It is often said that New York is a city of neighbourhoods. While this reflects the history of New York development in absorbing waves of immigrants coupled with the footprint of New York’s socio-economic development, much has been done in recent years to preserve and enhance the identity of New York neighbourhoods, and to resolve conflicts between development imperatives and the preservation of heritage and identity. While there are on-going tensions, there is much in the situation of the neighbourhoods of New York that provide insights into the position of local communities in large successful cities where individual initiatives, and the role of civil society, have been important in preserving and enhancing New York neighbourhoods.

New York is a large city with an estimated population of 8.336 million in 2012 while the total New York Metropolitan area has a population of 18.9 million. The city is divided into five boroughs : Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, and Staten Island. Many neighbourhoods within these boroughs have distinctive characteristics and identity.

Efforts to enhance the liveability of New York neighbourhoods have involved a strong role for civil society organisations, such as the Project for Public Spaces and Grow NYC, while individuals have at times played a decisive role as, for example, in the preservation of the High Line as an aerial public park which is discussed below. City government has often supported such action, although sometimes with a time lag, in areas such as passing Landmarks legislation and the declaring of over one hundred Historic Districts, and in the construction of new urban parks.

PPS and place making

The Project for Public Spaces was established in 1975 to put into practice the findings of William Whyte’s Street Life project. This work provided a guiding philosophy for the work of PPS deeply rooted in a local neighbourhood foundation. While PPS has had a large number of projects in New York, nationally, and internationally, its work may be illustrated by :

• The New York Streets Renaissance project; and
• Its approach to place making.

In 2005 PPS was brought into the New York Streets Renaissance campaign as a grassroots initiative that led to sweeping changes in New York streets in a few years. The initiative addressed New York’s traffic which dominated streets and aimed to reinvent the city’s streets as vibrant public spaces. This alternative vision of the role of streets was illustrated around public spaces in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan. Street Renaissance demonstration projects were constructed in many of the city neighbourhoods.

Much PPS work has been directed at effective place making based on evaluating many public spaces around the world. This has led to a clear PPS view on the role of public spaces in place making.

They are the front porches of our public institutions – libraries, field houses, neighbourhood schools- where we interact with each other and government. Where spaces work well, they serve as a stage for our public lives.

The PPS view of a successful place is clearly set out.

PPS has worked in a joint project with the UN Habitat agency on place making and the future of cities with draft conclusions available in a 2012 report (PPS 2012).

Grow NYC

Grow NYC is a hands on non-profit organisation that has been improving the New York city environment for over 40 years. Established in 1970 as the Council on the Environment of New York, the organisations has evolved to become more engaged with the city and its citizens in a range of ways. It has sponsored environment programs that transform communities block by block aiming to empower local communities to act to secure clean and healthy environments for future generations. Projects include the famous Union Square Greenmarket, building community gardens, teaching young people about the environment, and improving recycling awareness.

Preserving neighbourhood heritage

Preserving historic neighbourhoods in New York has involved struggles between development imperatives and action by local communities to preserve their heritage. These conflicts across the city between competing imperatives may be illustrated by the struggle to preserve the heritage of Brooklyn Heights which was to become New York’s first declared Historic District (Schneider 2010).

While seventy years ago historic preservation regulations in urban areas existed in only a handful of American cities, Boston’s Beacon Hill and the Vieux Carre in New Orleans were notable exceptions, the conflicts between development imperatives and preservation action by local communities led to the New York Landmarks Law in 1965 which included immediate action on three historic districts, including Brooklyn Heights.

In these struggles leading to the New York Landmarks Law, local community action was important. In Brooklyn Heights, for example, volunteers mapped all houses in the district and identified 619 pre-Civil war houses that gave the district its unique 19^th century quality (Schneider, p43). Preserving the heritage of “brownstones” became a battle cry for the community.

New York now has a Landmarks Preservation Commission to administer the city’s preservation efforts including identifying Historic Districts.

A Historic District is an area of the city been designated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission because it has a special character or a special historical or aesthetic interest which causes it to have a distinct “Sense of place”  (Landmarks Preservation Commission)

This approach links place making with preserving the heritage as a foundation for building a city with a strong sense of identity and heritage. Historic Districts range in size from small groups of historic buildings to areas covering hundreds of buildings. Hardenbergh/Rhinelander Historic District is the smallest with 7 buildings. Greenwich Village is the largest containing 2,035 buildings.

Buildings in the declared Historic Districts require the approval of the Commission for changes. This has acted as a brake on the destruction of historic buildings and districts so that New York has gained as a city with an enhanced sense of its heritage and identity. With these procedures in place, New York has over 100 declared Historic Districts with 30 districts in the Brooklyn Borough alone, and with Brooklyn Heights the first of these.

Innovating in Urban Parks

New York in 2012 received the Lee Kuan Yew Prize for “outstanding contributions towards the creation of vibrant liveable and sustainable urban communities around the world”  (Urban Solutions No 1, July 2012,p26). In responding to this prize, Mayor Greenberg cited as two of New York’s innovations the new Brooklyn Bridge Park and the High Line.

• The Brooklyn Bridge Park is being built along the Brooklyn waterfront for nearly a mile and a half. The park is innovative in creatively reusing six abandoned piers as relics from Brooklyn’s shipping past so that the park projects the theme of adaptive reuse of past industrial objects and conveys a new vision of what a park in an intensely urban setting can do.
• The High Line is also an innovative urban park developed from a disused elevated industrial railway that formerly served warehouses in the “meatpacking district” of Manhattan. Community action saved the railway line from demolition and led to a park with significant public spaces running for about one and a half miles in Manhattan’s west side.

Both these examples show the city innovating in reclaiming an artefact from the city’s industrial past, and reinventing it for the 21^st century (Bloomberg 2012,pp26-27).

The role of Community Boards

An illustration of the significance of local communities in the operation of New York as a city of neighbourhoods exists in the role of the 59 Community Boards established by the city. The role of the Board’s is advising on land use and zoning matters where they must be consulted. Each Community Board usually takes in a number of neighbourhoods. For example, Community Board 2 Manhattan covers neighbourhoods of Greenwich Village, Soho, NoHo, Little Italy, and Chinatown.

Some examples of neighbourhoods

Fulton Ferry Landing and Brooklyn Heights may be taken as examples of typical neighbourhoods, both declared Historic Districts. Information on all the neighbourhoods of Brooklyn is available in the excellent Neighbourhood History Guides produced by the Brooklyn Historical Society. The museum of the Society in Brooklyn Heights has a good historical library.

• The Fulton Ferry Landing is a small historic neighbourhood located on the Brooklyn waterfront adjacent to Brooklyn Bridge. A jetty existed here back to the 18^th century, at times caught up in drama such as the retreat by George Washington and his officers from Brooklyn following defeat in the battle of Brooklyn in the American War of Independence. Ferryboats from Manhattan became regular following the invention of the steamboat by Robert Fulton. This became an industrial area and Brooklyn’s transportation hub and commercial area with a range of industries and shops. The building of the Brooklyn Bridge impacted on this neighbourhood with a decline of the former dominant industries. In recent years some of the old commercial and industrial buildings have been renovated for residential purposes. The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge Park adjacent to this neighbourhood is leading to a placemaking revival of the neighbourhood.
• Brooklyn Heights was New York’s first declared Historic District. This is a pleasant tree lined residential neighbourhood which combines this with a vibrant main street with many eating places and small shops. A touch of Paris. The neighbourhood displays a range of architectural styles and periods with the superb Brooklyn Heights Promenade with its views over Manhattan, East River, and New York Harbour. Brooklyn Heights has attracted many eminent literary figures such as Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Norman Mailer, while the Brooklyn Historical Society  Museum in Pierrepont Street preserves the rich heritage of Brooklyn. Brooklyn Heights demonstrates successful place making with the new Brooklyn Bridge Park connected to the Heights Promenade with a bridge  to add to the public spaces in the neighbourhood and its attraction as an urban living environment.
• New York, the city of neighbourhoods, illustrates a different approach to revitalising local communities to most of the cities involved in the PASCAL International Exchanges. This is not a top down approach seen in some other cities in the PIE exchanges, but a kind of social free market in which entrepreneurial action by individuals and community organisations is important. The key role of civil society is illustrated by the roles of the Project for Public Places and Grow NYC. Place making ideas have filtered down to influence much of this development with the City supporting with such initiatives as the innovative urban parks discussed

The importance of the neighbourhoods of New York gives the city a distinctive ethos and spirit that can be seen as articulating a moral case for diversity (Bell & de Shalit, p6) Good place making in recent years, combined with efforts to preserve and enhance the heritage of the city, make the neighbourhoods of New York one of the enduring assets of the city, and enhances the quality of life for many.

The New York approach is distinctive, and perhaps unique, a reality recognised when the city was able to combine winning the Lee Kuan Yew Prize in 2012 for “outstanding contributions towards the creation of vibrant, liveable and sustainable urban communities around the world” with selection by the Economist Intelligence Unit as the world’s most competitive city applying the Global City Competitiveness Index (Economist Intelligence Unity 2012). Whether the New York approach to preserving and enhancing the role and significance of neighbourhoods in a competitive global city has implications for other cities  merits discussion.

Some questions

1. Do you consider that the New York approach to preserving and enhancing the role of neighbourhoods has lessons for other cities?
2. What aspect of the New York approach do you consider has most value?
3. In what ways could the role of civil society organisations play a significant role in the development of cities, as has occurred in New York.

References

Bell,D & de Shalit,A (2011), The Spirit Of Cities : Why the identity of a city matters in a global age, Princeton, Princeton University Press

Bloomberg, M (2012), Extracts from speech on 21 March 2012, Urban Solutions, Issue 1, July 2012, Centre for Liveable Cities, Singapore

Brooklyn Historical Society (2001), Dumbo, Fuller Ferry Landing, Vinegar Hill Neighbourhood Guide, Brooklyn

Project for Public Spaces (2012),  Project for Public Spaces Impact on New York. Accessed on 15 May 2013

Project for Public Spaces (2012), New York Streets Renaissance. Accesed on 15 May 2013

Schneider,M (2010), Battling for Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn Heights Association, Brooklyn Urban Solutions Issue 1, July 2012, New York City, Centre for Liveable Cities, Singapore