urban case studies URBAN DIFFERENCE + CHANGE FALL 2020 - YALE ARCH 4247 + MORGAN STATE ARCH 418
PROFESSOR JUSTIN GARRETT MOORE + DR. SAMIA KIRCHNER TEACHING ASSISTANT LILLY AGUTU
The information provided in this Report illustrates an assignment in a course offered at Morgan State University School of Architecture and Planning and Yale University School of Architecture. We make no warranties, express or implied, regarding the work performed by students participating in this course. The reviewers of the information contained in this Report hold harmless the two Universities against any claims made in the whole or in part of materials developed by students. Efforts were made to ensure a quality product but it is important to recognize that this Report illustrates student learning outcomes conceived primarily for academic purposes.
URBAN DIFFERENCE & CHANGE YALE ARCH 4247 + MORGAN STATE ARCH 418 Faculty: Justin Garrett Moore, AICP, NOMA and Samia Kirchner, Ph.D. Teaching Assistant: Lilly Agutu Our cities and their socioeconomic and built environments continue to exemplify difference. From housing and health to mobility and monuments, cities small and large, north and south—like New Haven and Baltimore—demonstrate intractable disparities. The disparate impacts made apparent by the COVID-19 pandemic and the reinvigorated and global Black Lives Matter movement demanding change are remarkable. Change is another essential indicator of difference in urban environments, such as disinvestment, disaster, or gentrification. Cities must navigate how considerations like climate change and growing income inequality intersect with politics, culture, gender equality and identity, immigration, migration, and technology, among other conditions and forms of disruption. In Urban Difference and Change, we explored some key questions: • How are cities and their environments shaped by difference, including the legacies and derivatives of colonialism and modernism? • How do the structures and systems of difference operate in our spaces, places, and cities? • How might we better understand and find agency in the past, present, and future of urban contexts using an anti-racist and decolonial approach to design and urbanism? • How can frameworks like cultural heritage, environmental conservation, and social equity and inclusion challenge dominant narratives or unjust past and present conditions? The course operated as an online (via Zoom) trans-institutional collaboration between Yale University SoA in New Haven, Connecticut, and Morgan State University SAP in Baltimore, Maryland. This partnership allowed for interaction among students from different backgrounds and fields of study in order to share a learning environment and bring diverse experiences and perspectives to our work. The format of the course included readings, presentations, conversations, and case studies in the first half of the semester. The second half of the semester focused on the development of students’ independent research and design for place-based or issue-based projects or research focused on difference and change in the urban environment. Our collective work from the seminar is compiled, in an unedited and in-process state, in this online publication.
01___NEW URBANISM 02___ECORSE AND WYANDOTTE PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN DETROIT 03___RACE WALLS 04___LIVING SOILS 05___FOOD SOVEREIGNITY 06___URBAN VOIDS 07___CLOSING DOWN RIKERS 08___TORRE DAVID
New Urbanism
In Iberville, New Orleans Alexander Whittaker, Courtney Carrington, Marshay McCain
Bienville Basin in Iberville, New Orleans Https://www.nola.com/multimedia/photos/collection_0f659628-0667-11ea-ba4c-6f8850ab2135.html#4
INTRODUCTION In the design of city redevelopments, the term New Urbanism captures many desirable characteristics of a project. It is defined by the Congress for the New Urbanism as “human-scaled urban design�1 that focuses on walkability, connectivity, mixed-use development, and generally a high quality of urban life. These practices are implemented in a way that is easily replicable and applicable anywhere, while at the same time often highly specific to a particular site or city. The features of New Urbanism are reproduced in targeted 1 Https://www.cnu.org/resources/what-new-urbanism
urban areas: failing communities that have ceased to be safe, profitable, or reachable in the eyes of the city. Following Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans designated the public housing projects throughout the city as the playgrounds for New Urbanism. One of these housing neighborhoods, the Iberville, was located near the historic French Quarter. Parts of the neighborhood were demolished in 2013 with a very specific vision. The completed project of Bienville Basin in New Orleans exemplifies the practices of New Urbanism, and further investigation into the redevelopment reveals a complicated history of housing that remains today.
CONTEXT the public housing projects of “The Big Four” and Iberville were constructed in New Orleans in the 1940’s, and became associated with poverty and crime. Prior to Katrina, government officials were already proposing plans to demolish Iberville and build attractions in its place. The history of Iberville was a familiar story; it was a housing project that during segregation was exclusively for whites, but as with many places in the inner city, it became predominantly black after “white flight”2 occured in the neighborhood. The hurricane’s destruction created a pressing need for housing and could have prompted renovation and investment in public housing areas, but the crisis was instead used as motivation for tearing down the only moderately damaged buildings. There was a growing sentiment that design would fix the deteriorating areas where social policies and practices had failed. Iberville, the city’s last public housing project to be demolished, was transformed into Bienville Basin, an area of mixed-income housing and mixed use. The Bienville Basin project was completed using the Choice Neighborhoods grant, a federal initiative from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that was awarded to New Orleans to redesign struggling neighborhoods following Katrina. Centered on creating affordable housing, raising incomes, and improving features in neighborhoods,3 Choice Neighborhoods “is designed to remake public housing using the principles of the Charter for the New Urbanism.”4 ISSUES An approach centered on community development can create separation between neighborhoods and lead to the isolation that city planners in New Orleans were attempting to combat. Just as design cannot erase social dilemmas, spatial formulas like New Urbanism as a framework can fail to foster true inclusivity. Does a project like Bienville Basin actually promote encounters with difference? Many argue that the achieved density and concentration of amenities limit our con2 Https://www.nola.com/news/politics/article_23e7220a-057d-11ea-a319-5314db00d55d.html 3 Https://www.hud.gov/cn 4 Https://www.cnu.org/what-we-do/build-greatplaces/iberville-offsites
ceptions of what a community is. A paper on the critiques of New urbanism states, “A community should be ‘liberated’ from territorial limitations, because the lives of individuals become spatially dispersed to a greater and greater extent.”5 New Urbanism evokes comparisons to gentrification; neither are inherently negative, but the application of the movement as a cure-all can be damaging to existing structures of living. That’s not to say that the project is not a success in the ways it fostered connection with other areas in the city, preserved existing structures and landmarks, and stimulated the neighborhood as commercially viable.
5 Https://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/ udi/59/1/article-p17.xml?language=en
Top: Communities input on the project Https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/PIH/documents/neworleanshsing.pdf Bottom: Neighborhood Poverty in New Orleans; Bienville basin is located in a 20% to 30% Poverty rate area https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2015/08/27/
Before Iberville, the area was known as Storyville, and was the a Red Light District https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/PIH/documents/neworleanshsing.pdf
The Iberville Grid, including the historic St. Louis Cemetary on Site.
https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/PIH/documents/neworleanshsing.pdf
Artist Rendering of the Redesigned Bienville Basin https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/PIH/documents/neworleanshsing.pdf
Highlighted areas of Bienville Basin and the Nearby Choice Neighborhood Off Sites developments https://www.hriproperties.com/case-study/bienville-basin/
DESIGN Bienville Basin’s design put the principles of New Urbanism into practice. Forming connectivity was of the utmost priority to the planners and developers, and they achieved this through the reintroduction of the historic street grid, establishing continuity with the surrounding area. This connectivity is also extended to the approach of neighborhood revitalization provided by the Choice Neighborhoods initiative. The Iberville Offsites project restored historic homes beyond the delineations of the public housing site, an example of this holistic reknitting of the social and spatial fabric.6 As with other New Urbanism developments, the concept of diversity led the Bienville Basin Design, through the focus on the heterogeneity of incomes and race, as well as the variety of building types and functions. The middle to low income housing was built to face the street, unlike the housing’s previous design. Preservation was also a key pillar of the redevelopment. The design and construction had to account for the existence of the St. Louis cemetery on site, leading to modifications of the master plan. Additionally, the plans allowed for the preservation of 16 historic Iberville buildings,7 connecting the site to its past. OUTCOMES The completed development boasts a computer learning center, a childhood reading room, fitness centers, parks, outdoor dining areas, a coffee shop, and a yoga studio.8 Mixed-use buildings and spaces, a staple of New Urbanism, were incorporated fully with this design, and the street grid was reestablished. Another measure of the success of a development is investment and subsequent profit, in order to accomplish Choice Neighborhoods’ goal of lifting people out of poverty. But this story leaves out the fact that many of the people who were in poverty had to leave because there were only so many low-income housing units included in the design. Iberville had its share of problems, but the community that used to live there was 6 Https://www.cnu.org/what-we-do/build-greatplaces/iberville-offsites 7 Https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/PIH/documents/neworleanshsing.pdf 8 Https://www.nola.com/news/politics/article_23e7220a-057d-11ea-a319-5314db00d55d.html
fractured by the new development. A resident from another redeveloped public housing project in New Orleans said, “It’s hard to explain. There’s something missing, and you miss it every day. You miss your neighbors for one. Like we used to sit on the steps and conversate with our neighbors, and it’s not like that anymore.”9 Iberville has been completely changed, in many ways for the better, but one is left wondering what happened to the people that were left behind. CONCLUSION New Urbanism’s identity is founded on the centrality of human need and the most basic of these is housing. The history of Iberville lives on in the existence of the remaining building and residents. Bienville Basin in New Orleans applies the general model of New Urbanism to a specific site of public housing, and offers a new form of creating self-sufficiency that does not isolate. Yet even with thoughtful design, the issues of connectivity, diversity, and walkability will continue to be contended in this development and many more like it. The Bienville Basin redevelopment speaks of the potential for thriving neighborhoods, when the inclusion of difference is achieved from the start.
9 Https://www.npr.org/2015/08/17/431267040/afterkatrina-new-orleans-public-housing-is-a-mix-of-pasteland-promises
New yoga studio and coffee shop for the residents Https://www.nola.com/multimedia/photos/collection_0f659628-0667-11ea-ba4c-6f8850ab2135.html#16
Building design layout, Highlighting Features of New Urbanism Https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/PIH/documents/neworleanshsing.pdf
Krauss Company, with Iberville public housing in view on the top left, prior to Bienville Basin redevelopment. Https://www.nola.com/multimedia/photos/collection_0f659628-0667-11ea-ba4c-6f8850ab2135.html#17
Community of Bienville celebrating the new development Https://www.nola.com/multimedia/photos/collection_0f659628-0667-11ea-ba4c-6f8850ab2135.html#4
Technology Center added to Bienville Basin Https://www.nola.com/multimedia/photos/collection_0f659628-0667-11ea-ba4c-6f8850ab2135.html#11
Ground level view of Bienville Basin Https://www.nola.com/news/politics/article_23e7220a-057d-11ea-a319-5314db00d55d.html
Aerial View of Bienville Basin Https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bienville+Basin+Apartments/@29.9583015,-90.0734863,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x3a49f54affcecae3!8m2!3d29.9583015!4d-90.0734863
Ideal Application of New Urbanism • An Ideal application of New Urbanism is a design that focuses on the Human Scale of the Urban Design. It focuses heavily on the walkability of the community ensuring that housing and shopping stay relatively close to each other.
General Application
• The general application of New Gentrification. It can potential to displacement. It begins to create that are designed to keep people out.
n of New Urbanism
w Urbanism resembles the process of o create problems like red lining and e what we call “bubble communities” e that aren’t apart of the community
Specific Application of New Urbanism in the Bienville Basin Community • In the Bienville Basin community, the application of New Urbanism has led to a redevelopment of the neighborhood. It attempts to bring in new residents while trying not to displace the original community members with its Low-income housing. It tries to add to the community without taking away what made it special. It suffers from the common problem of New Urbanism creating a “bubble community” that makes it stick out like a red balloon.
Ecorse and Wyandotte Public Schools in Detroit Re-Segregation by Education
Hannah Mayer Baydoun, Mereese Peltier, Kyle Coxe
Left Above: Aerial view of Ecorse Community High School. Left Below: Street view of Ecorse Community High School. Right Above: Aerial view of Roosevelt High School in Wyandotte. Right Below: Street view of Roosevelt High School. Attribution: Google Maps.
INTRODUCTION Deed restrictions imposed by developers in the suburban housing markets throughout the 20th century created a lasting racial divide in many US cities still seen today. Figures like J.C. Nichols and Harry S. Kissell’s established homeowner’s associations and schools in their developments to maintain real estate values while forming communities of exclusion.1 Schools remain a challenging issue in the US for many today, especially communities of low socioeconomic status. The suburbs Ecorse and Wyandotte south of Detroit, Michigan, are the areas of interest in this study. Broad demographic overviews yield the Ecorse Public School District at a median household income of $40,703 for parents with children in a public school and a racial breakdown of 30% White, 43% Black, 18% Hispanic/Latino, 9% Other.2 Wy1 Worley, William S. J. C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City: Innovation in Planned Residential Communities. University of Missouri Press, 1993, p. 175. 2 ACS-ED. “Ecorse Public School District, MI Demographic Dashboard 2014-18.” National Center for Education Statistics, 2020, nces.ed.gov/Programs/Edge/
andotte Public School District consists of a median household income of $66,785 for parents with children in a public school and a racial breakdown of 93% White, 1% Black, 4% Hispanic/ Latino, 2% Other.3 Narrowing interest, Ecorse Community High School’s student body consists of 10% White, 83% Black, 6% Hispanic/Latino, and 1% Other.4 Wyandotte’s Roosevelt High School’s student body consists of 81% White, 5% Black, 11% Hispanic/Latino, and 3% Other.5 The high school demographics
ACSDashboard/2612930. 3 ACS-ED. “Wyandotte City School District, MI Demographic Dashboard 201418.” National Center for Education Statistics, 2020, nces.ed.gov/Programs/ Edge/ACSDashboard/2636540. 4 Common Core of Data. “Ecorse Community High School Directory Information (2019-2020).” National Center for Education Statistics, 2020, nces.ed.gov/ ccd/schoolsearch/school_detail.asp?Search=1&Zip=48146&Miles=20&DistrictType=1&DistrictType=2&DistrictType=3&DistrictType=4&DistrictType=5&DistrictType=6&DistrictType=7&NumOfStudentsRange=more&NumOfSchoolsRange=more&SchoolPageNum=2&ID=261293004988. 5 Common Core of Data. “Roosevelt High School Directory Information (2019-2020).” National Center for Education Statistics, 2020, nces.ed.gov/ ccd/schoolsearch/school_detail.asp?Search=1&Miles=10&Zip=48195&SchoolPa-
of White and Black student populations are nearly inverses of each other in these adjacent districts. The interest of this case study looks at the difference of Ecorse Community High School and Wyandotte’s Roosevelt High School’s and their respective proficiency rates, funding, and school facilities. CONTEXT Detroit is of particular interest because of its highly segregated metropolitan area and “dearth of school transportation services.”6 By 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruled segregated schools as unconstitutional,7 however this case did not force integration. The 1974 case Milliken v. Bradley “actually strengthened the hand of segregationists: the justices held that integration plans may not be enforced across school district borders. This outcome cleared the way for district borders to be used as lawful tools of segregation.”8 With a combination of segregated districts, inevitably meaning segregated schools, charter schools were proposed as possible solutions, yet the enrollment populations usually consisted of “better” students from a recently closed parochial school. Alternatively, strategically placed charter schools often “cherry picked” students in more affluent neighborhoods, “avoiding areas with students who may be most likely to damage the school’s market position.”9 Essentially, charter schools do not solve the problem to access equitable education, even under the assumption students of low socioeconomic status have reliable transportation to attend a charter school outside of their locality.
organize and fund school districts. When district lines split better-off neighborhoods from poorer ones, that keeps local dollars on one side of the line and needy students on the other—and wealthy communities have every incentive to keep it that way.”12 Since district lines are split and socioeconomic gaps are large, the funding system for school districts weigh heavily on available funds. Michigan runs primarily on student-based funding. Costs are assigned to student education as a base amount. Additionally, “Michigan expects school districts to contribute revenue to the funding of public schools” based on property values.13 Real estate disparities between Wyandotte and Ecorse School Districts are profound, resulting in significant differences in available school funds. EdBuild’s study revealed Ecorse’s poverty rates at 44% with $3,524 in local revenue per pupil versus Wyandotte’s poverty rates at 15% with $5,754 in local revenue per pupil.14 A possible hypothesis can be drawn here that low funding results in low proficiency scores and high funding yields higher proficiency scores. DESIGN Ecorse and Wyandotte High Schools have both undergone 12 “Fault Lines.” 13 “Michigan State Funding Policies.” FundEd: State Policy Analysis, 2020, funded.edbuild.org/state/MI. 14 “Fault Lines.”
ISSUES Based on the contextual complexities established, students of low socioeconomic status are often bound to their respective school districts, as in Ecorse and Wyandotte. It is noted, racial breakdowns of test scores yields a plethora of information that may be extracted to draw several inferences and areas for future study, however this simply provides broad overviews of the student body results to draw correlation between funding and overall proficiency rates. Recent student proficiency at the high school level by subject in Ecorse follow: English Language Arts 15.22%, Mathematics at 2.17%, and Social Studies 10.42%.10 Roosevelt High School’s student proficiency rates follow: English Language Arts 52.92%, Mathematics 29.22%, and Social Studies 40.78%.11 The key is to determine not only how proficiency rates exist but how to improve them and close the proficiency gap between similar public schools. “Fault lines,” a contemporary form of segregation, are another major problem that exists within these schools as uncovered by an EdBuild study. “This kind of segregation comes about largely because of how we geNum=2&ID=263654007252. 6 Gulosino, Charisse, and Christopher Lubienski. “Schools’ Strategic Responses to Competition in Segregated Urban Areas: Patterns in School Locations in Metropolitan Detroit.” Education Policy Analysis Archives, 28 Feb. 2011, p. 3. 7 History.com Editors. “Brown v. Board of Education.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 27 Oct. 2009, www.history.com/topics/black-history/brown-v-boardof-education-of-topeka. 8 “Fault Lines: America’s Most Segregating School District Borders.” EdBuild, 2020, edbuild.org/content/fault-lines. 9 Gulosino, p. 19. 10 CEPI. “Annual Reports, 2019-2020.” Ecorse Public Schools, 2020, ecorse. education/district/district_reports/annual_reports. 11 CEPI. “2018/2019 AER Reports.” Wyandotte Public Schools, 2020, www. wyandotte.org/district/annual-education-reports.
Above: Ecorse Community High School event space. Attribution: “Ecorse Public Schools - Event Space Senior Pinning Ceremony.” Ecorse Public Schools Added a New Photo. - Ecorse Public Schools, www.facebook.com/Ecorse.Public.School/photos/ pcb.1867363813522370/1867363516855733/?type=3. Below: Roosevelt High School event space. Attribution: Google Photos.
building changes throughout their histories, however the timeline for these changes differ. Ecorse had a dedicated high school built in 1927 and again in 1938. Six years prior to Ecorse’s first high school, Wyandotte was building a new high school in 1921 which included athletic facilities like a gym and swimming pool. Ecorse started to gain more opportunities for athletics around the time Brown v. Board of Education decision was passed, fifteen years later. In the 1970s, Wyandotte underwent large scale renovations to add a new gym, pool, and cafetorium, and had several prior building additions.15 In the 1900s-2000 Ecorse’s buildings from the 40s were phased out, demolished, and in 2001, a new high school was built to consolidate Ecorse’s facilities.16 Over the decades Wyandotte highschool has maintained its 1921 building featuring detailed stonework in a Gothic and Tudor Style,17 while school facilities in Ecorse have been more often razed and rebuilt, often in favor of a consolidation of functions. The racial divide in equitable school facilities in these two districts is evident throughout the 20th century in terms of continual investment versus large capital government investment projects in Wyandotte versus Ecorse, respectfully.
funding, student proficiency, and building design are only some of the issues that surround the differences between the schools in each of these districts, namely the high schools. Proficiency is not fully correlated with design. The student’s environment and the resultant success is based on more factors than a new, oneoff capital investment project or building. School construction spending, for example, leads to gains in some cases but no clear effects in others. What is clear, however, is that gerrymandering can be used as a tool to integrate districts versus divide them, and a focus on specific lines of funding has been proven to be directly linked to increased proficiency.
OUTCOMES School zone lines are drawn by “groups with political clout – mainly wealthier, whiter communities.” Retaining school zone boundaries or redrawing them is the choice, and “we can actually gerrymander these lines so we’re not recreating underlying segregation,” says Thomas E. Monarez.18 Capital investment in school facilities is also a part of the story for improving student proficiency results. Eric Hanushek, a Stanford economist, has repeatedly previously shown that a new school does not speak to the quality of teachers or their retention or school programs. Related to retention, but not necessarily definitive in outcome, teacher salaries at Wyandotte are around $66,400,19 while at Ecorse they are $62,700.20 The U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said last year, “the notion that spending more money is going to bring about different results is ill-placed and ill-advised.” Yet Northwestern economist Kirabo Jackson refutes this saying that “researchers should now focus on understanding what kinds of spending increases matter the most.” Jackson mentions school construction spending led to gains in some cases but no clear effects in others.21 CONCLUSION While adjacent in proximity, Wyandotte and Ecorse school districts could not be more dissimilar. Racial demographics, 15 Burb, Matt. “Wyandotte and Greater Downriver: Theodore Roosevelt High School.” LocalWiki, 2020, localwiki.org/wyandotte/Theodore_Roosevelt_High_ School. 16 Hunt, Glenn. “Going to School in Ecorse.” Ecorse Along the Detroit River, 2020, ecorsealongthedetroitriver.weebly.com/going-to-school-in-ecorse.html. 17 Burb. 18 Chang, Alvin. “We Can Draw School Zones to Make Classrooms Less Segregated. This Is How Well Your District Does.” Vox, 8 Jan. 2018, www.vox. com/2018/1/8/16822374/school-segregation-gerrymander-map. 19 “Roosevelt High School.” Niche, 23 June 2020, www.niche.com/k12/roosevelt-high-school-wyandotte-mi/. 20 “Ecorse Community High School.” Niche, 8 Jan. 2020, www.niche.com/k12/ ecorse-community-high-school-ecorse-mi/. 21 Jackson, C. Kirabo. “Does School Spending Matter? The New Literature on an Old Question.” National Bureau of Economic Research, 10 Dec. 2018.
Above: Ecorse Community High School Gymnasium interior. Attribution: Facebook, www.facebook.com/Ecorse.Public.School/ photos/pcb.2410059825919430/2410059752586104/?type=3. Below: Roosevelt High School Gymnasium interior. Attribution: Google Photos.
Above Left All: Ecorse Community High School exterior athletic facilities. Above Right All: Roosevelt High School athletic facilities. Attribution: Google Maps.
Above All: 1921 Wyandotte High School construction site photo and stone crest detailing. Attribution: Downriver Things. Edited by Historian, 22 Oct. 2020, www.flickr. com/photos/92760331@N04/albums/with/72157633363417254. Right Top: Ecorse High School. Attribution: Downriver Things. Edited by Historian, 22 Oct. 2020, www. flickr.com/photos/92760331@N04/albums/with/72157633363417254. Right Below All: Wyandotte High School interior photos. Attribution: Roosevelt High School. 1926 Roosevelt High School Yearbook. Edited by Publisher Michigan Interscholastic Press Association, www.classmates.com/siteui/yearbooks/80576?page=69. Next Spread Attributions: Roosevelt High School. 1926 Roosevelt High School Yearbook. Edited by Publisher Michigan Interscholastic Press Association, www.classmates.com/siteui/yearbooks/80576?page=69. Roosevelt High School. 1941 Roosevelt High School Yearbook. www.classmates.com/siteui/yearbooks/218332?page=48. Roosevelt High School. 1966 Roosevelt High School Yearbook. www.classmates.com/siteui/yearbooks/130216. Ecorse High School. 1942 Ecorse High School Yearbook. www.classmates.com/siteui/yearbooks/48346?page=28. Ecorse High School. “1967 Ecorse High School Yearbook.” Classmates, www.classmates.com/siteui/yearbooks/163399.
Roosevelt High School Year Book 1926.
Roosevelt High School Year Book 1926.
Roosevelt High School Year Book 1941.
Roosevelt High School Year Book 1941.
Roosevelt High School Year Book 1966.
Roosevelt High School Year Book 1966.
Ecorse High School Year Book 1942.
Ecorse High School Year Book 1942.
Ecorse High School Year Book 1967.
Ecorse High School Year Book 1967.
Ecorse and Wyandotte Public Schools in Detroit Hannah Mayer Baydoun, Mereese Peltier, Kyle Coxe
Ecorse Community High School’s St 10% White 83% Black 6% Hispanic/Latino 1% Other
Wyandotte’s Roosevelt High School 81% White 5% Black 11% Hispanic/Latino 3% Other.
Wynandotte School
Source Image Attributions: Google Maps EdBuild.org National Center for Education Statistics Vox The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S. http://racialdotmap.demographics.coopercenter.org/
Ecorse
Poverty Rate: 44% Local Revenue Per Pupil: $3,524
Wyandotte
Poverty Rate: 15% Local Revenue Per Pupil: $5,754
tudent Body Demographics
l’s Student Body Demographics
Wyandotte’s Roosevelt High School
Ecorse School District
Wyandotte’s Roosevelt High School
l District
Ecorse Community High School
2010 Census Block Data 1 Dot = 1 Person White Black Asian Hispanic Other Race / Native American / Multi-racial
Ecorse Community High School
RACE WALLS
REDLINING FORMER BLACK MECCAS Garrett (Ray) Hicks, Alicia Jones, Sydney Maubert
Division between West Grove & East Grove Connection Points
The neighborhood became divided between East Grove or West Grove. Black communities occupied West Grove, while predominantly white communities occupied the East.
INTRODUCTION America rightfully garnered a new title: a nation of walls- where its former black meccas were fractured and fell at the erection of divisive architecture, poor infrastructure and stagnant legislation established in the 1880s. Miami’s black neighborhoods transformed from sites of Caribbean immigration, deep poverty, thriving black sustained economies culminating to today’s densely populated black neighborhoods, extremely vulnerable to gentrification. Miami’s hidden
black population resides behind a city of walls, standing unashamedly today in Liberty City and Coconut Grove. Likewise, Detroit is another former black mecca, with its rich history of hope for black people, housing a number of underground railroad stops, but above ground remains insidious with its emblems of division, walls along Eight Mile and Wyoming. For the purposes of this case study, we’ll be examining Miami and Detroit.
JIM CROW IN MIAMI: MIAMI’S RACE WALLS Miami’s oldest settlement is Coconut Grove, built off of a land grant through the Homestead Act, c. 1880s. The grant offered 160 acres for five years of labor, attracting its Bahamian community. The community thrived with its black-owned businesses, but was confined to West Village, evidenced by a race wall.1 The wall was built postwar to appease white residents, who protested affordable all-Black duplexes in the former St. Albans tract. The St. Albans tract owners would agree to a 30-foot buffer strip, a six-foot wall topped with wire running parallel to Grande Ave, along Loquat street; then a 50-foot street with a row of single family houses on the farther side of the street.” In exchange, white residents would allow developers to access FHA mortgages.2 Caption: The neighborhood became divided between East Grove or West Grove. Black communities occupied West Grove, while predominantly white communities occupied the East. Liberty City’s Housing Complex was one of the first black housing projects built in America, the second Federal housing project built in the U.S..3 Attracting middle class black families from the deplorable conditions of Overtown, then “Colored Town”. Construction began in 1934, a 753-unit housing apartment complex completed 1937. The white families were promised a 20-acre buffer strip between their neighborhood and the housing project. In 1939, city officials, the architect, and U.S. Housing Authority, erected the 8- ft wall on NW 62 st and NW 12th Avenue, shrouded by Australian pines. The Liberty Square barrier would serve as a precedent for other post-war, black public housing.4
1 Roshan Nebhrajani. “The early Bahamian history of Coconut Grove”. The New Tropic. (2016). Retrieved from https://thenewtropic.com/bahamians-coconut-grove/ 2 Chat Travieso. “A Nation of Walls”.Places Journal. (September 2020). Retrieved from https://placesjournal.org/article/a-nation-of-walls/#ref_23 3 Roshan Nebhrajani. “Liberty City: From a middle-class black mecca to forgotten”. The New Tropic. (2017). Retrieved from https://thenewtropic.com/liberty-city-history-moonlight/ 4 Chat Travieso. “A Nation of Walls”.Places Journal. (September 2020). Retrieved from https://placesjournal.org/article/a-nation-of-walls/#ref_23
African-American men march outside the Miami Beach Convention Center.Joe Rimkus. Miami News Collection, HistoryMiami Museum.
Civil rights Detroit Freedom March 1963
DETROIT’S RACE WALL The wall that runs perpendicular to Eight Mill Road in Detroit, Michigan, is known by many names, including the Birwood Wall, the Eight Mile Wall, and the Wailing Wall. In the 1930s, a small Black community lived in the Eight Mile-Wyoming neighborhood, surrounded by predominantly white subdivisions. More than 72% of the area was undeveloped and empty, and banks and real estate firms owned most of the land due to a high volume of defaulted loans on high-interest land contracts. The vacant land acted as a barrier between Black community members from the newly built white middle-class homes.5 One developer proposed the continued development of exclusively white middleclass subdivisions adjacent to the Eight Mile-Wyoming neighborhood. However, he could not obtain funding from the Federal Housing Administration because it was considered “hazardous,” according to government appraisers. In response, the developer proposed building a six-foot-high, cinder-block wall that would run half a mile through the property and divide white and black neighborhoods and ensure the “safety” of white residents.6 The Eight Mile Wall is no longer the delineation between black and white communities it still stands as a symbol for the segregation that remains throughout Detroit. The wall now sits between two black neighborhoods, but there exists a division in the area of Eight Mile Road where mainly white residents live on the north side and majority black residents live on the south side.7
5 Sugrue, Thomas J. and Thomas J. Sugrue. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit - Updated Edition. Princeton University Press, 2014. Project MUSE muse. jhu.edu/book/64464. 6 Kim Kozlowski. “Wall built to separate whites, blacks in Detroit ‘an important story to tell.’” The Detroit News. (July 2019). Retrieved from https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/ detroit-city/2019/07/10/wall-built-separate-whites-blacks-detroit-an-important-story/1551503001/ 7 “Eight Mile Wall: A painted-over wall in Detroit originally built to segregate a black community from an adjacent white development.” Atlas Obscura.
Courville area residents called an e boundary of Dequindre Ave. From: T Detroit.
emergency meeting when a black family violated the invisible racial The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar
Eight Mile Wall shortly after construction in 1941
Eight Mile Wall c. 1941 Credit: Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University
Clipping from The Miami Daily News, showing an architectural rendering of the Liberty Square wall, July 16, 1939. [Chat Travieso]
ISSUE Today nationally, the formerly thriving black communities are segregated against the sizable white community or white passing community, functioning off of a de facto aristocracy inherited by the generational wealth from FDR’s New Deal or their intersocial relations at the level of the neighborhood. Redlining is still visible today through legal policies and physical walls constructed nationally, still unashamedly standing today. Redlining is compounded by the extinction of affordable housing and climate change. Black redlined neighborhoods are substantially hotter than other neighborhoods. Climate change multiplies the burden of poverty, exacerbates health, housing, and employment challenges. Redlined neighborhoods were more likely to default on their mortgages; this designation precludes renters’ chances from buying or refinancing a home. As a result, community investment declined and property values plummeted in redlined neighborhoods. For decades, redlining and housing segregation prevented African Americans from accumulating wealth through homeownership, proliferating economic disparities across racial lines. These walls perpetuate legacies of financial strangulation, population retention, mobility, wellness and resources.
Eight Mile Wall
Race and ethnicity in Detroit as of the 2000 census. Each dot is 25 people. And location of Eight Mile Wall
Location of various wall throughout Detroit. From: http://www.63alfred.com/thewalls.htm
2014 a fences was erected on Kercheval Road In Grosse Pointe Park to prevent access from Detroit residents. From https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2799262/no-entryhaves-wealthy-michigan-suburb-erect-fences-middle-streets-stop-detroit-nots-driving-city.
Mural on the wall in the Eight Mile neighborhood of Detroit, 2011. [Király-Seth © via Wikimedia Commons under license CC BY-SA 4.0]
“Colorful Houses” Detroitjetaime.com
“Fair Housing” Detroitjetaime.com
Today, the wall includes images of civil rights icons such as Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman and historical images. It also includes many colorful houses to symbolize why the wall was built. 1
8 Kim Kozlowski. “Wall built to separate whites, blacks in Detroit ‘an important story to tell.’” The Detroit News. (July 2019). Retrieved from https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2019/07/10/wall-built-separate-whites-blacks-detroit-an-importantstory/1551503001/
Teresa Moon pointing our her favorite portion of the mural, which pictures Sojourner Truth leading children through the underground railroad. Denise Guerra/NPR
“I am a man” Detroitjetaime.com
“Judge him not until u walk a mile in his flip flops” Detroitjetaime.com
Teresa Moon has been a resident of the neighborhood for the past 59 years. Today, she is President of the 8 Mile Community Organization. Moon explains, “... We’re asked all the time, ‘how do you feel about it? Do you want it to be torn down?’ Heck, no. No. It’s not a stain to me. It’s astounding to us that people are astounded by it. A lot of people come and they’re tearful because of what it represents.”1
9 Elizabeth Baker. In Detroit, A Colorful Mural Stands As A Reminder Of The City’s ‘Segregation Wall.” All Things
Considered. (July 2017). Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2017/07/22/538760677/in-detroit-a-colorful-mural-standsas-a-reminder-of-the-citys-segregation-wall
Remnants of a segregation wall in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami, built in the late 1930s to separate a newly constructed Black-only a white neighborhood, 2018. [Chat Travieso]
Conclusion
Race walls are prevalent throughout the US and are often hiding in plain sight. They are the remainders of racist inf of racial segregation. Public agencies constructed many of these walls, agencies meant to uplift and aid communitie ties have chosen to deconstruct these walls, while others have allowed them to endure and exist as living history. In wall in Liberty City was designated as a historic site. Executive Director of the Black Archives History and Research da, Inc., Timothy A. Barber, expressed in his designation report, “This remnant of the ‘Liberty Square Wall’ is a tangi discrimination once commonplace in America.“ Additionally, Barber states, “The wall is not to be celebrated, but rem the many who fought against the hatred born of segregation, and whose perseverance ultimately saw the world cha
10 Chat Travieso. “A Nation of Walls”.Places Journal. (September 2020). Retrieved from https://placesjournal.org/article/a-nation-of-walls
y public-housing development from
frastructure and reminders es in need. Some communi2006, a portion of the race h Foundation of South Floriible symbol of the pervasive membered as a testament to ange for the better.�1
s/#ref_23
Children standing beside a concrete wall erected in Detroit to separate a new all-white subdivision from an existing African-American neighborhood, 1941. [Library of Congress]
RACE WALLS: REDLINING FORMER BLACK MECCAS Garrett (Ray) Hicks, Alicia Jones, Sydney Maubert
A NATION OF WALLS
BLACK M
MECCAS
MIAMI AND DETROIT
Living Soils
Urban Farming in Brooklyn Madeleine Reid, Vicky Achnani
Urban farms , Source: Brooklyn Grange.com, perspective.org
Background Before the industrial revolution, people settled on or near farmland, because it was harder to transport goods. The Industrial revolution allowed for people to live away from farms and the contrast between urban centers with factories and rural agriculture grew. During WWII, Woodrow Wilson encouraged Americans to grow Victory Gardens as a response to blockades. The purpose of the program was to produce food to supplement the lost imports. The Victory Gardens Program produced over 9 million pounds per year, which accounted for 44% of the produce grown in the US during the war. After the war, urban farming lost popularity and is now making a comeback as a way to unite communities, provide food education, supplement food deserts, and repurpose undeveloped land. Now Urban agriculture serves more to recontextualize urban dweller’s relationship to food, rather than feed the city.1
1 “Urban Agriculture: The Latest Trend Is.. Ancient.” Hoerr Schaudt, November 18, 2019. https://www.hoerrschaudt.com/urban-agriculture-the-latest-trend-is-ancient/.
What’s the purpose? Urban farming doesn’t provide a significant amount of food. Industrial farms are efficient. Urban farms are also not necessarily more sustainable, smaller farms use water and pesticides less efficiently. And transportation is not as significant in global warming impact compared to dietary choices. A Johns hopkins study showed that urban farms don’t have a significant impact on improving diet. None of these things are drawbacks, but it’s important to be realistic about what the farm can actually do. The community the farm is in does benefit. Largely urban farms provide education and a place for community building. Urban farms also improve air quality and mitigate urban heat island effects. Often white non-residents build urban farms in predominantly black or Latino neighborhoods. This is problematic. It’s important that people in the community are leading the farm for the farms to have a positive impact. And while urban farms don’t start gentrification, they can accelerate gentrification. Property values typically rise around urban farms, which can be good for building the wealth of homeowners, but can push renters out.2 2 Plumer, Brad. “The Real Value of Urban Farming. (Hint: It’s Not Always the Food.).” Vox, May 15, 2016. https://www.vox. com/2016/5/15/11660304/urban-farming-benefits.
Red hook Urban Farm
Brooklyn Grange Urban Farm
The two farms that we have chosen for our casestudy are unique in their operation and the way they are conencted to the communities. Looking through this framework of what makes an urban farm successful and what is realistic success, two important factors are leadership and location.
Shading, which is limited in red hook due to low rise buildings, lack of trees, and empty lots mitigating urban heat island effect improving air quality (red hook runs along the BQE), collecting rainwater to mitigate stormwater runoff.1
The red hook urban farm The Red Hook Farm is led by Red Hook Initiative (RHI) —a community based nonprofit for Red Hook NYCHA residents. RHI is a good example of a nonprofit led for and by the community. They hire within the community and focus on youth development.1 The Red Hook Farm was established in 2001, and recently became a project of RHI in 2018. Two sites make up the red hook farm—Columbia street primarily used for composting and production and Wolcott Street primarily used for education. The Wolcott Street farm is the first on NYCHA property, and was a collaboration between Green City Force, Mayor’s office, and NYCHA. 3 “Red Hook Initiative.” RHI. Accessed October 28, 2020. https://rhicenter.org/.
Community building and education Although the Red Hook farms can’t offset the health impacts of living in a food desert, they do provide valuable educational opportunities and jobs for youths in the community through their paid apprenticeships. The Farm is also creating an advisory committee to bring more of the community’s voice into farm operations. The environment The Red Hook Farm’s location and program make it environmental. The benefits the farm brings are especially needed in red hook:
4 Red Hook Farms. Accessed October 28, 2020. http:// www.added-value.org/.
Food Production Combined, the red hook farm locations harvest 20,000 lb of produce each year. “Red Hook Initiative.” RHI. Accessed October 28, 2020. https://rhicenter.org/. This sounds like a lot, but when you do the math, it’s clear that food production is not the primary mission of the farm. The average american eats 800lb of fruits and vegetables a year, which means the Red Hook Farm could only feed 25 people a year. 10,000 residents live in the Red Hook Houses. 1 5 Aubrey, Allison. “The Average American Ate (Literally) A Ton This Year.” NPR, December 31, 2011.
Living Soils
Urban Farming in Brooklyn Madeleine Reid, Vicky Achnani
Brooklyn Grange Urban farm
Source : Brooklyn Granage farm.com
INTRODUCTION Roofs cover up to 32% of cities and built-up areas (Frazer 2005) and represent a vast potential of currently unused space in urban centers. An increased implementation of green roof technology to transform these urban rooftops into an environmental, ecological resource is becoming standard practice in many cities (Peck et al. 1999, Getter and Rowe 2006, Oberndorfer et al. 2007). Parallel to this investment in green infrastructure, urban dwellers also have developed a desire for more sustainable, health food. This rapidly growing the interest has fostered the development of urban agriculture projects cultivating organic, locally grown produce in many cities. Our choosen Brooklyn Grange
roof top urban farm is one such productive site1. Brooklyn Grange, a commercial enterprise which transform vacant, unused rooftops into large urban Farms began their operation in 2008 with a small prototype, the Eagle Street Farm. After its first successful year, a nearly seven times larger, one-acre farm was installed on a rooftop in Long Island City and started operation in 2010. While their 40,000 square foot space atop a warehouse in Long Island City has been enough to grow more than 40 different types of vegetables each year.
1 Gundula Proksch : Urban rooftops as productive resources.
10
Location Year completed Roof area Cultivated area Percentage growing area Containment Substrate depth Substrate weight Retrofit or new construction Construction system Construction cost Annual Precipitation irrigation system Hardiness Zone Growing season Yield Crop distribution Number of employees Social / educational tie Area of operation Out reach stratergies
Long Island City, Queens, NY 2010 40000 sq. ft. 37,000 sq. ft. 93% Surface beds 7.5” “roof intensive” 44-56 lb./cubic ft. Retrofit 7- story warehouse, supports 130 lb. / sq. ft. $ 5 / sq. ft. material cost 47.3” drip irrigation 6-8 April 1 – Nov 15, 227 days, 9 months with cover crops during the winter months 16,000 lb. 0.4 lb. /sq. ft. 5.5 tons / acre CSA, local farmers market, local restaurants, pantries , grocery stores 5 partners + many volunteers Apprenticeship, education programs, social activities 5 miles Cultural events Workshops Consultations Openly markets Food share
50 27
100
ft
Area of operation and influence
Roof barrier
Thick felt
Drainage Plates
Thin felt Layers of introduced vegatation bed
Intensive green roof “Rooflite intensive” 44-53 lb / cubic ft ( dry) 6” – 8” substrate depth
Permisible load vs load of vegetation
Diagrams sourced from study by Gundula Proksch on urban roof top
ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS
Storm-water management
In the United States, 60-95% of the built-up area is covered by impervious surfaces (Frazer 2005). These hard, nonporous surfaces cannot absorb precipitation and therefore contribute to heavy runoff, which constitutes about 75% of the rainfall in cities. Dense urban areas often lack space to build low impact storm-water management facilities; therefore there urban rooftop urban farms are ideal storm-water management tools. Green roofs and rooftop farms retain water during rainfall events, delay its runoff, and increase the volume of water returned to the atmosphere directly through evapotranspiration.
Water
Since the rooftop receives more sun exposure and wind, which dry out the soil, there is an continuous demand of water to efficiently operate the farm. Therefore a localized drip irrigation system is installed, which brings water directly to the roots, and in a way is most effective since the water cannot be blown off the roof by the wind. The farm has incorporated storage tanks and stratergies for rain water harvesting to ensure adequate water for crops during growing season.
Rain water availability
Water retention potential of substrate
BALANCE
Farming method
Water requirement of crops
Water retention + run off reduction
Energy savings ( increase with insulation value)
45 % 75 %
CO2 sequestration ( increase with biomass of vegetation layer)
Water needs irrigation
Cooling through evapotranspiration ( increase with leaf
Insulation value of substrate
conductivity)
( increase with depth of substrate) 3” to 5” 5” to 8”
Comparing green roof to roof top urban farm
Summer cooling
green roof
social benefits
Beside the ability to retain rainwater, the urban rooftop farm add insulation and thermal mass, which increases with the depth and composition of substrate. The improved insulation value and mass reduce the heat transfer through the roof. The improved performance is reflected in the breakdown of total solar radiation absorbed by the planted roof: 27% is reflected, 60% is absorbed by the plants and the soil and only 13% is transmitted into the soil ( Eumorfopoulou 1998). So clearly the solar energy gain on a rooftop farm can be reduced by up to 87% compared with non-shaded building surface (Wong et al. 2003). The reduced heat transfer into the building results in improved building performance and energy savings.
Aesthetic + psychological benefits through visual + physical Educational programs
Urban Heat Island Effect
Conventional roof
On an urban scale, the summer cooling of green roofs and rooftop farms contributes also to the mitigation of the urban heat island effect. Metropolitan areas, through their lack vegetation and agglomeration of dark impervious surfaces, are significantly warmer than their surrounding rural areas, especially at night. The air temperature above vegetated roofs can be up to 30°C lower compared to conventional roofs, resulting in up to 15% of annual energy consumption savings (Getter and Rowe 2006).
Relaxation + improve human health Increase satisfaction + productivity Knowledge + awareness Life skills Less Crime
Youth Programs + job creation Volunteer work + community building Job Creation
Roof with farm
Rooftop farm
Fresh Local Food
Sense of Belonging Reconnection to sources of food Increase of resources Healthier diets Social Equity Reduced health care needs/ cost
Diagram adapted from study of Gundula Proksch - urban roof top
Conclusion Urban farms are a good first step in community building and education to train local leadership. But they can’t be made out to solve all these issues like food justice and environmental improvement. The most important factors in a successful urban farm are location for environmental benefits and local leadership to grow community.
Living Soils Urban Farming in Brooklyn First Name LastMadeleine Name, FirstReid Name Last Name Vicky Achnani,
Br
Mayor’s Office
Brooklyn Grange
Green City Fo Chester Count, PA
NYHA
Red Hook Farms
Brooklyn Botanic Gar Brooklyn Grange
rooklyn Grange
orce
rden
Are there real social, environmental, and health benefits to growing food within city limits?
FOOD SOVEREIGNTY David Owe, Ingrid Pelletier, Hamdi Alotaibi
(Source: Samia Kirchner / PPHUF) Image of Richard Francis “Farmer Chippy” tending to the plants on the Urban Farm in Park Heights.
INTRODUCTION Food is fuel… without it humans cannot survive. Virginia Woolf once said, “one cannot think well, love well, sleep well if one hasn’t dined well.” without proper nutrition we cannot perform to our fullest extent and many in the United States lack access to healthy food. Globally, food insecurity is a major issue… during a live video, chef and blogger Sophia Roe made the comment, “choosing what to eat, is a choice billions do not have.” and it is a problem that also majorly affects the United States. Within the United States 19 million people live in a
food desert which is defined as, “large geographic areas with no or distant grocery stores” (Gallagher 6). In the city of Baltimore 1 in 4 residents live in a food desert or about 25% of the population. These food deserts are centered in specific neighborhoods most in the east and west and disproportionately affect racial minorities with 34% African Americans affected as opposed to only 8% Caucasians… these food deserts affect the economically disadvantaged and are also affecting about 30% of Baltimore’s school aged children. Food improves brain functioning and without the proper nutrition children’s performance can be unfairly affected. To make things
even more difficult the residents of these food deserts also lack access to a vehicle (30.3% on average in the city of Baltimore) which makes traveling to a supermarket difficult. These issues of food insecurity in Baltimore arose much like other food deserts across the nation due to suburbanization and oppressive governmental policies. Through the 1950’s and 60’s the city saw a loss of 45,000 residents as around 7,0008,000 homes were being constructed a year in the suburban areas. Along with this shift in population arose a shift in the access to food as supermarkets followed this shift and built out in the suburbs rather than in the city. Among food insecurity Baltimore has faced many more issues involving, “redlining, extreme racial segregation, industrial decline, and generational poverty”. Within the past decade steps have been taken at a community and governmental level in order to better the city’s access to healthy food. The Farm Alliance of Baltimore is a “network of producers working to increase the viability of urban farming and improve access to urban grown foods” they compose of 16 farms and cater to areas of food insecurity in the city. This alliance plays a critical role in bringing food sovereignty to the city. As discussed in previous research food sovereignty follows 6 pillars of focusing on food for people (food is a right, not a privilege), valuing food providers, localizing food systems, putting control of the food system locally, building knowledge and skills (culturally relevant to community), and working with nature. The Food Alliance is giving back the power to the communities, educating residents and youths, providing access to healthy food, and creating a sustainable model that is not only beneficial to the city but also the planet.
to create the first ‘AfroAgrihood’ in the city of Baltimore.” the farm includes 14 city-owned vacant lots that grow food, herbs, and flowers for the surrounding community and local farmers markets. The workers of the farm include 250 elementary school children, 33 teachers, and 39 parents and the main goal is to produce 250,000 pounds of food. The urban farm follows many of the success pillars for food sovereignty with Farmer Chippy stating that their goal is to create, “0 waste, 0 poverty, and 0 hunger” which puts not only the community’s health at the forefront but also the health of the planet. Most important in their aim for a sustainable system is the focus on education. Creating change often starts with the young people in a community who are learning daily and will be the next generation of leaders. With youth helping in the production of the food grown they are gaining knowledge on how agriculture works, sustainability, and what foods they can eat that will nourish their bodies.
CONTEXT The Farm Alliance of Baltimore has 16 members and of those urban farms is the Plantation Park Heights, which was started in 2014 by Richard Francis “Farmer Chippy”. The goal of the urban farm is address food insecurity within the Park Heights neighborhood while engaging the community and, “provide cleaner and greener foods while training at risk youths
(Source: Baltimore City Food Environment) A map highlighting the different food deserts across Baltimore City and location of supermarkets and parks.
ARLINGTON ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Pimlico Food Market
Oswego Market Always Groceries
Food City
Map ofGroceries Store Proximity To Site
Plantation Park Heights
PIMLICO ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
EDGECOMBE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Greenspring
CREATIVE CITY PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL
Plantation Park Heights Dr Martin Luther King Jr Elem
Neighboring schools
N
Impact/Design:
Plantation Park Height’s goal, as stated by Farmer Chippy himself, is to grow 250,00 pounds of food by the end of 2020 while maintaining it’s sustainability goals of “zero waste, zero poverty and zero hunger”. Through a grant from the Center for the Study of Religion and the City, (CSRC) Morgan State University students from the Architecture and Construction Management fields were tasked with designing a demonstration kitchen for the farm in Baltimore City. The demonstration kitchen design incorporates a hoop house which is a passive solar greenhouse constructed from a steel tube frame and covered in heavy duty plastic. The choice to use a hoop house was to reduce construction costs while providing a sheltered space for plants to continue to grow during off season. The space also contains a herb garden and seating where educational classes will be conducted on healthy food practices and ways to be sustainable and grow your own food. Adjacent to the herb garden is the demonstration kitchen where all the foods and crops will be stored, processed, and prepared. Concrete countertops and CMU blocks are utilized instead of wood to avoid carpenter ants from damaging millwork. The shipping containers will house the cold wet storage and dry storage and would be connected to the hoop house so there is direct access to the kitchen and the rest of the farm. Solar panels sit on top of the containers to help generate electricity so as to not rely on the City’s grid as much. Water barrels that collect rainwater sit above the restroom and filter down which would be used to flush the toilet systems without wasting water. The recreational outdoor space will host a stage for varying activities such as dancing and martial arts. It will also have mobile seating to follow social distancing guidelines.
Allowing children to be part of the farm also engages a conversation with their parents and leads to better awareness and understanding of food in the community. The Urban Farm has been able to include 250 elementary school children, 33 teachers, and 39 parents all working together to reach the goal of producing 250,000 pounds of food. The Urban Seeds Kitchen’s three primary goals are to educate the school children in Food Supplement Nutrition Education, provide the community with healthy food, and initiate a mentorship program between the schools in the area. These goals align closely with some of the 6 pillars of food sovereignty such as working with nature, localizing food systems, building culturally relevant knowledge and skills, and focusing on food for the people.
1.
OUTCOMES So far, the Plantation Park Heights has been able to integrate school children from various local schools in the area to help grow food on the farm which in turn helps educate them on sustainable food practices.
2.
(Source: Khalil Campbell / Morgan Statue University) Site plan of proposed demonstration kitchen design in relation to the existing farm context and neighborhood. Shows the street parameters and different points of access to the Urban Farm.
3. (Source: All images except Site Plan by Khalil Campbell and David Owe / Morgan Statue University) 1). Level 1 plan of Urban Farm. 2). Demonstration Kitchen on interior of hoop house. 3). Overall 3D propsed design view.
CONCLUSION Throughout the globe and the nation there is still a long way to go before each and every inhabitant is food secure but within the city of Baltimore with programs like the Farm Alliance and Plantation Park Heights remedies can start to be made. Programs not only need to provide access to healthy food but also provide for the community and future community members. The current global pandemic will see about 54 million people face food insecurity. For people in a food desert who already have limited access to transportation, the pandemic only exacerbates the situation. Plantation Park Heights and the Farm Alliance are working to provide for their community by making meals through the Urban Seeds kitchen and by continually growing food in the greenhouses. For a community to embody food sovereignty a focus must be put on the future of the city’s food access and on the planet. Baltimore is moving towards a more equitable and sustainable food system that will honor its current community today and tomorrow.
FARM TO TABLE
Hamdi Alotaibi, David Owe, Ingrid Pelletier
FARM
At Plantation Park Heights food, herbs, and flowers are grown to support the local community. The goal of the farm is to eliminate food insecurity in Baltimore, provide clean and nutritious food, and create a sustainable and equitable model good for the farmers and the future community.
TO
The Urban S educate the y community in and provide a
TABLE
O
The goal of the Plantation is to create “zero waste, zero poverty zero hunger� and they are doing so by growing clean foods, educating, and brining together the community to make a change.
Seeds Kitchen seeks to youth of the n how to eat healthy a mentorship program.
Plantation Park Heights BALTIMORE
URBAN VOID
REDEVELOPMENT OF WASTE INFRASTRUCTURE , VACANT LAND & ABANDONED HOUSE Yuyi Zhou, Bingyu He, Nahim Brumant
Map of Abandoned Railroads in the North America
*Data from https://www.abandonedraillines.com/p/the-map.html
INTRODUCTION America is deindustrializing. In 2005 more than 600,000 abandoned and contaminated waste sites have been identified within U.S. cities. How did this “waste landscape” come to be? What will we do with it? How will it affect urbanizing areas in the future? Controversial questions like these are difficult to answer, and this subject has produced some of the late-twentieth century’s most debated bodies of scholarship. The waste landscape emerges out of two primary processes: first, from rapid horizontal urbanization (urban “sprawl”), and second, from the leaving behind of land and detritus after economic and production regimes have ended. From its dein-
dustrializing inner core to its sprawling periphery to the transitional landscapes in between, the city is the manifestation of industrial processes that naturally produce waste. With regards to “waste” it is impossible to isolate recharacterizations of the city from its socioeconomic milieu. Horizontal urbanization is linked to economies and simultaneous modes of industrialization -- to what, in 1942, Harvard University economist Joseph Schumpeter characterized as “the process of creative destruction.” Schumpeter examined how capitalism creates and destroys existing structures of industrialization.1 1 Berger, Alan. “Drosscape.” The Landscape Urbanism Reader, by Charles Waldheim, Princeton Architectural Press, 2006, pp. 199-203
volves the recognition that all types of space are valuable, not just the privileged spaces of more traditional parks and squares, and they must therefore be inhabitable in a meaningful way. This requires the rethinking of the mono-functional realm of infrastructure and its rescue from the limbo of urban devastation to recognize its role as a part of the formal inhabited city. Designers need to engage with this infrastructural landscape: mundane parking facilities, difficult spaces under elevated roads, complex transit interchanges, and landscapes generated by waste processes.2 Abandoned Railroad
Abandoned Bridge
Abandoned Factory
DESIGN The relationship between natural systems and the public infrastructure of the city begins to suggest a means of developing urban strategies through the development of networks of landscape infrastructure related to ecological systems. The starting point is that the most permanent and enduring elements of cities are often related to the underlying landscapes -- the geology, the typography, the rivers and the harbors, and the climate. This does not mean a denial of the realities of globalization or the influence of technology, but recognition of the importance of place and of connection to natural systems. 2 Mossop, Elizabeth. “Landscapes of Infrastructure.” The Landscape Urbanism Reader, by Charles Waldheim, Princeton Architectural Press, 2006, pp. 171-172
EIGHT TYPES OF INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT CONTEXT Explorations in landscape urbanism have focused on infrastructure as the most important generative public landscape. In the course of the twentieth century we have seen the increasing standardization of infrastructural systems as they meet higher standards of technical efficiency. These ubiquitous urban environments have been considered and evaluated solely on technical criteria and somehow exempted from having to function socially, aesthetically, or ecologically. Such a reexamination of infrastructural space in-
1. Transportation (such as railways, bridges) 2. Energy (the production and delivery of energy) 3. Water (water resources management, treatment and flood prevention) 4. Green Infrastructure (such as systems for reuse and recycling that prevent waste from environment) 5. Digital Infrastructure (communication networks, computer facilities) 6. Social Infrastructure (such as schools, hospitals, emergency services) 7. Government Services (such as consumer protection and fair competition regulations and enforcement) 8. Resilience (Foundations that improve a community’s resilience to stresses such as a tsunami shelter)
THE HIGH LINE Manhattan, New York City The High Line is a 1.45-mile-long (2.33 km) elevated linear park, greenway and rail trail created on a former New York Central Railroad spur on the west side of Manhattan in New York City. History The growth of interstate trucking during the 1950s led to a drop in rail traffic throughout the U.S. St. John’s Freight Terminal was abandoned in 1960, and the southernmost section of the line was demolished in the following decade due to low use. A nonprofit organization called Friends of the High Line advocated its preservation and reuse as public open space, an elevated park or greenway similar to the Promenade Plantée in Paris. In 2003, Friends of the High Line sponsored a design competition that attracted more than 720 participants from 38 countries. The following year, the New York City government committed $50 million to establish the proposed park. Fundraising for the park raised a total of over $150 million.1 Sustainable Practice Plant Selection: The plant selection on the High Line favors native, drought-tolerant, and low-maintenance species, cutting down on the resources that go into the landscape. The High Line’s ecosystem also provides food and shelter for wildlife species, including native pollinators. Local Sourcing: Whenever possible, we source materials from within a 100-mile radius. Almost half of the High Line’s plants are native species, and many were produced by local growers, which are better adapted to grow successfully in our climate—reducing the amount of plant failure and replacement costs. Watering: The High Line’s green roof system with drip irrigation is designed to allow the planting beds to retain as much water as possible. Combined with the drought-tolerance of many of our plants, our gardens need little supplemental watering.2 3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Line 4 https://www.thehighline.org/sustainable-practices
THE 606 TRAIL Chicago, IL The 606 Trail, located on Chicago’s northwest side, has inspired many to dream of a unique urban oasis. Its industrial structure, lifted landscape, and inspiring views create a journey both profoundly public and intimate. The 606 trail runs through several vibrant communities along 606 trail Avenue, adjacent to numerous private properties, and crosses over major arterials, an historic boulevard, bus and bicycle routes, and the CTA Blue Line. History Official plans for converting the Bloomingdale Line into a public space date back to the late 1990s, when it was included in the City’s Bike Plan. The 2004 Logan Square Open Space Plan called for an ambitious reuse of the former industrial rail corridor. This spurred the formation of the Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail, a group of residents who would champion the project for the next decade, dedicated to making the vision become a reality.1 Redevelopment Unlike other elevated rail structures built on bridge platforms, the 606 is supported by massive concrete retaining walls filled with soil and crushed rock. The design of the park can call attention to this original construction by lowering the path and exposing the sides of the retaining walls. Measures like this, and others, can be developed through the inclusion of public artists, emphasize the original construction and the human history of the railway, and can contribute to a diverse range of landscape experiences along the length of the trail. Providing a designated shared-use path separated from vehicles has the potential to increase bicycling and walking in the city, thereby decreasing motor vehicle use and ultimately improving the urban environment through reduced pollution, noise, and traffic. In addition, the shareduse path will be designed for pedestrians who wish to stroll with friends, jog the length of the site, or explore new neighborhoods. 2 3 https://www.the606.org 4 https://www.the606.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/ Bloomingdale-Framework-Plan-small.pdf
URBAN VOID Exploration of Vacant Land
Possibly Existence Forms of Vacant Land
VACANT LAND---LEFTOVER SPACE The existence of urban public space is a necessary condition for social interaction and contributes to the creation of sustainable, safe and liveable cities. While public space is usually designed for certain group activities, the presence of unplanned spaces seems to be heavily interwoven into the urban landscape and exists in the form of “leftover spaces”. Although this kind of existence seems to be worthless, even belonging to the “forgotten corners” of the city, it actually provides a lot of potential opportunities for urban innovation for most planners and designers.
Vacant land suffers from both political and economic problems. Most urban vacant land in the U.S. is viewed only in terms of its current highest and best use from an economic perspective. If it is not developable it is ignored. There are many opportunities to redevelop vacant land in terms of ecological and social value, so many design professionals and scholars are becoming interested in the potential offered by vacant urban land, especially with regard to planning and design . While recent attention has largely focused on urban brownfields (contaminated industrial sites), relatively little research or policy work has considered the vast potential of the large number of different types of vacant urban land in our most economically depressed urban neighborhoods .
Many federal policies (including Community Development Block Grants) focus on the creation of new infrastructure and new development rather than rehabilitation or infill development. Ever since the 1950s, the transformation of the national economic base from an industrial to a service economy, coupled with the expense cleaning up environmentally degraded land, suburban migration, mobile workplaces, and weak neighborhood economics, have resulted in a vicious cycle of decline and disinvestment in infill vacant land and increasing vacancy rates. Declining property values are part of the cycle of abandonment, but at the same time, speculation has increased property values in other areas . Speculation is an inevitable part of a competitive free market, but it can also lead to increased land vacancy and abandonment.
VACANT LAND IN CITY Space in cities is becoming increasingly limited or even scarce, and the enormous economic pressures associated with the construction of tall buildings are maximizing the limits of urban capacity and use. If these problems were addressed at their most acute, cities could create a network of spaces to improve environmental circulation and urban ecosystem function, which could even help cities spend more wisely on public works. All leftover spaces have some common features. They usually are surrounded by important buildings or contain fountains, statues and signs and they convey a livable and active atmosphere due to the fact that they are surrounded by public buildings such as shops and restaurants. So how do we activate the remaining space between these buildings?
The approach to transforming abandoned or derelict city lots has often focused solely on economics and litigation. There are, however, opportunities to redevelop vacant land by improving its ecological and social value, leading many design professionals and scholars to study aspects such as its the planning and design potential. VACANT LAND DEFINITION Interest in urban vacant land has grown in recent years, but the definition of vacant land is often unclear. Although urban vacant lands are not officially designated as green spaces, they have often been left open to colonization by nature and thus appear to be in a semi-wild natural state.
Leftover Space Among Buildings
SMALL SCALE SOLUTION ---HUTONG BUBBLE/ MAD
HuTong Bubble Overview MAD proposed the “Future of Hutongs,” which featured metallic bubbles scattered over Beijing’s oldest neighborhoods in 2006. Three years later, the first hutong bubble appeared in a small courtyard in Beijing. The self-perpetuating degradation of the city’s urban tissue requires a change in the living conditions of local residents. Progress does not necessarily call for large scale construction – it can occur as interventions at a small scale. The hutong bubbles, inserted into the urban fabric, function like magnets, attracting new people, activities, and resources to reactivate entire neighborhoods. They exist in symbiosis with the old housing. Fueled by the energy they helped to renew, the bubbles multiply and morph to provide for the community’s various needs, thereby allowing local residents to continue living in these old neighborhoods. In time, these interventions will become part of Beijing’s long history, newly formed membranes within the city’s urban tissue. The real dream, however, is for the hutong bubble to link this culturally rich city to each individual’s vision of a better Beijing. The bubble is not regarded as a singular object, but as a means to initiate a renewed and energetic community. Under the hatchet of fast-paced development, we must always be cognizant of Beijing’s long term goals and the direction of its creativity. Perhaps we should shift our gaze away from the attraction of new monuments and focus on the everyday lives of the city’s residents. Reference: 1. Gunwoo Kima, Patrick A. Millerb, David J. Nowak: Urban vacant land typology: A tool for managing urban vacant land. journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/scs 2.Hutong Bubble 32 | MAD Architects, www.i-mad.com
One Bubble
One Bubble in Hu tong
LARGE SCALE SOLUTION --- SUPERKILEN/TOPOTEK 1 + BIG ARCHITECT + SUPERFLEX Superkilen is a half a mile long urban space wedging through one of the most ethnically diverse and socially challenged neighborhoods in Denmark. It has one overarching idea that it is conceived as a giant exhibition of urban best practice – a sort of collection of global found objects that come from 60 different nationalities of the people inhabiting the area surrounding it. Superkilen is the result of the creative collaboration between BIG, Topotek1 and SUPERFLEX, which constitutes a rare fusion of architecture, landscape architecture and art - from early concept to construction stage. Superkilen is a park that supports diversity. It is a world exhibition of furniture and everyday objects from all over the world, including benches, lampposts, trash cans and plants – requisites that every contemporary park should include and that the future visitors of the park have helped to select. Superkilen reattributes motifs from garden history. In the garden, the translocation of an ideal, the reproduction of another place, such as a far off landscape, is a common theme through time. As the Chinese reference the mountain ranges with the miniature rocks, the Japanese the ocean with their rippled gravel, or how the Greek ruins are showcased as replicas in the English gardens. Superkilen is a contemporary, urban version of a universal garden. The conceptual starting point is a division of Superkilen into three zones and colors – green, black and red. The different surfaces and colors are integrated to form new, dynamic surroundings for the everyday objects. The desire for more nature is met through a significant increase of vegetation and plants throughout the whole neighborhood arranged as small islands of diverse tree sorts, blossom periods, colors - and origin matching the one of surrounding everyday objects. As an extension of the sports and cultural activities at the Norrebrohall, the Red Square is conceived as an urban extension of the internal life of the hall. A range of recreational offers and the large central
Superkilen Overview square allows the local residents to meet each other through physical activity and games. The colored surface is integrated both in terms of colors and material with the Nørrebrohall and its new main entrance, where the surface merges inside and outside in the new foyer. This original remaining urban space is visually integrated into the surrounding project, following the colors of the surface and conceptually folding upwards to create a three-dimensional experience. The striking colors revitalize the entire space in the city and create a new urban environment that attracts residents and visitors from Copenhagen and the suburbs, which seems to be a new focal point for urban interaction. Reference: Plan Común , http://www.plancomun.com/commonplaces
Superkilen Infrastructure Detail
URBAN VOID Disscussion of Abandoned House
DISCUSSING HOUSE ABANDONMENT Although there aren’t any consistent definitions of abandoned housing there is a common understanding that it is viewed as a result of urban decline. An abandoned house is a vacant and uninhabitable unit whose owner has little to no intentions of restoring the unit back into the housing market. Abandoned houses contribute to neighborhood decline and set back revitalization efforts by being eyesores, fire hazards, and other assorted crime activities. It also contributes to massive pest infestations and vagrancy. Properties that have turned from productive use to disuse are found in cities, suburbs, and rural areas throughout the country, and they vary widely in size, shape, and former uses. But these vacant and abandoned properties are more than just a symptom of larger economic forces at work in the community.
FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO HOUSE ABANDONMENT It has been documented that demographic and socioeconomic changes occurring in the U.S has heavily impacted changes in rural, and inner-city neighborhoods. Factors such as economic restructuring and deindustrialization of cities, not to mention federal policies and spending programs that have subsidized middle class individuals out migration from cities. In addition, numerous real estate policies and practices have redlined areas and influenced racial segregation resulting in severe neighborhood decline. However, the current inventory of vacant properties results from two main causes are the foreclosure crisis and depopulation. These factors have led to population loss and forced an influx of out migration from neighborhoods and as a result there was a lower demand for homes.
Depopulation in Four major cities
Many Rust Belt cities have seen substantial population loss since their twentieth-century peaks as residents left for suburbs or other regions. The shrinking population and the typically lower incomes of those who remain are often insufficient to support commercial revitalization. Former industrial centers such as Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, and Gary, Indiana are dotted with empty factories and have thousands of foreclosures and vacant residential properties Sun Belt metropolitan areas that were booming just a decade ago now suffer from widespread foreclosures.
Both residential and commercial foreclosures are at high risk of becoming vacant or abandoned. Former occupants are likely to vacate the property, and because the costs associated with the foreclosure process are high and the value of a given property is often very low, lenders or servicers may walk away. In Nevada, Arizona, Florida, and Georgia, all states with high foreclosure rates, nonseasonal vacancies increased by more than 85% between 2000 and 2010.14
Reference: Duncan, Ian and Cristine, Zhang “After years of failing to get Baltimore’s vacants below 17,000, city launches a new push to reverse the trend.� baltimoresun.com 15 March, 2019. Web. 21 Oct, 2020.
Source: United States Census Bureau. 2012. American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates.
In Baltimore efforts are being made to demolish and restore uninhabited houses that have been eyesores for over the decade. From the early 2000’s to present over 17,000 abandoned buildings have been vacant butut city Housing Commissioner Michael Braverman says his team is finally in a position to drive the number down, pledging to demolish more than 2,000 vacant units. This project is currently valued at $50 million that is projected to bring the city’s total number of abandoned buildings below 15,000 for the first time in a decade and a half. Sources: 1965 to 1999 data from “Table 7. Annual Estimates of the Housing Inventory: 1965 to Present,” and 2000 to 2010 data from “Table 7a. Annual Estimates of the Housing Inventory.” U.S. Census Bureau. 2012. “Housing Vacancies and Homeownership: Historical Tables,” Current Population Survey/Housing Vacancy Survey. See sources for additional explanatory notes. www.census. gov/housing/hvs/data/histtabs.html. Accessed on 21 October, 2020.
Property Facade This property location is 2254 Crotona Avenue Bronx Newyork. The owners not only abandoned the building but they also abandoned the ten-ants. One tenant described the building as being a “nightmare” and as a result tenants were forced to flee the building. The owners were unable to provide basic services and maintain the building. The landlords of this building were in foreclosure in 2008 and 2009. They also owned other prop-erties in the city despite being on the housing agency’s annual list of the most poorly maintained apartment buildings in New York City. Of the 200 properties on the 2008 list, at least 77 were in foreclosure from January 2005 to October 2008, according to data from PropertyShark.com. Since then, the building was placed on the market; new owners swooped in and purchased the building. They pumped in an immense amount of funds to revitalized the building’s apartments and its façade to compliment and uplift the neighborhood.
Interior Condition
Property Facade
Facade after Refurnished
*Fernandez, Manny Jennifer 8. Lee “Struggling Landlords Leaving Repairs Undone� nytimes.com. 14th July, 2009. Web. 30th Oct, 2020.
URBAN VOID
REDEVELOPMENT OF WASTE INFRASTRUCTURE , VACANT LAND & ABANDONED HOUSE Yuyi Zhou, Bingyu He, Nahim Brumant
Closing Down Rikers
NYC’S PLAN FOR A BOROUGH-BASED JAIL SYSTEM Eliot Nagele, Claudia Ansorena, Julia Cochran
Aerial view of Rikers Island, New York City’s largest jail complex, to be closed by 2026. Credit: Getty Images/New York Daily News INTRODUCTION Operated by the New York City Department of Corrections (DOC), Rikers Island houses seven of the City’s nine jails. DOC inmates are either accused of crimes and awaiting a sentencing, or are convicted and sentenced to serve one year or less.1 Rikers Island is located in the north end of the East River with only one access bridge connecting to Astoria, Queens. Since its construction, Rikers Island has been plagued by a history of poor construction, overcrowding and a multitude of other concerns, ranging from rioting to high suicide rates and abuse of power. Though many of these issues can be attributed to the design and management of the facility itself, larger trends
such as the quantity of drug convictions, increasing population and high percentage of black and brown inmates are symptoms of larger citywide and nationwide policies. BRIEF HISTORY Rikers Island was first used for public service during the Civil War in which the US army seized the island as a military training facility. The Rycken family, which inhabited the island, later sold the land to the NYC Department of Charities and Corrections in 1884.2,3 During its early years the island operated as a City dump, the Municipal Farm and a rehab, with approximately 2000 patients.3 In 1932, the first correctional
facilities were constructed after the closure of Blackwell prison, on what’s now Roosevelt Island. During this time, the Municipal Farm shrank and in 1939, the garbage dump operations came to a halt as the City prepared for the World’s Fair.2,3 Due to fill operations, the island today is 2x times its original size. The 1950-60’s marked a unique time in corrections in NYC. Anna M. Kross, the first female commissioner of the DOC, worked throughout this time to build better facilities, provide more training for corrections officers and, most importantly, provide increased social services for inmates. NYC Health and Hospitals began caring for addicts and the mentally ill, and BMCC and CUNY established degree programs in corrections management.3 Despite this push to decrease the prison population and increase social services, the number of inmates in detention continued to grow (from 7,900 in 1954 to 14,000 in 1969) and facilities continued to deteriorate.2 The failure of this approach can be partially attributed to highly criticized failures of psychiatry at the time including: misdiagnosis, questionable practices and indeterminate sentencing.4 During subsequent years, poor conditions and growing population fueled prison riots and resulted in a spike in homicide/ suicide rates.5 In 1979, the City Council put forth its first proposal for a borough-based jail system. In the report, Rikers Island Project Working Document, they proposed renting Rikers Island to the state and shifting municipal corrections operations to each borough. Their main reason for this change was: 1) the poor health of inmates due to living conditions and building deterioration and 2) the poor safety of corrections officers due to island location and layout. This was shot down by those who believed that the plan was too expensive and that a borough-based system would harm their local community. During the 80s, 90s and early 2000s there was a spike in prison population nationwide.3,5 This spike is attributed to the nationwide War on Drugs, which increased the penalties and sentencing for drug related charges, including possession.6 At the same time, NYC began the tactic called Stop and Frisk. Very generally, Stop and Frisk allowed NYPD officers to search anyone they believed to be suspicious. Data has shown that nearly 90% of those stopped were Black or Latino.7 As a combined result of these policies, during the 80s and 90s Rikers Island prison population exceeded 20,000 inmates. With Stop and Frisk being deemed
unconstitutional in 2013 along with other policies such as the decriminalization of marijuana in 2019 the City’s inmate population has dropped to 5,800/ day where it sits today.1,7,8 THE “SMALLER, SAFER, FAIRER” PLAN In March 2017, New York City Mayor, Bill D’Blasio announced a three-part plan to close down all jails on Rikers Island. The plan would disperse the jail complex into four new jails to be incorporated into the fabric of the city, each one to be located in one of the five boroughs with the exception of Staten Island. In order to “be in a position to close Rikers Island for good,” the City has set the jail population milestone marker at 5,000, a goal they aim to meet by 2026.9 The three principles of the plan—smaller, safer, fairer— are expanded upon by an 18-point summary outlining
Top: Rikers Island shoreline Change Over Time Bottom: Historical Rikers Island Landfill; New York Correction History Society
Rikers Island, 2011; AP Photo / Bebeto Matthews
Conditions Throughout Rikers Amongst Several Jails (GRVC, CPSU, and RNDC); The City of New York Board of Correction
Jail Population Reduction Through the Years & Projected Drop in Jail Population; NYC Criminal Justice and City of NY Office of the Mayor, “Smaller, Safer, Fairer: A Roadmap to Closing Rikers Island.” 2016 Strategy 1: Provide judges with tools to assist release decisions 750 person reduction
Strategy 3: Expand Diversion Programs
Strategy 5: Reduce the number of incarcerated individuals with mental illness and behavioral problems 50+ person reduction
Strategy 9: Develop additional strategies to reduce the jail population further from 7,000 to 5,000
500 person reduction
Strategy 7: Reduce the number of State technical parole violators in NYC jails 170 person reduction
Strategy 4: Recidivism-reduction programs 300 person reduction
Strategy 2: Reform Bail System
Strategy 6: Reduce the number of women in city jails by providing programs inside and outside of the jails focused on their unique needs
Strategy 8: Speed up case processing times 450 person reduction
20+ person reduction
200 person reduction
Five-Year Strategic Plan to Reduce the Jail Population from 9,000 to 7,000 by 2026; Info and stats from NYC Criminal Justice and City of NY Office of the Mayor, “Smaller, Safer, Fairer: A Roadmap to Closing Rikers Island.” 2016
Proposed Model: Tower; Design Principles & Guidelines, Manhattan Detention Facility, NYC DDC; The goal of the new “borough-based jails plan,” according to the city, is to create more “modern,” “humane” jails. Building four new jails, however, is the single biggest capital-construction project that the city government has embarked upon in more than a half-century—and the project is supposed to be finished on an aggressive schedule of six and a half years from mid-2020. They want to incorporate the buildings to the character of surrounding buildings to compliment the neighborhood, encouraging a safer public area (i.e streetscapes and open spaces by planting trees, adding cross walks, vehicle access spaces, lighting and public seating). These towers are proposed to be 29 stories with close to 900 beds hoping to drop the prisoner population from 7,000 to 3,300.
124 and 125 White St., Manhattan 450 ft. tall
275 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn 395 ft. tall
745 East 141st St., The Bronx 245 ft. tall
126-02 82nd Ave., Queens 270 ft. tall
Proposed Sites; Sketch by Alex Moy; Site Images from Google Earth; Site Plans from Beyond Rikers Commitment Tracker; Programming for all four jails would include housing units for detainees and recreational space, with retail and community space on the ground floor. In Manhattan—currently under review—125 accessory parking spaces (for staff) would be provided, along with 20,000sf of community facility and commercial space. In Brooklyn, the City would replace the existing Brooklyn Detention Center with a modern center. In the Bronx, the western portion of the site could be rezoned to allow the development of a mixed-use building in the future. In Queens, the City would demolish the existing facility and build a modern one in its place. Additional programming would include an above-ground public parking facility and publicly-accessible community space.
a series of implementation strategies used to reform the current carceral system in NYC. The goal of the first five years is to cut the jail population by 25%— from 9,400 inmates to 7,000—with the intention to reduce it further by 2026, ultimately aiming to be at 3,300 thereafter. Strategies for reduction include a $5 million plan to cut jail sentences down to less than 30 days in hopes of reducing recidivism; a reform to the bail system, making it easier for people to post bail; and a push to provide judges with modern tools to conduct more thorough and fair risk assessments on defendants, prioritizing public safety over a failure to appear in court. The new jails will be closer to courthouses, eliminating one of the main complaints about Rikers: its remote location places inmates far from their legal representatives and contributes to delays in court hearings that keep people in jail longer at a cost of $8.7 billion.10 Transportation of inmates to and from the island for their 15-minute court dates alone costs the city $30 million. ISSUES Not knowing the exact design of the jails, and therefore not knowing how the neighborhood might be impacted by them, was a consistent criticism from communities surrounding the four proposed complexes during the approval process. Their refrain: How can you mitigate concerns and fairly review a project and its effect on neighborhoods when you only have a partial picture? That, in part, galvanized two other lawsuits targeting the jails planned for the Bronx and Queens, respectively. RIKERS ISLAND REIMAGINED Another possibility is to use Rikers Island as a renewable energy hub among its 415 acres.11 An early proposal states that 100 acres of the island would be designated to solar panels and batteries which would replace power generates in the city decreasing air pollution in neighborhoods and land can be cleared for parks and new housing. Along with renewable energy thoughts floated around with the idea to add an extension of La Guardia Airport to eliminate problems with delays etc. The extension would allow for a runway stretch and elevated platforms connecting Rikers and the main airport.
Top: Renewable Rikers Rendering; Lippman Commission Report Bottom: Justice Hub, Design Principles; Van Alen Institute & The Independent Commission for NYC Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform CONCLUSION There is a consensus among many in New York that the conditions on Rikers, along with the systemic inequalities designed into the carceral system nationwide, are in need of a drastic change. It is the magnitude of that change and the process by which it occurs that has caused contention among advocates and opponents of NYC’s decarceration plan. At the root of the problem is the question of whether a jail system works and for whom. Abolishing the carceral system, one that has so consistently and disproportionately failed BIPOC individuals, in favor of diverting funding to mental health, community outreach, and rehabilitation programs, is actively being considered across the country. Other grievances with the plan include the fast-tracking of the project through the planning process by the mayor, the lack of definitive visions for the sitespecific proposals, and the use of a tower typology — often recalling failed, mid-century public housing models — to alleviate the systemic, cultural issues embedded in the jail complex.
Alternative Model: Campus; Lin Sing Association; One alternative proposal to the tower design is a “campus” on Rikers island. This model is currently in its early stages without a clear end goal. A “campus” design would include schools, integration systems, a low-rise detention center and lots of open spaces to keep prisoners from being “locked away” and implementing new justice designs. The campus would hold separate facilities housing different functions, from eating, sleeping, recreation, and education with outdoor exercise.
Alternative Model: Justice Hub; Van Alen Institute & The Independent Commission for NYC Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform; Another reform design model proposal intends to decentralize the jail complex, instead creating “justice hubs.” The intent is to create healthy, normative environments that have the ability to support rehabilitation for incarcerated individuals, while providing neighborhoods with new public amenities to be shared by all. The goal: make “the justice system more visible, accountable, and responsive.”
Endnotes <?>. NYC Department of Corrections “Facilities Overview.” https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doc/ about/facilities.page <?>. Marques, Stuart. “The Birth, Life and—Maybe—Death of Rikers Island.” NYC Department of Records and Information Services. https://www.archives.nyc/blog/2019/3/21/the-birth-life-andmaybe-death-of-rikers-island. <?>. Belcher, Ellen. “New York Prisons and Jails: Historical Research: Research NYC Jails.” Lloyd Sealy Library. https://guides.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/NYPrisons/NYCJails. <?>. Marques, Stuart. “Riots, Rebellion and the City’s Second Attempt to “Sink” Rikers Island.” NYC Department of Records and Information Services. https://www.archives.nyc/ blog/2019/4/19/riots-rebellion-and-the-citys-second-attempt-to-sink-rikers-island. <?>. Halleck, S. (1965). American psychiatry and the criminal: A historical review. American Journal of Psychiatry, 121(9), i–xxi. <?>. Jensen, Eric & Gerber, Jurg & Mosher, Clayton. (2004). Social Consequences of the War on Drugs: the Legacy of Failed Policy. Criminal Justice Policy Review. 15. 100-121. 10.1177/0887403403255315. <?>. Saunders, Benjamin A., et al. “Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation Indirectly Predict Support for New York City’s Stop-&-Frisk Policy Through Prejudice.” Current Psychology, vol. 35, no. 1, 2016, p. 92+. <?>. Mogul, Fred. “NY Officially Decriminalized Marijuana Today. Here’s What You Should Know.” Gothamist. https://gothamist.com/news/ny-officially-decriminalized-marijuana-today-heres-what-you-should-k. 28, Aug. 2019 <?>. NYC Criminal Justice and City of NY Office of the Mayor, “Smaller, Safer, Fairer: A Roadmap to Closing Riker’s Island” <?>. Caroline Spivack, “Bill de Blasio’s Plan to Close Rikers Is Crumbling,” Curbed NY. <?>. Matthew Haag, “Available: A 415-Acre Island With Manhattan Views. What to Build?” New York Times.
Endnotes 1. NYC Department of Corrections “Facilities Overview.” https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doc/about/facilities.page 2. Marques, Stuart. “The Birth, Life and—Maybe—Death of Rikers Island.” NYC Department of Records and Information Services. https://www.archives.nyc/blog/2019/3/21/the-birth-life-and-maybe-death-of-rikers-island. 3. Belcher, Ellen. “New York Prisons and Jails: Historical Research: Research NYC Jails.” Lloyd Sealy Library. https:// guides.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/NYPrisons/NYCJails. 4. Marques, Stuart. “Riots, Rebellion and the City’s Second Attempt to “Sink” Rikers Island.” NYC Department of Records and Information Services. https://www.archives.nyc/blog/2019/4/19/riots-rebellion-and-the-citys-second-attempt-to-sink-rikers-island. 5. Halleck, S. (1965). American psychiatry and the criminal: A historical review. American Journal of Psychiatry, 121(9), i–xxi. 6. Jensen, Eric & Gerber, Jurg & Mosher, Clayton. (2004). Social Consequences of the War on Drugs: the Legacy of Failed Policy. Criminal Justice Policy Review. 15. 100-121. 10.1177/0887403403255315. 7. Saunders, Benjamin A., et al. “Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation Indirectly Predict Support for New York City’s Stop-&-Frisk Policy Through Prejudice.” Current Psychology, vol. 35, no. 1, 2016, p. 92+. 8. Mogul, Fred. “NY Officially Decriminalized Marijuana Today. Here’s What You Should Know.” Gothamist. https://gothamist.com/news/ny-officially-decriminalized-marijuana-today-heres-what-you-should-k. 28, Aug. 2019 9. NYC Criminal Justice and City of NY Office of the Mayor, “Smaller, Safer, Fairer: A Roadmap to Closing Riker’s Island” 10. Caroline Spivack, “Bill de Blasio’s Plan to Close Rikers Is Crumbling,” Curbed NY. 11. Matthew Haag, “Available: A 415-Acre Island With Manhattan Views. What to Build?” New York Times.
CASE STUDY TITLE
First Name Last Name, First Name Last Name
SAF
SMALLER
Riker’s Island 1910s - 1920s
Riker’s Island 2020
FAIRER
FER
Sketch of Borough-Based Plan
TORRE DAVID
Appropriation of Urban Space Zhanna Kitbalyan, Dominiq Oti, Andrew Spiller
Fig. 1. Iwan Baan, Torre David, 2012. https://divisare.com/projects/209495-urban-think-tank-iwan-baan-torre-david-gran-horizonte INTRODUCTION Centro Financiero Confinanzas, also known as Torre David, is an unfinished 45-story tall complex, originally built for commercial use. Between 2007 and 2015, many of the tower’s floors wer occupied by squatting families, with a peak population of 5,000 residents.1 In 2012, Urban-Think Tank worked with the residents of the tower to document their methods of adaptive reuse, and propsed interventions on the Nate Berg, “Inside The Tower of David, Venezuela’s Vertical Slum,” Daily Beast, Apr. 24, 2016. https://www.thedailybeast.com/ inside-the-tower-of-david-venezuelas-vertical-slum
1
infrastructural level to improve the living conditions inside the building.2 The interventions were never realized, and in 2015, the Venezuelan goverment relocated the residents of Torre David as part of “Mission Zamora.”3 We researched the legal and social urban processes that the occupation of Torre David gives one insight to, and explored the future and unrealized potentials of the settlement. Urban-Think Tank, “Torre David,” http://u-tt.com/project/ torre-david/ 3 Brianna Lee, “Venezuela Evicts ‘Tower of David’ Squatters From World’s Tallest Slum,” International Business Times. Jul. 24, 2014. https://www.ibtimes.com/venezuela-evicts-tower-david-squatters-worlds-tallest-slum-1638348 2
CONTEXT The occupation of Torre David has been referred to as a “vertical slum” primarily because of the uncertain tenure status of the residents. However, the occupation of the tower was preceded and followed by legal frameworks that supported the residents’ right to claim the governments undeveloped building as their own. In 2002, a presidential decree essentially codified squatter’s rights: it created a mechanism for Venezualans living in self-built homes on occupied land to appeal for title to the land, by means of establishing Urban Land Committees (CTU - Comités de Tierras Urbanas.)4 When Torre David was occupied in 2007, expropriation of land for housing still took place primarily on rural lands around the city or underdeveloped pockets within the city. However, those barrios proved to be unreliable for housing construction as the hillside eroded during rains and floods, and barrios residents took to unutilized nonresidential structures in the city centers. Following particularly destructive floods in 2010, the Organic Emergency Law for Lands and Housing declared that “the plots of land can be subject to urgent or temporary occupation.” By April 2011, about 155 office, apartment, and government buildings were occupied by squatters, as well as a 3000 person homeless shelter in the Sambil mall. 5 (fig.2) The occupation of Torre David was partially a result of heavy rain, but it also embodied the mobilization of people to take ownership of urban space. Casiques de Venezuela, the cooperative of Torre David residents, was certified in 2009.
pool in Edificio B, a ten-story parking garage, and 23 high-speed elevators. The building also features a glass curtain wall by Cupples Industries, who worked on buildings like the Sears Tower and the World Trade Center. According to Urban-Think Tank, “the area had become Caracas’ Wall Street, the center of finance and the prime location for building the global city.” The building was never completed or used as intended due to an economic crisis in 1994. DISTINCTIVE QUALITIES The “prime location” of Torre David is a major difference between its occupation and the informal settlements in barrios. Barrios house around 60%
Fig.2. Map of informal settlements and occupied buildings in Caracas in 2005. Urban-Think Tank, Torre David: Informal Vertical Communities.
Centro Financiero Confinanzas, dubbed Torre David after its developer David Brillembourg, is located at the intersection of Calle Real de Sarria and Avenida Urdaneta. It is surrounded by commercial skyscraper complexes, a mountainous national park, and lies near the Avenida Boyaca - an arterial road constructed in the 1970s. The original design for the complex consisted of a hotel, office spaces, and helipad in Edificio A, 81 luxury apartment suites and a swimming 4
Gregory Wilpert, “Venezuela’s Quiet Housing Revolution: Urban Land Reform,” Sept. 12, 2005. https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/1355 5 Urban-Think Tank, Torre David: Informal Vertical Communities, Lars Muller Publishers, 2013, p.98.
Fig.3. Family residence inside Torre David. Iwan Baan, 2012. https://divisare.com/projects/209495-urbanthink-tank-iwan-baan-torre-david-gran-horizonte
Fig. 4. Iwan Baan, Torre David, 2012.
or the population of Caracas and occupy 40% of its land, mostly on the outskirts of the city. Major roadways and the Río Guaire river clearly demarcate where the formal city ends and the barrios begin. In contrast, the residents of Torre David had easy access to their places of work and Caracas’ public transportation system. Street vendors were able to park their carts in the building’s garage and could also attract enough clientele posted on the street right outside of their home. The accessibility of city infrastructure in Torre David was also evident in the presence of well-managed water, gas, and electricity systems in the building, which were resultant of many years of hard work on behalf of the residents. A former resident of the tower recalls that in the beginning of occupation in 2007, the families “put up tents on the ground floor because the upper floor had no light or electricity.” She also recalls some residents taking and repurposing the elevator cabins, and seeing damage to the building’s systems by looters.6 Before the forced eviction, residents of Torre David lived in relatively safe and sanitary conditions and had, albeit limited, a legal supply of electricity and utilities upto the 28th floor. (fig.8) The lack of functional HVAC system posed a significant problem for the residents. As a result, many have taken out units of the glass facade to ensure air flow. The housing settlements in Torre David also stood out in their security. Following the abandonment of the complex in 1994, “drug and housing mafias took control of the space, and vandalism, looting and crime reigned within and around it.” Unfortunately, the reputation of danger and crime continued well into the occupation of the building by families. Former resident Daisy Mosalve recalls: “since the occupation, everybody blames everything bad that happens around here on Torre residents. They say we’re thugs, robbers, scum… but we’re honest, hard-working people, and this has always been a bad area of Caracas.”7 The reality of life at Torre David was vastly different from the outsiders’ perception. In fact, for many, the Urban-Think Tank, Torre David, 2015. https://vimeo.com/ondemand/torredavid/72176936 7 Ramón Iriarte, “Tower of David: Urban Survival Creativity,” Works That Work, no. 4, 2014, https://worksthatwork.com/4/ tower-of-david-urban-survival-creativity/share/4abd5fb5a9832a8f091127a2c3eed5a0 6
Fig. 5-7. Top to bottom: barbershop, church, and sewing workspace in Torre David. Iwan Baan, 2012. https://iwan.com/portfolio/venice-biennale-2012-uttiwan-baan-torre-david
Fig. 8. Diagram of the electricity supply in Torre David. Urban-Think Tank, Torre David: Informal Vertical Communities.
Fig. 9. Diagram of residentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; construction. Urban-Think Tank, Torre David: Informal Vertical Communities.
Fig. 10. Iwan Baan, Torre David, 2012.
tower was a safe haven in comparison to the barrios. According to another former resident, “here [Torre David] it’s safe. You need a key to enter the tower. And at the gate of the parking lot, there is a guard.”8 In fact, Casiques de Venezuela employs security guards and enforces community living standards. The earliest residents spoke of violence that had happened during the first few years of the settlement. However, that all changed when Alexander “El Nino” Daza moved in. He was an ex-convict who changed into an evangelical pastor.9 His history was ambiguous, but he brought order to the community. Under Daza, the rules became more strict, but the tower became safer. The community government was set up with distinct levels. The lowest level were handling issues for each floor amongst residents of that floor. There was a larger delegation which was comprised of a representative from each floor and the other leaders such as Daza which would meet twice a week. Their most common issues were residents not paying their quota or trash being flung into the courtyard.10 Their fees would go towards employing the 33 people who worked in the tower, providing infrastructural needs such as water and electricity, security guards, coordinators, and the members of the directive.11 Residents would use construction the same construction materials utilized in the slums but construct their apartments and businesses within the tower. The construction was ad-hoc and carried out by the residents themselves. They would carry the bricks and concrete up the stairs.12 Over time, businesses opened within the tower with there being several bodegas, hair salons, day-care centers, and various small scale manufacturing operations. UNREALIZED FUTURES AND RELOCATION Urban Think Tank described the building as Urban-Think Tank, Torre David, 2015. https://vimeo.com/ondemand/torredavid/72176936 9 Alejandro Cegarra, Alicia Hernandez “Inside Venezuela’s tower of neglect,” Aljazeera, Dec 5. 2015 https://www.aljazeera.com/ features/2015/12/5/inside-venezuelas-tower-of-neglect 10 Jon Lee Anderson, “Slumlord” The New Yorker, Jan. 21, 2013 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/01/28/slumlord 11 Urban-Think Tank, Torre David: Informal Vertical Communities, Lars Muller Publishers, 2013. 12 Urban-Think Tank, Torre David, 2015. https://vimeo.com/ondemand/torredavid/72176936 8
functioning like a complex city, merging formal structure with informal adaptation to solve the problems faced by the residents. Their description was that the community was not criminal but nor was it a utopia. UTT was led by Alfred Brillembourg, a relative of David Brillembourg for whom the Torre David was named after. UTT sought to add novel infrastructure and circulatory schemes to the tower to experiment with what was described as the vertical slum. The nature of the project lent itself to much of the same ideology as Le Corbusier’s Double House with its ability for expansion but at completely different scales. The Urban Think Tanks core concept was to integrate the life of the city into this building with improvised elements such as apartments, shops, and a gym on the terrace.13 To demonstrate the impact of this, their team created a mock hypothetical restaurant for the project at the 2012 Venice Biennale which would be awarded the Golden Lion by the jury.14 Shortly thereafter in 2014, the Venezualan government decided to end the occupation of Torre David and convert it into a commercial center and office tower. The government executed Mission Zamora, The residents would be “evacuated” to nearby cities of Cua and Valles De Tuy. However, even using the term evacuation is loaded as the other description was an eviction carried out by the military. At this point, the Torre David housed roughly 4400 people.15 The project mentioned above never materialized and the building was most recently damaged in an earthquake in 2018, which caused the top 5 floors to partially collapse.16
13 Urban - ThinkTank, “Torre David,” http://u-tt.com/project/ torre-david/ 14 Nico Saieh, “Venice Biennale 2012:Torre David, Gran Horizonte / Urban Think Tank + Justin McGuirk + Iwan Baan,” ArchDaily, Oct. 23, 2012 https://www.archdaily.com/269481/venice-biennale2012-torre-david-gran-horizonte-urban-think-tank-justin-mcguirkiwan-baan 15 Alicia Hernandez, In Photos: Familis Removed from ‘Tower of David’ Skyscraper Slum,” Vice News, Jul. 25, 2014 https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbnj88/in-photosfamilies-removed-from-tower-of-david-skyscraper-slum 16 Nicolas Valencia, “Last Floors of the Infamous Torre de David Have Tilted Following an Earthquake,” ArchDaily, Aug. 27, 2018 https://www.archdaily.com/900858/last-floors-of-the-infamoustorre-de-david-have-tilted-following-an-earthquake
TORRE DAVID: APPROPRIATION OF URBAN SPACE Zhanna Kitbalyan, Dominiq Oti, Andrew Spiller