governor Garcia Padilla, thus the severity of debt established an alliance between private and public sectors in which private actors were “building and making the infrastructure” according to the director of the Public-Private Partnerships Authority (AAPP) Davis Álvarez (Noticel 2012). In partnership with the AAPP, under the servitude of the “public-private alliance” in the 2010s, over 480 schools serving K-12 grades were closed between 1990, 167 schools were closed in 2016-2017, and an additional 255 schools closed between 2017 and 2018 (Rosario 2018). School closures were not an unprecedented action in Puerto Rico before La Junta, but formalized colonial models of leadership that favored private domains on the island accelerated the closure rate, with 65% of closures occurring in rural areas (Hinojosa et al. 2019). The mismanagement of public services created a foundation where “paradise” no longer served Boricuas. In the years of these closures, school facilities were unfit to be in, causing enrollment rates to drop and migration out of Puerto Rico to increase (Brusi 2020).

Private schools on the island follow this public-private alliance to a separate degree. In my interview with Chana Torres Dávila, an English teacher, she affirms “La cultura de educación en Baldwin es más el negocio de los padres. En Baldwin puede comprar la educación [...] El que no tiene dinero no tiene acceso a una educación en el país y el currículo es muy Americano.” Dávila’s experience with the education system in Puerto Rico is rich in history as it offers an array of perspectives on the interaction between the private, public, and military schools in Puerto Rico. Her early childhood education at Escuela Papa Juan is a stark contrast to the resources and environment schools she recalls “no había materiales. Era una falta de dignidad que los pupitres están rotos, no había tecnología y los salones con 43 estudiantes.” For high school, she attended military school in Buchanan where “te daban detención si no te ponías las mando en el pecho para el American Flag. Si no cantabas y si no te parabas.” The element of needing to fight for education is more often inherited in public schools as they are not as favorable based on the government’s continuous neglect and budget cuts. Thus, there is a subtle veil, as Torres highlights, where the push for privatization on the island through charter and private schools, she stated “tenemos un velo cultural y social. Aquí la gente le gusta el velo porque el velo viene con Costco, viene con una realidad más accesible.” Through these notions of education come new systemic models of survival that fit into the lives of a few elites on the island, a veil is instilled to

keep education as a marker of social stature furthering her argument of the island being in “an intellectual apocalypse.”

DISPLACEMENT MAGNIFIED: PUBLIC-PRIVATE ALLIANCES

The marginalization of education for profit feeds a divide between opportunity and land rights. If the government closes schools and reallocates students to sell titles through Acts 20 and 22, education serves to fund foreign interest. Brain Tenebaum, a beneficiary since December 2014 of Act 22 has multiple contracts with the Department of Transportation and Public Works on the island under numerous LLCs including Mr. Blue Ocean LLC, Mr. Bull LLC, and Shinrai Holdings LLC — all of which have been used to buy school property (Dennis 2020). The first school bought under Mr. Blue Ocean LLC, Escuela Antonio Sácnchec Ruiz in Aguada, was bought for $260,000 on March 8th, 2019. Aguda has a 26% vacancy rate, shown in figure 1, with low mobility (limited movement to the U.S.) at 33 people who moved from the U.S. in 2020, shown in figure 2. Escuela Carmen Gómes Tejera in Aguadilla, which offers schooling to kids with special needs, was sold for $780,000 on May 24, 2019, under Mr. Bull LLC (Díaz Ramos 2020). Unlike Aguada, Aguadilla holds a 22% vacancy rate, shown in figure 2, and a moderate mobility rate of 233 people in figure 1. On April 15, 2019, Shinrai Holdings LLC bought Escuela Martín Grove Brumbaugh, otherwise known as Escuela Puerta Tierra for $500,000. San Juan was at the highest mobility with 1413 people per figure 1 and a vacancy rate of 24% per figure 2. San Juan, unlike the rest, holds a greater history of gentrification on the island.

The presence of Act 20/22 beneficiaries is more popular in San Juan given its colonial touristic culture. While interviewing San Juan Legislator Joel Vazquéz Rosario, he affirmed “no somos la misma población de años atrás[...] el sistema educativo hace ver como si el sistema fuera malo. Causa que las familias piensen que los niños deben estar en escuela privada en vez de públicas.” Vazquéz argues the mass exodus occurring on the island stems from the political and economic instability of the island and more importantly a failure in the education system’s ability to reflect modern concerns in the curriculum. Considering changes in the global market Vazquéz suggests schools don’t promise jobs. Schools have the funding to create change but educational pedagogies adhere to a colonial market where the capital and bureaucracy on land management pertinent to school closures overrules initiatives for students to perceive education as a tool for mobility.

A study from economist and Professor José Craballo Cueto at the University of Puerto Rico showed around 33,704 students have dropped out since 2015 with data gathered from the Department of Education’s public school system (Caraballo Cueto 2021). In the 202021 academic school year, the Department of Education reported 54 cases where students dropped out with an additional 448 cases of students under an unknown status— 2,769 since 2015 (Encarnación Martínez 2022). This same year 12,132 students failed the academic school year (Metro, 2022). Financial burdens play a significant role in dropout rates since 86.1% of students who dropped out were classified as low-income, the average family income of dropouts was $10,986 (Caraballo Cueto 2021). Around 8,893 students were “not being able to wait” based on financial strife, 8,526 students transferred to night school, and 8,675 students moved to alternative or accelerated programs.

Considering the socio-economic relationship between dropout rates and the decline of modern curriculum value per education

stakeholders, closing schools is not the answer to achieving social mobility. Notwithstanding, by the year 2026 the Department of Education’s “vision of the future” plan supported by the Education Reform Act proposes consolidating an additional 83 schools — displacing around 18,644 students (Díaz Ramos & Encarnación Martínez 2022). Currently, 18 schools have closed from 2019-2020 per figure 2 with an additional 16 scheduled to close as shown in figure 1. Two of the schools that are planned to close are specialized schools in music: Escuela Libre de Música Ernesto Ramos Antonini in San Juan and Escuela Central Artes Visuales in San Juan— an area with a high presence of gentrification and a part of Puerto Rico Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority “opportunity zones.”

From this plan, certain municipalities are at a higher risk like Vieques where schools like Escuela Adrianne Serrano have remained without access to a lunchroom or food security since Hurricane María in 2017. The school relies on other schools like Juanita Rivera Albert to supply food for students. The Germán Rieckehoff High School is the only vocational school in Vieques and one of the few that offers services for students with special needs, closing it would leave these students without proper resources (Díaz Ramos & Encarnación Martínez 2022). In Yabucoa, where 25% of families’ annual income is around $10,000, the DOE plans to close four more schools: Escuela Elemental Rosa Costa Valdivieso, Escuela Marta Sánchez Alverio, Escuela José F. Cintrón y Anexo, and Escuela Manuel Ortiz which displaces around 579 students (Díaz Ramos & Encarnación Martínez 2022). Fluctuations between resources in public education transform the mobility of students on the island.

The neoliberal and colonial foundation of the public education system induces loss. In 2021, 73,233 students went to study in the U.S. and 16,681 to attend private schools— affecting 73% of enrollment in the public education sector (Caraballo Cueto 2021). At the time, there were a total of 177,243 students in Puerto Rico (Baldwin 2021). The revised fiscal plan from La Junta in 2019 seeks to have an average of 14 students per teacher compared to “districts on the

mainland such as Miami-Dade County” but public school teachers affirm the average is around 21.6 students per classroom (Caraballo Cueto 2021). As for costs, 14 out of 20 teachers spent an average of $237.50 on materials like new fans, air conditioning, paper, printers with ink, pens, pencils, et cetera.— which should be covered under the Title I education fund (Financial Oversight and Management Board 2019). With the new school year beginning, the new Secretary of the Department of Education Yanira Raíces declared $400,000 worth of frozen meals for schools in the Ponce region were confirmed as lost as of July 2023 (Ruiz 2023). Prioritizing the privatization of land and public resources like education curates a future isolated from the needs of Boricuas.

In my interview with Omar Ayala González, leader of the nonprofit URBE a Pie in Caguas, they highlight how the closure of schools creates a culture of loss. As an organization, URBE a Pie, as the name references, aims to re-establish a sense of community for Boricuas by reclaiming abandoned public spaces in the metropolitan area of Caguas. The group has successfully claimed 4 spots: Huerto Feliz, Valle Garita, la Boutique Comunitaria, el Museo de la Higuera all of which reflect this mission of giving the low-income community of Caguas “un espacio donde la comunidad puede ejercer poder” since to Omar “se nos han desmantelado todo.” Caguas, around an hour away from San Juan, has a poverty rate of 37.5% from 2017-2021 (U.S. Census Bureau n.d.) with a 16% vacancy rate per figure 2 and a high rate of mobility at 388 per figure 1. Omar confesses “vivimos un cultura de la soledad ” because there is “a panorama of isolation and absence of service” for the everyday Boricuas.

Urbe A Pie was founded as a direct response to the culture of loss prevalent in Borinquen by bringing forth an initiative to reclaim spaces “lost” or unused for communities. Their headquarters in Caguas offer parking to other organizations like Centro de Apoyo Mutuo— a non-profit food distribution initiative established in a school closed by the government but reclaimed as a community kitchen after Maria in 2017 feeding over 25,000 Boricuan families (Comedores Sociales

Figure 3. Inside and Outside the abandoned Escuela Elemental Martin G. Brumbaugh in Puerta Tierra 2023 (Aimar Rosario Ávila)

2022). In 2015 the Act 22 beneficiary Morgan Reed Group bought the school for $108,000, a quarter of $400,000 market value (Comedores Sociales 2022). After having occupied the space for 6 years in May 2022, the group wanted to sell the school for $360,000 (Comedores Sociales 2022). CAM, Urbe A Pie, and other organizations mobilized to stop the transfer of title. The spirit of mutual aid resuscitated the community by offering avenues to mobilize resources to the community—thereby unbinding plans to gentrify the area and its colonial ties.

CONCLUSION

In the case of Plyer v. Doe, the case argued “Education has a fundamental role in maintaining the fabric of our society” and “provides the basic tools by which individuals might lead economically productive lives to the benefit of us all” (Smallwood Ramos 2020). In the case of Puerto Rico, the accumulation of “benefits” from education signifies a privatization of land and resources. Under the tutelage of privatization, education resorts to the consolidation of schools, rather than fixing the infrastructure of public schools. Pablo Juan Rubio, former Head Start Coordinador in Coroza, argues “quisieran eliminar nuestra cultura dentro del programa.” Rubio recalls how children who are 3-5 years old learn of urban life in the context of New York as the program models Head Start schools from this district. According to him, in a region like Corozal, tucked between mountains, the curriculum lacks a connection to the student’s context. Teachers and students must assimilate to an educational formula set by foreign standards. Thus, despite the new Education Reform Act, in the case of Rubio’s school, the curriculum fails to adequately provide a practical understanding of the urban design infrastructure in Puerto Rico.

Both figure 1 and figure 2 prove the desire to assimilate to foreign standards bleeds into the spatial dynamics in Puerto Rico. A longstanding issue is not only the need to denounce the neoliberal colonial relationships of public-private alliances but also the interdisciplinary perspective of education and urban planning. At its core, school consolidations and closures are not being assessed at a planning level; rather the focus stays on the management of schools over all and government budget cuts. Only by understanding the dominion of private education through land management can there be a critical assessment of the colonial practices catalyzing the reduction of Boricuan infrastructure and the displacement of Boricuas. Creating more unions where people can offer education initiatives founded by Boricuan values actively fosters the building ground for a system where Boricuas can become more autonomous. Without a steady practice of interdisciplinary perspective in the education system and urban planning continuing to adhere to an agenda of privatization to further investment, the island becomes a Borinquen without Boricuas.

air2124@barnard.edu

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STIs AND STDs IN THE BRONX AS A PUBLIC HEALTH AND URBAN PLANNING ISSUE

BY JENNIFER GUIZAR BELLO Barnard College ‘24

INTRODUCTION

Black and Hispanic/Latino low-income adolescents, living in the Bronx are among the most vulnerable populations susceptible to sexually transmitted diseases and infections. Studies such as “Neighborhoods and Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Adolescent Sexual Risk Behavior” (Carlson et al. 2014) have correlated disadvantaged communities with a high concentration of Black and Hispanic/Latino residents to a higher chance of engaging in adolescent sexual risk behavior, acts that lead to sexually transmitted infections and teen pregnancy. The Bronx, one of New York City’s boroughs, is 53.3% Hispanic/Latino and 36.5% African American. The Bronx historically lacks investment and is segregated, with over 25% of families residing below the poverty level (Travers et al, 2019). According to a 2014 study, due to socioeconomic status, female-headed households, early sexual debut, and multiple partners are “historically more prevalent among Black and Hispanic/Latino compared to White youth. Black and Hispanic/Latino women have a higher chance of becoming pregnant before the age of twenty. Black youth are also more likely to contract sexually transmitted infections compared to Hispanic/Latino and White youth” (Carlson et al, 2014).

Sexually transmitted diseases and infections (STDs and STIs) disproportionately affect marginalized communities of color due to a multitude of external factors, which are deeply rooted in institutionalized racism. Institutionalized racism is defined as the “racial inequities that are embedded in the routine policies and procedures of social institutions that create unequal outcomes by limiting access to opportunities and rights of the groups deemed inferior” (Boutrin and Williams 2021). Additionally, institutional racism has historically impacted the way Black, Hispanic/Latino, and Indigenous populations receive medical care in the United States and the degree to which their needs are met. Moreover, underlying systems of urban planning tactics rooted in institutional racism such as redlining, planned shrinkage, the elimination of health services in cities, and housing destruction are directly linked to the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV and AIDS.

While efforts such as the Morrisania STD clinic in the South Bronx and the District Public Health Office (DPHO) of New York City have conducted research efforts to measure the efficacy of services, programs, and interventions, they fall short in addressing and identifying institutional racism as an underlying factor. Through the lens of critical race theory and the praxis of antiracism work in the public health sector, this paper will focus on understanding the mechanisms under which institutional racism and racist urban planning tactics directly contribute to the high rates of sexually transmitted diseases and sexually transmitted infections in Black and Hispanic/Latino low-income adolescents living in the Bronx. Using this same framework, research-based interventions will be criticized and alternate solutions that consider racism will be developed using the work of Dr. Ijeoma Opara, who specializes in HIV/AIDS prevention among young urban Black girls and families.

RACISM AND STDs/STIs

Identifying institutional racism within the medical and public health sector goes beyond acknowledging historical racism. Hispanic/Latino and Black youth have the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis compared to their White counterparts (Boutrin and Williams 2021). Not only does institutional racism play a key role for Hispanic/Latino adolescents when attempting to access services and health professionals, the stress from institutional racism plays a role in influencing sexual behavior.

Boutrin and Williams classify different forms of racism into three categories for addressing the disparities amongst Black and Hispanic/ Latino youth facing sexually transmitted diseases and infections: institutional racism, cultural racism, and discrimination. Institutional racism manifests in the form of embedded policies and procedures in social organizations. It is present in institutional systems such as education, laws, and the medical field. For example, Boutrin and Williams mention the Tuskegee Syphilis Study which used the stereotypes of syphilis as “already prevalent” in poor Black communities and Black individuals “not wanting to seek help” for syphilis as a rationale to conduct the unethical 1932 study (Boutrin and Williams 2021). In modern medicine, the study is seen as a textbook case of unethical behavior within the medical field. However, the medical field continues to benefit from research findings at the expense of Black people.

Cultural racism, the next category, “encompasses social ideologies that initiate and sustain negative racial images and stereotypes that can reduce support for egalitarian policies, trigger health-damaging psychological responses in stigmatized groups, and facilitate explicit and implicit biases in the larger society that reduce the access of stigmatized groups to desirable resources” (Boutrin and Williams 2021). A specific example of cultural racism is the belief in harmful stereotypes and stigmas surrounding mental health in communities of color (Boutrin and Williams 2021). Returning to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, it can be interpreted as a culturally racist study, since the rationale behind the study was based on untrue stereotypes created by the medical industry. These harmful stereotypes, stigmas, and myths prevent and discourage individuals who need care from receiving access to quality care.

Lastly, discrimination or differential treatment, “by both institutions and individuals, in addition to reducing access to opportunity, can be experienced as stressful life experiences that can adversely affect mental and physical health” (Boutrin and Williams 2021). Discrimination faced on a day-to-day basis contributes to stressors that Hispanic/Latino and Black youth have to cope with. These forms of racism manifest in residential segregation, the criminal justice and incarceration system, and a lack of access to mental health, all of which lead to risky sexual behavior. Before considering possible solutions to tackle sexually transmitted diseases and infections present in low-income Hispanic/Latino neighborhoods, there needs to be space for accountability and acknowledgment of institutionalized racism, cultural racism, and discrimination. These are all factors that directly impact the way vulnerable populations of adolescents receive care.

URBAN DISINVESTMENT AS A FACTOR

When considering reasons for the heightened numbers of sexually transmitted diseases and infections prevalent among Hispanic/ Latino and Black youth in inner cities, historical disinvestment, and segregation need to be part of the dialogue. Urban planning tactics such as planned shrinkage are directly tied to institutionalized racism. Planned shrinkage is the process in which cities remove essential public services when communities are seen as “failing” (Travers et al. 2019). In Chapter 1 of Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America’s Sorted-Out Cities, Fullilove discusses how the 1970s AIDS/HIV epidemic is directly linked to city disinvestment in areas such as the Bronx. Her colleague Dr. Wallace explains how disinvestment from New York City had triggered a ripple effect causing the epidemic (Fullilove 2013). Planned shrinkage in the Bronx and Harlem began with closing down fire stations in poor neighborhoods, literally letting these neighborhoods burn down. The shrinkage then paved the way for neglect in the public health sector. “The plagues were not contained in the neighborhoods burned by planned shrinkage, but rather they were spread throughout the city, the region, and the world. These are what I call mad plagues’’ (Fullilove 2013). Fullilove refers to the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a “mad plague” because it spread rapidly throughout the streets of the Bronx, unable to be contained. Therefore, understanding the ways in which sexually transmitted diseases and infections in Hispanic/Latino and Black youth in urban cities is more than just a mere coincidence, or due to personal choice, but rather one that is historically placed due to deeply rooted institutional racism.

Without services, doctors, or investment from the city, low-income people of color suffer the most. Fullilove writes, “if we wanted to have healthy people, we had to have healthy neighborhoods.” Her quote gets to the root cause behind the marginalization of communities of color who live in these neighborhoods and face systemic barriers preventing them from thriving in these communities. In order for low-income communities of color to thrive, they must be cared for and invested in. This means sustaining interventions and attempting to address the root causes of these health disparities—interventions which can be achieved by paying attention to existing research already out there. Fullilove’s work on public health and the intersection with physical spaces such as urban cities provides future healthcare professionals with the frameworks to properly conceptualize the role of race.

Low-income Hispanic/Latino and Black populations face stressors outside of their control that place them at a higher risk of becoming victims of STDs and STIs. The historical disinvestment in urban cities in which the majority of the population are low-income Hispanic/ Latino and Black and prone to addiction further exemplifies the need for outside interventions in these communities that directly address institutionalized racism as a factor. This is attributed to a larger issue of institutional racism that has not been addressed. It is impossible to expect communities to thrive when there is a multitude of injustices present at the forefront, working collectively to harm vulnerable populations.

CLINICS AND INTERVENTIONS

STD Prevention and the Challenge of Gender and Cultural Diversity: Knowledge, Attitudes, and Risk Behaviors Among Black and Hispanic Inner-City STD Clinic Patients, analyzes the sexual risk behaviors, knowledge, and attitudes among Black and Hispanic

men and women (O’Donnell et al. 1994). The paper found attitudes differ based on gender and cultural diversity after receiving care for sexually transmitted diseases at the Morrisania STD Clinic in the South Bronx.

The study also found education to be a potential tool for addressing misconceptions about sexual health and STD prevention. Patients who received treatment and care were undereducated and/ or had limited knowledge regarding sexual contraceptives and other tools of sexual protection. The authors found that sexual education, and efforts made in an attempt to teach their patients after their visits, could bridge the gaps of knowledge. For example, “A majority did not realize that women can have STDs without having symptoms; even fewer knew that men with STDs, including syphilis and chlamydia, also can be asymptomatic” (O’Donnell et al. 1994). Thus, sexual education plays a key role in STD prevention by informing patients of the types of STDs, their symptoms, and different contraception methods. Prevention programs must be designed in a way in which they are not only educational but culturally aware. Institutions must account for the cultural diversity of patients, given that diverse communities conceptualize sex practices differently. In general, rather than looking for a uniform approach, intervention programs must coordinate flexible intervention initiatives that address specific needs Black and Hispanic men and women have.

A study conducted by the District Public Health Office (DPHO) under the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) focuses on “teen friendliness” as one of the barriers to adolescent sexual and reproductive health care that exist within medical practices in the South Bronx (Alberti et al. 2010). Teen friendliness is based on the criteria of disclosing confidentiality, customer service, and other encouraging behavior that would motivate teenagers to seek care. Ninety-three of the qualifying South Bronx medical practices were assessed using a mystery shopper telephone survey, 43% of the calls were positive, 36% were negative, and “more than half (51%) of callers responded that they would not seek care from the medical practice based upon their interaction with the frontline staff” (Alberti et al. 2010, 612). Less than half of the practices were seen as “teen friendly” despite having been trained to meet certain teen-friendly standards. Thus, efforts to minimize the barriers were ineffective. Accessibility does not equate to efficacy, and while sexual and reproductive health services are available for Bronx adolescents, they are not effective at attracting youth. Culturally responsive initiatives that address institutionalized racism need to be implemented. Clinics would benefit from partnering with researchers such as O’Donnell to collaborate on different methods to address institutionalized racism from a bottom-up approach. This means directly focusing on ways to not only increase their score on teen friendliness but also understand how the low score is attributed to institutionalized barriers. If teens don’t feel safe or empowered to use the services provided, the services are not serving the targeted demographic. It is not to say that these services aren’t physically accessible but they are not socially accessible to these communities due to lack of consideration and care from health professionals.

Frontline workers need to understand the nuanced implications of their job and how their job contributes to institutional barriers and lack of resources. For historically disinvested communities like the Bronx, having access to adolescent clinics is a step forward, but ultimately little to nothing changes if the racial and cultural sensitivity of these services is low.

Implementing Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health: Clinical Best Practice in the Bronx, New York attempts to provide communities in the Bronx with school partnerships as a method to address the sexual and reproductive health inequalities among youth (Travers et al. 2019). Holistic approaches taken by the health centers in efforts to integrate into the community – through partnering with schools and other youth organizations – are effective to a limited capacity. Students who don’t have access to schooling, permanent housing, or are in the foster care system are the ones who are at an extreme disadvantage. While the initiative strived to include youths’ perspectives in an attempt to make reproductive and sexual healthcare services more accessible, it failed to respond to feedback. In conversation with the Alberti 2019 study, frontline and professional workers revealed that they often cannot consider the youth and teenagers’ feedback due to prioritizing other needs. A heavier focus needs to be placed on the importance of responsiveness as a way to eliminate institutional barriers to marginalized communities of inner city youth of color.

BUILDING ON CRITICAL RACE THEORY AND ANTI-RACIST FRAMEWORK FOR SEXUAL HEALTH

“To establish racial consciousness means to develop a deep awareness of the ways racism operates in society within oneself and how it may influence the project at hand” (Ford and Jeffers 2019). Critical race theory aims to address ways in which racism may operate in both overt and subtle ways. To translate this theoretical lens into the praxis of public health frontline workers must have the same access to research and knowledge as those in academia. Ford and Jeffers outline the following steps that researchers can use to make this possible: “(1) respond to ways racism operates contemporarily, (2) identify biases in the field that may hamper antiracism work, (3) decide how to measure key racial/ethnic concepts, and (4) take action based on the lessons learned from the study” (Ford and Jeffers 2019). These steps are essential because they acknowledge racism as a root cause for the lack of accessibility in the healthcare field.

Opara’s work, A Systematic Review on Sexual Health and Drug Use Prevention Interventions for Black Girls criticizes interventions that address sexual health or drug use to make them target Black adolescent girls directly. Opara highlights the need for studies to center and highlight racism and sexism, especially when focusing on Black girls. As mentioned above, school, home, and community-based interventions are the most effective for the girls who have access to them. Those who do not occupy these spaces, for example, girls in foster care, remain unreached. This contextualizes the ways access plays a huge role in the effectiveness of an intervention, clearly defining who the intervention might work for rather than just generalizing it entirely. There needs to be flexibility when it comes to care.

Research should also strive to be culturally responsive, thus being able to hold conversations about a multitude of factors including; gender, race, sexuality, and drugs. Finally, interventions are suggested to go beyond and address institutional racism and sexism and the ways those systemic issues impact sexual health. This can look like culturally competent health clinics and accessible education interventions. There needs to be flexible and community-oriented interventions. Investment into community health care resources and education can be the key to solving this healthcare crisis. STDs and STIs spread rapidly throughout the Bronx because of harmful policies of urban disinvestment. Only intentional re-investing in communities

and in the Bronx can undo the damage.

jg4308@barnard.edu

REFERENCES

Fullilove, Mindy Thompson Fullilove, “Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America’s Sorted-Out Cities.” Chapter 1, “From Illusion to Solution.” Oakland: New Village Press, 2013.

Marx, R., Aral, S. O., Rolfs, R. T., Sterk, C. E., & Kahn, J. G. “Crack, sex, and STD.” Sexually Transmitted Diseases 18, no. 2 (1991): 92–101. https://doi.org/10.1097/00007435-199118020-00008.

Boutrin, M. C., & Williams, D. R. “What Racism Has to Do with It: Understanding and Reducing Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Youth of Color.” Healthcare* 9, no. 6 (2021): 673. https://doi. org/10.3390/healthcare9060673.

O’Donnell, L., San Doval, A., Vornfett, R., & O’Donnell, C. R. “STD Prevention And The Challenge Of Gender and Cultural Diversity: Knowledge, Attitudes, And Risk Behaviors Among Black And Hispanic Inner-city STD Clinic Patients.” Sexually Transmitted Diseases 21, no. 3 (1994): 137–148. https://doi. org/10.1097/00007435-199405000-00003.

Alberti, P. M., Steinberg, A. B., Hadi, E. K., Abdullah, R. B., & Bedell, J. F. “Barriers at the frontline: assessing and improving the teen friendliness of South Bronx medical practices.” Public Health Reports (Washington, D.C. : 1974) 125, no. 4 (2010): 611–614. https://doi.org/10.1177/003335491012500417.

Travers, M., O’Uhuru, D., Mueller, T., & Bedell, J. “Implementing Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Clinical Best Practice in the Bronx, New York.” The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine 64, no. 3 (2019): 376–381. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2018.09.020.

Opara, I., Pierre, K., Assan, M. A., Scheinfeld, L., Alves, C., Cross, K., Lizarraga, A., & Brawner, B. “A Systematic Review on Sexual Health and Drug Use Prevention Interventions for Black Girls.” Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 19, no. 6 (2022): 3176. https://doi. org/10.3390/ijerph19063176.

Ford, Chandra, and Kia Skrine Jeffers. “Critical race theory’s antiracism approaches: Moving from the ivory tower to the front lines of public health.” In Racism: Science & Tools for the Public Health Professional, edited by DC: American Public Health Association, 2019.

Carlson, D. L., McNulty, T. L., Bellair, P. E., & Watts, S. “Neighborhoods and racial/ethnic disparities in adolescent sexual risk behavior.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 43, no. 9 (2014): 1536–1549. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-013-0052-0.

HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY, AND INFRASTRUCTURE: WHAT MAKES INSTANBUL’S FERRY DIFFERENT

BY FARUK ECIRLI University of Pennsylvania ‘27

INTRODUCTION

Sitting right at the crossroads of two major waterways, Istanbul has relied on water transportation services almost since its inception (Janet Wade 2022, 8–13). Although walking and horse riding were the general mode of transportation within the city until the 1930s (Guney 2012, 93), nearby settlements such as Scutari (Üsküdar) and Chalcedon (Kadıköy) were only accessible by boat (Janet Wade 2022, 45–46). The reliance on small boats changed in 1850 when the ferry business known as Şirket-i Hayriye (“The Auspicious Company”) was founded and became the first joint-stock company in the history of the Ottoman Empire (Koraltürk 1992, 6–8).

Istanbul has now grown into a metropolis that now counts sixteen million inhabitants, incorporating once-distant towns and villages in a large conurbation that has made reliable public transportation essential (Koraltürk 1992). Istanbul’s ferry system—including the venerable and still-flourishing Şirket-i Hayriye—has remained an essential part of this network. Today, Şehir Hatları A.Ş , Şirket-i Hayriye’s successor, provides services to more than one hundred thousand passengers daily, with thirty ferries and fifty-three piers (Sahir Hatlari 2023).

This paper will outline the underlying reasons for Istanbul’s ever-expanding ferry network by focusing on its history, infrastructure, and topography. Firstly, I will show how the physical geography of the city limited its ability to build effective land and rail transportation links over the Bosphorus because of high infrastructure costs and difficult engineering challenges. Then, I will focus on the city’s human geography, including its unplanned development in the 1950s and 60s, to explain why, despite higher prosperity and population, the city still cannot develop efficient public transport networks. I will argue that the unplanned development of the city and the consideration of large-scale cargo ships in building transportation infrastructure (as opposed to other cities like Sydney and New York that have no such problems) makes infrastructural development much more expensive and leads to more frequent use of lowcost, low-maintenance transport options such as ferries, necessitating an ever-expanding water transportation network.

BACKGROUND

Previously known as Byzantium, Constantinople, and Kostantiniyye, Istanbul’s location at the meeting point of the European and Asian continents has defined the city’s strategic importance and its historical development at the confluence of the Bosphorus Strait, the Golden Horn, and the Sea of Marmara. Precisely because of this geographical positioning, Istanbul has become the focal point of many military campaigns throughout history, having been besieged twenty-nine times by various forces since its founding (Mutlu 2019).

The city’s historical reliance on water transportation is also evident in the city’s urban development and architecture, with many of its most significant and iconic buildings—such as the Dolmabahce and Beylerbeyi Palaces, numerous historical mosques and hundreds of waterfront mansions—oriented towards the sea.

Other cities built next to bodies of water, such as New York City, Sydney, Stockholm, and Manchester, went through a process similar to Istanbul’s in the progression of their ferry transportation network. Ferry services in these cities often started with people who owned boats and provided irregular services across waterways. As demand and the importance of these services grew, private companies emerged, standardizing schedules, routes, and fares, and turning ferry transportation into a structured industry. Later on, larger corporations started taking over, further improving the sector with investments in infrastructure (Schreurs, Scheerlinck, and Gheysen 2023). Recognizing the strategic importance of these transportation networks, governments either took over existing corporations or regulated them heavily to ensure reliability, safety, and affordability for the public. Generally, this was followed by the full integration of ferries into urban transportation systems.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, only a few cities had managed to keep their ferry transportation systems flourishing. Many ferry transportation systems entered phases of stagnation and decline, as people started preferring transportation methods like motor vehicles and subways (Eftimiades 1989, 1–2). The convenience and speed of these land-based systems often overshadowed the benefits of water-based transit, triggering a reduction in ferry services in many cities around the world (Schreurs, Scheerlinck, and Gheysen 2023, 1–2). Istanbul is a notable exception to this trend.

Before the construction of bridges and tunnels that connected the Asian and European sides of Istanbul, residents had to rely on boats to cross the Bosphorus Strait and move between different districts of the city (Guney 2012, 94–95). In the 19th century, however, Istanbul’s population grew as it incorporated surrounding villages and towns. This necessitated a more structured approach to ferry transportation. The founding of Şirket-i Hayriye, the first joint-stock company in the history of the Ottoman Empire marked a change from transportation services provided by individual boat owners to a structured ferry system that could meet the needs of an expanding city (Koraltürk 1992, 6–8).

In time, Istanbul grew even more. At the turn of the 20th century, new transportation challenges and opportunities emerged with the introduction of land-based transportation. Options like buses, trams, and eventually, the metro system provided alternatives to ferries for intercontinental travel (Koraltürk 1992, 95–100). However, the city’s unique geography, including its topography, geology, and seismicity, continued to favor water transportation, particularly for crossing the Bosphorus, which remained a significant barrier to the integration of the city’s European and Asian parts.

LIMITATIONS FOR LAND AND RAIL TRANSPORT

Numerous factors have historically limited and are still limiting land and rail-based transportation in Istanbul. It is possible to classify these limitations into two categories: physical geography and human geography.

LIMITATIONS RELATED TO PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY

GEOGRAPHIC FEATURES OF THE BOSPHORUS

Most ancient cities in the world have been built next to a body of water. However, unlike most cities, Istanbul is not a city separated by a river, estuary, or canal; it is a city separated by the Bosphorus Strait, whose sheer width and depth drastically influence daily life. With an average depth of 65 meters and a width ranging from 0.7 to 3.5 kilometers (Ünlülata et al. 1990, 27), the Bosphorus presents almost insurmountable challenges for any type of engineering project. Almost no other mega city in the world possesses such a difficult geographical challenge for engineers. New York City’s Hudson River, for example, is comparable to the Bosphorus in terms of width and length. However, it is only 9 meters deep on average (Howarth, Schneider, and Swaney 1996, 851), a depth that still presents engineering challenges, but is surmountable. This is one of the reasons why Manhattan today is highly connected to the surrounding land, with twenty-one bridges and fifteen tunnels (Li, Moore, and Staley 2021). Comparatively, Istanbul, a city with twice the population, only has three bridges and two tunnels crossing the Bosphorus (Canitez, Alpkokin, and Kiremitci 2020, 1155).

Other major cities, like London and Paris, are built on rivers that are neither as wide nor deep as the Bosphorus. The rivers of these cities—the Thames and Seine respectively—are both, on average, around 200 meters in width and 5 meters in depth (Misachi 2021). This is one of the reasons Londoners and Parisians were able to connect their cities across their rivers in old antiquity, whereas Istanbulites did not build their first land connection until 1972. Many other cities around the world, including Rome, Cairo, Moscow, Bangkok, Shanghai, and Buenos Aires, are comparable to Paris and London in this regard.

Golden Gate Strait and the San Francisco Bay present a closer comparison to the Bosphorus in terms of depth and width. Even though the San Francisco Bay is much shallower in some parts with an average depth of 5 meters, it reaches a staggering width of 15 kilometers, presenting a much considerable challenge for infrastructure development (Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center 2022). San Francisco, however, has effectively overcome this challenge through thoughtful urban planning and capital investment, unlike Istanbul which has faced difficulties due to rapid and less coordinated urban growth. San Francisco’s systematic approach and strategic infrastructure projects, like the Golden Gate Bridge, San Mateo-Hayward Bridge, and Dumbarton Bridge, have successfully integrated the city’s unique topography into its urban development.

TOPOGRAPHICAL VARIATION

Istanbul’s hilly landscape is another feature that sets it apart from many other major cities. Known for its iconic streets built over hills and gradients reaching thirty-one percent, San Francisco has a topography similar to Istanbul (Lu 2023). This landscape not only influences the aesthetics and building styles in the city but also the design and functionality of its transportation systems, including its iconic cable cars. However, this hilly landscape is far from prevalent in the greater metropolitan area; most cities in the Bay Area such as Oakland, Fremont, Palo Alto, and San Jose all have relatively flat topography (USGS 2019), unlike Istanbul, whose hills extend over a much larger area and affect settlements with a much higher population density. Furthermore, the Bay Area does not have the same level of population density due to its urban sprawl as Istanbul and its population is not concentrated enough on the coastlines to support a wide water transportation network (Leonard 2023). The fact that the Bay is much shallower in some parts is also another reason no meaningful water transportation networks emerged in the South Bay.

Lisbon, often referred to as a city of seven hills (Sciolino 2008) like Istanbul, stands out as an example of a metropolitan city nestled within hilly terrain. However, the southern part of greater Lisbon, which is separated by the Tejo River and includes the Setúbal Peninsula, is not densely populated, and distinctly differs in terms of density from the hilly neighborhoods of central Lisbon. The contrast in population density across these areas sets Lisbon apart from Istanbul, where both the European and Asian sides are heavily populated. Additionally, Lisbon’s metropolitan population is significantly smaller than that of Istanbul. While Istanbul boasts a population of 16 million, Lisbon’s metropolitan area consists of only 3 million residents. The challenges posed by Istanbul’s rugged landscape are more pronounced compared to Lisbon’s, which has a lower population and less dense settlements in hilly areas (Sykes and Balci 2021; Minder 2018). Consequently, the influence of landscapes on the growth of cities, transportation systems, and everyday routines in Lisbon differs significantly from that observed in Istanbul.

SEISMICITY OF THE REGION

Located by the North Anatolian Fault, a deadly fault with a history of several devastating tremors that date back to antiquity (Kundak and Türkoğlu 2010), Istanbul faces further complications in urban and infrastructure development as an already dense and topographically challenging city. The effect of this seismicity on Istanbul’s infrastructure can be traced all the way back to 558 AD. Hagia Sophia, one of the most iconic buildings of today and the biggest church in the world at the time, was structurally weakened and its large dome collapsed after a series of tremors that started in 553 AD. Since then, Hagia Sophia has been constantly restored and structurally improved over the years, requiring resources and extensive care to withstand potential future tremors (Çaktı, Dar, and Uncu 2019, 195–204). The history of Hagia Sophia is a good example of the demands of Istanbul’s infrastructure: every piece of the built environment must be constructed

with higher standards to resist earthquakes with magnitudes upwards of 7.5, these infrastructure demands require many more resources to prevent failure.

Cities such as London or Paris that do not have such high seismicity do not face the same level of difficulty in infrastructure development. They can build metros, bridges, and highway tunnels more easily, allowing better integration of their cities through land and rail-based infrastructure. This is not the case for Istanbul. Even though Istanbul has more than 10 active metro lines, only one of them connects the two sides of Istanbul, showcasing the difficulty of building infrastructure over the Bosphorus in a seismically active area.

LIMITATIONS RELATED TO HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

INTERNATIONAL MARITIME TRAFFIC

The Bosphorus Strait is a vital maritime route that connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. It acts as the only access point to the oceans for five countries, including Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, and Georgia, and it connects Russia’s most important year-round ice-free ports to the outside world. As the only waterway with access to the Black Sea, it is also an important route for the world’s military ships, most notably the United States and Russia.

This is why the Bosphorus experiences significant maritime traffic, with more than 40,000 ships passing through it every year. The land and rail transportation links over the Bosphorus, therefore, must be constructed in a way that accommodates this heavy traffic and the many kinds of ships that pass through the Bosphorus, some of which can reach heights of more than fifty meters. The height of these ships requires bridges to be designed with high spans to provide enough navigational clearance for heavy maritime traffic, including large cargo ships and oil tankers.

Taken together, these limitations greatly complicate bridge construction over the Bosphorus and increase capital costs dramatically. As a capital-poor country for most of its history, Türkiye was not able to effectively meet these upfront costs until recently, which is one of the reasons three of the five Bosphorus crossings did not exist before 2013.

UNPLANNED URBANIZATION

Unplanned urbanization in Istanbul, a process that unfolded over several decades, was largely driven by rapid population growth. Beginning in the mid-20th century, millions of people from all over Türkiye flooded Istanbul as they sought better job opportunities and living conditions. This led to a dramatic population increase from around a million people living in Istanbul in the 1950s to over fifteen million today (Akman 2009). A significant aspect of this growth was the emergence of informal settlements, known as gecekondu (literally translated to “built overnight”), which were built quickly and often without official permission.

The speed and scale of this migration overwhelmed the city’s planning capabilities, resulting in a lack of comprehensive and sustainable urban planning. The recent real estate and construction boom further exacerbated this trend, leading to new residential and commercial developments often built with little regard for long-term planning or environmental considerations. This resulted in a sprawling metropolis with significant challenges, including traffic congestion, inadequate infrastructure, environmental issues, and varied living conditions across the city.

This unplanned urbanization also affected infrastructure development within the city. When the potential routes for the third Bosphorus Bridge were being discussed, the areas covering ten kilometers to the south and two kilometers to the north of the second bridge were not considered because of how urbanized they are. As a result, the third bridge had to be built so far north that it created more problems than solutions (Finkel 2011). Furthermore, it is not only the potential bridges that suffer from unplanned urbanization. Many pieces of essential infrastructure such as roads, highways, public parks, auto parks, trams, and suburban rail lines are much harder to build right now due to unplanned, rapid urbanization that has left almost no space for them.

Ferry lines do not face this problem, which, unlike buses or trams, use water as a means of transportation. No part of the Bosphorus was illegally occupied during the rapid unplanned urbanization, and it remains, for the most part, a public good. Ferries can navigate the strait freely without the need for a constantly maintained road or track, making them a very

Figure 1: Traffic in Istanbul on Saturdays at 8 p.m., congestion concentrated on highways leading up to the bridges.

Figure 2: The Kabataş-Kadıköy Ferry Line

Figure 4: Istanbul Rail Systems Map

Figure 3: Typical Traffic in Istanbul on Saturdays at 8 p.m. Most congestion is concentrated on highways leading up to the bridges.

Before Marmaray After Marmaray After Marmaray

Table 1. Passenger ridership on Eminönü-Kadıköy, Kadıköy-Karaköy, and the Eminönü-Üsküdar ferry lines (Keski 2014).

convenient option for a city such as Istanbul.

FACTORS INDUCING FERRY RIDERSHIP IN ISTANBUL

TRAFFIC CONGESTION

Istanbul is a city known for its overcrowded squares and eternal traffic. Due to the unplanned urbanization described in the previous section, there are only four available motor vehicle crossings across the Bosphorus (Starr 2015). Severe traffic congestion is present on almost all the highways of Istanbul, but most of the congestion is concentrated in crossings over the Bosphorus, particularly the first (15 July Martyrs’ Bridge) and the second (Mehmet the Conqueror Bridge) bridge, as seen in figure 1(Google Maps 2023b).

These chokepoints make the crossing between the two sides of Istanbul extremely time-consuming, especially during rush hour. Since rail links between the continents are also almost non-existent, ferries are an effective way of surpassing traffic.

Kabataş-Kadıköy for example, as seen in figure 2, is a ferry line that takes approximately twenty-five minutes, and there is a ferry departing almost every 10 minutes, making the average journey time around thirty minutes (Google Maps 2023c)).

This same journey would take, despite a flight distance of only 5 kilometers, upwards of an hour during rush hour, as can be seen in figure 3 (Google Maps 2023a). Considering the amount of time needed to find a parking space and walk to the final destination, the actual journey could take even longer.

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION LINKS

Another factor that induces higher ridership for ferries among Istanbulites is the linkage of other types of public transport to ferry piers. Using the same ferry line described above—Kabataş-Kadıköy— it is notable that both piers are very well integrated with other modes of public transportation: the Kabataş pier is integrated with the T1 tram line, F2 funicular line (which is integrated with the M2 metro line) and will soon be integrated with the M7 metro line, whereas the

Kadıköy pier is integrated with the M4 line (which is integrated with the suburban rail line Marmaray, the Metrobus line and the M8 metro line), as seen in figure 4 (Metro Istanbul 2023). The integration of piers into other modes of public transportation is not limited to this example. Many other piers such as Bostancı, Üsküdar, Karaköy, Eminönü, and Eyüpsultan have rail links, whereas all the other piers, at the very least, have conveniently placed bus stops, further inducing the use of ferries.

THE COST OF OWNING A CAR

Cars in Türkiye, no matter the type, are infamous for their prices. Their costliness primarily stems from a combination of high taxes, including Special Consumption Tax (ÖTV) and Value Added Tax (KDV), as well as import duties, which make car prices up to four times more expensive, in dollar terms, than their sales price in Europe or the United States (Euronews 2023). The progressive tax structure in Türkiye is based on the engine size and value of the car (Euronews 2023), making larger and luxury vehicles particularly expensive. These financial burdens are compounded by the Turkish economy’s challenges, such as currency depreciation and inflation, making the cost of owning a car even more prohibitive for the average citizen. As the value of the Turkish Lira falls, the price of imported cars and parts rises, further driving up overall costs.

This high cost of car ownership has a direct impact on transportation dynamics in Istanbul. The city, known for its heavy traffic congestion, particularly on the bridges over the Bosphorus, sees many residents turning to public transportation as a more viable and cost-effective alternative. The ferries are an integral part of this system, providing an efficient and scenic way to traverse the Bosphorus Strait for many Istanbul residents, especially for those commuting between the European and Asian sides of the city. The combination of high car prices, traffic congestion, and the availability of a robust public transport network, therefore, leads to a greater reliance on modes of transportation like ferries, highlighting the city’s unique

and

context.

INTERCONTINENTAL RAIL AND ITS EFFECTS ON WATER TRANSPORTATION

Before 2013, buses and ferries were the only available method of public transportation to traverse the two sides of Istanbul. With the exception of the bus rapid transit route, Metrobus, there were no land or rail-based public transportation methods that could avoid traffic (IETT 2023) The Metrobus, although highly effective in avoiding traffic, did not provide the same level of comfort offered by light or heavy rail, and it continues to be prone to disruption due to traffic accidents (Bayraktar 2023; Cengiz and Almaçayır 2023; Dörtkardeş, Durmuş, and Uysal 2022; Şimşek and Eğri 2023). Ferries, on the other hand, despite being faster than cars during rush hours, were still slow, and their reach was limited to the coastlines of Istanbul.

The development of Marmaray, a suburban rail line connecting the two sides of Istanbul via an immersed tube tunnel, changed everything. Metro lines existed in Istanbul before that, but they were extremely fragmented. This development marked the first time a rail-based system provided a direct and continuous link across the Bosphorus, uniting the city’s fragmented transportation network. Financed with an investment of around 4 billion dollars, the introduction of Marmaray offered a faster, more reliable, and efficient mode of transit compared to ferries and buses (NTV Haber 2020). With its high-capacity trains and frequent service, Marmaray significantly reduced travel times, allowing commuters to bypass slow ferries and traffic congestions, making it an attractive option for daily commuters and resulting in a noticeable shift in public transportation usage (Keski 2014).

Rates of ferry ridership in Istanbul experienced a decline following Marmaray’s debut. The convenience and speed of Marmaray, coupled with its integration into the city’s expanding metro network, drew passengers away from the ferries. While ferries had previously been a primary means of crossing the Bosphorus, especially during rush hour, the ease of a more direct and less time-consuming rail journey offered by Marmaray made it the preferred choice for many. This shift was particularly evident in the decrease in passenger numbers on traditional ferry routes such as the Eminönü-Kadıköy, Kadıköy-Karaköy, and the Eminönü-Üsküdar ferry lines, as seen in Table 1 (Keski 2014, 26). The Eminönü-Üsküdar line has been particularly affected, as it directly lies on Marmaray’s route. Following the introduction of the Marmaray, this decline in ferry ridership goes to show how people vastly prefer faster and better-integrated modes of transportation.

THE FUTURE OF THE FERRY IN ISTANBUL

Despite the gloomy picture painted in the previous section, water transportation in Istanbul largely stayed the same in other lines, and the large drop in ridership was primarily in lines whose routes significantly overlapped with that of Marmaray. Even though the drop in these popular lines was noticeable, water transportation rebounded relatively quickly, and almost doubled its capacity from 341,000 daily passengers in 2013 (Keski 2014, 24) to 644,000 daily passengers in 2019 (IETT 2021).

While Marmaray brought about a significant shift in the

transportation landscape of Istanbul, it did not mark the end of the ferry’s role in the city. Instead, it led to a vitalization of public transportation, with ferries continuing to play a crucial role in Istanbul’s diverse transportation network.

It seems Istanbul is slow to build rail links between its two sides, despite Marmaray’s huge success that now attracts more than 200 million passengers annually (Ogan 2023). The only other planned intercontinental link, named HızRay, has started materializing with a proposed length of 75 kilometers and a massive budget of $6 billion (Metro Istanbul, n.d.). When it does go into operation, in 2030, ferry ridership will likely drop. However, as Marmaray’s case shows, it will probably only affect ferry lines directly on its route, and, in the long term, water transportation ridership will likely rebound to, and even exceed, its previous levels.

Ferries are so ingrained within the city’s culture and people’s daily lives that even lines with a few hundred users continue to operate to this day, despite the municipality’s attempt to close them down. When the municipality decided to discontinue a ferry line between Anadolu Kavağı, one of the peripheral districts of Istanbul, and Eminönü, the historic center of the city, the frequenters of the line started protesting (T24 2011). The line did not only serve these two piers; it also stopped by the piers of Sarıyer, Büyükdere, Yeniköy, İstinye, Emirgan, and Beşiktaş along the way. The protesters remarked “Most of us have been using this line to commute for more than 20 years now. We reach Sarıyer in an hour thanks to this line. The same commute takes 2.5 hours with the bus. We want Mayor Kadir Topbaş, who has been telling Istanbulites to use public transportation, to say “stop” to people who are forcing us to use our cars.” Furthermore, some of the banners in the protest read: “Aren’t people living in Anadolu Kavağı Istanbulites?” (Kavak’ta yaşayan İstanbullu değil mi?) and “From the Auspicious Company to the Heinous Company” (Şirket-i Hayriye’den Şirket-i Hain’e) (T24 2011).

These protests, even though small in scale, reveal how ferries are critically ingrained in the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of Istanbulites. It is also worth noting that the protest was successful, and this line remains intact twelve years later (Şehir Hatları 2023).

CONCLUSION

Today, Istanbul’s ferry system is not only a mode of transportation; it is also a testament to the city’s strong historical connection with the Bosphorus. Unlike many other cities where such systems have declined, the continued prominence of ferries in Istanbul highlights the unique interplay of geography, history, and urban development in shaping the city’s transportation networks. The limitations imposed by the Bosphorus Strait’s challenging topography, the seismicity of the region, and the rapid, unplanned urbanization have made the development of land and rail transportation exceedingly complex and costly in Istanbul, necessitating the existence of its ever-expanding ferry network.

Despite the advent of modern transportation alternatives like Marmaray, which initially led to a decline in ferry ridership, the ferry system has demonstrated resilience. It rebounded, underscoring its enduring appeal and functionality. Looking

ahead, the future of water transportation in Istanbul remains bright. While Marmaray and future rail projects like HızRay represent significant advancements in Istanbul’s public transportation, they cannot fully replace the unique role that ferries play. The system’s flexibility, cultural significance, and practical advantages in a city marked by complex geography and heavy traffic congestion suggest that it will continue to be an integral part of Istanbul’s transportation ecosystem.

ecirli@wharton.upenn.edu

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REFRAMING HOMELESSNESS: RACIAL CAPITALISM AS A DIMENSION OF HOMELESSNESS IN SAN FRANCISCO

JARED MURTI

University of San Francisco ‘24

ABSTRACT

The plight of the unhoused across the United States presents a particularly cruel reality for the individuals experiencing homelessness and a sharp indictment for society at large. It is a persistent problem, one that both punitive and paternalistic solutions fail to reconcile. This article proposes that the failure to find scalable solutions is due to a fundamental failure to understand the problems that cause and perpetuate homelessness. By framing homelessness through the lens of racial capitalism, the history of its rise and management becomes a dimension of class and racial oppression that has continued to evolve alongside the United States since its formation. This paper applies the lens of racial capitalism to four dimensions of homelessness’s persistence to demonstrate the way racialized hierarchies embedded in capitalism propagate and exacerbate homelessness among black San Franciscans. It finds that racial capitalism creates housing precarity that puts black San Franciscans on the streets at higher rates where they can experience disproportionately frequent, negative, and violent police interactions. Health and mental health literature and practitioners discriminate against black unhoused individuals due to the compounding bias towards racial status and housing status, creating barriers to the services necessary to prevent and escape homelessness. Meanwhile, management and assistance services that fail to consider these issues end up failing to adequately address homelessness but are propped up by the institutions of racial capitalism. However, organizations like Moms 4 Housing, the Coalition on Homelessness, and the Housing and Dignity Village present hopeful possibilities if scaled up.

INTRODUCTION

This essay will focus on the prominent academic frameworks of homelessness and interrogate them through the lens of racial capitalism. The existing literature emphasizes that the strongest predictor of rates of people experiencing homelessness in a region is its cost of living (Kushel & Moore, 2023). With exorbitant rent and housing costs, many lower income San Franciscans are unable to build an adequate safety net to prevent loss of housing in the event of job loss or unforeseen expenses. Inaccessibility to mental health services and police interactions play a role in increasing the likelihood of becoming unhoused – but also of increasing the length of an individual’s unhoused status (Streeter, 2020; Herring, 2019). Emphasis is often also placed on the lack of adequate mental health resources due to the deinstitutionalization of mental health services since the mid twentieth century due to their cruel and inhumane history (Streeter, 2020). Because of the United States’ history of racial discrimination, segregation, and oppression, communities of color are disproportionately represented in low-income communities, subsequently, housing precarity, overpolicing and the loss of public mental health institutions have disproportionately impacted communities of color.

While this framing is not false, it is incomplete. High cost of living is a major predictor of homelessness, surpassing the predictiveness of crime rates, drug usage, or even unemployment (UCSF, 2023). However, to understand the dimension of the cost of living, the reasons for such unaffordability must be examined. The racial dynamics of housing precarity must also be understood to attain a comprehensive understanding of the housing dimension of homelessness. The same can be said for police interactions and mental health services. Conventional frameworks around homelessness identify the symptoms, rather than the disease; and solutions designed to treat symptoms can sometimes be more palliative. Integrating racially informed lenses to problem solving in the nonprofit sector is paramount for creating truly impactful programs and solutions. The organizational structures of nonprofits result in a system that determines a nonprofit’s success on its alignment to the values of the capitalist society they exist in. The result is that programs that focus on the symptoms of racial capitalism but do not challenge the institutional structures that exploit populations along a racialized hierarchy are propped up by those structural institutions.

RACIAL CAPITALISM

The concept of racial capitalism interrogates the hierarchical structures of emergent capitalism in the early 14th century and argues that capitalism developed within a racialized hierarchy, adopted those hierarchical structures, and applied them to various populations as it expanded across the world. Cedric Robinson’s concept of racial capitalism posits that as “development, organization, and expansion of capitalist society pursued essentially racial directions, so too did social ideology… racialism would inevitably permeate the social structures emergent from capitalism”. The Western European context in which capitalism emerged was heavily racialized. The feudal system was organized into a racial hierarchy when “the integration of Germanic migrants with older European peoples resulted in a social order of domination”. The racialized class structures that upheld feudalism were baked into every aspect of society and carried into 14th century early merchant capitalism when the merchant class rose to prominence. When European trade expanded into Africa and Asia in the 15th century, racialized hierarchies informed their view of the population. With expansion into the Americas, racial capitalism justified the enslavement and exploitation of indigenous populations and the establishment of the East Atlantic Slave Trade, then continued to inform race relations (Robinson, 1983). Racial capitalism argues that capitalism as an economic structure, could only come to be in a racialized hierarchy and thus is inextricably linked with racial hierarchies throughout its history. Robinson compares European appraisals of African populations before and after capitalism and colonization. Prior to these systems, “Ethiopians were far from rare sights in the Greco-Roman, particularly in the Roman, world. Yet the intense color prejudice of the modern world was lacking.” These sentiments persisted throughout Europe up until its collapse in the 5th Century. Upon

a near millennia later, following Europe’s economic resurrection, racialized hierarchies featured prominently. Racism informed European assessments of regions outside their borders and led to the dehumanization of African populations, which justified the Atlantic Slave Trade. They argue:

The African became the more enduring “domestic enemy,” and consequently the object around which a more specific and exclusive conception of humanity was molded. The “Negro,” that is the color black, was both a negation of Africa and a unity of opposition to white. The construct of Negro, unlike the terms “African,” “Moor,” or “Ethiope” suggested no situatedness in time, that is history, or space, that is ethno- or politico- geography. The Negro had no civilization, no cultures, no religions, no history, and finally, no humanity that might command consideration. (Robinson, 1983)

This linguistic evolution is a key part of the role racism plays in justifying the marginalization of communities of color. Historian Donald Bogle argues that black folks were racialized according to whatever was most beneficial to existing capitalist circumstances. Before the Civil War, they were presented as unintelligent, and ‘simple;’ serving to justify the inhumane nature of slavery. During reconstruction, they were portrayed as lazy and dishonest to disqualify them from being taken seriously politically, socially, or economically. Later, they were portrayed as dangerous and nefarious, justifying the prison industrial complex, wage stagnation, and income inequality (2016). Though the hierarchies evolved, the black population was consistently placed at the bottom. White and white passing populations were able to gradually ascend the hierarchy, but colorism, segregation, and various discriminatory practices galvanized the lower rungs.

Current socioeconomic inequalities are the direct result of racial capitalism. Racial capitalism has adversely impacted black communities in the US by nearly every economic measure. Median income, unemployment, and poverty rates all reflect the hierarchies of early American capitalism (Statista, 2023). Although these factors impact education and subsequently opportunities for upward mobility, even with varying degrees of education and job experience, black workers are paid below their respective median and well below their white peers. Racism and capitalism framed as independent, albeit complementary, structures fail to adequately explain the persistence of racial inequality. They also fail to explain the racial dynamics of homelessness.

Racial capitalism contends that racialized hierarchies persist because they are integral to the foundational mechanisms of capitalism. Because of this, solving racism without addressing capitalism or solving inequality without addressing racism and racialized hierarchies will continue to result in incomplete outcomes.

REFRAMING HOMELESSNESS

An important context in which to explore the way racial capitalism impacts homelessness is the city of San Francisco. Black San Franciscans make up 6% of the city’s population, but 38% of the unhoused population (Dept of Homelessness, 2022). Bayview/ Hunter’s Point, home of the city’s largest black population, is a superfund site and a “textbook example of environmental racism” (Dautch & Ellington, 2018). Black individuals in San Francisco are “25 times more likely than white people to have force used on them” (Balakrishnan, 2023; citing SFPD, 2022). This inclination

towards violence is of particular concern to black folks experiencing homelessness when considering the near daily interactions with the police that they experience (Herring, 2019). The experiences of black San Franciscans – and especially the experiences of black unhoused San Franciscans – seem to contradict the city’s verbal commitment to diversity, acceptance, and equity. Racial capitalism exacerbates housing insecurity, income inequality, which in turn exacerbates rates of homelessness experienced by black San Franciscans; black San Franciscans experiencing homelessness experience a dual prejudice by law enforcement and health practitioners, making escaping homelessness more challenging; and failure to create solutions that address this dynamic struggle to make an adequate impact on homelessness. Wage stagnation, historical and present discrimination in the housing and labor market, and anti-tenancy doctrine are all ways racial capitalism exacerbate the precarity of housing for black San Franciscans. Over-policing of San Francisco’s housed and unhoused black populations has negative financial, carceral, health, and housing impacts, all resulting from a continued history of policing black folks as enforcement of racialized hierarchies. These policing experiences and housing stressors likely exacerbate the mental health of black unhoused individuals while racialized hierarchies of racial capitalism result in compound bias from health and mental health practitioners for black and unhoused San Franciscans. Furthermore, social understandings of mental health diagnoses and treatments do not cater to the experiences of unhoused folks and black folks. Racial capitalism presents itself in homelessness support systems just as prevalently. Institutional biases shape the policies and practices that succeed in a capitalist context. This results in two complexes explored in this paper: the nonprofit industrial complex and the white-savior industrial complex. These two complexes create a self-perpetuating feedback loop ensuring the continuance of programs that fail to address the core causes of homelessness in San Francisco. Any discussion on the causes of homelessness that fails to consider the multifaceted impact of racial capitalism is incomplete.

HOUSING

Housing has been delineated along racial lines since European colonization of North America but an understanding of the dynamic of racial capitalism in the context of San Francisco’s disproportionately black unhoused population begins with the Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard. During WWII, a high demand for ship production coupled with the contexts that led to the great migration resulted in a large influx of black folks from the South arriving to work in Bayview/Hunter’s Point (Point of Pride, 2014). While the labor demand provided promising labor opportunities, housing discrimination limited housing opportunities for black folks to the immediate neighborhoods surrounding the shipyard (Rothstein 2018). The labor demand persisted throughout the World War and beyond as the shipyard played a large role in nuclear testing (Chapple & Elias, 2018). Civic disinvestment, racial capitalism, labor, and housing discrimination all worked to negatively impact the black population living around the shipyard. The shipyard is a superfund site: nuclear testing and manufacturing occurred and was improperly handled, a hazardous electrical power plant was built beside the residences, and a large waste management

plant and a sewage treatment plant still operate all in the same small district (Dautch & Ellington, 2018). It is unlikely a coincidence that these conditions were imposed on one the city’s only majority black district.

Hunter’s Point showcases the way racial capitalism sets the agenda of a capitalist society. It was beneficial for the city, industry, and capital accumulation that the labor required for capitalism be racially and spatially confined (Herbin-Traint 2019). Capitalist institutions needed an immediately available cheap workforce, but disdain imbued through racial hierarchies simultaneous needed spatial separation from that same community. Disinvestment kept black and brown folks in the region impoverished and available for whatever employment opportunities attainable. Both “[f]ederal agencies and the California government ignored the needs of Hunters Point tenants. The unwillingness of federal and state officials to fund Hunters Point repairs… reflect a growing political sentiment that urban programs and residents were not a priority” (Baranski, 2019). Racialized hierarchies justified this discrimination, and the role wealth plays in political structures kept the voices of these individuals unheard. The simple fact was that in a capitalist society, there was little to gain from investing in a marginalized and disenfranchised community. Racial hierarchies kept investment in Bayview/Hunter’s Point low on the city’s priorities. This is just one of the ways that racial capitalism in San Francisco led to increased housing precarity among black San Franciscans.

Another historically significant element is the erasure of affordable housing in San Francisco. One such housing model was the Single Room Occupancy Hotel (SROs). These were once the bread and butter of a city once known as ‘Hotel City,’ but vast and systemic razing of SROs removed them from the market, particularly in communities of color (Wright & Rubin, 1997). SROs are housing of last resort; they are small private rooms with communal bathrooms and spaces. They provided an integral piece of upward mobility for immigrant communities for the bulk of San Franciscan history prior to Urban Renewal’s erasure. Regions such as the Fillmore and Western Addition, which were predominantly black neighborhoods, experienced severe so-called “Urban Renewal” aimed at removing the “blight” of the SRO (Groth, 1989). But when considering the longstanding history of SROs as mechanisms of upward mobility, it is suspicious why discourse and political movements that deemed the spaces blights only seemed to become prevalent after the Great Migration (Baranski, 2019). History professor John Baranski found that while “before World War I, the slum narrative justified the expansion of government,” and “During the Great Depression and Second World War, the concept of slums helped to mobilize support for government programs”, after World Warr II, “popular and professional descriptions of slums became a crucial tool in the justification of redevelopment projects” (Baranski, 2019). He found that the race of SRO occupants seemed to be what determined if an SRO was a mechanism of upward mobility or a blight on the city. The removal of the SROs from the housing pool is also a result of racialized hierarchies and racial capitalism in San Francisco for similar reasons as the neglect and abuse of the Bayview/Hunter’s Point region. While the removal of affordable housing did not displace the current unhoused population in San Francisco, this form of housing served as housing of last resort,

but also as a mechanism of upward mobility (SRO Alliance). Because their destruction did nothing to dismantle the economic factors that necessitated their existence, it further exacerbated the housing precarity that black San Franciscans already faced through redlining and discriminatory labor practices.

The history of racial capitalism bleeds into the present housing insecurity experienced by black San Franciscans. Racial capitalism creates excessive and exploitative rent burdens that are disproportionately felt by black renters resulting in insecure housing circumstances that disproportionately displace black San Franciscans. Black renters are more likely to be rent burdened and face higher eviction rates than their white peers (Crowell 2019). But this is not merely a result of income inequality. Rather, there are further obstructions: Rent exploitation, or “tenants being overcharged in rent relative to the value of the home,” is a phenomenon that has disproportionately targeted black renters for as long as they’ve rented (Desmond & Wilmers, 2019). A 2022 study that measured “the ratio of median rent to median property taxes of owner-occupied units” found that black renters are more likely to experience rent exploitation than the general population (Crowell). Meanwhile, another study found that “renters in communities of color are more likely to reside in units with unsafe or unhealthy conditions. Yet, the neighborhood, property, and household factors proposed as explanations for this correlation are not all correlated with neighborhood racial composition” (Korver-Glen et al, 2023). They found that black renters were paying the same or more for unsafe units compared to what their white counterparts were paying for safe units of similar size, even considering the socioeconomic status of the neighborhoods in question. The measurable differences in rates of eviction, rent burden, rent exploitation, and rental unit hazards suggest a systemic abuse of housing precarity. Municipal failures to rectify these abuses suggest a system that fails to prioritize the lower rungs of its hierarchy.

These housing inequalities are not merely the result of racialized hierarchies in the housing sector, but also are the result of racial capitalism in the US justice system. In January 2023, legal scholars Sarah Schindler and Kellen Zale published their seminal work on the “Anti-Tenancy Doctrine.” This doctrine posits three key findings. First, legal structures have routinely and systematically failed tenants by prioritizing the rights of landowners over the rights of tenants. They argue that the court does not see the two groups of people as equal. Second, these laws “were enacted by legislatures and upheld by courts with the knowledge (or intent) of providing preferential legal treatment to white people or disfavored treatment to people of color by utilizing the tenant/ homeowner distinction as a proxy for race.” And lastly, legal patterns of today continue to use tenancy as a proxy for race and tenant discrimination as a proxy for racial discrimination. Under their analysis, racial capitalism influences the very legal framing of property. Setting a disadvantageous context for black Americans precipitates the housing inequalities discussed above.

Court documents and legal documents prove Schindler and Zale’s framing of the tenant/homeowner distinction being a proxy for race and its impact through court documents and legal practices. They point to court decisions where landholding plaintiffs admit to using tenancy as a proxy for race while also referring to rentals as parasites – something the courts affirmed. When

explicit redlining was outlawed, exclusionary zoning took its place. For this reason, they conclude racism – or more accurately racial capitalism – is a key cause of anti-tenancy laws. This system maintains the racial hierarchy necessary to perpetuate capitalism by creating barriers to homeownership, wealth accumulation and upward mobility for black renters, thus maintaining a body of exploitable labor. This same situation creates precarious housing that leads to higher rates of homelessness among black communities.

These housing dynamics create housing insecurity and unaffordability that lead to high rates of homelessness in black populations throughout the US. This is felt strongly in San Francisco, where black people are far more likely to experience homelessness due to rent precarity than the general population. Reducing housing insecurity through development, rent control, and housing vouchers often falls short of resolving the housing dimension of homelessness because it fails to consider the role of racial capitalism in housing.

MENTAL HEALTH

Race and class have broad impacts on mental health outcomes; nowhere is this more apparent than in the experiences of unhoused individuals. A 2023 UCSF survey found that 82% of Californians experiencing homelessness reported serious mental health conditions; 27% reported being hospitalized for a mental health condition, nearly half of which occurred only after experiencing homelessness. Many reported on the way homelessness exacerbated preexisting conditions. The prevalence of mental health issues among unhoused folks is, at some level, increased by health provider discrimination which is experienced by all unhoused individuals. However, unhoused individuals of color face a compounding bias that results in “experiencing discrimination and stigma when they sought healthcare” at higher levels than their white peers (UCSF, 2022). The racial hierarchies of capitalism have adverse mental health impacts on black folks, especially those experiencing homelessness.

Mental health in Black communities is a complex issue. Rates of mental health disorders are anticipated to be higher in Black communities than other communities. The systemic adversity black folks face on a regular basis compounded by racial discrimination, should result in higher levels of depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues. In other words, “cumulative trauma exposure is linked to poor self-rated mental health” (UCSF, 2022). However, black populations consistently show lower rates in these categories (LaMotte, Elliot, Mouzon, 2022). There are many theories as to why this phenomenon, referred to as the BlackWhite mental health paradox occurs, but two things are worth noting when applying this imbalance to homelessness through the lens of racial capitalism. First, the defining literature of mental health diagnoses and treatments are white-centric, tending to be less accurate or effective for black individuals (Claussen, 2015). The way mental health issues are framed and treated has historically catered exclusively to the white-middle class. This is a phenomenon discussed by Robinson in his seminal writings on racial capital. They argued that a racial capitalist society would value commodities, services and experiences based on their adjacency to whiteness (1983). This aligns with the way conventional framings of mental health fail marginalized communities.

While health practitioners are working to amend these inequities through trauma informed and racially informed approaches, they are operating on a system that has historically structured their services along racialized lines of hierarchy.

The second notable consideration regarding the Black-White mental health paradox is the lack of consideration of unhoused populations. Studies of community-based populations do not typically survey the unhoused or incarcerated (Pamplin & Bates, 2021). The unhoused, the incarcerated, and other bodies of marginalization are brought into these assessments. Considering the high rates of black and mentally ill individuals experiencing homelessness, there is a huge gap in the research in the fields of mental health, the black experience, and homelessness.

The story of mental health for black folks experiencing homelessness is one of discrimination, heartbreak, and resilience. The mental health experience of black individuals experiencing homelessness faces a compounding of discriminations on the basis of class and race. Racial capitalism highlights the way racialized hierarchies shape social interactions, but it does not argue race is the only hierarchical structure. Class hierarchies shape the way all unhoused individuals are viewed by health practitioners and the policy writers and voters who fail to prioritize accessible care. The racial component exacerbates the already existing discrimination, creating an additional dimension. Black unhoused folks experience a ‘double prejudice’ for their race and their housing status from health care workers and mental health diagnoses that are based on white-middle class experiences. These lines of discrimination and neglect along race and class hierarchies also bleed into the way mental health outcomes are diagnosed and treated. The result is a system that marginalizes black folks experiencing homelessness through its practitioners, diagnoses, and treatments, as well as the structural framings and understandings of mental health.

POLICING

A multitude of research has been conducted that shows the way policing operates within the racialized hierarchies of racial capitalism but far less of the work has focused on the way racialized policing impacts the unhoused. Researcher Chris Herring argued that:

“The link between urban change, housing insecurity, and racialized criminalization [has] been undertheorized by scholars documenting the hyper-policing of people of color on the one hand and those studying the criminalization of homelessness on the other” (Herring, 2019).

The compounding bias that shapes interactions with mental health practitioners likely impacts interactions with law enforcement officers as well. Also, because most police interactions with the unhoused are the result of complaints called in by citizens and businesses, compounding bias must also be explored by scholars and researchers as well. The lack of information that examines this intersection results in an incomplete understanding of the racialized policing of black folks experiencing homelessness. While further research must fill this void, the lens of racial capitalism in the history of policing black San Franciscans and black unhoused San Franciscans helps understand the existing disparities in the experiences of black unhoused individuals.

Racialized policing is almost as old as policing itself – in some

cases even older (Sparks, 2018). The police have been the first line of defense for maintaining racialized hierarchies throughout the history of the US. This tendency to side along class and racial lines is demonstrated through law enforcements history with slave patrols, enforcing segregation, and the war on drugs (Horrace & Harris, 2018). The role of law enforcement in protecting the spatial dynamics of racial hierarchies is of particular importance. Examples such as segregation enforcement, eviction facilitation, and homelessness management demonstrate the elevated level of protection property and space have over citizens of color in racialized policing. The police incident resulting in Breonna Taylor’s death reflects this notion as it “was connected to a political plan to clear a Louisville, Kentucky street for a real estate development” (Holcombe & Snyder, 2020).

While racialized hierarchical maintenance results in systemically poor police outcomes for black folks, housing status creates a compounding effect worth examining. The overpolicing of the unhoused is not new; but in the eighties, a relatively recent approach to it began when the theory of Broken Window Policing added a new procedural weapon to law enforcement’s arsenal. Broken Window Policing was a concept put forward by social scientists in 1982 that argues minor, harmless crimes such as jaywalking (or aesthetic violations such as broken windows) create an environment hospitable to more major crime (Wilson and Kelling, 1982). The theory led to a trend of legislative moves that gave law enforcement legal grounds to over police neighborhoods designated ‘run down’ far more disproportionately than before. Due to national trends of disinvestment in communities, this ethos quickly ravaged communities of color (Sparks, 2018), allowing law enforcement to further galvanize the existent racialized hierarchies. Broken Window Policing gave way to a framework of policing referred to as order-maintenance policing in the 2000s or quality of life policing, where maintaining order is viewed as a means reducing more serious crime (Herring, 2018). The criminalization of social disorder in a capitalist society meant criminalizing vagrancy in the 19th century and sitting on sidewalks in the 21st (SF Penal code, 2023). The policing of the unhoused through the framework of maintaining this type of strict orderly social conduct has defined law enforcement in San Francisco for the past few decades.

Though the specific racial dimension of order maintenance policing of the unhoused is under-researched, its impact on the general unhoused population is well documented. The near daily police interactions unhoused individuals experience have three main outcomes: move-along orders, citations, and arrest (Herring, Yarbrough, & Alatorre 2019). Each has seriously adverse impacts on the unhoused that perpetuate their situation, especially for those who are black. Introduction into the carceral system can create barriers to shelter access and government subsidies in addition to the more obvious risks and fears associated with incarceration. While citations may seem low to observers, ranging from $50 to $100 (Kieschnick 2018), any fine to a person experiencing homelessness should be considered an excessive fine; they are often unable to pay these fines, or unable to attend court to fight them without risking loss of a spot in a shelter lineup or of unprotected goods (Herring, 2019). Failure to pay outstanding fines can result in a bench warrant for one’s arrest, resulting in the carceral harm previously mentioned. Even move-along

orders have adverse latent impacts on unhoused individuals that perpetuate and galvanize their unhoused status. Ordering unhoused individuals to relocate removes them from the informal social structures they have been able to establish in the spaces they occupy. This has been shown to result in increased risk of violence, theft, incarceration, and overdose (Herring, 2018). When unhoused folks are shuffled by law enforcement, they must reinstitute safety structures they had previously established, unfortunately this is not always successful. Although these adverse impacts are not concretely documented to disproportionately impact black unhoused individuals, they are still a notably negative dimension of experiencing homelessness, which is disproportionately experienced by black San Franciscans.

The specific ways order-maintenance policing disproportionately targets people of color experiencing homelessness is unobserved in San Francisco, but there are some adjacent studies that shed further light onto this dimension. A survey in San Diego found that black unhoused folks “reported high rates of police contact, frequent lack of respect; overt racism, sexism, and homophobia; and a failure to offer basic services during these encounters” (Carroll, Flanigan, & Guitierrez 2023). While San Diego is particularly cruel to the unhoused, the racialized hierarchies that shape its treatment of black unhoused folks extend to San Francisco (Welsh & Abdel-Samad, 2018). Again, while this remains conjecture without more thorough research, police data shows that “in a city where Black residents make up less than six percent of the population, they account for nearly half of the use-of-force incidents by police officers” (Balakrishnan, 2023; citing SFPD, 2022). This data point highlights the compounding discrimination against black unhoused individuals face in policing. With black folks constituting 6% of the general population and 38% of the unhoused population, the severe disproportionality of SFPD use-of-force incidents highlights the way law enforcement enforces racialized hierarchies in San Francisco (SF Dept of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, 2022). These numbers suggest a statistically significant compounding of discrimination and violence against black people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco. This indicates that in practice, there are likely disproportionately adverse police interaction outcomes for black unhoused San Franciscans. Because adverse interactions with law enforcement have been shown to create barriers to housing support, the disproportionality of law enforcement interactions enforces and galvanizes the racialized hierarchies that perpetuate homelessness for black San Franciscans (Herring, 2018).

Excessive policing of black unhoused individuals is the result of compounding bias generated by racial capitalism. The racialized hierarchies that capitalism requires are enforced through our justice system and the institutions of law enforcement. Law enforcement has, throughout history, ensured the maintenance of racialized hierarchies and class hierarchies in our society (Zinn, 1980). The intersection of these two roles puts black unhoused individuals disproportionately in law enforcement’s sights. Their subservience to class hierarchies and the propertied class is highlighted through the complaint-oriented policing model, which has resulted in policing distributions that do not reflect public safety, or even unhoused populations, but the distribution of wealth in the city. The compounding of biases along racial and class hierarchies in both law enforcement and the propertied class create

a hostile context for black folks aiming to escape homelessness, as police interactions can compromise one’s eligibility for housing services and support programs.

REFRAMING MANAGEMENT

In the city of San Francisco there is a wide spectrum of alternative homelessness management entities. A way of organizing homelessness service entities was created by Berkely researcher Darren Noy. They arranged service providers on a left to right political spectrum and examined the way these entities interacted with one another and adjacent San Francisco institutions. From this, they clustered organizations into three main categories: left, right, and center. The left consisted of mainly grassroots organizations, the center of larger scale nonprofits, and the right of probusiness entities such as business improvement districts. The center and left groups constituted a vast majority of organizations and service providers. Both groups had similar framings around homelessness and housing instability but failed to use this majority to enact strong policy influence for two main reasons. First, capital. Organizations on the right were well-funded by capitalist entities of the city: real estate, commerce bodies, businesses, corporations and supported right-leaning perspectives. For example, the right-leaning policy campaigns that brought about San Francisco’s notorious tent-sweep policy were obscenely overfunded. Organizations on the left were able to raise 1-2% of the finances used by the right framing policies. The second reason, capitalism. While centrist and leftist organizations shared empathetic concerns for the unhoused, the main division between the entities was their willingness to collaborate with capitalist structures. Leftist groups considered capitalist institutions to be the source of the problems they were trying to solve, subsequently, collaboration meant compromise; it gave positive press to the causes of homelessness. Centrist groups considered leftist’s anti-capitalist perspective to be unrealistic idealism that hindered providing support to the people they were trying to help. This resulted in the center often siding with the right on policies and practices. Based on Noy’s analysis, in the context of racial capitalism, it is more accurate to cluster organizations into two main groups: pro-capitalists – whether out of ideological harmony or reluctant practicality – and anti-capitalists.

THE INDUSTRIAL COMPLEXES

The tension between pro- and anti-capitalist organizing has been observed by a major critique of the model known as the nonprofit industrial complex (INCITE!, 2007). This critique argues that the conventional nonprofit model, among other things, forces hierarchical rigidity, orients organizations into a profit driven model, centralizes and deradicalizes objectives, and depoliticizes movements, stating, “where are the mass movements of today in this country? The short answer—they got funded… it is important to recognize how limited social justice groups and organizations have become as they’ve been incorporated into the non-profit model” (INCITE!, 2007). While grassroots organizations often maintain their anti-capitalist ideology, capitalist investment props up the conventional nonprofits that do not align with this view.

The nonprofit industrial complex is an institution of both capitalism, and legislative structuring. The 501(c)(3) tax exempt nonprofit model requires that:

Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity. Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.

The fact that our laws prohibit nonprofit organizations from engaging in politics whatsoever but permit corporations to engage financially beyond the rights of citizens through funding SuperPACs speaks to the structural imposition capitalism holds in government systems (Supreme Court, 2008).

The racialized hierarchies embedded in US capitalism extend into the conventional nonprofit model. In the United States, “non-profit organizations and institutions serving those impacted by housing instability are overwhelmingly white… [and] only 14% of [these] nonprofits have 50% people of color in leadership roles (Aviles, 2023). A 2020 report found that this disparity was the “result of racialized barriers, including lack of support by white boards of directors and biases of executive recruiters” and that “nonprofits need to focus their attention on structures of race and racism, simultaneously addressing the concerns and experiences of people of color” (Building Movement Project). The same racialized hierarchies that limit access to housing, education, employment, and livelihood also limit entrance into the nonprofit sector. As a result of this underrepresentation, the assistance programs nonprofits oversee are framed through the same biases that inform the broader capitalist society.

Researcher Ann Aviles combined this data with the concept of the White-Savior industrial complex. The White-Savior industrial complex “supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening” and “is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege” (Cole, 2012). Applying this lens to the nonprofit sector, they found that for nonprofits:

“To seriously reckon with housing instability, the role of racism must be at the forefront in understanding how [people of color] are relegated to the margins of society through structural inequities; inequities that repeatedly prohibit communities of color from accessing safe, stable, secure housing”.

They then argue the prevalence of the organizations that do not assume a more radical approach “will not serve as protection or a solution” but will only perpetuate and expand the imbalance “between the ‘have’ and ‘have-nots’—of which race is a driving factor” (Aviles, 2023). This is due to the critical failure to address the core issues that cause the inequalities organizations focus. This stifling of substantive change is the result of the way the nonprofit industrial complex operates in tandem with the white-savior industrial complex to perpetuate one another and maintain the status quo.

Applying these two complexes to the reframing of homelessness through the lens of racial capitalism presents a rather clear narrative of the barriers set to adequately aid and support black folks experiencing homelessness. As previously discussed, racialized hierarchies embedded in capitalism throughout the

history of the United States have led to increased housing insecurity in black populations through institutional discrimination, redlining, and individual prejudices barring employment, wealth building, or any other conventional modes of upward mobility. This has led to higher rates of homelessness in the black community across the country. The disproportionality of policing in the black community and unhoused community in San Francisco results in a double prejudice for black unhoused or housing insecure San Franciscans. Because police interactions can exacerbate the difficulties of experiencing homelessness and because citations and incarceration can render unhoused individuals ineligible for supportive services, the result of this overpolicing is a much harder path to escaping homelessness for black San Franciscans. Further discrimination from health practitioners and the mental health institutional structure result from compounding bias. The same racialized hierarchies in capitalism seep into the dynamics of all labor sectors, including the nonprofit sector; both its origin and its current context.

Historically, the formation of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit has been posited as a mechanism to assimilate and tame more radical, grassroots forms of organizing (INCITE!, 2007). The 501(c)(3) introduced through the 1969 Tax Reform Act just after the Civil Rights movement brought about the Fair Housing Act and amid ongoing Vietnam War Protests and the Stonewall Uprising (IRS n.d.). Its apolitical requirement has been framed as a means of curtailing the radical upheaval that the country’s institutions were facing. These upheavals challenged the racialized hierarchies within capitalism. Institutional structures such as segregation maintained hierarchical labor, housing, and political contexts that aided capitalism. This led to the creation of 501(c)(3) tax exempt status, bringing this resistance into the folds of capitalism. The apolitical requirement led organizations that focused on the results of racial capitalism rather than responsible institutions to succeed over anti-capitalist entities.

This was compounded by white saviorism, which explicitly requires racialized hierarchy (INCITE!, 2007). White saviorism values whiteness above other racial or ethnic compositions but frames that racial preference in a veneer of compassion. The nonprofit industrial complex was a product of both racial capitalism and white saviorism. While racial capitalism built the 501(c) (3) exemption policies, white saviorism framed nonprofit work as assisting the inferior, rather than assisting the victims of an exploitative system. The mutually beneficial dynamic between the nonprofit system and capitalist institutions resulted in the nonprofit industrial complex; where the success of organizations depends heavily on their compliance with the institutions of capitalism that finance their existence.

This mutually beneficial arrangement is the core of Teju Cole’s white-savior industrial complex. The racialized hierarchies of capitalism create the disparities that warrant the nonprofit industrial complex, but the White Savior Industrial complex keeps the narrative away from those institutions of capitalism and perpetuates the socioeconomic systems that drive inequality. The white savior industrial complex also funnels well-meaning individuals away from challenging the conventional structures. Successful nonprofits are often ones that, as Cole suggests, are “about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege” (2012). These nonprofits attract more capital, more volunteers and employees,

and more government and corporate support. All of these elevate these organizations and therefore elevate their narrative in the public eye, creating a positive feedback loop. Because of this, organizations often must choose between addressing the root causes of inequality and scaling up their models.

This phenomenon has certainly had an impact on support and management of San Francisco’s unhoused population. Organizations that challenge the institutions of capitalism are marginalized by the institutions of capitalism while organizations that sidestep the issue to treat the symptoms are propped up by them. A worthwhile example of the way anti-capitalist policies and organizations face obstacles implementing solutions in capitalist society when it comes to implementation in a capitalist society can be found in the evolution of the CARTsf program. It highlights the way scaling up and remaining anti-capitalist can be somewhat mutually exclusive objectives. The program was created by an anti-capitalist grassroots organization but was only scaled up when a pro-capitalist organization presented an alternative version that appeased the demands of its capitalist context and did not address or acknowledge the core causes of the program’s necessity. By failing to address the root causes of homelessness, this alternative measure fails to enact truly effective change.

APPLYING THESE THEORIES TO CARTSF, THE COALITION ON HOMELESSNESS, & URBAN ALCHEMY

In 2021, the Coalition on Homelessness and over 20 other grassroots organizations published their proposal for the Compassionate Alternative Response Team (CARTsf) to provide a safe and effective alternative to managing the unhoused through the police and public works departments (Coalition on Homelessness, 2021). The proposal received unanimous support from the city’s police commissions, and the board of supervisors set aside three million dollars of funding. However, much to the dismay of community organizers, a new alternative was created by the nonprofit Urban Alchemy that received the municipal contract which played no part in the creation of CART, and has been accused of operating as police in all but name (SF Chronicle Editorial Board, 2023; Balakrishnan, 2023). The evolution of CARTsf into the Urban Alchemy’s Community Response Team (CRT) provides an excellent example of the problems that come with scaling up anti-capitalist approaches in a capitalist social context.

Urban Alchemy is a complicated organization to observe. In the five years since it began operating in San Francisco, it has exploded, earning 62 million dollars in street management contracts with the city of San Francisco and taking up management contracts across California, Texas, and Oregon (Oamek & Montgomery, 2023). Their model is to hire formerly incarcerated and/or unhoused folks to manage homelessness in their contracted areas, arguing that these past traumas inform their employees’ responses to hostile circumstance and result in better outcomes (Urban Alchemy, 2023). They clean streets and manage the Safe Sleep Villages and some of the Shelter in Place hotels in San Francisco. The organization is focused on managing homelessness respectfully and ethically. Many of the formerly unhoused and formerly incarcerated workers take pride in improving streets around which they grew up, and report that they are making a

positive impact on their community. However, the organization has also received criticism for the conduct of its workers, including assault, sexual harassment, and attempted homicide; lack of accountability due to the fact that their practitioners do not have IDs or badge numbers, making complaints difficult to file; inadequate training of practitioners; and of shuffling the unhoused the same way the police and public works department do (Moench, 2023; Balakrishnan, 2023; Sjostedt, 2023; Kukura, 2023). For these reasons, many activists and grassroots organizations are less than enthusiastic about the implementation of Urban Alchemy’s CRT over the original CARTsf program.

Between the publication of the CARTsf proposal and the Urban Alchemy CRT implementation, several key changes had been made to the program. CARTsf required each team to have a degree-holding mental health practitioner. This requirement was removed from the model and replaced with an individual with 500 hours of field training and 40 hours of classroom training in de-escalation and trauma informed care and the ability to call in mental health professionals. The role of Community Response Teams extended to also include “neighborhood beautification and street cleaning” under the Urban Alchemy model. CRTs also reduced the team training level (Chronicle Editorial Board, 2023; CARTsf, 2022). These changes accomplish two main results: first, they reduce the cost of the program’s operation, and second, they model the program closer to Urban Alchemy’s existing models. While the CARTsf program called for 6.8 million dollars annually, the CRT contract was for 2.75 (CARTsf, 2021; Moench, 2023). As the implementation of this program is recent, it is too early to tell what the actual impact will be, but the evolution shows the impact and influence of capitalism Darren Noy suggested in his analysis of organizations in San Francisco and the complementary dynamics of racial capitalism, the nonprofit industrial complex, and the white savior industrial complex.

Urban Alchemy occupies the centrist bubble in Noy’s breakdown. It empathizes with the unhoused and aims to rectify racism and inequality but does not see capitalism’s institutions as antagonistic to solving homelessness under racial capitalism. Outside of government contracts, Urban Alchemy has millions in contracts with legal firms, business improvement districts, the UC law school, and other businesses across the city (Smith, 2023). This is because Urban Alchemy achieves the same effect of police citations and move-along orders without employing law enforcement from the perspective of these capitalist institutions. It benefits from the white-savior industrial complex by affirming the emotions of its benefactors.

By using this more compassionate alternative to policing that still accomplishes the same goal of maintaining security, contracting with Urban Alchemy validates privilege, a main premise of Coles white-savior industrial complex. A recently published article supporting the organization cited as proof of its effectiveness the stark contrast in cleanliness and presence of unhoused folks at the border of one of Urban Alchemy’s contracted zones, “the west side of the block, abutting a shuttered Chase Bank, was filled with people, many of them either using drugs or passed out. Piles of trash dotted the sidewalk. Yet the east side of the block was clear. No signs of drug use. No trash. In the sunlight, the sidewalk literally sparkled” (Knight, 2023). This, however, supports claims that Urban Alchemy is simply displacing the

unhoused the same way police and the public works department did previously. Urban Alchemy’s approach to homelessness management follows a trend of government officials “[using] nonprofits to keep their promises to reduce interactions between police and homeless people without substantially changing the system” (Oamek & Montgomery, 2023). The result is a program that furthers the interest of capital, fails to address the root causes of homelessness, and continues to make escaping homelessness more difficult for folks experiencing it.

The White-Savior and nonprofit industrial complexes help explain why the city chose Urban Alchemy’s program over the one proposed by the Coalition on Homelessness. The white savior industrial complex ensures that nonprofits succeed by appeasing the narratives of the institutions of capitalism. The Coalition on Homelessness is an organization that does not shy away from challenging the institutions of capitalism. One of the main arguments of the nonprofit industrial complex is that by structuring nonprofits in a corporate hierarchical structure focused on growth and profits, the values of capitalism and capital growth become priorities. The cost difference between the two programs made Urban Alchemy the better candidate because the value of the benefit to the unhoused individual is not as high of a concern for the assessment. The nonprofit and white-savior industrial complexes have created a social structure that determines the success of a nonprofit based on its compliance with the demands of capital. It is likely that CRT was chosen of CARTsf for two reasons beyond the price tag. First, the Coalition and other grassroots organizations involved in its creation challenge the institutions of capitalism and hold them responsible for housing insecurity. This results in a tumultuous relationship between those institutions and these organizations. Second, this anti-capitalism disposition indicates an unlikeliness that a program drafted and organized by the Coalition would compromise in order to adhere to the demands of capital. Urban Alchemy’s willingness to conduct unofficial tent sweeps and move along orders has been demonstrated and well documented – almost as well documented as the Coalition on Homelessness’ disdain for such behaviors. Note that these preferences are not necessarily the preferences of the municipal government but are more explicitly the preferences of corporate bodies within the city of San Francisco.

DISCUSSION

This paper applied Cedric Robinson’s concept of racial capitalism to homelessness epidemic in San Francisco. It found that racialized hierarchies embedded in American capitalism have resulted in severely disproportionate adverse housing circumstances for black San Franciscans. Black renters experience higher eviction rates, interest rates, rates of hazardous living conditions, and rent prices. This compounds the way a history of discriminatory housing and labor practices barred black renters from avenues of home ownership and upward mobility throughout the twentieth century. The result is a system that renders black San Franciscans’ housing far more precarious than the general population leading to higher rates of homelessness.

Once experiencing homelessness, black San Franciscans experience compounding bias from law enforcement and health practitioners, including mental health practitioners. The history of police enforcing racial hierarchies by policing space has

negatively impacted black folks for centuries and has resulted in more chronic homelessness in unhoused populations. Black unhoused folks are disproportionately targeted by police interactions. While data is not available to determine the role citizen complaints – and therefore citizen biases – play in creating these frequencies, the fact that police incidents involving use of force disproportionately happen to black San Franciscans seems to indicate that law enforcement officers have at least some roles in the creation of this discrepancy. The institutions of mental health services are white-centric. Beyond this disparity, black unhoused folks have reported being discriminated against by health and mental health practitioners at higher rates than the general unhoused population. Both instances of compounding bias make homelessness a harsher experience for black unhoused individuals and end up making escaping homelessness more difficult.

Lastly, racial capitalism creates a pair of industrial complexes within the nonprofit sector that results in a system that props up programs aimed at treating the symptoms of racial capitalism rather racial capitalism itself. The Nonprofit Industrial Complex describes the way the nonprofit model deradicalizes organizers and activists. The apolitical requirement for 501(c)(3) eligibility keeps nonprofit narratives away from addressing institutional change. The corporate hierarchical model emphasizes the same values of growth and profit, and the need for investment keeps nonprofit organizations beholden to owners of capital, individuals who invariably benefit from maintaining the institutions of racial capitalism.

CONCLUSION

On November 18, 2019, Dominque Walker and Misty Cross from the newly formed Moms 4 Housing occupied a vacant home in Oakland. A month and a half later, they were forcibly evicted by the Sheriff’s Department. Ten days after that an agreement was made between the LLC owner, Mom’s 4 Housing, and the Oakland Community Land Trust (OAKCLT) for OAKCLT to acquire the home for transitional housing (Solomon, 2020; OAKCLT, 2022; Thuy Vo, 2020). This inspired similar occupation measures in cities across the country and resulted in legislation that helped give prospective homebuyers a leg up on corporate investors (Baldassari, 2020; AP 2020). The goal of their occupation was to “reclaim housing for the Oakland community from the big banks and real estate speculators;” something that in terms of Oakland property – they were able to accomplish (Wolffe, 2019). This example demonstrates a hopeful future in the struggle for housing. The Moms 4 Housing occupation represents an approach to solving homelessness that is informed by racial capitalism, addresses the institutional mechanisms that perpetuate the problem, and holds those entities responsible for resolving the issue. It sidesteps the nonprofit and white-savior industrial complexes, which trap other organizations and prevent impactful change. More work must be done to understand how to scale approaches such as this to the size necessary to remedy housing instability and homelessness in the US, especially in marginalized communities of color.

By subverting the restraints of the conventional 501(c)(3) model, movements like Moms 4 Housing and the Coalition on Homelessness present hopeful possibilities if they can find ways to scale up their approaches. The question of how to scale up an

anti-capitalist approach to social reform in a capitalist society is vital to understanding how to adequately address homelessness and housing precarity.

The findings of this paper highlight a gap in the literature linking racism and racial capitalism to current housing precarity and homelessness. While the link has been demonstrated here, its complexity and the personal impact must be assessed to accurately understand the impact of racial capitalism on homelessness. As previously stated, failing to understand the impact of racial hierarchies creates solutions that miss a large component of the problem they hope to address. It is important that the impact of this dynamic on policy measures be examined and implemented. Furthermore, the scope of this analysis has been limited to San Francisco and the Bay Area, the elevated rates of homelessness and housing precarity in black communities is across the country, but the specific dynamic that it plays is unique to each locality. Further exploration into these topics could inform and establish policy measures, practices, and programs that can address this missing component of current framings and approaches to homelessness in the US.

jkmurti@dons.usfca.edu

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Untitled (Pedestrian)

Untitled (Curtain Wall)

Untitled (Facade)

The three visual works deal with alienation in urban space in the context of 20th century modernism. I take Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building as an occasion to think about the relationship between urban inhabitants and architecture. The works argue that the Seagram Building is one site at which the inhabitant is effaced by urban processes, representing that relationship through a series of visual registers that diffuse and distort the building and inhabitant to seek moments of opacity in which the inhabitant might escape the building’s spatial territorialization.

Ben Erdmann, CC ‘25 bpe2114@columbia.edu

MONUMENTS RESISTENCE & ADHERENCE of

How Harlem’s public memory challenges judicial adherence, and the steep price the community pays.

and

However, when we look at monumentality -- heavy, expensive, permanent pieces of art, Harlem’s only pieces are all dedicated to activists of resistence. This represents the public memory and persistent need for the Harlem community to remember their heritage of ghting against opporession,

and slavery’s replacement: incarcaration.

This psychographic map examines how Harlem’s public memory challenges judicial adherence, and the steep price the community pays in incarceration rates.

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Zoe Pyne, BC ‘26