Market, community and local state: Neighborhood revitalization in New York's Lower East Side.
Item
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Title
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Market, community and local state: Neighborhood revitalization in New York's Lower East Side.
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Identifier
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AAI9432383
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identifier
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9432383
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Creator
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Sites, William Thomas.
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Contributor
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Adviser: William K. Tabb
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Date
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1994
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociology, General | Urban and Regional Planning | Political Science, General
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Abstract
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This study analyzes the relationship between market, community and local state by examining the evolution of neighborhood revitalization in New York's Lower East Side over a fifteen-year period. One weakness in many accounts of revitalization is a failure to link economic approaches with a political analysis of state policy and community mobilization. Another is a failure to distinguish between gentrification, which displaces lower-income communities to accommodate more affluent groups, and neighborhood preservation efforts, which seek to control and channel market revival to benefit traditional residents. Drawing on a broad literature on gentrification, restructuring, social movements and the state, this study argues that restructuring plays an important role in creating gentrification pressures but that the local interaction of market, community and state actors can serve to accelerate those pressures or to protect lower-income groups.;By examining the revitalization process in the Lower East Side between 1975 and 1990, the study finds that shifts in the interaction of market, community and local-state actors lead to a series of political conflicts and policy changes. At the beginning of the period of study, restructuring-induced market and fiscal pressures result in a variety of local-state policies that fuel economic expansion and gentrification. Over time, however, resistance by lower-income community groups encourages local officials, whose flexibility is enhanced by market revival, to grant political concessions that lead to greater community benefits from revitalization. The study concludes that a combination of community resistance and lower-income inclusion in the dominant local political coalition can translate into state policy and planning efforts to preserve neighborhoods, but also that these initiatives can be undermined by subsequent shifts in the larger economy.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
