Urbanities,
Vol. 4
·
No 2
·
November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
64
Harlem Business Alliance told the
New York Daily News
: ‘The risk of a homogenized,
cookie-cutter landscape filled with chains is that we become less interesting: We’re not there
yet, but we’re near the tipping point.’ (Smith, quoted in Feiden 2012).
Conclusions
Under the administration of Bloomberg, the use of site-specific re-zoning plans has expanded
the geographical scopes of property investment and development to neighbourhoods that
were once disadvantaged or underserved, creating the material conditions (providing the legal
and administrative framework) to make high-end development feasible and profitable.
In this article, we have explained how the 125
th
Street rezoning plan has acted as the
catalyst of a massive wave of property development and as a blueprint for the gentrification of
the neighbourhood around Harlem’s ‘Main Street’. The rezoning has unlocked development
potential by encouraging the production of market-rate housing, prime retail and office space
in a neighbourhood whose initial land values were relatively low, and where the expectations
of returns from redevelopment were therefore particularly high.
While this rezoning has greatly benefited the development community, however, it has
negatively affected the most vulnerable Harlemites. These are mostly low- to middle-income
households and small independent businesses who are being priced out of their
neighbourhood as a result of the new zoning regulations, or whose survival in the area is
under threat. This article has shown how the rezoning action has coincided with the
disappearance of small independent businesses and their substitution with large corporate
retailers, and has reported evidence of luxury residential developments which includes very
little or no housing units affordable to local residents.
Contrary to institutional narratives of a broad involvement of the affected
communities in the planning processes, our account has shown how local residents felt they
had any say in the making of the plan. Also the City’s official narrative of a fine-grained,
preservation-oriented approach to the 125
th
Street plan is disputable, as the increased
allowable densities encourage the demolition of some of the street’s historical landmarks and
jeopardize the low-scale character of the historical corridor. Similarly, official narratives
around the plan were centred on the promise that the rezoning would provide much needed
affordable housing. Our calculations, however, have shown that only 200 out of a proposed
3,858 housing units will actually be within reach of the average Harlem residents, if they ever
get built.
