Welcome to Gotham II

Gotham II  – The Communities of New York
Nicholas O’Han
nohan@lrei.org

Course description

Gotham II studies 20th century New York City through the lens of its changing neighborhoods. It is at the neighborhood level that we can observe the real life manifestations and impacts of those larger forces – historic, economic, social, technological, cultural and many more – that have informed the City’s history and made it, in the twentieth century, the world’s unofficial capital. Following Jane Jacobs, we view places as the “vessels of community,” and students trace the changing nature and vitality of the City’s neighborhood communities in the large, and often violently shifting, contexts of the New York’s history. We pick up the story with the Progressive Period at the end of the 19th century and follow it through the urban renaissance that began in the mid-1990s and continues to the present day. In between we’ll look closely at 1920s, the era of the Great Depression and World War II, the post-war era, and the municipal crisis of the 1970s and 1980s.

We will be particularly interested in the complex process of debating and shaping the city’s future.  We will study the combined efforts and roles of grass roots political activists, members of the not-for-profit sector, artists, and leaders in preservation and community organizations who play major roles in this process. We will focus on patterns of development, displacement and gentrification that continue to change the social geography of the city, and on the rebirth of local communities that continues to give the city renewed sources of vitality.

We will read a number of theoretical works about the nature of urban life and the concept of “community,” and pay particular attention to the conflicting worldviews of Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. All students will keep an Urban Journal and they are expected to visit neighborhoods in all part of the City on weekends. Participation in Open House New York on October 10th and 11th is required. In addition. the class will take frequent field trips, screen videos and films about New York and benefit from frequent guest speakers.

Beginning in the fall, students will begin work on a major research paper in which they conduct an in-depth study of one neighborhood, focusing on the people who make it their home today, and the social, cultural, economic forces that have defined its history. The research process will involve exploring the world of a range of players in the process, from the contemporary interest groups, to developers, city planners, and community-based organizations that are often competing stakeholders in the process of determining the shape of  this community as New York continues its inevitable journey into the future.

We call these studies  “neighborhood autobiographies,” because as viewed through the various theoretical lenses, research techniques and interpretive frameworks, the neighborhoods reveal themselves and tell their story to the trained and sympathetic observer.  Throughout the course we will do extensive fieldwork and there will be regular visits to our class from experts and activists.

Required texts

Being Urban, by David A. Karp, Gregory P. Stone, William C. Yoels
How The Other Half Lives, by Jacob A. Riis
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City, by Jonathan Mahler
The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs
The Living City, by Roberta Brandes Gratz
The Mole People, by Jennifer Toth