From Urban Village to East Village The Battle for New York's Lower East Side

by Abu-Lughod, Janet L.

• ISBN13: 9781557865250
• ISBN10: 1557865256
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-01-09
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

This landmark study explores a new reality in today's inner cities - one that diverges radically from the dominant models of either the urban village, with its shared culture, or the disorganized zone of urban anomie. Growing numbers of inner city neighbourhoods now contain populations drawn from a multiplicity of ethnicities, subcultures, and classes. These groups may share physical space, but they pursue disparate ways of life and hold very different views of their neighbourhood's future. Such areas have become contested turf - arenas of heated political struggle. Nowhere has this struggle been so complexly joined than in the East Village on New York's Lower East Side. For over two decades, established and new immigrants, community activists, hippies, squatters, yuppies, developers, drug dealers, artists, the homeless, and the police have been battling for control of the district and its central meeting ground, Tompkins Square Park. Based on five years of research and participant observation, this book gives a vivid account of the contestants and their struggles in the battle for the Lower East Side. It is a battle which is likely to be replicated, perhaps less violently, in many other parts of urban America.

Author Biography

Janet L. Abu-Laghad is Professor of Sociology in the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, New York. She is one of America's leading commentators on urban affairs.

Table of Contents

List of Plates
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
A Note about the Contributors
Introduction	p. 1
Welcome to the Neighborhood	p. 17
The Past Is Still There	p. 41
The Changing Economy of the Lower East Side	p. 43
The Tenement as a Built Form	p. 63
A History of Tompkins Square Park	p. 81
Deja Vu: Replanning the Lower East Side in the 1930s	p. 99
The Process Of Gentrification	p. 121
Neighborhood 'Burn-out': Puerto Ricans at the End of the Queue	p. 125
Appendix: The Other Side of the Coin: Culture in Loisaida	p. 141
From Disinvestment to Reinvestment: Mapping the Urban 'Frontier' in the Lower East Side	p. 149
The Process of Gentrification in Alphabet City	p. 169
Public Action: New York City Policy and the Gentrification of the Lower East Side	p. 189
Contesting Community: The Issues And The Protagonists	p. 213
A Resident's View of Conflict on Tompkins Square Park	p. 217
The Battle for Tompkins Square Park	p. 233
The Residents in Tompkins Square Park	p. 267
The Squatters: A Chorus of Voices ... But Is Anyone Listening?	p. 285
Defending the Cross-Subsidy Plan: The Tortoise Wins Again	p. 313
Conclusions And Implications	p. 335
Bibliography	p. 355
Index	p. 375
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