The United Nations Conference, Habitat II

In How the Other Half Lives, the author Jacob Riis sheds light on the darker side of tenant housing and urban dwellers. He goes to several different parts of the city of New York witnessing first hand the hardships that many immigrants faced when coming to America. His journalism and photographs of the conditions of the tenant housing helped led the way of reformation in the slums of New York. His research opened the eyes of many Americans to the darker side of the nation's lower class. Though it seems that he blamed both the victims and the board forces of society, I believe that he placed more of the blame on the board forces for the conditions that many immigrants faced.

To judge the success or failure of Blumberg Apartments, we must first analyze the project as it works to provide good housing. Good housing should not just be regarded as a noun, it should also encompass housing as a verb. The commodity of the house as a shelter is the noun. This commodity should provide a place for redressing. It should hold the essential necessities that make for a comfortable and complete home. A place that balances privacy and social interactions. As a verb, good housing should be a utility that works to enhance one’s life (Turner, 1972). It should be a stepping stone towards opportunity. For Blumberg Apartments in the grand scheme, both of these facets can be regarded as failures. As the housing projects suffered through massive deterioration, it failed as a commodity. Residents described how their housing had “stairwells that reeked of urine and dirty diapers, constantly breaking appliances and elevators, and the frequent sounds of gunshots” (Colaneri, 2016). Furthermore, units were found to not meet minimum size standards and

New York City is just like every other major city in the United States. New York City crime rate is the main reason why people are moving out of the city that they call home. American’s believe that a civil decent society is a place where they can receive an education, and have access to things in life such a life, liberty and freedom. According to United States of America (1994), Public spaces are among New York City’s greatest assets. The city’s parks, playgrounds, streets, avenues, stoops and plazas are the forums that make possible the sense of vitality, excitement, and community that are the pulse of urban life. As time goes by these places have be ruined by environment problems such as eye sore graffiti, prostitution, unnecessary panhandling and people in the street intoxicated. When a city have these types of problems, the citizen feel as if they cannot protect their children because of the environment. Fear caused by disorder makes people leave the cities and communities that they reside in.

The study of urban spaces, especially with respect to gentrification, has increased dramatically in significance and relevance in the past several decades. With the resurgence of city living’s popularity, urban revitalization has occurred in neighborhoods across the United States and brought with it significant economic and social change.

Many large cities are experiencing skyrocketing rental/housing price because of the excessive demand and more importantly, the scarcity of land. San Francisco, as one of the most important financial centers in the world, is facing a serious dilemma due to its inflated rental/housing prices; people’s dissatisfaction over the government grow as they are excluded from the access to proper housing. San Francisco has the highest rents of any large city in the United States, which makes people, especially from low and medium income group, hard to acquire housing near their workplaces and force to commute from other regions of Bay area into the city. In other words, the high housing prices are pushing people as well as the productive industry out of the city. While people are accusing the government of being responsible for the failure of housing since it underestimates the rate of population growth, which leads to a shortage in the housing market. However, statistic shows that San Francisco actually built more than 30 percent more housing units per capita than New York City and Los Angeles in 2014. (Henry Grabar, 2015) It is because such shortage is artificially created by the policy makers to constraint land use, hence, increasing the supply of housing does not efficiently decrease the housing. The fundamental cause of this imbalanced housing market is the poor allocation of land use.

New York City suffers from a disease I call "over population". New York City is running out of building space and the only way how to keep up to New York's expanding population is by constructing skyscrapers. According to New York's urban planners skyscrapers cannot be built where ever a person may want. The construction of skyscrapers are decided by zoning maps, in which it notifies the owner/builder how much space is available. Unfortunately, in specific areas buildings can only be constructed up to a specific height. The city's limited space is a reason why barely or no affordable housings are being constructed and the main cause of why the growing wealthy

Not only does gentrification evade concerns regarding poverty and crime, it aggravates the issue at hand, creating (more) discord in the community. This stems from the fact that gentrifiers and long-time residents possess different and varying opinions on their ideal community, as well as opposing agendas as to how this can be achieved. Whereas gentrifiers work to improve the physical appearance of the city, long-time residents seek to improve the health and welfare of the community. Ultimately, gentrification benefits the wealthy and the affluent. Rather than offering an appropriate solution, gentrification merely ignores and dodges the complex issues of the lower and working

New York City is made up of five boroughs, which include the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. Within these boroughs, there are high and low-income neighborhoods that contain either high or low status organizational structures or facilities. Each division has their own characteristics and top attractions, such as the Empire State building, Central Park, or Times Square. As New York City may be known for great food and fun attractions, New York faces infrastructure problems within each borough. New York City’s infrastructure funding is limited in lower income neighborhoods, where money needed to upkeep the city goes toward prime tourist’s areas or residents living in high status neighborhoods, such as The Upper East Side of Manhattan, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, and Lenox Hill, Manhattan. Moreover, abandoned buildings, poor sewage conditions, and rocky roads and streets are examples of low-income area infrastructure problems that may hinder neighborhood growth both structurally and economically. Harlem, East Brooklyn, and South Bronx are low-income parts of New York that lack new and refined facilities, roads, plumbing, and fundamental structures, which contribute to high crime and arrests.

The negative effects of this issue could not be anymore clear. In major cities like Boston, the cost of living has skyrocketed just in the last five years. This process of removing housing districts to increase the neighborhood’s value is negatively affecting low-income families, primarily people of color, while wealthy middle to upper-class white families are positively benefiting from it. Gentrification is interfering with the diversity and economy of many urban areas and historically low-income neighborhoods. There is a very high displacement rate in the United States, particularly in states like Massachusetts and New York due to gentrification. Evidence has shown that

Habitat for Humanity is an international organization that was created by Millard and Linda Fuller in 1976 (“The History”). Millard was struggling in his life with what was important to him, which is what lead him to search for a greater purpose. Therefore, Millard and his family sold all of their possessions, donated the money and moved to a Christian community called Koinonia Farm (“The History”). This is where his Christian faith led him to start building homes for low-income people who were trying but couldn’t quite afford to build a home of their own. Millard and Koinonia Farm owner, Clarence Jordan, developed the idea of providing housing to families with no profit and no interest loans. With his new idea of “partnership housing,” Fuller and his

New York’s housing problems in the 19th century was the result of a mix of factors such as increased immigration, rising rents and shortage of affordable housing supply. The sudden influx in the city’s population led to emergence of tenements in the 1840s and 50s, built specifically to accommodate large numbers of low-income people. Tenements soon became the dominant form of working class housing.

As cities have grown away from the center to accommodate people housing needs, suburbs mushroomed outwards, producing an urban sprawl, thus putting pressure on the cities amenities. Modern urban sprawl projects tend to be more controlled and are for effective infrastructure and sustainability requirements and implementing creative urban development solutions to solve the issues quality housing, public transport systems, schools, hospitals, police, and fire service stations. Demands for more emphasis to be placed on these issues which are all fundamentals part of everyday lives, without them, we would be unable to maintain Australia. Governments can respond to development opportunity through a conference called Habitat 3, this is a way of promoting a new model of urban development that can integrate all facets of sustainable development to promote equity, welfare and shared prosperity. It is time to think urban, how to

Another advantage about living in public housing is the potential for economic development. Residents who are paying less on their utility bills will certainly have extra money and will be able to add more to the economy. If residents of public housing are not stigmatized, they can also have a better chance of finding a good paying job. In addition, a number of fascinating developments on Wall Street may perhaps help with economic remuneration as well. While looking at booming public housing developments, it is apparent that a majority of successful developments are those that are intended for the residents in mind. Based on the residents and their needs, a considerate architect can design a project to offer such amenities like sidewalks, reasonably priced childcare, and parks which may be considered as an improvement for the resident value of life. Moreover, for this reason, public housing projects are mainly triumphant once the social and cultural desires of the people who reside in public housing are also taken into account. Public housing projects are designed to help the people who live in these facilities become successful in the long term. Projects as such may result in fewer household mishaps and a reduced amount of risk for residents by delivering a social space that is safe and sound, with an environment that encourages vast benefits for children’s overall development such as their mental, emotional, physical and social

Neighborhoods are more than just tangible, physical environments that people live in. Rather, they mirror and embody the cultures, religious affiliations and political beliefs of the residents who occupy the community. Together the synthesis of the unique combination of these elements determines its sustainability. The City of New York is made up of over 400 neighborhoods. They are broken up into five boroughs, each one as diverse and complex as the next. Listed in order of geographic size they are as follows: Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, The Bronx and Manhattan. The second largest, but by far the largest by population, (Brooklyn) will be the focus of this paper. This paper focuses on Brooklyn; by tracing the demographic history of one

The problem I am addressing in this paper is, A lack of safe, decent, accessible, and affordable rental housing in communities where people chose to live. For the last twenty years, rental housing available to low income people have been demolished, not enough replacement units are being built as lower than market rates for the poor. For the last twenty years, rental housing available to low income people in urban communities around the country are steadily being demolished to make room for coffee houses and side walk eateries for those who seek residence in the inner cities from suburbia.