Aggressive Urban Planning Toward Low-Income Residents

Fitzsimmons 1 Emily Fitzsimmons Dr. Wieters RCPL 5013 001 21 October 2020 Aggressive Urban Planning Toward Low-Income Residents In the fall of 1890, a police reporter named Jacob Riis published his book How the Other Half Lives with the hope of inspiring New York City’s wealthy citizens to help their impoverished neighbors. Filled with candid photographs of tenement and street life, the book conveyed the severely inhumane living conditions that the lowest classes endured, including crowded and poorly built apartments without windows, light, or ventilation; limited access to bathrooms; polluted air and water; and streets filled with waste. Coincidingly, these surroundings were coupled with long working hours, dangerous working conditions, low pay, and high rents.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the city, those in the middle- and upper-classes enjoyed clean streets, spacious rooms, and higher quality of city services for the time. The difference of situations was not the fault or choice of the residents but rather that of city officials: This disparate outcome occurred because city leaders actively decided which people deserved proper quality of life. With prejudices fueling their desire to make their urban society appear wealthy, city leaders smothered the poor through city planning. This dynamic is not restricted to 19th century New York; rather, this has been the global narrative for millennia. Not only have city leaders historically prioritized affluent groups in city design and services but they have also acted aggressively in order to suppress, confine, and eradicate the lower classes.

Little can be known for sure about many ancient cities, but we can still observe the prioritization of wealthy classes over the lower classes in city planning and design. For instance,

Fitzsimmons 2 in ancient Egypt, most of the labor, materials, and goods were diverted to the pharaohs’ tombs for the culture’s most elite. Coincidingly, modern Egypt’s greatest metropolitan area now abuts the Giza Pyramid Complex. Likewise, places like El Amarna built the city’s luxury homes closest to the main streets, followed by a subsequent decrease in household income and building quality the farther one lived from the main thoroughfares. This is the first known case of urban planning in which transportation infrastructure determined land use as well as who got to use it (Wieters, “Early” 8). This example in which the wealthiest are given the easiest access to transportation and other city resources is still extremely prevalent in urban planning.

Similarly, ancient Rome was built according to a major wealth disparity. Overall, the city of Rome’s layout was spatially equitable with few clusters segregating the rich and poor, resulting in people of all classes traveling through the same public spaces (Morris 64).

Eventually, Roman cities also progressed to having building codes and widespread public assistance; nevertheless, the distinction in housing quality between the rich and poor left its historical mark (Wieters, “Early” 33). In the 4th century A.D., 1,797 domus – single-family home equivalents – were recorded in the city of Rome; at that same time, there were 46,602 insula.

Insula were poorly built multi-story apartment buildings, much like the tenements that Jacob Riis documented; these structures were mostly made of lumber even though open fires were used for lighting, cooking, and heat. In addition to being an obvious fire hazard, the upper floors did not have running water, nor did these apartments have the privacy or protection from dust and noise from the outdoors that the domus provided. With an average of five apartments per insula and five to six residents in each flat, over a million Romans lived in these crowded, dusty, and dangerous buildings. By comparison, only Rome’s most wealthy citizens could afford a domus, which provided much higher quality and safer homes (Morris 63-64). Not to mention, the city’s

Fitzsimmons 3 most impoverished and outcast people lived not even in the insula but at the city’s fringes, finding shelter in tombs (Patterson 102).

During the Han Dynasty in China, the ideal urban plan was configured by scholars of the time; their blueprint has influenced urban development of traditional Chinese cities ever since.

This plan consists of concentric squares: In the center lies the palace, which is surrounded by administrative buildings, which is then surrounded by the outer city. Notably, this organizational design reflects the three distinct parts of the universe – heaven, mankind, and earth – as well as a belief in the moral distinction between the emperor, scholars and administrators, and commoners (Nelson). In other words, the ideal city was laid based on the idea that wealthier people intrinsically had higher morals and more individual value than those of lower classes. Coupled with this moralist division, strict rules confined the commoners to both their societal and geographical place, eliminating opportunities for each kind of mobility (Nelson).

Likewise, 16th century records of European cities show macro-level class segregation in which low-income people largely lived at the city’s boundaries while the wealthiest concentrated at the city center. On the meso-level, middle-class and some lower-class residents habituated the side and back streets behind the houses of the wealthy because they had certain careers (Lesger and Van Leeuwen 339). In general, “the greater was the social distance between groups…the greater was the spatial distance between them” (Lesger and Van Leeuwen 340). This segregation was methodical and guided by both the market as well as city planners, who enforced class requirements for certain residential areas while also providing low quality public services to neighborhoods farther from the nucleus. In addition to residential prioritization based on socioeconomic class, businesses associated with lower classes were often nomadic, forced to be stationed on a public square rather than inhabit a permanent space (Lesger and Van Leeuwen

Fitzsimmons 4 340-341). Again, restrictions such as these often still apply today through discriminatory practices in homeowners’ associations, banks, and similar institutions that stiffly regulate who can occupy certain spaces.

As time has progressed, we have more accounts of urban leaders seeking to plan for the well-being of citizens from all socio-economic classes, such as James Oglethorpe’s public squares in Savannah, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s Central Park in New York City, and Ebenezer Howard’s widespread garden city movement (Wieters, “Early” 121-122).

Correspondingly, however, disparities in urban planning and services based on wealth are more documented than ever, and the motivations behind such planning are more apparent than ever as well. For instance, the New York tenements that Jacob Riis documented and lived in himself for a time were inhumane in structure, but the neighborhoods also lacked basic services, resulting in dangerous epidemics of cholera, tuberculosis, and other deadly diseases in addition to the lifeshortening ailments from the physically and mentally demanding environment (History). New York City’s leaders allowed this to occur because poor immigrants were the ones most affected.

In Chicago, officials seized the opportunity after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 to rebuild the city into a global player, meaning a city for wealthy society. To do this, city leaders enforced building restrictions that ultimately pushed low-income housing to the city’s periphery and out of sight (History).

Historically, those with lower incomes have consistently lived close to industrial areas because they often cannot afford to live far from their workplace, especially with little access to services like transportation. As recent papers on environmental injustices against marginalized communities illustrate, this placement is also a result of systemic discrimination against people of color and of certain ethnicities who tend to experience generational poverty. Through tactics

Fitzsimmons 5 such as zoning, redlining, and denial of municipal services, city planners have escalated the injustices low-income residents have faced in the last century, intentionally transforming their neighborhoods into slums that the city can justify clearing for infrastructure and industry (Rothstein 6; Highsmith 355). In some cases, residents even attempted to cooperate with local governments in urban renewal projects that planned to demolish their own neighborhoods because the city had neglected and degraded these areas so much over the years (Highsmith 353356). Despite these persistent efforts by residents to participate in the process, fight policy, improve their neighborhoods, or move, cities adamantly prioritized wealthy and white residents as well as industry in city design and services (Highsmith 355-357). Though redlining is now illegal and urban renewal condemned, low-income neighborhoods still experience many of the same urban challenges today from current planning as well as the lingering effects of past policies. Cities around the globe funnel public funds into wealthier neighborhoods, giving them more trees, sidewalks, and services that poor communities have lacked for decades.

Urban planning has historically prioritized affluent groups in city design and services without limit to time or place, but attitues toward low-income groups and leaders’ intentions in city planning have become clearer as documented history nears modernity. At best, those with power have had a condescending disregard for low-income residents that manifests in neglect.

For the most part, however, I assert that urban planning has embodied a systematic animosity toward impoverished peoples resulting in aggressive city design and management with the intent to suppress and eradicate lower classes. This aversion toward low-income people is founded on a variety of prejudices, the least offensive of which asserts that city planning should prioritize wealthier residents because they are dubbed as the more productive class, even though 44% of the United States workforce is low-income (Escobari, et al.). Correspondingly, many think of

Fitzsimmons 6 poor people as lazy, uneducated, immoral, and, in general, lesser to those who are fiscally successful. This is especially illustrated by the Chinese city planning during the Han Dynasty, which was structured heavily on moral distinction between the emperor, the scholars, and the commoners. Similarly, the City Beautiful movement calls for beautiful urban environments that will inspire civic morality in poor people, metamorphosing them from vagrants and criminals into respectable citizens (Wieters, “City Beautiful” 6-7). Although the leaders of this movement were right in wanting to improve urban environments, their reasoning reveals a discriminatory opinion that views impoverished people as automatically immoral. In this frame of mind, lowincome people do not contribute to the community but rather sully the upper society and, therefore, are unworthy of enjoyable – or even basic – community design and support. Naturally, this fails to account for generational disadvantages that are multiplied by intersectionality, extortion of certain groups by economic systems, and bigoted governments.

Many planners’ racist, xenophobic, sexist, classist, and similarly discriminatory views have motivated this decision to prioritize wealthier neighborhoods. Not all planners have necessarily done this consciously, but they are participating in a systematically classist society that teaches them to, expects them to, and ultimately praises them for prioritizing wealthy residents in city improvements. Regardless of the ignorance, those with lower incomes are hurt socio-economically, psychologically, and physically. Such planning practices have sustained generational poverty and health issues, including diabetes, obesity, heart disease, heatstroke, lung disease, depression, drug and alcohol addiction, and overall shortened life expectancies (Plumer and Popovich).

Instead of targeting poverty itself, urban leaders have abused impoverished people with the goal of eradicating some and suppressing those who remain. In Egypt, leaders distributed

Fitzsimmons 7 incredibly disproportionate resources and land according to class. In Rome, all but the wealthiest lived in fire traps or tombs that deprived them entirely of privacy. In China, the ideal city carefully separated the rich and poor, insisting on the moral depravity of commoners. In Europe, spatial segregation and a lack of permanency kept low-income people in their socio-economic place. In the United States, tenement housing similar to ancient Rome’s insula, lack of municipal services, and the displacement of impoverished people to urban peripheries created disastrous public health and safety issues that ultimately killed a tenth of New York City’s population (Borton). Openly discriminatory tactics have refused low-income peoples municipal services, displaced poor populations, created environmental injustices, and continued generational poverty. Such aggressive conditions can only be explained by a classist system’s motivation to exterminate the lives and diminish the capacity of low-income communities.

Fitzsimmons 8 Works Cited Borton, Terry. “A Layman’s Sermon: Jacob A. Riis on How the Other Half Lives & Dies in NY.” YouTube, uploaded by MuseumofCityNY, 29 Oct. 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3NwFB9zuF8.

Escobari, Marcela, et al. “Realism About Reskilling: Upgrading the Career Prospects of America’s Low-Wage Workers.” Brookings, 7 Nov. 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/research/realism-about-reskilling/. Accessed 6 Oct. 2020.

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3, 2009, pp. 348-368. PDF. History.com Editors. “Tenements.” History, 10 Oct. 2019, https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/tenements. Accessed 6 Oct. 2020.

Lesger, Clé, and Marco H.D. Van Leeuwen. “Residential Segregation from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century: Evidence from the Netherlands.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 42, no. 3, pp. 333-369, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41291232.

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Patterson, John R. “On the Margins of the City of Rome.” Death and Disease in the Ancient City, edited by Valerie M. Hope and Eireann Marshall, Routledge, 2002, 85-103.

Plumer, Brad, and Nadja Popovich. “How Decades of Racist Housing Policy Left

Fitzsimmons 9 Neighborhoods Sweltering.” The New York Times, 24 Aug. 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/24/climate/racism-redlining-cities-globalwarming.html. Accessed 2 Sept. 2020.

Rothstein, Richard. “The Making of Ferguson: Public Policies at the Root of its Troubles.”

Economic Policy Institute, 15 Oct. 2015. PDF. Wieters, Kathleen M. “City Beautiful Movement: 1890s-early 1900s.” RCPL 5013 001: History and Theory of Urban Planning, 16 Sept. 2020, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK. Lecture.

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