Dyson College of Arts and Sciences

ket-rate housing (Gould and Lewis 2016). If successful, the ESCR would show that a green amenity based on world-class design could be carried out without the gentrification and displacement of poorer residents that had been documented in this park, as well as in other disaster-rebuilding projects such as those follow- ing Hurricane Katrina and, more locally, 9/11. Yet, 4 years later, the project has gone through another round of public input and two re-designs, and still has not broken ground. Instead, what has begun to spring up all along the LES waterfront are luxury hous- ing towers, as well as proposals for even more of these projects. In the meantime, the FEMA funding for the Sandy repairs that was allocated to public housing has itself been delayed. e question then becomes: can this experiment in the building of an equitable resil- ience infrastructure project be carried out, or will it be superseded by more gentrifying projects and process- es? Will the less powerful political actors who are de- manding that the city protect them from rising waters get to benefit from an award-winning design that gives them both high level green amenities and greater re- silience infrastructure? Or, finally, will the LES remain without protection against future storms? In this article, we discuss the challenges of meeting the joint goals of equitable, community- responsive resiliency planning, on the one hand, and of financing and building large-scale infrastructure on the other. Urban political economists have long ar- gued that, in the context of market-oriented or neo- liberal urbanism, local politicians, no matter which constituencies have elected them, are forced to create policies that emphasize economic growth, and so to be responsive primarily to the interests of local busi- ness, real estate, and financial elites. Even more progressive city administrations are controlled by an urban "growth machine": one that privileges the "exchange value" of local space over the use value needs of regular, non-wealthy citizens, hobbling the ability of progressive politicians to be accountable to the citizens who elect them (Logan and Molotch 1987, 2007). While not disputing this, other urban scholars, following the perspective of Henri Lefeb- vre, argue that cities also have the potential to be re- sponsive to local demands for a more broadly shared "right to the city" (Mitchell 2003; Harvey 2011). From this perspective, the city can be shaped not only by fi- nance and real estate elites, but also by its engaged and radicalized "inhabitants," and so become a place to congregate, create community, and envision and col- lectively build new worlds which allow for new kinds of human life (Harvey 2008). is article will explore what "the growth ma- chine" and "the right to the city" mean in the age of resiliency planning. Resilience infrastructure is expen- sive. Can a city in this neoliberal age, even under a pro- gressive mayor, fund such projects without financing new luxury housing developments, or finding other private mechanisms of financializing infrastructure? Can an activist base push elected leaders to uphold their promise to protect the most vulnerable, threat- ened by both the rising cost of housing and by rising waters? In other words, can there be a right to the resil- ient city? To look at these questions, we will begin by looking at contemporary critiques of urban resilien- cy planning. According to critics, cities seeking re- silience infrastructure and their associated environ- mental amenities are forced to become "green growth machines" building projects that increase urban inequality. We will compare these arguments to re- cent work on "e Right to the City," asking whether it might yet be possible to design resilient infrastruc- ture that includes lower-income residents and has more equitable outcomes—despite its capital needs. To do this, we will focus on e East Side Coastal Resiliency Project (ESCR) stretching 2.2 miles from along the East River Park from East 25th Street to Montgomery. e ESCR is part of a larger project, e Big U, a proposed ring of flood protection lining the waterfront of Lower Manhattan. As a winning design in the Rebuild by Design competition, e Depart- ment of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded New York City $335million in funds for this project. e City has dedicated these funds to build the first segment of the Big U, the ESCR, along with city commitments of $425 million. e Big U design rebuilds the East River Park into a soened shore and bermed parkland designed to protect the LES against future storm surges by absorbing stormwaters (Mayor's Office of Recovery and Resiliency 2017).We will look closely at the political conversation around this project as the proposal has developed over a 5- year period, from the HUD award for the Big U proj- ect design to the third, most recent, ESCR design. To do this, we will look at media discourse and public documents that discuss the design and financing of this project over the period 2014–2018, to ask wheth- er a city can build resilience infrastructure without depending on the growth machine logics of real estate development. 45

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