Introduction:

Urban Studies is an inherently interdisciplinary subject that draws from a range of established academic disciplines, among them global studies, environmental studies, history, sociology, anthropology, economics, political sciences, policy and planning, architecture, design, media studies, and the arts. Urban studies majors learn to address the myriad ways urbanization affects many facets of urban life, including politics, social justice, the environment, and the economy in cities both in the United States and internationally. They culminate the major course of study with a year-long senior seminar aimed at guiding students through the process of developing a research project of their choosing and prepare for life after graduation.

This year, nine students embarked on this journey and completed a far-ranging set of capstone projects associated with resistance and change in cities along three broader themes:

(1) New York City Neighborhood Change and Justice (feat. Cicely Hunscher, Maya Silver, and Vanessa Xelo)

(2) Visualization and Stories of Urban Changes (feat. Giulia Andronico De Morais Salles, Alexandra Vargas, and Galen Peterson)

(3) Beyond Ideology and the Right to the City (feat. Ollie Dillon, Joshua Fiore, and Nihil Nudelman).

Below we present, in alphabetical order, short summaries of their unique and wide-ranging work.

To this day, my family is living in the same house they had built in 1964 in Vila Madalena, São Paulo. When they moved in, the streets were unpaved and the homes weren’t hidden behind gates; both conditions that are unimaginable to me now. When I think of the future generations of my family, I imagine a similar scenario where they do not believe me when I explain the neighborhood once wasn’t a sea of luxury condominiums.

As I grew older, I noticed the neighborhood changing. Old stores were closing, new businesses were popping up, and homes were demolished to erect tall condominiums. Recent developments have been inviting a new crowd to the neighborhood drawn by modern apartments with envious views of the city. Out of nowhere, I saw developers desperately trying to purchase our home. My neighborhood was never so valorized to the extent that my own family would not be able to afford a studio apartment. Therefore, for my capstone, I wanted to understand what was happening in my neighborhood.

When I started investigating the transformations of Vila Madalena, I learned that the community was zoned as a “Structuring Axes of Urban Transformation (EETU in Portuguese)” in São Paulo’s 2014 Master Plan because of its proximity to the Vila Madalena Metro station. EETUs were created to address the city’s history of urban sprawl, high car ownership, and traffic congestion in order to encourage public transportation use by densifying and verticalizing the transit areas. Only EETU designated areas are permitted to construct new high-rise buildings with a floor area ratio (FAR) of 4 or higher. The rest of the municipal region has a default FAR of 1 and developers must purchase the right to build above it. This incentive, along with the proximity to the metro station and the Bohemian character of Vila Madalena, has attracted the attention of developers as a profitable investment and facilitated a physical transformation.

To show the neighborhood’s changing landscape, I examined the neighborhood through Google Street View, dating back to 2010. I identified 32 new developments in the research site and captured screenshots of them throughout the years to create time-lapse videos. Using GIS, I created an interactive online map that shows the location of each new building with its corresponding time-lapse video. With this map, I aim to convey the impact of the developments in an engaging manner.

My research demonstrated rather clearly that neighborhood’s transformation can be defined as Transit-Induced Gentrification. The proximity to the metro station and the city’s policies aimed at promoting density, vertical expansion, and public transportation usage ultimately only facilitated the construction of luxury condominiums with underground private garages. This resulted in an explosion of housing prices that only very few can afford. My home is a five-minute walk from the metro station, which has always been a privilege for me, but real estate developers have turned it into a burden.

Over my past four years at the New School, I have been interested in the ways that politics and policy influence the built urban space, and how they create an urban identity within a country or culture. Oftentimes this interest has manifested itself in the form of editorialization and constructive critique of the American/Western urban ethos. In doing so I have become increasingly fascinated with alternatives that have been constructed and envisioned over time. The most impactful were those built by the Soviet Union and within its Communist sphere of influence. Thus, it seemed only right, that for my senior project I fully engaged with Soviet urban design methodology and its influences.

For my project, I outlined and investigated the successful elements of Soviet city planning, and how they could be applied in the failures of the American city. Building on years of research, travel, and literature on cities in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, I was determined to make a much needed contribution to current discourses in urban studies in the U.S. This involved an initial investigation of the urban history of the USSR and its brand of Communism, with specific attention paid to the key tenets of Russian communism and how they informed city planning. On that analytic basis, I determined the specific components of Soviet planning that are worth emulating. This led me to ascertain the way in which these successful practices could solve America’s many urban problems, such as urban sprawl, inefficiency, and inequality.

Considering that COVID 19 limited the possibility for travel to the cities and countries which I studied and researched, I primarily relied on secondary sources, much of which was biased and difficult to work through. Such limitations notwithstanding, I found new opportunities in tsuch theoretical, contemplative, and applicable studies of Soviet cities.

Specifically, I was able to identify three main areas of Soviet success that allowed me to analyze analogous American failures and propose solutions. The first area of success was associated with specific efficiencies created by the central planning apparatus of the Soviet central government compared to the private planning powers held by developers in the U.S. A second area pertains to the use of public transit as the backbone for urban planning and, conversely, how its depletion has literally ruined US cities while expanding its suburbs. Lastly, I came to appreciate the extensive public housing system the Soviets had created that could inspire the U.S. and its massive shortage of affordable housing.

Joshua Fiore BA ‘21, Urban Studies

Autonomous Space-Making: The Right to the City in the Housing Struggle of West Berlin

My thesis analyses the housing struggle of autonomous squatters in 1980s West Berlin, Germany. Autonomism sought to put people in direct struggle with the production of their everyday lives through the squatting of vacant buildings, direct and often violent confrontations with the state, and state infrastructure while also rejecting the politics of representation. I came to be interested in the Autonomen due to their status as one of the first anti-capitalist groups to organize through a decentralized network, in opposition to the molar configuration of a union or party, as had been the norm in the radical left since the 19th Century.

I argue that through the expansion of leftist struggle beyond factories and sites of production, the Autonomists invoked the “Right to the Cty:” radically reclaiming the city as a collective/common space and resisting the creeping commodification of urban life. The project takes the form of a standard research paper with an expanded appendix that includes exemplary archival documents. I mainly drew on archival sources including self-published zines and other artifacts as those allowed me to understand how the Autonomen made their claims to the city in their own time and learn what specifically went on inside the squats and demonstrations. In addition, I was able to interview George Katsiaficas, who organized with the Autonomen in the early 1980s and thereby helped me contextualize and clarify the content of the archives.

Through my research I found that the occupation of space in Berlin formed the social base for the entire German autonomous movement by providing the material space to work together politically and socialize outside of normative urban spaces. This form of organization invokes the minority politics of Deleuze and Guattari, in that this networked assemblage was auto-poetic and generative of a new collective identity through the occupation of space. This allowed for a complex, local, and experimental micropolitics of collective desires to permeate from the margins of West German society. While the spaces themselves were not homogenous, the Right to the City provides the framework for material alliance-building in that the autonomous “scene” ultimately was a necessary political simplification of various (and sometimes contradictory) forms of living that are antagonistic to contemporary neoliberal city-making.

As the housing struggle challenged capitalist space-making, the emergence of renewed real estate interests in Berlin threatened the neighborhoods that the movements were based in. By the late 1980s, the number of squats in Berlin was in rapid decline. The capture of these spaces was due to neoliberal microeconomic devices that helped to impose the novel global capital order onto West Berlin. These strategies of neoliberalism re-incorporated the experimental and local micropolitics of the squats, ossifying the network of sociality and space into the logic of exchange values and severing the lines of flight that the Autonomen were pursuing, thereby leading to the movement’s eventual decline.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic first arrived in New York City, most residents used public transportation as their main mode for mobility. Due to uncertainties around infections, most people were asked to work from home, essential workers not included. Tourists were no longer allowed into the country and, with a mandatory stay in home order in place, people were only allowed to leave their homes if it was a necessity. An element of fear already embedded in New York City’s public transportation networks was exacerbated by the virus. Because of this, New York City experienced a massive decline in public transportation usage and subsequent revenue.

Although public transportation rates decreased during the pandemic, ridership for alternative modes of transportation increased. Alternative modes filled the gap, they kept people mobile and oftentimes since the modes were outside, made people feel safer.

After returning to the city in September of 2020, I noticed how many New Yorkers had adopted the alternative modes of transportation. Companies like Revel Scooter, Citi Bike, Uber/Lyft and Zipcar profited from the pandemic whereas public modes of transportation severely struggled. The obvious switch in New Yorker’s preferred transportation and mobility habits inspired me to ask the question, how has Covid-19 affected people’s transportation and mobility patterns in New York City? That is what I explored for my thesis.

To answer this question, I underwent an extensive review of the literature already present. Since this is such a relevant topic, there was a plethora of information. While employing a range of original research methods, I had to keep Covid-19 and health at the forefront. Social distance research as well as online virtual research helped fuel the information gathering process for my thesis. To gather original data, I sent out surveys to residents of a building on the Lower East Side as well as one on the Upper East Side. Through the use of surveys in two different socio-economic areas of the city, I gained a better understanding of how preferred transportation modes differed based on wealth, privilege, access and circumstance. I also interviewed peers to learn more specifically how people traveled pre, during and post pandemic. I lastly personally experimented with various modes of transportation to see how the new alternative modes of transportation suit the needs of New York.

After collecting and analyzing the data, I was able to confirm that most people's mobility patterns did in fact change because of Covid-19. It was also clear that some aspects of that change will continue for people in their post pandemic lives whereby much of this depends on the transportation needs and distances. I found out that people who cover shorter distances, modes of transportation like Citi Bike, Revel Scooter, Uber/Lyft sufficed. People living in neighborhoods farther out than the center of the city oftentimes had to commute in, a route not conducive to the modes of transportation mentioned above. For many, the subway was still the fastest and cheapest way to travel even if there were added safety concerns.

Although my research may not have produced sufficient data to make inferences about mobility constraints and opportunities of specific ethnic minorities, it still became evident that money, class, wealth, race, gender, age, and overall privilege played a major role in the travel patterns of New Yorkers during the pandemic. It’s important not to forget about the underlying greater inequalities at play in New York City to understand how people moved during Covid-19.

In June of 2019, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a $17 billion campaign to “step up” fare evasion enforcement and promised to deploy 500 additional uniformed officers throughout the MTA’s subway and bus network. The campaign, which spent $40 million on the placement of classist advertising and additional surveillance cameras throughout MTA property, sought to blame poor patrons for fare evasion. Subsequently, the NYPD violently targeted primarily low-income Black and brown commuters for “quality of life” offenses such as fare evasion, unlicensed vending, and subway performances. Tactics such as these had been an integral component of Broken Windows policing, a practice which had wreaked havoc on many low income communities of color in the 1980s and 90s. Enraged, many New Yorkers took to social media and soon after to the streets, questioning this reemergence of Broken Windows policing in a notoriously crumbling subway system with continuously rising fares. Amongst those who called these practices into question, were the FTP (F**k the Police, Free the People, Feed the People) formation, the entity I chose to be the primary focus of my research.

Examining the FTP protests of late 2019 and early 2020 as a case study, I analyzed the correlation between struggles for police abolition with those for free, accessible transportation in New York City. During my time in the Urban Studies program, I have been drawn to courses that focus on transportation equity and urban policing, using New York City as a site for political struggles and social movements. Additionally, my interest came from my own participation in these actions and the goal to examine how urbanists might use abolitionist thought and practice by applying it to issues of urban injustice and inequity more generally. Though the two are often considered distinctly different issues and modes of thinking, I became interested in their intersections and potential to benefit one another.

As this topic is contemporary by nature, the use of interviews with community organizers who participated in the FTP formation have greatly shaped the trajectory of the case study. I additionally have used a variety of secondary sources such as newspaper articles, social media, and government reports to inform this research. In contextualizing this case study, I conducted preliminary research on Broken Windows policing in New York City, as well as the state of the MTA as a crumbling piece of “public” infrastructure.

The key outcomes of this research have manifested in the ability to offer an abolitionist perspective on Governor Cuomo’s fare evasion crackdown in lieu of restoring a piece of crumbling infrastructure. Additionally, approaching the FTP Formation as a case study has allowed me to examine the potential of robust frameworks of mutual aid, community care, and political education as ways to materially serve our communities. As we seek to work outside systems of policing, prisons, and other oppressive institutions, these models allow us to break free from the limiting structures and institutions we have been given to work with. It is my ultimate goal to broadly distribute this research through liberation.nyc, a website I created.

Words and graphics do not do justice to the parched understanding one is imbued with by a bone-dry landscape and the heat of a wild flame. From afar, one may understand the meaning of a swift river, but it cannot truly be comprehended until it is crossed. In my limited experience working the wildfire season in Washington State and Montana as a firefighter, I became more familiar with some of these phenomenological conditions and the methods used to contain wildfire. With time and inspired by the potential of wildfire, I became curious about the ways in which a landscape could transition from being a mere object of property to be protected to a “homeland of our thoughts” (Ingold). I became curious about the juxtaposition of the multiplicity of top-down mandates, building codes, policies and prescribed burns which aim to mitigate wildfire’s destructive potential on ecology, property and life and the more subjective ramifications and experiences we have with wildfire.

Through interviews, mapping, and artwork, this project seeks to rethink our understanding of the urban-wildlife interface and increasingly destructive wildfires as evidenced in the destruction within the Northern California city of Santa Rosa. This particular city has been a much criticized yet concrete example for post-fire reconstruction and expansion. Although I do not aim to castigate the rebuilding of the community per se, I encourage the reader to look at wildfire not in antagonistic fashion but accept it as a force for the creation which in turn may result in a more reciprocal, collective and substantial relationship to our natural environment.

The methods I employed, backed by reading and study, revolved largely around conversation with friends who I worked with on the fire crew with, as well as persons who have experienced wildfires and as such inspire my artwork.

The artwork involved the use of materials and artifacts collected from terrain affected by wildfire and featured a personal attempt in the creation of a more subjective and physical relationship towards the landscape and wildfire. Positioned alongside maps made digitally through GIS software, I created an “atlas” which scales from the subjective to the more substantial and concrete. This in turn reflects the hope that in the catastrophe of wildfire, rather than being addressed through top-down objective mandates, can bring about a subjective formation and individuation of the spirit which can ultimately coalesce into a novel and creative optimism.

Systemic racism manifests itself in every aspect of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color’s lives in the U.S. from urban to rural even affecting the quality of air compared to more affluent white neighborhoods just a few miles away. When systemic racism negatively impacts a marginalized community ecologically, it is categorized as environmental racism. To identify inclusive planning practices that could potentially mitigate the negative consequences of environmental racism and bring about positive changes, I decided to focus on the implementation of green roofs in a marginalized BIPOC neighborhood in the Bronx, New York.

I was born and raised in New York City and have lived here my entire life yet knew little about environmental racism in the city. My interest in this topic was sparked by a class on Green Roof Ecology I took here at The New School. In studying green roofs as a means to enhance urban equity and build resilience, I learned about the benefits of green roofs for underrepresented BIPOC communities and as potential ways to counter environmental and systemic racism.

To find out what kinds of strategies could conceivably be used to facilitate the creation of green roofs and inclusive climate action in one of the Bronx’ most marginalized BIPOC communities, I analyzed case studies from cities across the United States and extracted a range of inclusive planning methods that can conceivably be applied to mitigate the negative effects of environmental racism and gentrification. Although the urban case studies used in my analysis had varying objectives ranging from improving public transportation, to fighting urban blight, and to building a comprehensive community garden, I found that the perhaps most important and successful inclusive planning strategies centered around community participation and involvement.

Specifically, I learned that only by taking the needs and expectations of community residents into consideration can policy makers and local government entities achieve equitable, fair, and sustainable planning outcomes that benefit current residents, particularly marginalized ethnic minorities. Conversely, the lack of community participation has proven to have detrimental effects for current residents in that the ensuing “green revitalization” only benefited wealthy residents with the means to afford green roofs subsequently turning into environmental gentrification that only serves the displacement of marginalized community members.

The main implication for the creation of green roofs in the Bronx therefore is that it is imperative to counter environmental gentrification and racism by implementing an inclusive planning agenda that takes needs and expectations of the current community members into account while also drawing on ample existing research about and resources on funding options and the practicalities around green roof building and maintenance. Only in this way will we be able to prevent environmental gentrification and racism while simultaneously empowering and providing social and environmental benefits to the Bronx’s BIPOC community.

Alexandra Vargas BA ‘21, Urban Studies

S O L: Encouraging Inclusive Empowerment through Storytelling

How does storytelling change, cultivate, and generalize our perspective and responses towards places, as individuals, and as a society? In the midst of conversations, I have noticed how people often circle towards certain themes and try to piece them together which made me wonder if they ever thought about sharing their thoughts and stories with a broader audience. When I asked them, most responded affirmatively but stated that they don’t even know where to begin and that they would appreciate guidance about how to approach their next steps towards expressing their story. And helping others tell their stories became the point of departure for my project.

Through visual analysis, conversations, observation and personal experiences, I was curious to find out how others perceive storytelling, as well as to learn how their experiences affect their storytelling methodology and expression’s style. I learned that everyone had their own unique explanation of what storytelling means to them, but the common thread was its emphasis on the community impact. Storytelling has the power to allow people to see something in a new light and foster community resilience. Storytelling can make us realize the generalizations we make about others and places, and instead push us to further understand another and the spaces we interact in.

With this rationale in mind, I developed SOL, a highly customizable toolkit in the form of a universal notebook that people interested in telling their stories can utilize and personalize in ways that embrace their unique expression and mindset. SOL helps prospective storytellers ideate, develop, and assess their stories and think creatively and mindfully through the impact their choices would have on others and the world around them while ideating with the community. As such SOL is structured to constantly take into consideration that each choice expressed holds value, since inevitably it will reap gentleness or sow rough consequences.

New York City is experiencing a massive housing crisis marked by a substantial lack of adequate affordable housing with a simultaneous overproduction of luxury condominiums. The practice of buying and selling homes from low-income neighborhoods to affluent outsiders propels gentrification and results in increasing rates of evictions, displacement, and homelessness with dramatic and lasting effects for low-income communities.

Housing cooperatives are a great strategy to fight the effects of gentrification. Housing cooperatives work to ensure that low-income working-class residents maintain ownership of their homes by paying part of the mortgage through monthly rental payments. Cooperatives are collectively owned by their residents who then democratically decide how to manage the building. Cooperatives also receive public incentives and subsidies that help with the maintenance of buildings. In such fashion, cooperatives provide affordable housing, build equity and generate capital, share the costs of maintenance, and promote neighborhood involvement. If housing cooperatives can generate all these benefits, why are there not more? What has halted the housing cooperative movement? And how can we promote information on housing cooperatives to the working class?

With these questions in mind, I began to focus my thesis work studying cooperatives in New York City by first examining statistical and historic data on the housing cooperative movement and its eventual decline. Next, I volunteered with an organization called the Worker’s Justice Project where I conducted individual interviews and organized a three-part seminar series to examine the members’ experiences with the housing crisis and gentrification in New York City, find out what they already knew about cooperatives, and thereby learn what additional information they might need about housing more generally.

Through my investigation, I was able to develop a booklet for community members to learn about housing cooperatives, provide strategies to gain access to them, and address broader housing needs. As for the larger question as to what factors undermined the housing cooperative movement, I found that the biggest one is income inequality. It is difficult for poor people to imagine owning their own homes when there is no financial stability. Many working-class members were dealing with lack of employment, work harassment, discrimination, and other problems, all of which are exacerbated by the intersectionality of gender, race and ethnicity, and immigration status and, more recently, the Covid19 pandemic. Such problems are further exacerbated by systemic political problems that ultimately necessitate broader immigration reforms, increased governmental aid, and a strengthening of community organizations and I hope that my contribution will help spread awareness and help make a small but important step toward more social justice.