Harlem changes.. Detroit parallel?

[Hypestyles]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/ny...agewanted=2&em

after reading this, i couldn't help but think about Detroit, all the abandonment, and the pockets of redevelopment in certain areas... skepticism about 'gentrification' versus accepting diversity, etc.

[Retroit]

There is one big difference. Harlem is a small neighborhood [[2-3 sq. miles?) in a large, vibrant New York City; Detroit is a whole city [[139 sq. miles).

[MichMatters]

Bingo. I was just about to say that. Harlem is a tiny slice of one of the most vibrant global cities in the world. If you're going to compare Harlem to anything, it'd have to be a neighborhood of Detroit, not the entire city.

[texorama]

Except the same could be said of a much larger area than Harlem. Many neighbhorhoods in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn bounced back and have held on as the economy declined. The biggest factor was the dramatic drop in crime.

[gazhekwe]

Which came first, gentrification or drop in crime? And don't forget the huge economic resource that NYC is, compared to Detroit.

[cman710]

While I have not done a study, based my experience from having lived in New York City during the time period of its recovery, the drop in crime definitely preceded the gentrification. Of course, as gentrification occured, crime continued to drop in those areas, as it has throughout the city.

[iheartthed]

While I have not done a study, based my experience from having lived in New York City during the time period of its recovery, the drop in crime definitely preceded the gentrification. Of course, as gentrification occured, crime continued to drop in those areas, as it has throughout the city.

Not really. Gentrification efforts in NYC began in the late 1980s, but NYC didn't experience its highest crime rates until the early 1990s. I believe it was 1991 or 1992 when the city was reporting over 2,000 murders in a single year [[and also had the highest murder rate in the country).

Also, while of course no place will be an exact match to Detroit's situation, you'd have to be blind not to see any parallels between the two stories.

[Danny]

It's true that Harlem, NYC. is in the process of gentrification. Poor folks are being cast out, property values rose, and lots of yuppified skinny jeaned white kids are moving to once black NYC. Harlem neighborhood. Some of you folks who used to lived in NYC back in 1960s to 1990s saw and known that Harlem used to be a drug, gang and crime laden community simular to south Bronx. Plus there were some homes and businesses either abandoned or being torn down for slum clearance. Now Fewer white folks are quickly moving to Harlem due to excellent property value rates, excellent businesses and lower crime rates. When I went to Harlem in 1997 and 2001 There community was in the middle of gentrification. But they are still traditional black owned businesses survive. The second Harlem Rennaisance has began and it starts not only yuppfied skinny jean white kids, but also people of color. Even former President Bill Clinton had started his law firm in W.125th street near 7 to 8th Ave. Just two blocks from Historic Apollo Theatre. Fewer Black Harlem home and business owners love to have ethnicity in their community for these people have the money and connection. I feel really sorry for the low-income folks [[especially black Harlem families) who has lost their homes to private developers but NYC is changing through its streets and getting more like an America-like Atlantis within America.


Detroit could do the same, but most Detroiters don't want change or regionalization. Our city is a massive debt. Other private investors don't to build their super condos and megastores in our downtown. Crime in Detroit is too high, too much political corruption in city services. Too many schizo-blacks bums and mutants running around the ghettos like rats. Our Detroit Public School system is in state transition with the lowest math and reading scores in most culturally baised standarized tests. Forty percent of DPS students drop out when they turn 14 years-old. More Blacks are moving out of Detroit to the suburbs or any other areas in U.S. Too mant vacant lots [[over 70,000 and growing). Too many abandon buildings [[ people are sqautting into those buildings, too.) Hard to tear them down for it's too costly. Detroit has lost more workforce than any other rust-belt city in the U.S. There are too many abandon turn of the century-like automobile plants still standing being gobbled up by nature. Most people in the Metro-Detroit area just don't give a hoot about Detroit's progress like the Karmanos, the Illitches and Yatoomas and Fiegers. If we the people of Detroit want to change and gentrify, it starts with the people. We don't need to consult our leaders for reform, we the People of Detroit are the mayors, the city council, the police and fire departments.


WORD FROM THE STREET PROPHET

Because fixing Detroit takes community action NOT TALK!!

for Neda Soltani's sake.

[DetroitPlanner]

Its hard to compare Detroit to Harlem. Maybe if this was 1935 you could compare it to certain neighborhoods, but you can't compare broad to specific and come up with much of anything. The fact that both are percieved as being black cities is about as laughable as comparing Dexter Michigan to Minneapolis because they are both perceived as white cities.

Harlem was a very active neighborhood prior to the influx of white yuppies. When I was there in 1990 there was lots of stores and people on the streets, and I can assume that in this post Gulani world it is even more vibrant, as Times Square was.

[Retroit]

I feel really sorry for the low-income folks [[especially black Harlem families) who has lost their homes to private developers ...

But weren't those low-income folks adequately compensated for their properties? In other words, if middle- and upper-income people buy up property in a low-income area, doesn't that actually benefit the low-income folks because now they can move to an area that is better than the area that they used to live in?

Also, as to what comes first: drop in crime or gentrification? I think it could happen either way. If crime in Detroit suddenly dropped, I think thousands of outsiders would move in. Or, if thousands of outsiders moved in, I think crime would drop.

[ziggyselbin]

Not really. Gentrification efforts in NYC began in the late 1980s, but NYC didn't experience its highest crime rates until the early 1990s. I believe it was 1991 or 1992 when the city was reporting over 2,000 murders in a single year [[and also had the highest murder rate in the country).

Also, while of course no place will be an exact match to Detroit's situation, you'd have to be blind not to see any parallels between the two stories.

I call bullshit. The overwhelming evidence I have read is that the drop in crime is the reason for the trend in gentrification. There may have been pockets of gentrification but on a major scale it went hand in hand with crime reduction_ something Detroit has yet to learn.

[iheartthed]

I call bullshit. The overwhelming evidence I have read is that the drop in crime is the reason for the trend in gentrification. There may have been pockets of gentrification but on a major scale it went hand in hand with crime reduction_ something Detroit has yet to learn.

Well, clearly you haven't read much about it.

[EastsideAl]

But weren't those low-income folks adequately compensated for their properties? In other words, if middle- and upper-income people buy up property in a low-income area, doesn't that actually benefit the low-income folks because now they can move to an area that is better than the area that they used to live in?

Only if those low-income folks own those properties. Which they in very large measure do not in NYC. Even in Detroit a large portion of the poorest families are renters.

[texorama]

Harlem was not gentrifying in the least in the late 1980s or early 1990s, and neither was the South Bronx. Why crime dropped in these areas is a matter of keen debate, but it seems clear that in most areas [[sure, there are exceptions), safer streets led to economic revival. Giuliani claims the credit, while many African Americans maintain that the Million Man March had a lot to do with it. Whoever is responsible [[and it is probably a mixture of factors), the drop has been dramatic. New York is now safer than a lot of small towns. And it has had enormous benefits to the city as a whole.

[bartock]

Harlem was not gentrifying in the least in the late 1980s or early 1990s, and neither was the South Bronx. Why crime dropped in these areas is a matter of keen debate, but it seems clear that in most areas [[sure, there are exceptions), safer streets led to economic revival. Giuliani claims the credit, while many African Americans maintain that the Million Man March had a lot to do with it. Whoever is responsible [[and it is probably a mixture of factors), the drop has been dramatic. New York is now safer than a lot of small towns. And it has had enormous benefits to the city as a whole.

There is also a controversial school of thought on this regarding Roe v. Wade discussed in Freakonomics.

[EastsideAl]

I lived in NYC in the late 80s and early 90s. Except for the worst recession years of the 90s, gentrification was already well underway in a lot of areas by then. Hell, gentrification in NYC really goes back into the '70s when middle-class and upper-middle-class people began to move into areas like the Upper West Side and Park Slope [[see the movie The Landlord for a very funny take on '70s gentrification in Park Slope).

The sharp drop in crime, which occurred pretty much everywhere in the late-90s including Detroit, did begin to hasten the process in areas like Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant that were once considered inhospitable. And NYC has been able to keep crime at relatively low levels, even as the economy has declined.

But, beyond crime, there are a number of big drivers of gentrification in NYC that are absent in Detroit. The primary one is, of course, economic. Until very recently the economy in NYC has been very healthy and active, and even now it is still creating jobs to replace many of the ones that have been lost in the recession. Real estate prices have held their own there in this recession [[which means they've remained at an extremely high level compared to the rest of the country), and rents have begun to climb again in a lot of neighborhoods. The driver for this is the constant immigration of people into NYC from both inside and outside the U.S. [[a population gain of just about a million people in the city since 1990), and the resulting shortage of housing and very low vacancy rates throughout the city and the surrounding areas.

Also, although there was significant abandonment of buildings during the 70s and into the early '80s, there was never anything like what you see in Detroit. As indicated by DetroitPlanner above, neighborhoods like Harlem in NYC remained densely populated and quite active even during this period, with commercial streets lined with going businesses and people out walking around during most of the day. Part of the reason for this is that people in NYC simply do not do like so many Detroiters and jump in their cars [[since most NYers do not have cars) to leave their neighborhoods to shop by driving out to the mall in the suburbs. It's really a very different kind of a city from here.

[iheartthed]

I lived in NYC in the late 80s and early 90s. Except for the worst recession years of the 90s, gentrification was already well underway in a lot of areas by then. Hell, gentrification in NYC really goes back into the '70s when middle-class and upper-middle-class people began to move into areas like the Upper West Side and Park Slope [[see the movie The Landlord for a very funny take on '70s gentrification in Park Slope).

The sharp drop in crime, which occurred pretty much everywhere in the late-90s including Detroit, did begin to hasten the process in areas like Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant that were once considered inhospitable. And NYC has been able to keep crime at relatively low levels, even as the economy has declined.

But, beyond crime, there are a number of big drivers of gentrification in NYC that are absent in Detroit. The primary one is, of course, economic. Until very recently the economy in NYC has been very healthy and active, and even now it is still creating jobs to replace many of the ones that have been lost in the recession. Real estate prices have held their own there in this recession [[which means they've remained at an extremely high level compared to the rest of the country), and rents have begun to climb again in a lot of neighborhoods. The driver for this is the constant immigration of people into NYC from both inside and outside the U.S. [[a population gain of just about a million people in the city since 1990), and the resulting shortage of housing and very low vacancy rates throughout the city and the surrounding areas.

Also, although there was significant abandonment of buildings during the 70s and into the early '80s, there was never anything like what you see in Detroit. As indicated by DetroitPlanner above, neighborhoods like Harlem in NYC remained densely populated and quite active even during this period, with commercial streets lined with going businesses and people out walking around during most of the day. Part of the reason for this is that people in NYC simply do not do like so many Detroiters and jump in their cars [[since most NYers do not have cars) to leave their neighborhoods to shop by driving out to the mall in the suburbs. It's really a very different kind of a city from here.

I agree with most of what you said. Not so much on the last paragraph. NYC's real estate hit was delayed relative to the rest of the country, which is why the city didn't appear to be hit hard. Granted, it's not the same as what's happening in Arizona or California, but that doesn't mean it's not happening. Developers here got hit hard too.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of new apartment buildings that are sitting empty around this city. Albeit, not for lack of available tenants, but because the banks refuse to take the 40-50% hit on the properties that they would if the units were sold at market rate today. And I've been staring at a large commercial space in a prime Fifth Avenue location in Manhattan that's been sitting empty since CompUSA went out of business two years ago. Even my own apartment building went into foreclosure and was taken over by a proxy management company sent in by the courts.

As for Harlem, it was 57% off of its peak 1950 population by 1990. How far is Detroit off of its peak again?

[ziggyselbin]

Well, clearly you haven't read much about it.

Actually I have read extensively on the topic. Yours is the typical dogmatic liberal response[[and I am a liberal)you just can't stomach the idea that crime reduction initiated a republican Mayor is responsible for the majority of gentrification.



http://www.racematters.org/revivalinharlemsheart.htm

[ziggyselbin]

I agree with most of what you said. Not so much on the last paragraph. NYC's real estate hit was delayed relative to the rest of the country, which is why the city didn't appear to be hit hard. Granted, it's not the same as what's happening in Arizona or California, but that doesn't mean it's not happening. Developers here got hit hard too.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of new apartment buildings that are sitting empty around this city. Albeit, not for lack of available tenants, but because the banks refuse to take the 40-50% hit on the properties that they would if the units were sold at market rate today. And I've been staring at a large commercial space in a prime Fifth Avenue location in Manhattan that's been sitting empty since CompUSA went out of business two years ago. Even my own apartment building went into foreclosure and was taken over by a proxy management company sent in by the courts.

As for Harlem, it was 57% off of its peak 1950 population by 1990. How far is Detroit off of its peak again?

Really Detroit had crime reduction like nyc? you're high if you think that

[iheartthed]

Actually I have read extensively on the topic. Yours is the typical dogmatic liberal response[[and I am a liberal)you just can't stomach the idea that crime reduction initiated a republican Mayor is responsible for the majority of gentrification.



http://www.racematters.org/revivalinharlemsheart.htm

OH, you posted a random link to a random source on the internet so you MUST.BE.RIGHT!

Ya know, I have a feeling that no matter what I offer, you will continue to believe the fallacy that NYC neighborhoods did not gentrify until after the city's crime rate began to fall. That isn't the case, but whatever. Believe what you want to believe. So I'll wave the white flag on this and let you continue to be ignorant, and thank G-d that you aren't in charge of fixing Detroit.

[iheartthed]

Really Detroit had crime reduction like nyc? you're high if you think that

He said that most major cities experienced significant reductions in crime. Yes, Detroit too.

''In five of the six study communities,'' the report found, ''homicide rates track quite closely with cocaine use levels among the adult male arrestee population.'' The report said that when homicide rates increased in the mid-1980's with the advent of the crack epidemic, ''cocaine-test positive rates generally increased. Similarly, when homicide rates declined, cocaine-test positive rates also generally declined.''

The report did not address the question of why crack use might drive homicide rates, but experts have suggested that it might be the pharmacological properties of the drug, which creates a brief, intense high, often with feelings of paranoia, or the way crack spawned a new type of drug market, bringing in large numbers of younger dealers who began arming themselves with semiautomatic handguns.

The study, which was requested by Attorney General Reno to try to understand what has led to the drop in homicide rates since 1992, is to be released next month. The cities that were selected were those that showed the clearest patterns in homicide trends, including Detroit and Washington as well as Indianapolis, where crack use and homicide rates have risen sharply in the 1990's, an exception to the national declines.

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/27/us...pagewanted=all

Ignorance is not sexy.

[Danny]

But weren't those low-income folks adequately compensated for their properties? In other words, if middle- and upper-income people buy up property in a low-income area, doesn't that actually benefit the low-income folks because now they can move to an area that is better than the area that they used to live in?

Also, as to what comes first: drop in crime or gentrification? I think it could happen either way. If crime in Detroit suddenly dropped, I think thousands of outsiders would move in. Or, if thousands of outsiders moved in, I think crime would drop.

Gentrification does not provide too much property benefits for the poor, only some. Most the poor folks in Harlem will be displaced into what's left of the slums of New York City. In fact the slums of New York City is almost non-existant. Thanks to NYC republican politicians who some ties to big banks, private investors and Wall Street since the mid 1970s, and it all started with Donald Trump and his rich friends and his risky plan to revitilize the lower financial district. The World Trade Towers was first on the list. [[Trump only put a bit of his fortune only the land near the WTC plazas).

A drop of crime and unused brownfields and greyfieds will lead into ideals of gentrification. That pattern might worked in Harlem and south Bronx. The N.Y.P.D. must have step up community patrols to stop the flow of street gangs, squatters, prostitutes and crack pushers. Then came the private developers and the NYC city council's permission to slum clear most of the vacant and abandon buildings and sweep out the owners who are housing low-income families. The result buildings have been rehabbed, new businesses came and more yuppied hip cool skinny jean Jesus haired white kids came to live and occupied much of Harlem and south Bronx.

The process also happen in Times Square and Broadway Ave. In the late 1960s to mid 1970s That area used to be a prostitute alley, filled with porn stores and gentlemen's clubs. The NYC city council slum clear that mess and now its thriving family entertainment complex.


Gentrification was working in Detroit during the Archer years. Half of Downtown Detroit is rehabbed, Brush Park was turned from a crack head terrance filled with brownfields into to Crosswinds Condo Complex, Midtown near Wayne State University got a face lift. Detroit provided Neighborhood Empowerment Zone's 53% tax breaks to private developers, home and business owners for 12 years. All went well until King Kwame 'KILL'patrick and bank and real estate crash destroy Detroit's chance for a second rennaisance. Gentrification in Detroit has a long term side effects: No new subsidized housind project being built. Most of poor/low-income had been booted out from their homes from 1995 to 2002 and again from 2008 to the present. More people squatted into dangerous vacant buildings, slum clearance has slowed down, fewer people had been killed just to save their property like the mystery of the African American property owner who had been killed after he refused to sell his property to private developers to build the Comerica Park and Ford Field.

Even through outsiders tried to move into once black ghettos and Hispanic barrios they are going to have to deal with crime. If any outsider decided to take his or her own risk to revitized that certian ghettohood, 'they' could start by feeding the giving to the poor. Start community policing clubs, provide neighborhood watch and block club organizations and simply keep their property clean. Then the crime will drop.


WORD FROM THE STREET PROPHET

Gentification has its ups and downs, but it saves our city and it drives America. However I'm not going to say that gentrification is bad or good, I see it as a effect to the human race.

In Memoriam: Neda Soltani

[ghettopalmetto]

Except the same could be said of a much larger area than Harlem. Many neighbhorhoods in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn bounced back and have held on as the economy declined. The biggest factor was the dramatic drop in crime.

What's your source for this claim?

I would suspect that the largest single factor driving gentrification in places like Harlem, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, is the droves of young professionals being pushed out of Manhattan by unaffordable rents.

There are plenty of places in the country with low crime, but you don't see people flocking to all of them.

[cman710]

Not really. Gentrification efforts in NYC began in the late 1980s, but NYC didn't experience its highest crime rates until the early 1990s. I believe it was 1991 or 1992 when the city was reporting over 2,000 murders in a single year [[and also had the highest murder rate in the country).

Also, while of course no place will be an exact match to Detroit's situation, you'd have to be blind not to see any parallels between the two stories.

Iheartthed, I know that you like disagreeing with me for the sake of it, but please provide evidence regarding effective gentrification efforts in NYC beginning in the late 1980's. Further, please provide evidence that any widespread gentrification occurred in Harlem and other once high-crime neighborhoods. While there was some revitalization in the 1980s, as well as some temporary reductions in crime, there was not widespread gentrification until the mid to late 90's, several years after the dramatic drops in crime had begun.

New York City's murder count peaked at 2245 in 1990, but was in the 1800-ish range for the few years preceding that. 1800 was still an incredibly high number, considering that the city at the time had about 1 million fewer people than it does now.

[cman710]

Also, although there was significant abandonment of buildings during the 70s and into the early '80s, there was never anything like what you see in Detroit. As indicated by DetroitPlanner above, neighborhoods like Harlem in NYC remained densely populated and quite active even during this period, with commercial streets lined with going businesses and people out walking around during most of the day. Part of the reason for this is that people in NYC simply do not do like so many Detroiters and jump in their cars [[since most NYers do not have cars) to leave their neighborhoods to shop by driving out to the mall in the suburbs. It's really a very different kind of a city from here.

While there was never the level of abandonment that exists in areas of Detroit, Harlem experienced quite significant abandonment in the 1970s and 1980s. Take a look at Camilo Jose Vergara's historical pictures of Harlem here, http://invinciblecities.camden.rutgers.edu/intro.html, and you will see many pictures that look like that could have been taken in Detroit if not for the different architectural style.