Dyson College of Arts and Sciences

The right to the city Another perspective on the city emphasizes its poten- tial as a democratic space for radical change, giving citizens greater opportunity to organize and resist elite interests. Henri Lefebvre argued that urbanization pro- vided the capacity for collective action by city inhabi- tants, enabling people to gain "e Right to the City": a space in which to mobilize for essential collective consumption and political rights as urban dwellers, including the right to public space and to a powerful voice in local development decisions. From this point of view, cities give citizens the opportunity to, as Le- febvre states, "make themselves," because people are concentrated in space and can make greater demands about the form of the space in which they live. e Right to the City, however, "depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of urban- ization" (Harvey 2008). Characterizations of urban development of- ten combine these two perspectives, looking both at growth machine forces and the countervailing force of collective urban resistance. From a green growth machine perspective, urban elites will incorporate as much of the sustainability and resilience discourse as will enable them to expand developmentalist schemes. From a "Right to the City" perspective, organized so- cial movements can resist these schemes and partici- pate in the design of resilience projects that will pro- vide broader amenities to all without awakening the sleeping giant of gentrification. Strong community organizing efforts can lead to more equitable recovery planning and projects. Gould and Lewis, for example, while focusing on "green growth machine" politics, also note that neighborhoods with strong communi- ty organizations suffer less displacement in the face of green gentrification (2016). Some scholars have argued that lower-income neighborhood coalitions tend to balance their demands for green amenities with their fears of gentrification by asking for projects that are "just green enough": providing a few green amenities desired by the neighborhood but not so much as will attract higher-income residents (Curran and Hamilton 2017; Wolch et al. 2014). Yet, as cities find themselves increasingly cash- strapped in their efforts to meet mounting resilience infrastructure needs, the question remains as to how community organizations can intervene. When they do participate, organizations oen propose solutions that are not appealing to or profitable for the green growth machine—emphasizing in particular the main- tenance of affordable housing. In the wake of the 1970s economic crisis, and beginning with the Koch Admin- istration, New York City imposed austerity policies that pulled away from previous social services com- mitments and embraced public-private partnerships as a way to fund infrastructure, transforming the city into a "brand," that strategically positioned itself with- in the growing, global, interurban competition for new sources of financial and real estate investment, tour- ism, and new upper-class residents (Greenberg 2008). e ESCR, however, was a turn away from austerity politics and market-oriented development, renew- ing City commitment to the progressive politics of a publicly funded large-scale infrastructure project that would provide benefits beyond the City's elites, and which was designed in concert with some of the City's lower income residents. Could this new turn succeed? The politics of disaster response in New York City e post-history of the 9/11 disaster shows that Lower Manhattan was rebuilt around the interests of the fi- nancial and real estate elite and ignored the signifi- cant needs in low-income neighborhoods, marginal- ized communities, and small business (Gotham and Greenberg 2014). Redevelopment projects emerged from short-term development decisions made during the mayoral administration of Rudy Giuliani, combin- ing infrastructure with real estate, and influenced by a range of actors and a "politics of immediacy," that had long-term unintended consequences (Lopez 2017). Subsequent decades saw the increasingly dramatic rise, fall, and rise again of the local financial and real estate markets that were part of intensive, if inconsistent, waves of gentrification (Smith and DeFilippis 2008). Mayor Michael Bloomberg continued the mar- ket-oriented policies of disaster response initiated by Giuliani. One month following Sandy, in Decem- ber 2012, Bloomberg launched the "Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency" [SIRR]. A success- ful businessman and self-proclaimed "CEO-Mayor," Bloomberg had launched PlaNYC 2030 5 years prior, as an urban sustainability plan emphasizing econom- ic growth and public-private partnerships. e aim of SIRR was to beef up "resiliency" by creating a "road map" that laid out plans for "additional protection for New York's infrastructure, buildings, and communities 1 e report, "A Stronger, More Resilient New York," was issued on June 11, 2013. See the full report here: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/sirr/report/ report.page 47

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