This is my MA thesis on Privatization of Public Space.
Three other documents are contained in this paper inlcuding: Battery Park City , Los Angeles Gated Communities and the Mall of America.
The bibliography is also available at the end.
This document contains approximately 20,000 words and should be downloaded.

Frederique Krupa
Spring 1993

The Privatization of Public Space

The State of the Public Realm

Richard Sennett chronicled the erosion of public life from a sociological standpoint in The Fall of Public Man. Psychology, he felt, was the source of the problem because of its overwhelming emphasis only on the "internal" and the personal. Psychology helped encourage society to become obsessed with private development and minimized the importance of social rituals like politeness and consideration, often seen as stodgy, insignificant and artificial. Ultimately, activity in the public realm has come to be considered a duty with few psychological benefits.1

This trend towards privatization has transformed the forums for public life; cities have become a series of racially and economically segregated private enclaves. Using case studies of Battery Park City in New York, gated communities in Los Angeles and the Mall of America outside of Minneapolis, this thesis deals with topics that are diverse not only in location but in critical ideas. However, all deal with the insulation of housing developments for the privileged and middle classes. Beyond the restriction of some personal freedom for the sake of security, some fundamental aspects of democracy are at stake, such as the right to free speech and assembly and representation.

Terms such as public and private are laden with ambiguous associations and moral connotations that are difficult to avoid. For our purposes, the public realm is the bond of an unrelated crowd as opposed to the private realm's bond between family and friends.2 Accordingly, public space is the forum in which public life is acted out. Certain public spaces like Battery Park City are public because they are the physical and financial property of the state, in this case property of the New York State Battery Park City Authority. Blurring this distinction, some public spaces appear like traditional public spaces but are privately owned, like the Mall of America and the streets of the private gated communities. In those instances, the public is allowed in at the discretion of the land's owner. In the mall, the public is invited to experience the public space as potential consumers.

...

The balance between the public and private realm has shifted historically. The emphasis on the public realm culminated in the 18th century with the rise of the bourgeoisie in London and Paris. The experiences to be learned in public life were thought to be crucial for individual development. The cosmopolitan became the quintessential public man.3 The social rules were much different for men than women. The public realm for women was closely linked to immorality and corruption; whereas, the public realm's immorality was liberating for men.4 With the onset of the Industrial Revolution and political changes in the 19th century, the idealized bourgeois family became a shelter from the troubling changes of the new economic and social order, but the public realm of the ancient regime continued to co-exist with privatizing influences throughout the 19th century.5

The current situation in the United States is not unlike that of late 19th century Europe. Our political, social and economic situation is perhaps more complex because of our post-industrial, post-modern society's status in a global economy that threatens our world dominance. The eclipse of the American empire is in certain ways similar to the slow fall of the British empire in the frantic insecurity it produced among its citizens. Now that a dull forty-hour a week job is no guarantee of a house and two cars, people are protecting their personal possessions, disregarding the welfare of others.

The swing to political and social conservatism is not only an indication of citizens' uncertainty, but a loss of faith in the welfare state. The problems of the disenfranchised have grown burdensome to taxpayers because social programs -- ill-conceived and under-funded -- appear to have failed. People are more concerned with their personal special interests in government expenditure, leaving overall social welfare behind. The war on poverty of the 1960's has transformed itself into a war on the poor.

As the largest concentrations of the disenfranchised are located in urban areas, ignoring them has become increasingly easier for those that took advantage of the government sponsored suburban exodus through mortgage tax credits, gas subsidies, highway construction and federal and state mortgage guarantees. Cities are becoming so economically and racially segregated that it is now possible for marketing companies to target specific types of demographic groups based on zip codes alone.6 For those affluent citizens that have chosen to remain or even come back to the city, an increasingly popular solution has been to create semi-public communities like Battery Park City or gated communities that exclude undesirables not just in buildings but in neighborhoods. Tactics in the three case studies include using public funds for private developments, selling public property and services to private groups, using exclusionary zoning regulations and, when all else fails, fortifying the architecture itself. Decisions like those mentioned previously form the public space and are controlled by public policies that encourage privatization.

...

The influence of the mass media on privatization of the public space is a more recent dilemma. The access to 24-hour news - often over-hyping violence for better ratings - and the popularity of graphic and voyeuristic "true crime" programs like 911 and Cops anaesthetizes viewers to "real" atrocities while inciting paranoia regarding the perceived moral degeneration of the public. The city as represented in the news and "true crime" series appears to be inhabited mostly by degenerates, rapists, murderers and drug-dealing, Uzi-carrying minority gang-members. A viewer's typical desire is to militarize the home against the hostile public, whether the threat is real or not.

Ironically, the printed media curtailed the power of the ancient regime in the 18th Century by questioning its authority in unsigned pamphlets put out by the likes of John Wilkes.7 The mass media has since become a tool to shape public opinion, whether for marketing or political ends. During the Gulf War, the State Department carefully controlled the press' access to information by physically barring them from combat area. In this manner, they were able to dictate the public's perception of the war -- highlighting America's technological wizardry and making lethal combat palatable to the American viewing public. Even though most viewers still did not understand the factors involved in the war, Bush experienced his highest surge in popularity ratings. Such an effort to distract the public from a recession, crumbling infrastructures and pressing social concerns could make Orwell's 1984 pale in comparison. By isolating and manipulating citizens and denying them the forums for the expression of their discontentment, the population becomes easier to control through the influence of the media.

...

If the vast dead urban spaces of modernist urban renewal did much to discredit modernism in the United States in the 1960s and 70s, the movement's original socialist concerns did not translate well in the 1930's trans-Atlantic crossing. Instead, modernism became an image for corporate headquarters and recreational homes of the privileged class. By discrediting all aspects of the movement, concern for the public realm was discarded as well. No longer was the betterment of society or even the betterment of the social environment important. The new private communities strive hard to counteract modernism's sterility, yet fail to contribute to the public realm much more than token amenities and meaningless art, usually in return for zoning bonuses.

Perhaps more important than the loss of social ideals is the loss of basic democratic rights. Beyond losing the "freedom of the city," in its anonymity and tolerance, the privatization of traditional public spaces such as streets in gated Los Angeles communities or the town center in the Mall of America severely limit free speech and assembly. Where could a revolution occur now that the privately-owned mall has become the substitute town center for most people? The Supreme Court upheld a decision in 1972 giving mall owners the right to limit access to their private property if someone or some activity was considered detrimental to consumption.8

Could protests in the semi-deserted streets of a town or vast plazas of city hall attract attention in a car-based culture? Limiting the impact of such protests neuters the voices of individuals in society, isolating people, making them more docile and easier to control. By creating private communities, freedom of movement, a principle this country was founded on, is limited. The real limit is on pedestrians, which in car-based communities means the disenfranchised.

...

Private communities for the privileged class are not a new phenomenon. Tuxedo Park in Upstate New York and part of Montrose in Houston are 19th century prototypes. These communities were planned by well-connected entrepreneurs on privately-owned, undeveloped land to create exclusive suburbs of mansions. However uncosmopolitan such developments may be, the construction of the homes, streets and sewers were paid for privately.

Battery Park City, LA's gated communities and the Mall of America all cross the traditional financial boundaries of public and private space. Battery Park City is essentially an exclusive luxury community built on publicly owned land, with publicly-funded construction of streets and utilities. Although the streets are technically public, the main pedestrian entrances to the development, via two covered footbridges spanning the ten-lane West Side Highway, function as the city gates into the development. The more popular North Bridge leads from the Customs house of the World Trade Center into the World Financial Center's Winter Garden, a luxury shopping mall masquerading as a public space that serves to filter the poor and homeless out of the immaculate parks and esplanade.

As for the security-fixated gated communities in Los Angeles, neighborhoods such as Hidden Hills in the San Fernando Valley and Bradbury in the San Gabriel Valley are former public communities that have been bought back by their residents -- more specifically by Homeowners Associations (HA). As part of the Lakewood Plan in the 1950s, HAs buy back the streets and other public facilities like parks, hire private security forces and lease the county's greatly discounted, subsidized maintenance and sanitation services. The county receives revenues for pre-existing infrastructure and for services that it would have to otherwise provide, and the residents get to control who is allowed past the gates. In contrast, minorities are also subject to living in gated communities, quarantined by barricades courtesy of the Los Angeles Police Department, with curfews and assembly limitations for minority youths, all in the name of gang control.

Built in a working-class suburb on the outskirts of Minneapolis, the Mall of America recently opened to the public. At 4.2 million square feet, it is billed as the largest shopping mall in the United States. With Phase One completed, the four anchor stores, 350 shops, 100 restaurants and nightclubs and Knott's Camp Snoopy, a seven-acre theme park complete with a four-story rollercoaster and flume ride, cover 78 acres. Two seven-story parking garages provides covered parking for 12,000 cars. Phase Two calls for the addition of housing and hotels, creating a 24-hour edge city, minus the business district. Though not intended for the mall's 10,000 employees, housing at the mall poses troubling questions about the desires of the middle class.

Considering the threat of losing individual rights, has the public realm become so unbearable that someone would want to live in a mall or theme park, where all activities are centered exclusively around consumption?


Chapter 1 Endnotes



1. Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man, pg. 3-16.

2. The first written use of the word public in English occurred in 1470 by Malory. In French, the word appeared in the middle of the 17th Century. Sennett, Ibid., pg. 3 and 16.

3. Cosmopolite, meaning a man who is comfortable in his dealings with diversity and the unfamiliar, appeared in writing in 1738. Sennett, Ibid., pg. 17.

4. Sennett, Ibid., pg. 23.

5. Sennett, Ibid., pg. 19.

6. The Claritas Corporation identifies 40 different clusters based on zip codes. Statistics are kept as to the merchandise consumed by each of these groups, as well as political affiliations, income levels, home values and educational levels. Michael J. Weiss, The Clustering of America, pg. 1-28.

7. Sennett, Ibid., pg. 99-104.

8. Lloyd Corp. Vs. Tanner, 1972. William Kowinski, The Malling of America, pg. 356.






Battery Park City: Luring Back The Upper-Middle Class



Situated on the southern tip of Manhattan, just minutes from Wall Street, Battery Park City has become a paradigm for mixed-use urban renewal developments. When it is finally complete at the end of the decade, over 14,000 housing units and six million square feet of office and commercial space will have been constructed on the 92-acre landfill site.1 Excavations for the World Trade Center, part of the 1960's downtown construction boom, contributed 25 acres, creating low-cost land for the city on top of decaying Hudson River piers. The Port Authority also saved money by not having to transport and dispose of the excavated material. The rest of the fill was dredged up from the bottom of New York harbor. The creation of this new land cost the state $200 million.2 In the late 1960's, Mayor John Lindsay and Governor Nelson Rockefeller, both proponents of large public works projects, found themselves with prime, undeveloped real estate. From its inception, Battery Park City was viewed as a money-making venture, a residential haven for the downtown professionals who might otherwise choose to live in New Jersey or Westchester. New York like many other cities was feeling the effects of the national trend of suburbanization, encouraged by federal policies such as mortgage tax credits and extensive highway construction. A concerted effort was needed to bring professionals and their social service-paying tax dollars back to the urban center.

While Battery Park City went through several design stages, one concept never changed: the middle-class would not come back the city unless they were assured of a secure high standard of living. In other words, the middle class would not put up with the social problems of the disenfranchised. Therefore, the state believed that the development should remain exclusive. This way it would provide not only an increased tax base but also contribute money to finance low-income housing elsewhere. Conveniently, this elsewhere happened to be in Harlem and the Bronx, where it was argued that housing money would go further in rehabilitating abandoned buildings than constructing new units. Another justification was that if there were subsidized housing in Battery Park City, there would be fewer market rate housing, limiting the revenues generated by a more affluent population.3

While new construction costs more than rehab, the rejection of real mixed-income housing is an unfortunate reflection on current housing policy. Battery Park City has grown into an exclusive community while housing for the poor has been limited to only the most undesirable, crime-plagued locations. Ultimately, the question is not whether the housing in Battery Park City is good or bad, it is a question of who should have access to good quality housing and a nicely maintained neighborhood. Is it appropriate for the city spend its limited land and financial resources on a small privileged segment of the population already well served in the New York housing market? Is it really necessary to build the low income housing outside of Battery Park City? Or has the final conclusion -- isolated communities that once limited the integration of the underprivileged with the rest of the city -- become an ideal development?

...

In 1962, the 20 collapsing Hudson piers lead the New York City Department of Marine and Aviation to propose reconstructing a 100-acre-truck dock to lure the shipping industry back to New York. They hired consultants to create a revitalization plan that would map out the area's development potential until the year 2000. The consultants suggested quite a different scenario, an exclusive Miesian development built on top of the terminals.4 Ever since the 1600's, they argued, the development pattern for lower Manhattan has continually expanded out into the harbor, and this was the natural way to develop. The plan's mix of shipping and housing was not warmly received, but building over the piers appealed to Governor Rockefeller, since this was a way of creating a large number of new housing units without destroying an established neighborhood. With Robert Moses's Lincoln Center project and Penn Station's destruction still fresh in the minds of many New Yorkers, the ill-effects of urban renewal were being hotly contested, and community groups were organizing themselves against intrusive "slum clearance" projects devised by various government agencies.5 Another Battery Park City plan was devised by Wallace K. Harrison in 1966 at the instigation of the governor, but Harrison's modernist towers in the park were not well received either because its uninspired design was quickly losing popularity.

At the same time, Mayor Lindsay also proposed a plan designed by Conklin and Rossant, and a battle between opposing forces ensued. With Charles Urdstat at the helm, the state created the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) in 1968 to have a bonding authority of its own -- separate from the financial status of the municipal government -- to finance its projects.6 Philip Johnson was brought in to mediate between warring factions of government, and the first official 1969 master plan was issued by the BPCA board composed of Conklin, Rossant and David Wallace. Although homelessness was nowhere near as prevalent as it is today, the resulting design created an enclave for the rich with more architectural innovations than social ones. One noteworthy element of the 1969 plan was raising the elevation of Battery Park City's ground plane to the level of the World Trade Center, covering the West Side Highway. A precursor to the failed Westway project,7 this would have helped Battery Park City integrate with the rest of the urban fabric.

The city retained rights to the land under the river, thereby controlling the planning rights of the landfill via the City Planning Commission. It was impossible for the BPCA to do anything without first consulting City Planning. The hostile nature between City Planning and the state agencies resulted in a 105-page charter that took nearly five years to complete. By this time, the local real estate market was glutted, with 30 million square feet of unleased commercial space available in downtown alone.8 In 1974, on the eve of the city's fiscal crisis, the BPCA bonds failed to sell, and the project was put on hold. Financed by the state with $200 million in "moral-obligation" bonds that did not require voter approval, the landfill was the only part of the project advancing. But, with its complicated infrastructure requirements, the landfill was not finished until 1977.

With the disappointing progress of Battery Park City in 1979, Governor Hugh Carey altered the BPCA's 3-person board of directors by adding two able executive officers of the New York State Urban Development Corporation (UDC), William Hassett, chairman and David Kahan, president. The UDC had the power to cut through bureaucratic red tape like local zoning ordinance and basic democracy that make construction so difficult in the city.9 So the BPCA became part of the UDC. David Kahan brought in the New York firm of Cooper Eckstut to redesign a more attractive master plan, making the project more salable. Under pressure from BPCA's impending default on the $200 million state bonds, Stan Eckstut produced a new master plan in less than 90 days to get the state legislature's approval. To make the plan feasible, Eckstut attempted to make Battery Park City more attractive to investment and more responsive to current urban planning approaches. Formally, he integrated Battery Park City into the city by aligning the site with the existing downtown street grid. He also emulated desirable neighborhoods like Gramercy Park and Central Park West. A gentle veneer of diversity, controlled through materials, setbacks, curb cuts, color schemes and lobby entrance guidelines, created an instant nostalgia for New York's kinder, gentler past. Diversity was encouraged by allowing private developers to develop smaller parcels incrementally rather than having the city or the state build it all themselves. Since creating luxury housing with public money was not a very popular selling point, the project was devised to generate a profit that would finance the low and moderate income elsewhere. Incorporating nearly all of the Cooper Eckstut report, the Battery Park City plan was approved by Governor Carey, Mayor Ed Koch and Kahan in 1979.

Part of the plan called for the New York City to relinquish its ownership of the land by letting the UDC condemn it. The city would exchange all its planning and financial controls for one dollar. The city would also receive all future profits and tax-equivalency payments and regain ownership of the land once BPCA bonds and state advances were repaid. This structure allowed BPCA to capture its own revenue stream for the administration and maintenance of the project. BPCA promised the city $400 million in bonds secured by the revenue for affordable housing and $1 billion in excess revenue put into the general fund by the end of this century. BPCA leases parcels of land out to developers who then construct and own their buildings. Building and condominium owners do not pay property taxes; instead, they are charged "payments in lieu of taxes" tabulated by the BPCA based on the city tax rates. The BPCA then pays the city whatever profit is left after all maintenance and administrative costs and debt service have been met. In 1991 alone, BPCA generated a $37 million PILOT check for the city.10

...

If New York is to remain the center of the global marketplace, it has to attract the headquarters of multinational corporations and the educated and professional workers that work for them, which Robert Reich calls "the symbolic analysts."11 Battery Park City can be seen as a prototypical development for these symbolic analysts with their high paying jobs. While 75% of the units in Battery Park City are studios and 1 bedrooms which reflect the expected residency of two-income childless couples, rent for studios range between $850-$1200, one bedrooms average $1500 and two bedrooms average $2400. Condominiums range from $98,000 to $1.1 million. The residents must also pay additional "civic facilities payments," $200 for a condo owner and $50 for a renter, for full time security and ground maintenance staff.12

Currently, Battery Park City contains a resident population of 7,500 and a working population of 25,000 spread over 23 buildings. Begun in 1981, the commercial core is the grandly named World Financial Center, made up of four postmodern reflective-glass and thermal-granite towers and the glass-enclosed, barrel-vaulted Winter Garden, a 3.5 acre public plaza and luxury shopping mall. The project was awarded to the Canadian megadeveloper Olympia & York, who financed, built and currently owns the $2 billion project. Cesar Pelli won the limited competition to design it. Merrill Lynch moved into two of the towers, leasing 60% of the 6 million square foot complex. American Express and DOW Jones took the majority of the other two towers. Outside the Winter Garden is a large plaza with art installations by Scott Burton and Siah Armajani and a marina for 26 yachts at least 80 to 150 feet long.13 Berths can be leased for a minimum of seven years at a cost of $1.5 million; this comes to roughly $200,000 a year or $600 a day. 30% of Battery Park City is set aside for open space, including the plazas, parks and 1.2 mile waterfront esplanade.14

The southern residential sector is made up of three clusters that were developed over nearly two decades. The oldest -- the only "pod" built from the 1969 plan -- is Gateway Plaza (1980), finally finished in 1983 with 1712 housing units in three 34-story buildings and three 8-story buildings on a 5-acre site. They are considered the "project" of the development because of their brutal modernist design.15 To the south, Rector Place contains 2,200 units in 12 building that follow the design guidelines of the Cooper Eckstut plan.16 Six separate developers hired their own prominent architects such as Charles Moore, Davis, Brody & Associates and Stewart Polshek & Partners. Begun in 1984, Rector Place and the one-acre Rector Park were all ready by 1987. On the southern tip, the incomplete Battery Place contains 2,800 units in three buildings,17 each created by a separate development team. Battery Place will be the location for the Museum of Jewish Heritage though financial difficulty has put that project on hold. Battery Park City will perhaps be connected to Battery Park, much to the chagrin of the Battery Park City Owners Association, by extending the esplanade through South Park. They fear the "...derelicts, all the homeless, all the undesirable-all the problems of Battery Park.." would wind up in their park.18 "We don't want hawkers selling counterfeit watches and T-shirts," stated BPC Owners Association President Marie Crouch. Although this is a public park, they feel that since they pay a maintenance fee to the Battery Park City Parks Corporation, they have the right to decide what happens to the park. The controversial 3-acre $12 million park is set to begin construction in 1994.19

To the north of the World Financial Center, the infrastructure for the residential sector is still being built and ideas are still being kicked around. The zoning and mapping, completed in 1987, lead the BPCA and the Board of Education to open a new Stuyvesant High School in 1992, financed and built by BPCA at a cost of $150 million and maintained by the Board of Education.20 Once located near Stuyvesant Park, the school's enrollment is based on entrance exams and is widely considered one of the best public schools in the nation. A special $6 million bridge had to be constructed for the 3,000 students who would have to cross the dangerous West Side Highway.21 In addition, the $16 million, 8-acre waterfront Hudson River Park opened in June of 1992 after three years of construction.22 Meanwhile, New York's economic downturn has lead the BPCA to construct two baseball fields on the rest of the undeveloped lots until the development prospects improve. A proposal to create 100 affordable units -- for families making $40-50,000 -- in a 300 unit building with larger 3 bedroom apartments caused such an outcry from the Battery Park City Owners Association. Fearing falling property values if the community lost its exclusivity, the plan has been progressing very slowly.23 Apparently, middle-class renters have an easier time. A Moderate Housing Initiative tax-abatement program is available for Battery Park City's rental buildings if they subsidize 20% of the apartments for moderate income tenants. This deal is great for landlords at times when the luxury housing market is soft. Generally, the participating tenants are young college-educated full-time employees making $27-32, 000 a year.23B

The $4 billion development, mostly financed by private capital, has since generated substantial returns for the city. The $200 million state-provided seed money for Battery Park City was completely repaid with interest by 1987.24 The government now expected the BPCA to generate revenues. In 1986, Mayor Koch announced his $4.2 billion, ten year housing plan to generate 250,000 affordable housing units for New Yorkers.25 Battery Park City was meant to play an integral part in funding this undertaking. Since the BPCA had a separate credit rating from the city, much better in fact, it could use its blue-chip rating to issue bonds on behalf of the city that would in turn be used to create low and moderate income housing on city-owned land. The Housing New York Program was developed under the auspices of the New York City Housing Development Corporation to oversee bond issues backed by the BPCA.26 Recently, however, Olympia & York's bankruptcy has affected the BPCA's bond rating and has forced it out of the lucrative short-term bond market.26A

...

Though the fiscal crisis of the mid-1970's was precipitated by a combination of mismanagement and withdrawal of federal subsidies, the city also lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs, 800,000 residents and experienced drastic abandonment of properties from landlords who could no longer generate profit to meet their tax obligations.27 Landlords frequently set fire to their buildings in order to collect the last bit of profit from the fire insurance before abandoning the buildings to the city. The city of New York found itself in possession of huge swaths of land in the Bronx, Harlem and the Lower East Side. Most of the housing that came into the city's possession were deteriorated, abandoned tenement shells. (The problem became so bad that many fire insurance companies refused to cover properties in New York City, until the state's Insurance Regulatory Commission finally stepped in.)

The New York State Municipal Assistance Corporation -- an association of banks that have helped finance the city's debts for major profit -- and the Emergency Financial Control Board -- comprised of the governor, mayor, comptroller and 3 corporate executives that oversaw the rest of the city's financial affairs, including all labor contracts -- restructured the city's finances under the assumption that free market forces can allocate money more efficiently than government agencies.28 During this time, the Urban Development Corporation was established to override local land-use ordinances and to bring in private sector investment.29 Privatizing public services, controlled under local jurisdictions, would use city tax revenues more efficiently and streamline the municipal government. Wealthy communities such as Business Improvement Districts (BID) and the Upper East Side, now pay for the maintenance of their own neighborhoods. Poor jurisdictions have correspondingly suffered, as they are less likely to be able to afford private street cleaning or private security when faced with more pressing social problems like drugs and crime. Gaps in educational spending are even more drastic; wealthier neighborhoods spend twice as much on the average per student and teacher's salary than their less fortunate neighbors.30 The city's privatization and financial restructuring benefited New York's private sector and banks but did little for its social agenda.

Though Battery Park City was intended to provide apartments at the upper end of the spectrum so that less expensive apartments would become available, the trickle down theory did not pan out. The trickle-down theory of economics broadened the gap between the rich and poor. As William Tabb explained,"this effort to bring back the world of laissez-faire, in which social responsibility is reduced to private charity...is not unique to New York City: on the contrary, the shift to neoconservative reprivatization that is proceeding rapidly under the Reagan administration is...merely the New York scenario writ large."31

...

Of the $400 million in bonds promised by the BPCA in 1987, only $210 million have been sold by Housing New York, established as a subsidiary of the New York City Housing Development Corporation to oversee the bonds issued by BPCA for affordable housing. From this money, 1620 affordable housing units have been rehabilitated in the Bronx and Harlem. Scatter site housing rehabilitates individual abandoned buildings in a defined area rather than entire blocks. Most of the Bronx housing is located between 1415-1585 Townsend Avenue and 1424-1635 Walton Avenue. In Harlem, the housing is located between Lenox Avenue and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard from 139th to 144th Street. Of these units, 30% are reserved for homeless and doubled-up families ($0-5,000 a year), 40% for very low income ($5-10,000), 20% for low income ($10-15,000) and 10% for moderate income ($15-25,000).32

The renovated housing stock in Harlem consists of handsome six-story apartment buildings, with clean facades, new windows, secure entryways and wheelchair ramps. Harlem is blessed by well-constructed, generously-proportioned apartment buildings, originally built for white bourgeois families that could afford better housing. After the Civil War, poor blacks from the south moved to New York City, and Harlem experienced a drastic white-flight in the late-19th century. Due to segregation, African-Americans had limited housing opportunities and were limited to residing in certain neighborhoods, even if less expensive housing was available in white neighborhoods. Homes and apartment buildings were often subdivided to accommodate the increasing population. In the 1920's, Harlem enjoyed a thriving cultural scene and growing black middle-class.

Now, the majority of Harlem's businesses seem to consist of check cashing places, liquor stores and bodegas. Still one of the poorest communities in New York City -- only certain sections of the Bronx are poorer --- Harlem now appears as unintegrated as the Jim Crowe days. While the citywide median household income is $30,000, the median household income in Central Harlem is $13,000, and 23.3% of the households report incomes of less than $5000 a year.33B Within a mile from the Upper East Side (with the city's highest per capita income), an imaginary boundary line exists at 95th Street where in a few short blocks the faces on the street go from black to white. Battery Park City's median household income, on the other hand, was estimated at $110,000.33C

Unfortunately, new housing is not the only thing needed to rebuild these neighborhoods. All the money provided for low-income housing might ultimately serve no benefit, because -- although money is made available for construction -- the economic and social conditions that generated these slums are left unattended.33 The segregation of income only serves to reinforce the nature of the slums even as it generates money for low-income housing. Without access and proximity to a prospering middle class, these neighborhoods will not be able to support legitimate businesses and generate enough revenue to become self-sustaining. By economically and socially polarizing these neighborhoods even further, Battery Park City becomes more of an enclave for the well-to-do (with ever more restrictive rulings demanded by the BPC Owner's Association, to be sure), and the slum of Harlem and the Bronx become harder to turn into viable communities.

...

The Battery Park City redesign is arguably more successful than the proposed modernist super-blocks because it has successfully simulated diversity and integration. Rather than being diverse through generations of building codes, styles, materials and construction techniques, the buildings still have a homogenous brand-new feel to them. In reality, buildings underneath the skin are really no different from overscaled modern high-rises. Considering the expensive rents, the apartments are surprisingly average and ungenerous in space.

For all the talk of integrating Battery Park City into the urban fabric, it has continued to offer only limited access and relative isolation. Ironically, its failure to integrate has come to be seen as a bonus by its residents. Its stern public face, seen from downtown only hints at the splendid parks and esplanade beyond the lawns protected by chain link-fences and the massive World Financial Center. While the rest of the city is plagued by homelessness resulting from loss of affordable housing in the boom economy as well as the clearing of state psychiatric institutions, Battery Park City has remained relatively free of the homeless -- though the streets, parks and esplanade are all technically public. The reason might lie in the restrictive access available to pedestrians. Only three roads lead into the two-mile long development. Over the West Side Highway, the 22-second crossing signal restricts those impeded by old age or shopping carts.

The current pedestrian entrances are via two covered bridges, each 200 feet long and 40 feet wide, called North and South Bridge. South Bridge connects the appropriately named South Gatehouse to an unmarked structure on the sidewalk of Liberty Street and is closed in the evening and on weekends. North Bridge connects the World Trade Center and the Customs House to the World Financial Center and Winter Garden via a maze of climate controlled corridors and revolving doors. Once in the Winter Garden, one is presented with the enormous barrel-vaulted, palm-treed interior complete with a lavish marble and granite semi-circular staircase. Allowing public access to the Winter Garden is perceived as a privilege and a great "public amenity."

Aligning Battery Park City's main entrances through the World Financial Center is an interesting statement on our society's prerogative concerning the global financial world. By entering through the World Trade Center --hopefully avoiding the overcrowded and boisterous low-end shopping arcade and transportation node -- one is lead along a concourse with rows of television monitors declaring future events at the Winter Garden. (Polka bands, Third World music or the occasional classical recital, perhaps?) These uncontroversial public art programs are organized by BPCA and are considered charitable to the public realm.34 As they often require local participation to some degree, these programs are a gesture of goodwill on the part of the sponsoring multinational corporations such as tenants of the World Financial Center that do not have any real loyalty to one location.

At the end of the tube, revolving doors control the stream of executives and secretaries going in and out of the World Financial Center. Having finally arrived at the Winter Garden, one can shop at the luxury boutiques that sell a wide variety of first-class, international merchandise. By limiting the ease of access, the chances of having undesirable wander in is also limited. The large security staff, dressed in inconspicuous navy blue blazers but sporting 2-way radios, are spread throughout the World Financial Center. The homeless and the underprivileged are made to feel like outcasts in a society of achievers.35

Should this not be sufficient to safeguard Battery Park City, the doormen and the staff that clean and maintain the parks pretty much cover the rest. Battery Park City's Parks Corporation collect maintenance fees from the residents to assure that the parks remain spotless. The recently completed $18 million Hudson River Park has a maintenance budget of $1 million a year.36 Traditional public parks, littered with broken glass, already understaffed and facing budget cuts, should be so lucky. Such notions only reinforce the belief in the superiority of the private sector. As for security, the doormen are paid for keeping undesirables out of the buildings. On the street, private security (which employs 2.6% of the American workforce) patrols the neighborhood 24-hours a day.37 Curiously, these services are rendered mostly by young minority males. By buying the services that guarantee a measure of cleanliness and security, the symbolic analysts pay for the improvement of their own situation and those of other resident symbolic analysts. The rest of the city, in turn, is left behind.

...

While Battery Park City's mechanism for financial growth is very impressive, isolating the poor, in many regards the most vulnerable members of society, in drug and crime ridden communities helps to reinforce a cycle of poverty. It is also a convenient way to keep them out of sight. Perhaps integrating a wider mix of income levels in Battery Park City, serving fewer families if necessary, might serve a working-poor family better than giving them a new apartment in a desolate war zone. Correspondingly, the poor neighborhoods could also use a few more middle income residents to boost the commercial opportunities of a larger segment of the city, rather than in just a few privileged communities. Privatization of public services and local financial control foster development patterns that are so uneven in New York City that small focused segments thrive while the rest of the city is left to fend for itself.

While Battery Park City may provide a safe, clean community that is popular amongst the upper-middle class, the repercussions of denying the pressing needs of the rest of the city is even more dangerous. Already, Battery Park City is hailed as a model community to bring back the urgently needed upper-middle class to the urban center. What this type of plan ignores is the need of a well-designed environment for everyone. By blessing this type of development for the public realm, we reinforce an illusion of public space. In reality, we turn our backs on the rest of the city and reinforce the idea that it is okay to just look out for our own demographic group. The public realm is not just for a small segment of the population; it is for the entire city. By allowing the symbolic analysts to ignore their social obligations for the more charming private realm, we aggravate a social problem that will not go away by itself.


Chapter 2 Endnotes



1. Battery Park City Authority literature.

2. Lu Ratunil, "After Years of Being Down;" Manhattan Spirit, April 7, 1993.

3. Abraham Biderman, Commissioner of HPD, in a Letter to the Editor, New York Observer on Feb. 13, 1989.

4. Part of the Lower Manhattan Plan, from Battery Park City Authority press literature.

5. Robert Caro, The Powerbroker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York; New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1974.

6. Brendan Gill, "The Skyline," The New Yorker, Aug. 20, 1990.

7. Michael McCauliff, "Green Grass, Red Tape," Downtown Express.

8. Gill, ibid.

9. The statement about the UDC existing to overcome basic democracy is by David Kahan.

10. Glenn Thrush, "Battery Park City 2000," Downtown Express, July 27, 1992.

11. Symbolic Analysts solve, identify and broker "problems" and are the successful segment in the global marketplace. The Inperson Server and the Routine Producer, which makes up 80% of the population, are in fact getting poorer. Robert Reich, Work of Nations, pg. 268-282.

12. Lauren Ramsby, "Quiet Enclave on the Edge of Manhattan," New York Observer, Sept., 20, 1993.

13.Chris Oliver, "Megabuck Marina," New York Post, March 22,1989.

14. Figures for this paragraph come the Battery Park City Authority literature.

15. Gateway plaza plaza is constantly derided in articles that deal with the planning of the residential sector. See Gill, ibid. and Greg Sargent, "White Collar Colony," Downtown Express, Dec. 7, 1992.

16. These guidelines include using Caledonia granite for the curbs and seating walls, Belgian block cobble strips, fences of wrought iron pickets with cast iron spears and bluestone walkways. Rector Park design statement from Battery Park City Authority literature.

17. Figures for this paragraph come the Battery Park City Authority literature.

18. Jere Hester, "Not in My Garden," Downtown Express, Dec. 9, 1991.

19. Another controversy over South Park was Jennifer Bartlett's attitude toward designing something impractical and terribly expensive. The commission for the park was finally taken off their hands after Governor Cuomo decided it should be redesigned from scratch. See Herbert Muschamp, "Sprucing Up the Site," New York Times, Jan. 7, 1993.

20. Emil, David; New York Times Editorial; March 28, 1992.

21. Karrie Jacobs, "Little Utopias", Metropolis, Sept. 1992, pg. 86.

22. See Alison Simko' "Hudson River Park Opens," Downtown Express, May 25, 1992 and Karrie Jacobs, ibid., pg. 86.

23. Terry Golway, "Irked in BPC by Affordable Housing," New York Observer, March 29, 1993, pg. A1.

23B. Interview with a Moderate Housing Initiative tenant.

24. Cover page of the Battery Park City Authority 1987/88 Annual Report.

25 Gill, ibid. and Battery Park City Authority 1987/88 Annual Report.

26. See the Battery Park City Authority 1987/88 Annual Report and Thrush, ibid.

26A. Thrush, ibid.

27. See Jack Newfield, City for Sale, New York, Perennial Library, 1989.

28. William Tabb The Long Default, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1982, pg, 1-21.

29. Tabb, ibid., pg. 21-31.

30. Reich, Work of Nations, pg. 268-274.

31. Tabb, ibid., pg. 15.

32. Figures obtained from Mary McConnel at Housing New York.

33. Camillo Jose Vergara photographed the gradual degeneration and abandonment of hundreds of buildings in slums over several years to show the futility of Koch's Housing Initiative, from "The New Urban Landscape," a show at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in the fall of 1991.

33B. 1990 Census figures in New York City Department of City Planning, Socioeconomic Profiles,March 1993.

33C. From Jerry Chelsow, "A New Neighborhood Along The Hudson," New York Times, Dec. 26, 1993, Real Estate, Pg. 3

34. Anita Contini, who runs the art programs for the Winter Garden, was once part of Creative Time, a non-profit organization known controversial art in the public realm. From Hannah Morris's case study.

35. M. Christine Boyer, "City of Illusion," Design Book Review, Winter 1992.

36. Jacobs, ibid., pg. 86.

37. Reich, ibid.,pg. 269.




Los Angeles: Buying the Concept of Security



Los Angeles's walled communities provide professionals from the real estate, entertainment and technology industries with an escape from the problems of the disenfranchised that lie beyond their well protected enclaves -- with tall gates, private security forces and 24-hour a day electronic surveillance. Los Angeles's form originated around the idealized concept of the detached single family home, made possible by the automobile. LA has become America's archetypal decentralized metropolis. Now the second largest city in the United States, LA's 3.4 million people sprawl evenly over 70 square miles, an area roughly a quarter larger than New York City with half New York City's population. Eighty two different language groups make LA in certain respects an even more cosmopolitan gateway city than New York City, which only has 55 language groups.1

In the 1980s, LA replaced New York City as the most popular point of entry for immigrants, shifting the demographics from a predominantly Anglo-Saxon population to one that is 40 percent Hispanic, 37 percent Caucasian, 13 percent African-American and 10 percent Asian and other races.2 The social polarization also shifted in the Reagan Era with affluent households (making over $50,000) nearly tripling from 9 percent to 26 percent, while the poor population (making under $15,000) increased from 30 percent to 40 percent. Correspondingly, the middle class was reduced by nearly half, from 61 percent to 32 percent.3 Protecting the lifestyles and property values of the upper and middle classes by keeping out undesirables has lead to increasing privatization -- and militarization -- of entire neighborhoods, while increasingly repressive actions by the infamous Los Angeles Police Department4 serve to keep the poor in their place.

...

Los Angeles's most dramatic growth occurred only in the last seventy years, developing with the automobile culture and the growth of the national highway system. LA resulted with today's familiar low-density amorphous developments of single family homes. But until the 1920s, LA had developed in much the same way as other cities, growing up around Henry Huntington's "Pacific Electric" mass transit system that first opened in 1901. The mass transit system, once the largest in the world, operated over 1,114 miles of tracks and carried an average of a quarter-million passengers a day.5 Though the city was decentralized from the start, downtown Los Angeles prospered enormously as a transit hub, creating a traditionally dominant urban center. Henry Huntington wisely purchased large areas of land around his tracks and prospered enormously from the suburban housing developments that he built around the lines. Other developers had to pay him subsidies to get crucial rail links that would guarantee successful developments.6

By the 1920s, the automobiles began crowding out the streetcars downtown. Commutes became unbearably long and the cost of home ownership around the streetcar lines became prohibitively expensive. Automobiles and additional street infrastructure were seen as a means of curtailing limits to the expansion of the suburbia. The paradigm of the single family house was upheld by would-be homeowners and the civic elite whose enormous wealth was largely derived from real estate speculation -- from selling each homeowner a plot of land, a house and a mortgage. The oil industry and corporations such as Firestone Rubber had strong interest in the dominance of the automobile over mass transit. With no resistance from civic leaders, a bond act was overwhelmingly approved in 1926 to build an extensive street and freeway infrastructure, and a mass transit rehabilitation proposal was easily defeated.7 By allowing the mass transit system to slowly decay, Los Angeles essentially sacrificed its downtown.

In response to the Depression in the 1930s, homeowners threatened with foreclosures on their high-interest, short-term mortgages were assisted by Roosevelt's 1933 Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC). The HOLC refinanced over a million mortgages into what has become the industry standard: the self-amortizing (paying off both the interest and the principal) thirty-year mortgage. The rationalization of mortgages was at the center of the National Housing Act of 1934, which created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). FHA mortgages financed and insured up to 90 percent of a home's value, suddenly making homeownership accessible to over 50 percent of the population. More importantly, developers could borrow FHA funds, as well as funds from the burgeoning savings and loans, to comfortably complete entire projects, including street construction. This master-community-builder approach was a major factor of Los Angeles's enormous development after the Second World War.8 As Robert Fishman put it, "The growth of Los Angeles was not only explosively rapid; it was also virtually unhampered by previous traditions and settlements. The city was surrounded by seemingly unlimited land, supported by a massive influx of people and capital, and led by an elite wholly committed to suburban expansion."9

Unlike traditional cities, class division in Los Angeles has never depended on proximity to its urban center as much as in other cities. Instead, class divisions are based on altitude. The less fortunate live in the flatland, named the Plains of Id by Reyner Banham,10 while those more fortunate locate themselves in the hills for purer air and better vantage points. Development in the foothills west of the meandering Los Angeles River (converted to a concrete-lined storm sewer by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1940s) began in the 1920s as affluent, planned communities. If a cliched aspect of LA's good life exists -- conjured up in the movies that originated there -- it is based on the image of these well publicized communities: Beverly Hills, Westwood, Brentwood, Bel Air, Santa Monica, Hollywood and Silver Lake. Developed by Alphonso Bell in the 1910s, Bel Air, one of the original gated communities, was so exclusive that Bell refused to sell homes to "movie people", (i.e. Jews).11 Built on the 3,300-acre Hamel and Denkel Ranch after a failed oil-finding mission, the 1913 master planned community of Beverly Hills, designed by New York architect Wilbur Cook, was incorporated as a separate city by the Rodeo Land and Water Company before any construction even took place.12 Beverly Hills became the preferred residence for those in the entertainment industry because of its proximity to the studios in seedier Hollywood.

...

When explosive growth of the decentralized metropolis threatened the very qualities that were being sold as the rights of homeownership -- secure property values and low-density unspoiled open space -- voluntary homeowners associations and later, the homeowner-led slow-growth movements coalesced. Los Angeles's homeowners associations (HAs) began in 1916 with the Los Felix Improvement Association which created the concept of deed restrictions for new planned communities. Los Angeles pioneered deed restrictions and zoning for expensive single-family homes, with racial and social exclusion clauses and minimum costs and sizes for construction of new homes.13 The creation of HAs, which Mike Davis refers to as the White Wall, put 95 percent of the available housing out of the reach of Asian and African-Americans in the 1920s.14 Although the United States Supreme Court finally ruled against racist deed restrictions in 1948, the Gary case of 1919, established by the California Supreme Court, allowed the HAs to file suits against non-white homeowners, including film stars like Hattie MacDaniel. Should "trespassing" minority homeowners attempt to defend their homes, Ku Klux Klan-type vigilantism prevailed.15

Because incorporating a small group of people as a separate city for the benefits of highly restrictive zoning was an undertaking only the most wealthy could afford, most middle class communities located themselves in county areas that were undertaxed and unincorporated. The Lakewood planned community, modeled after Levittown but twice the size, was threatened by annexation to Long Beach in the 1950s. The developers, Weingart, Boyar and Taper, devised the "Lakewood Plan" to incorporate it without the traditional vital-service costs of creating a separate city. Los Angeles County allowed Lakewood to lease its fire, police, sanitation, library and maintenance services at cut-rate prices, subsidized by the county's funds for the services. The communities retained their zoning privileges, while their services were subsidized by county taxpayers. To offset the loss of real estate taxes, the county gets money for existing infrastructure and for services that would normally have to be provided.

The 1956 Bradley-Burns Act allowed local governments to collect a one percent sales tax for their own use, so the new minimal cities with their new decentralized shopping malls were able to finance their city government without increasing property taxes. The 26 county-subsidized minimal cities that appeared between 1954 and 1960 also encouraged suburban separatism and local control - by zoning out service-intensive low-income renting populations. The resulting suburban exodus left the older parts of the city with little tax base for the predominantly poor population. The 1980 Census showed that while the county was 13 percent African-American, 53 of its 82 cities, 30 of which were Lakewood Plan incorporators, had African-American populations of one percent or less.16

If the first forty years of Los Angeles's history focused on the creation of "Bourgeois Utopias," as Robert Fishman calls racially and economically segregated suburban communities, the last thirty years have revolved around their defense. When the foothill's drawing points threatened them with overdevelopment, homeowner-led slow-growth movements entered the political arena. Unlike its counterpart in Northern California, the slow-growth movement was not rooted in environmentalism but rather the protection of property values and land-use control. If environmental concerns came into discussion at all, it was because the residents regarded the open space of their sprawling subdivision as important as Yosemite Park. Drastic real estate inflation made buying a house in the foothills just about impossible for anyone but the most well-to-do. The Federation of Hillside and Canyon Homeowners, founded in the gated colony of Bel Air in the 1950s, affiliated a dozen other communities to make sure that NIMBY development went elsewhere. When the gated community of Hidden Hills -- whose residents include Frankie Avalon, Bob Eubanks and Neil Diamond -- was threatened with a Superior Court Order to provide 48 units of senior citizen housing outside the gates, they complained that the old people would attract drugs and crime.17 The Federation has since grown to over 50 affiliations and, with its massive financial and legal powers, took on an even broader role than HAs ever could.18

In West LA, gates are erected around established neighborhoods of single-family bungalows. Depending on the HA's social class, the neighborhood fortification can vary from chain link fences and automatic gates -- prone to frequent malfunction -- for the middle class, to iron gates, masonry walls and full-time security guards for more prosperous communities. Each individual home often has a fence demarcating its property, so if an HA has a tight budget, gates can be erected between different enclosed properties to cut off the street to pedestrians and vehicles. Older gated communities have the aesthetic advantage of having developed gradually. While certain neighborhoods contain modest looking homes, many have been substantially altered and expanded, adding variety to the "public" street. The inflated land values for minuscule homes on small lots have also created more streetscape diversity by encouraging the construction of large new postmodern homes. Styles range from Santa Fe to Deconstruction. Color schemes for the older homes are more varied than the monotonous new gated communities being built by developers in the San Fernando Valley. It might even appear that style in LA is reserved for westsiders. Generally, only truly privileged members of society can afford to move into homes on the westside, much less tear one down and rebuild a new one, so the rest are forced to move farther and farther inland.

Aside from the riots of 1943, 1965 and 1992, few Westsiders really noticed the flourishing minority communities, as the pleasantly insulated affluent communities and autotopic lifestyles made entire sections of Los Angeles easily invisible. The slow, orange Regional Transit Department (RTD) buses, serving only those too old or too poor to drive, provide transportation for the immigrant workers that tend the households of the Foothills residents and serve as a reminder that the city really runs on cheap immigrant labor. The large, empty, unshaded sidewalks and precariously timed traffic signals lead David Rieff to comment, "The impression is inescapable that the advertisements you see on benches all over the Westside for Jewish funeral chapels are really a message aimed at anyone foolish enough to expect to survive as a walker in Los Angeles."19

...

If the minorities are kept at bay, anxious property owners can thank the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Not only do they harass minorities that dare to trespass into bastions of privilege,20 they also quarantine poor neighborhoods in the name of war on drugs and gang control. While the New York City Police Dept has 27,000 officers for a population of seven million, LAPD has only 8300 officers serving an area 25 percent larger than New York and half as populated.21 In the 1920s, the LAPD developed mechanized policing by using squad cars instead of beat cops. In the 1950s, the legendary Chief Parker introduced the first police helicopter for aerial surveillance, further isolating the police from the communities they serve. As Mike Davis said, "Dragnet's Sergeant Friday precisely captured the Parkerized LAPD's quality of prudish alienation from a citizenry composed of fools, degenerates and psychopaths."22

The enormous area and lack of manpower has lead the LAPD to respond (increasingly) with tough paramilitary methods and high-tech weaponry. LAPD's 50 new French Aerospatiale helicopters, equipped with sophisticated infra-red heat-detection cameras and 30-million-candle-powered spotlights called "Nightsuns," and its fleet of Bell Jet Rangers average 19-hour days of aerial surveillance over high-crime areas (i.e. poor neighborhoods). Thousands of residential rooftops have been painted with large numbers creating a large grid for ground-air synchronization. An entire SWAT team can be airlifted to any region of the city, and can be seen frequently practicing their assaults on downtown high-rises, much like the movie Blue Thunder. LAPD's links with the Southern California aerospace/defense industry, has allowed them to acquire such technology as NASA's $42 million state-of-the-art communication system, named ECCCS, allowing access to vast databases on its citizens and guaranteeing secrecy of transmission.23 The LAPD's seemingly unlimited funding for these projects results mostly from gang hysteria and the ineffective war on drugs. Perhaps the LAPD's predilection for high-tech weapons might be better spent increasing their manpower to get back in touch with their communities.

...

Besides the physical and political disinvestment of ethnic Los Angeles, industrial disinvestment by relocating plants in Asia or much farther inland has eradicated 75,000 manufacturing jobs that once supplied African-Americans with decent wages. Residential and job growth in the 1980s happened to be in areas with African-American populations of one percent or less. Losing in the competition for menial jobs to recent immigrants who are seen as more docile and exploitable by employers, unemployed African-American youths in Los Angeles County remained at around 45 percent throughout the 1980s.24 By not replacing economic opportunities for jobs lost through foreign trade, minority youths frequently turn to one of the only economies left in the area -- dealing cocaine and crack. Following the classical capitalist principles of Adam Smith, young entrepreneurs -- loosely organized into two color-coded supergangs, the Bloods and Crips immortalized in the movie Colors -- sell their merchandise to the poor as well as the rich, accumulating fineries, weapons and reputations in the process.25

Gang-related violence has received more than its share of news coverage, but it occurs for the most part between rival gang members, averaging one homicide per day.26 Although the city attorney's office has recalculated the number of suspected gang-members from 10,000 to 50,000, the media and "gang experts" sensationalized this number up to around 100,000. As there are only about 100,000 African-Americans youths in all of Los Angeles County, the numbers appear extremely inflated.27 The result is that just about any minority teenager may be automatically suspected of being an Uzi-carrying, "narco-terrorist" just for wearing colored shoelaces or using a hand signal.28

After a young woman was gunned down in posh Westwood in December of 1987, the area's merchants demanded curfew ordinances and extra police protection, which made the African-American community leaders demand the same for their neighborhood. The LAPD was only happy to oblige. Since it had always been seen as an army of occupation, it now had the community's blessing to utilize its macho tactics on minority youths whose civil rights were suspended for this state of emergency. Any police misconduct was seen as a lesser evil than the gangs,29 so operation HAMMER began with selective curfews imposed on poor neighborhoods. Kids out past dusk would get police records (useful for future gang-related monitoring) for behavior that their affluent counterparts took for granted. Humiliatingly forcing children to "kiss the sidewalk" and processing them in mobile booking units, the hyped anti-gang sweeps also provided the LAPD with thousands of additional names and addresses of local teenagers, checked against their computerized list of gang members. By 1990 a total of 50,000 "suspects" had been picked up in this manner, 90 percent of whom were released without charges.

Since the sweeps proved worthless in stopping gang violence, Chief Gates created the first "narcotic enforcement zone" in October of 1989 by sealing off 27 blocks around the Pico-Union neighborhood with barricades and police checkpoints. As the Berlin Wall was coming down in December, LAPD spread Operation Cul-de-Sac by barricading a large section of Central Avenue in Southcentral, and a barrio in the Valley.30 The visible barriers proved even less effective, so the judicial system established class and racially biased statutes allowing for the eviction of entire families of people merely charged, not convicted, for drug dealing, as well as "bad parent" clauses that allow parents of minors to be charged. Five grams of crack ($125) yields a mandatory five year sentence, while it takes 500 grams of "yuppie cocaine" ($50,000) to get a similar sentence. Gang membership, not committing an actual crime, was now reason enough for conviction.31

How effective has this approach been? With juvenile crime rising by 12 percent annually, one out of 12 teenagers will be arrested, half for felonies. With more young African-American males in prison than in the entire University of California system, the penitentiary system currently has 84,000 inmates crowded into spaces designed for 48,000. Ironically, the penal colonies around central Los Angeles are now a major source of employment for minority males. Completely giving up on any hope of rehabilitation, the war on drugs is estimated to bring the total number incarcerated to 145,000 by 1995. The construction of prisons has become a new source of employment for celebrity architects such as Robert A.M. Stern's Pasadena Police and Jail Facility and Welton Becket's downtown Metropolitan Detention Center. Resembling a high-rise convention center or high-tech hotel, the Metropolitan Detention Center holds up to 70 percent of "the managerial elite of narco-terrorism" from the war on drugs.32

In the few platforms ever given to them, the articulate demands that gangs have made call for jobs, housing, recreational facilities, better schools and control of local institutions.33 While the LAPD budget neared $400 million in 1990, only $500,000 was set aside for an alternative employment program for a hundred "high-risk" youths. Most inner city employment training programs had already been dismantled during Governor Reagan's administration. For the 250,000 low-income latch-key children, the Bradley administration allocated only $30,000 for recreational equipment in 1987, encouraging parks to operate as fee generating enterprises. Funded by their surrounding neighborhoods, inner city parks are rapidly deteriorating, while parks in privileged neighborhoods are becoming increasingly controlled through "locals-only" restrictions designed to keep the poor families out.34 San Marino, one of the richest cities in the country, closes its parks on weekends to make sure the neighboring Asian and Latin communities are excluded. A plan is being considered to reopen the parks on Saturdays only to residents (with proof of residence). Following in their footsteps, other upscale communities are restricting parking to locals only; although, these communities tend to have three-car garages.35

...

In post-liberal Los Angeles, awareness of this desperate situation is such that the defense of the privileged and middle class neighborhoods has taken on a sudden urgency. The desire of the ordinary middle class to live in socially insulated communities has created a frenzy for security fencing around entire neighborhoods, emulating the luxury, fortressed "minimal" cities that developed in the 1950s and 1960s, like Hidden Hills, Bradbury, Palos Verdes Estates, Hidden Hills and Rancho Mirage. Older communities like Bradbury, with 900 residents and ten miles of private streets, are fully enclosed with guarded entry points and served by public and private security services and are impossible to enter without an invitation from a resident. The San Fernando Valley, completely open ten years ago, now has over one hundred newly gated communities. The demand for more security is nearly insatiable. Valley contractor Brian Weinstock remarked, "The demand is there on a three-to-one basis for a gated community than not living in a gated community."36 Forest City Enterprises, owners of the 1940s Park La Brea, have cut off pedestrian access and surrounded the 176-acre gentrifying development on Wilshire's Miracle Mile with security fencing.

Gated developments in the San Fernando Valley lack any of the architectural charm that the West Side has built up over time. The stringency of new HA design codes seems to discourage expansion or modification of the homes and fosters bland subdivisions such as can be found on the outskirts of any major town. Housing designs are often modern-colonial hybrids and available in the several shades of grey or beige. Anything that might deviate from the norm is considered a reselling hindrance, so everything is carefully maintained in a perpetual banality. Neighborhoods are composed of a few housing types, sometimes available in reverse plan to hopefully make homes appear more interesting. Since the San Fernando Valley is expanding farther and farther into the desert, serious environmental problems such as water shortages and smog are threatening these developments. But nothing it seems can stop the idealization of the single family home, and no price is too great, not even two-hour commutes, for peace of mind.

Needless to say, the homes of the rich are even more security centered, borrowing design ideas from foreign embassies for terrorist-proof security rooms accessed through secret doors. The concept of total residential security would not be complete without private security companies such as Westec or Bel-Air Patrol. "Armed response" signs dot the lawns of virtually all affluent subdivisions. HAs lease complete security packages, including hardware, monitoring, patrols, personal escorts and armed responses. Demand for security against the perceived threat of minority gangs has ironically provided minority males with one of the few job opportunities left to them, besides becoming prison guards. One of the fastest growing industries of the 1980s, private security guards comprised in 1990 twice the national labor average of 1970.37 In Los Angeles alone, the security workforce has tripled in the last ten years, from 24,000 to 75,000. While working for multinational conglomerates, security guards, often minority males, are paid minimal wages depending on literacy, and applicants with prison records are not automatically turned away under California's lax licensing practice. Michael Kaye, president of Westec, a subsidiary of Japan's Secom Ltd and the leading Westside security firm, revealed, "We're not a security guard company. We sell a concept of security."38

...

Whether these security measures fend off professional burglars is highly debatable, but they do work remarkably well at alienating innocent passers-by, confronting them with signs posting death threats. By establishing a siege mentality amongst middle and upper classes, the real problems are essentially ignored. The 1992 riot was triggered by the Rodney King verdict, but the pillaging carried out by the poor was really a response to desperate economic situations. The sight of people running down the street with boxes of diapers and foam mattresses illuminated the ironies of the situation. Unfortunately, the ensuing rush to buy firearms showed nothing had really been learned.39 The trend to privatize neighborhoods is not singular to Los Angeles, nor is its racial and economic polarization. Los Angeles illustrates these principles perhaps on a greater scale than cities such as Houston or Dallas, but unless these issues are confronted in a realistic manner, periodic riots, repressive police actions, increasing gang violence and environmental degradation promise to reduce the quality of life for all citizens.


Chapter 3 Endnotes



1. Robert Reinhold; "Groping for Ways to Break the Siege Mentality", New York Times,July 14, 1992, pg. D6, and David Rieff, Los Angeles, pg. 105.

2. Robert Reinhold, "Fate of Police Chief is Hotly Debated After Beating", New York Times, March 14, 1991, pg. A14.

3. Mike Davis, City of Quartz, pg. 7.

4. I am referring to the March 3, 1991 incident of the videotaped vicious beating of Rodney King by four police officers while 16 others looked on. All the policemen were white; Rodney King was black. The acquittal of the police officers by an all-white jury in Simi Valley resulted in five days of rioting in Los Angeles in May of 1992, resulting 58 deaths and millions of dollars in property damage. Numerous other incidents occurred around the country. A federal investigation uncovered rampant racial discrimination throughout the LAPD. See Seth Mydans, "Seven Minutes in Los Angeles: A Special Report", New York Times, March 18, 1991, pg. A1 and "Riots in Los Angeles: Overview", May 1, 1992, pg. A1. Also "After the Riots: 58 Riot Deaths, 50 Have Been Ruled Homicide", New York Times, May 17, 1992, pg. A26. Also Robert Reinhold ,"Riots in Los Angeles: The Blue Blue Line", New York Times, May 1, 1992, pg. A1.

5. Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias, pg. 159. For more information on the Pacific Electric, see Spencer Crump; Ride the Big Red Cars; Los Angeles, Crest Publications, 1962.

6. Fishman, Ibid., pg. 159-60.

7. Fishman, Ibid., pg. 166, also David Brodsly; L.A. Freeway: An Appreciative Essay; Berkeley, University of California Press, 1981, appendix and Crump, Ride the Big Red Cars, pg. 165-70.

8. Fishman, Ibid, pg. 175 and Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, Chapter 11. Another less mentioned aspect of L.A.'s growth during war was a result of 10 to 20 percent of all prime defense contracts that were given to firms in Southern California. War production brought in over a million workers -- many were African-Americans from the south looking for better employment -- and accounted for 20 percent of the areas Gross National Product, more than twice the amount of the more publicized entertainment industry. See Rieff, Los Angeles, pg. 76.

9. Fishman, Ibid., pg. 158.

10. Reyner Banham, Los Angeles, pg. 161-179.

11. Fishman, Ibid., pg. 168. During the Depression, the policy was discarded.

12. Fishman, Ibid., pg. 168. The city was named after Beverly Farms in Massachusetts, an exclusive resort town north of Boston.

13. Davis, City of Quartz, pg. 160-161. See also Marc Weiss, The Rise of Community Builders: The American Real Estate Industry, New York, 1987, pg. 3-12.

14. Davis, Ibid, pg. 160-4. The Anti-African Housing Association, turning into the University District Property Owner's Association, was established in 1922 to fight the "Negro Invasion" of African-Americans and Asians attempting to buy homes outside the over-crowded ghettos east of Budlong Avenue.

15. Davis, Ibid. 163 and 400-2. In the 1940s, a home was blown up by the KKK on 30th St., whites rioted on 71st St. against home sales to African-Americans. In 1945, after refusing to be bought out by the Fontana Chamber of Commerce, the entire Short family was killed when their home exploded.

16. Davis, Ibid., pg. 165-69.

17. Other NIMBY disputes involve day-care centers, retirement homes, restaurants and even Nancy Reagan's ill-fated drug treatment center. See Davis, Ibid., pg. 204 and 246.

18. Davis, Ibid., Pg. 169-73.

19. David Reiff, Los Angles, pg. 120. He also made the brilliant assertion that although Westsiders consider jogging to be an important activity, yardwork is considered a waste of time. See "The Stoicism of Maids", "Modern Times" and "Alien Nation".

20. Mike Davis, City of Quartz, pg. 284-5. Don Jackson, a black off-duty police officer decided to expose the racism of police officers towards minorities, bringing a group of young African-Americans into the Village. Although they carefully observed the law, the group was forced to "kiss the concrete" and searched for drug and weapons. Despite police identification, Jackson was arrested for disturbing the peace. Chief Gates claimed at a press conference that Jackson provoked the incident to create a cheap publicity stunt. Twenty-four minority teenagers were arrested for trying to play baseball in Will Rogers State Park. They were kept face down for more than 90 minutes while the police brutalized them, saying the Pacific Palisade park was for "rich white people only."

21. Timothy Egan, "Less Risk for Police Officers", New York Times, April 25, 1991, pg. B10.

22. Davis, Ibid, pg. 251.

23. Davis, Ibid, pg. 250-3.

24. Davis, Ibid, pg. 304.

25. Davis, Ibid. pg. 309-13.

26. Davis, Ibid, pg. 270.

27. Davis, Ibid, pg. 270, 277 and 316. There are supposedly 230 African-American and Latino gangs, with 81 additional Asian gangs.

28. The LAPD's high-publicity anti-gang sweeps, code-named HAMMER, began in 1987 and target "drug neighborhoods", picking up anyone suspected of being in gang based on dress and gang hand signal. See Davis, pg. 271-7.

29. I am referring to the killing of Eulia Love in 1978, a widow who had defaulted on her gas bill. She was shot twelve times for not allowing the utility workers on her property, while wielding a two-inch pearing knife. Chief Gates explained the rash of minority deaths due to chokeholds as, "We may be finding that in some Blacks when the chokehold is applied the veins or arteries do not open up as fast as they do on normal people." As Part of operation HAMMER, an unarmed boy was shot cowering behind a tree; he was suspected of being a gang member. Eighty eight police officers from the Southwest Division raided a house on Dalton street in Aug. 1988 and wielding guns, sledgehammer, racial slurs and search warrants, proceeded to completely destroy the house. No wanted gang members were found. The Red Cross offered disaster relief and temporary assistance to the 32 residents, who had been forced to run a gauntlet of cops beating them with fists and to whistle the theme from Andy Griffith Show. The city had to pay $3 million in fines. They at least did not have to be confronted by Nancy Reagan, who on April 6, 1989, assisted the first designer drug raid, clocking in her first visit to Southcentral Los Angeles after being a fifty year resident of the sunshine state. See Davis, Ibid, pg. 271-3 and Seth Mydans, "Seven Minutes in Los Angeles: A Special Report", New York Times, March 18, 1991, pg. A1. Nancy Reagan is also covered in David Rieff's Los Angeles, pg. TK.

30. Davis, Ibid, pg. 207.

31. Davis, Ibid, pg. 283-8. Even though he was not at the scene of the crime and did not know the murder would occur, a 20-year old Chinese man was sentenced to two life terms for being an accessory to the murder of a federal agent. Having robbed a McDonalds in Sunland with pellet guns, three young Latinos were killed by an elite LAPD stake-out team, while the seriously injured fourth boy was charged with the murder of his friends.

32. Davis, Ibid, pg. 255-7.

33. Davis, Ibid, pg. 300-1.

34. Davis, Ibid, pg. 302-8.

35. Davis, Ibid, pg. 246.

36. Davis, Ibid, pg. 245-50. See also Jim Carlton, "Walled In", Los Angeles Times, Oct. 8, 1989, pg. B1. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce is also planning to wall off the base of the Hollywood sign and installing video cameras and motion detectors.

37. Reich, Work of Nations, pg. 269. See also

38. Davis, Ibid, pg. 250. Rieff, Los Angeles, pg. 126. Linda Williams, "Safe and Sound", Los Angeles Times, Aug. 29, 1988, pg. D5.

39. Timothy Egan; "Big Rise in the Sale of Guns"; New York Times, May 14, 1992, pg. A1.






Mall of America: The New Town Center



Situated on the former site of Bloomington's Metropolitan Stadium, in a suburban community outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Mall of America is at 4.2 million square feet the largest enclosed shopping mall in the United States.1 Phase one of the 78-acre complex opened to the public on August 11, 1992. Four anchor stores, 350 boutiques and its star attraction, a seven-acre enclosed amusement park named Knott's Camp Snoopy, all vie for the consumer's attention. A fourth level contains entertainment facilities such as movie theaters, restaurants and nightclubs, making the mall essentially a 24-hour facility. Two well-lit seven-story parking garages and four surface parking lots provide space for 12,500 cars; each space is no more than 300 feet from the nearest Mall of America entrance -- a fact repeated frequently in the mall's literature -- easing the consumer's fear of walking too far and of violent crimes in parking lots.2

Its developers, Melvin Simon and Associates of Indianapolis, Indiana, and-Triple Five Corporation of Edmonton, Alberta, estimate the mall will attract 40 million visitors annually, making it one of the Twin Cities's leading tourist destinations.3 Conveniently located next to Highway 77 and I-494 -- within minutes of the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport -- Mall of America's greeters, translators, Pepsi Pick-up Shuttle tram system and courtesy phones seem to be an extension of the airport's antiseptic and highly controlled environment. Meanwhile, the mall's sublevel contains the service routes, loading docks, offices and an on-site police facility. With its security-fixation, the mall perpetuates the airport analogy. The mall's impeccable, invisible maintenance occurs in much the same way as it does at Disneyland, another popular fantasy town.

Phase two of the mall calls for the addition of hotels and residential towers, so people will never have to leave the protective cocoon of the mall. Although other malls, such as Trump Tower in New York City, already have housing incorporated in them, these urban malls are planned from the start with housing to offset high property values. The Mall of America is located in a white-collar low-density suburban area, so the addition of housing would essentially create an edge city in and of itself.4 Besides the 10,000 people who currently work at the mall,5 the increased density around such viable ventures frequently spawns additional commercial developments. Capping several decades of suburban growth, the Post Oaks Galleria, on Loop 610 outside of Houston, currently has more retail space, high-rise apartments and hotels than downtown Houston and is third in the state for total office space.6

By creating the ultimate consumer paradise, the architects of the project, which include HGA/KKE of Minneapolis and the Jerde Partnership of Los Angeles, have made a private city whose ideal citizen's sole purpose is to shop. The rest of society, which can legally be barred from the mall, is invisible.7

Has public space become so terrible that people would want to live in a theme park/mall? While the mall may try to provide the services of a town center, is it providing a genuine public realm? Besides negative social, political and psychological implications, the impact of such a project on future urban development is important at a time when central urban districts are in serious trouble.

...

Five minutes north of the Mall of America in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina lies the birthplace of mall culture, Southdale Mall. Developed by Austrian-born architect Victor Gruen in 1953, Southdale was the first fully enclosed, two-story shopping mall containing more than one major department store.8 Up until then, suburban shopping centers had gradually evolved from one-level strip malls composed of one or, later, two department stores with parking directly in front of each store. Southdale's success challenged the prevalent belief that two competitive department stores in a development were bad for business and that people were too lazy to walk away from their cars, much less climb stairs to shop on a second level. Gruen simply synthesized the different shopping mall trends while fulfilling modernist ideals by separating pedestrian and vehicular traffic and enclosing the two-story open space. Gruen envisioned malls as an antidote to suburban sprawl and to the psychological isolation that automobiles inflicted on the social fabric. In the mall, people would interact without interference from automobiles, while open space was simultaneously compressed and internalized for more efficient land use. Mall exteriors became less important with the internalization of pedestrian space; the more dramatic the transition from inside to outside the better. Outside was unpredictable, uncomfortable and banal, while inside was constantly pleasant, animated and interesting.

By sealing off open spaces, the complete control of natural climate was achieved, creating an artificial Eden that remains at a constant and perfect temperature. Although Gruen originally enclosed Southdale because Minnesota only has about 126 days of outdoor-shopping weather, the covered mall became the norm for even the best climates, such as those in California and Florida.9

The cocoon-like structure helps suspend notions of time, to be better enveloped in "The Retail Drama."10 Suspension of reality is similar to the goal of a Las Vegas casinos. Their goal is to push consumption. Television helps this process by influencing the "needs" of the audience and by priming them for the incongruities that are inherent in a mall's jarring mixture of stores and amenities. Inside the mall, consumers are stimulated into impulse purchases to fulfill unachievable gratification and constantly changing lifestyle fantasies.11

...

If the Mall of America draws customers away from other malls like Southdale and from downtown Minneapolis, Bloomington residents feel a certain sense of retribution. Bloomington suffered a loss of prestige when the Minnesota Vikings franchise deserted the Metropolitan Stadium for the Minneapolis Metrodome. Bloomington was left with a big empty lot and an even larger loss of tax revenues. Town officials courted developers to see what development possibilities might exist. With the success of the West Edmonton Mall (WEM) fresh under their belt (currently the largest mall in the world at 5.3 million square feet), the Ghermezian Brothers's Triple Five Corporation teamed up with Melvin Simon and Associates, the second largest developer of U.S. shopping malls,12 to recreate the successful formula in Bloomington.

With a surrounding population of four million, the Twin Cities has a potential customer base four times larger than Edmonton. As a super regional mall, it is expected to draw customers from as far as 300 miles away, even Canada and Japan. With visions of rising land values and an increased tax base, the city officials quelled the initial "Maul the Mall" protest with promises of 10,000 jobs. The protesters correctly feared traffic congestion expected from the 200,000 weekend shoppers.13 But Rick Geshwiler, Bloomington's director of planning, hyperbolically claimed Mall of America would be different: "It is the next level of retailing. It's like the difference between a space station and a bus station."14

With Bloomington's purchase of the stadium land and subsequent zoning changes, the developers were granted the right to build a mall totaling 9.5 million square feet, although only 4.2 million was to be built in the first stage. A ground breaking ceremony on Flag Day, June 14, 1989, included a squadron of F-14 fighter planes and a band playing the "1812 Overture." Initial construction was financed with $150 million of public bonds, divided into $25.5 million for the site, $51.5 million for the construction of the parking lots and $80 million for infrastructure. The rest of the $625 million construction financing came from two Japanese banks, Mitsubishi and Mitsui, each contributing $200 million. Although the economy was heading into a recession, the mall's investment potential was attractive enough to draw the New York-based pension fund Teachers Insurance Annuity Association. They purchased a 55% stake in the Mall of America.15

To insure the mall's success by attracting the right department stores, the developers offered extraordinary leases to the major tenants: Bloomingdale's, Macy's, Sears and Nordstrom. The mixture of department stores covers a broad middle-class price range. The brunt of the mall's cost is borne by the smaller specialty stores that line the corridors between major department stores. The highly controlled mix of stores limits competition between tenants and maintains an illusion of variety and uniqueness -- even though most stores are part of international chains. Independent stores are considered higher risk and therefore subject to higher rents; however, Mall of America's Entrepreneur Partnership tenants -- which include Hologram Land, Minnesota!, Painted Tipi and Alamo Flags -- do get free tips on management, store design and merchandising.16

But then again, all stores have to comply with rules set down by John Wheeler, Mall of America's general manager. Every aspect of the mall is tightly controlled: hours that the shops must stay open, design and placement of a stores's signs and sale banners, as well as color schemes in window displays. All tenants must pay Merchant's Association dues for the maintenance of the common areas, security, mall promotions and special events.17

The developers shrewdly enlisted sixteen major corporations for the privilege of being official Mall of America sponsors and marketing partners.18 These corporations pay Mall of America's developers to receive an unprecedented degree of advertising within the mall, to insure exclusive use of their products and, most importantly, to have potential access to an enormous clientele. American Express is the "Official Grand Opening Credit Card Partner;" approved applicants get $20 certificates valid at any Mall of America merchant. Ford Motor Company, the "Official Automotive Sponsor", funded the Ford Playhouse in Knott's Camp Snoopy. In return, Ford gets two permanent vehicle displays. One of them is a bizarre interactive display that allows shoppers to star in their own Ford videos. A shopper, once seated inside the car, can select an American scenic backdrop flashed on a wall of monitors in front of the car. Enjoying a fantasy of traveling for the world's goods available in the mall, he or she is actually sitting in an immobile car in a car-free, indoor space with pedestrians walking by. Should young people need other diversions beside Knott's Camp Snoopy, Ford has organized the Ford Exploration Association, a treasure hunt through the mall. Clues based on the diversity of American geography are gathered via special viewfinders. Although children may not be the target audience for Ford cars, on their paths through the mall, they just might make a few impulse purchases along the way.

The level of corporate sponsorship reaches an even more absurd level with James River Corporation, "The Official Paper Supplier." Their Brawny Paper Towels is the sponsor of the Paul Bunyan Log Chute in Camp Snoopy. Appearing throughout the ride is "Brawny Presents Paul Bunyan's Log Chute." If that does not get the message across, the Brawny Man is painted onto the mural of the Log Chute cabin. Among others, Pepsi is the "Official Soft Drink," Hormel is the "Official Hot Dog," and Holsum Foods is the "Exclusive Oil Supplier."

...

Mall of America is a rather typical mall, only bigger. The mall's design follows the golden rules of movement patterns that lead the consumer into the greatest number of stores. The mall's entrances lead directly from the parking lots into department stores or into the centers of corridors, escalators are placed far apart and benches and greenery strategically block direct access across corridors. Every aspect of the mall encourages consumerism; the amenities exist to draw people to the mall, to get them to spend more money and to keep them shopping longer. An informal study by the mall's public relations department indicates that their tactics are working. While the national average for a shopping visit is roughly one hour and spending averages $32.00 per visit, they maintain the average visit at Mall of America lasts three hours and results in $87.00 in sales per visit.19 Another poll taken by the Minneapolis Star Tribune found that half of the state's adults had visited the megamall within eight months of its opening.20

The mall's four main shopping corridors encircle Knott's Camp Snoopy, the seven-acre, four-story skylit, central atrium. Each corridor has a different theme and mixture of stores and amenities that cater to the type of clientele that may pass from one department store to the next.

South Avenue, considered the most upscale corridor, links Macy's and Bloomingdale's and is described as "an urban promenade reminiscent of the great shopping streets of Europe."21 The peach, cream, green, grey and rust color scheme was chosen for its urban qualities, as were the formal, rectilinear details, which seem inspired more by the design of highway interchanges rather than a high-class European street like the Champs Elysee. The Lego Imagination Center, designed by Norwalk, Connecticut-based Jeters, Cook and Jepson, is a three-story fantasy Lego Factory containing giant models of clowns and dinosaurs and, most importantly, a retail section for Lego toys and licensed clothing. South Avenue's fourth level contains the "Theater District," more precisely a 14-screen General Cinema multiplex.

West Market, linking Macy's and Nordstrom, caters to "young professionals." The atmosphere is that of a refurbished marketplace, similar to reconstituted malls like South Street Seaport in New York or Fanneuil Hall in Boston. Replete with rigidly regulated kiosks, street vendors and eateries, the painted metal and glass roof allows natural light to fill the enclosed space, while the architectural details made of painted metal with brass accents appear to be for exterior use. At the center of West Market is Market Square, a performance and exhibition area linking the West Parking and the amusement park. The color palette consists of cool greys with peach and green accents. The storefronts aim for an "international character" through the use of painted metal and wood, stone, tile, brass and chrome. Stores like Williams-Sonoma, The Limited, Oshman's and Warner Bros. Studio Store, are all part of international corporations whose products and stores are profitable because they have a reputable, easy to identify, predictable image -- free of any kink that may surprise or antagonize. Trying to reconcile an illusion of individuality or site-specificity with multinational, nonsite-specific corporate identities is an oxymoronic design feat.

North Garden is a winding recreation of Main Street, but now, it is both indoors and on private property. As it links Nordstrom to Sears, it is the most low-end of the middle class corridors, indulging mainstream tastes. The intention is for an "outdoor ambience," so heavy landscaping and white trellised gazebos and balconies abound. Skylights may bring in natural sunlight, but the overall effect is more 1950's indoor patio than "a park-like setting."22 The design specifications for this section call for canvas awning overhangs, plant covered balconies and wooden trellises. Storefronts have gabled portico entries, multi-paned windows, raised wood panels and planters. Predominant colors are white and green, with details in burgundy -- Mall of America's official color. Complementing the outdoor feeling is a three-story hillside, Golf Mountain. It features two miniature golf courses among rocks, landscapes and waterfalls. Golf Mountain' entrance is through the third-floor Garden Terrace Food Court. The game path slopes down the hill, should one worry that strenuous activity might actually be involved.

Closing the circular path is East Broadway, linking Sears to Bloomingdale's. Like the Times Square area that it attempts to emulate, this is an area that mixes different stratas of the middle-class. East Broadway carries the decor through with neon signs and high-tech materials like chrome, glass and polished stone. The color of choice is blue, with details in chrome, black, grey and gold. At the center of East Broadway, the Rotunda -- like Market Square, a performance and exhibition area -- links the East Parking to the main entrance of Knott's Camp Snoopy. The aim is for an "upbeat and contemporary appeal," but one cannot help but find East Broadway lacking in comparison to the original historic urban district. The mall's success depends precisely on filtering out those colorful lowlifes and undesirables that are a major part of Times Square.

At the very heart of Mall of America is perhaps its most successful architectural element, Knott's Camp Snoopy. The articulation of the columns and beams supporting enormous skylights are reminiscent of vast, high-tech factories. The park compresses four theaters, nine food places, seven boutiques and twenty-one rides and attractions on seven acres. Costing anywhere between $1.00 to 2.50 per ride, the most memorable attractions are the "Paul Bunyan Log Chute by Brawny" with a 40-foot drop and the "Pepsi Ripsaw" rollercoaster reaching 60 feet at its peak. The mix of high-tech interior structure with the summer-camp atmosphere created by the trees, log cabins, and vernacular sheds make a surreal juxtaposition -- part childhood memory, part brave new world. As far as theme parks go, Camp Snoopy is generally well planned. Besides providing a place to keep children entertained while parents continue to spend more money, the primary purpose of a theme park -- like the mall -- is to increase consumption by creating an illusion of entertainment. Food places and shops surround all the park's exits, and there are no less than eight automatic teller machines and six ticket vending booths evenly spread over the seven acre park.

...

Malls have pretty much supplanted town centers as the "public realm" for most Americans. Malls are the destination of choice especially for teenagers, senior citizens and housewives because they are viewed as safer than the unhomogenized, unpredictable streets of true public shopping districts. Reinforced by the mall's unarmed private security force dressed to resemble real police officers, this perception of security within the mall is one of the most important factors for consumers and merchants, even more important apparently than freedom of speech and of assembly.

Even though malls now serve as the town center for a huge segment of the population, they are not supplying forums for civic activity. The courts have repeatedly upheld the view that a developer's domain is private and that anything hindering the mall's livelihood can be expelled from the developer's property. Anything that might distract the patron from consumption can be barred from the mall, including the homeless, large groups of minority teenagers, charity organizations and political protesters. In the 1972 landmark Supreme Court decision of Lloyd Corp. versus Tanner -- and again in the 1976 case of union picketers versus another mall -- Justice Thurgood Marshall proclaimed in his dissenting opinion: "Shopping center owners have assumed... the traditional role of the state in its control of First Amendment forums."23 Now that malls were the new Main Street, developers were quick to point out that they were supported solely by consumerism, not by public funds and taxes. If the mall's business suffered from religious and political fanatics, the free-speaking public would not bail them out.

The public responsibility versus private property dilemma is more complicated at Mall of America. Perhaps some malls operate purely outside public expenditure, but in the Mall of America, $150 million in public bonds put the wheels in motion, and the surrounding infrastructure is still maintained by the city. Mall of America provides classrooms at nominal rates for 500 elementary public school students, children of mall employees, paid for by five surrounding school districts.24 Before shops open, the mall walking club allows senior citizens to track their miles between 7:00 and 10:00 a.m. Mall of America sponsors fashion shows, craft fairs and other innocuous, apolitical activities in the hopes of attracting more shoppers. While Mall of America shies away from anything remotely offensive, they did permit Salvation Army santas to solicit donations at Christmas time from specially designated posts. They were even allowed to ring their bells.25

The addition of housing at the mall, currently still on the drawing board, would complicate matters even further. Other malls with housing are in dense urban locations, with public forums available immediately outside the buildings. Mall of America is immediately surrounded by enormous parking lots and, beyond that, suburbia. There is no readily available public meeting place besides shopping malls. The political implications of a lack of public forum are similar to those of Los Angeles's car-based society. The lack of options for petitioning and protesting leads to easier control, sedation and manipulation of society. Rather than removing a potential audience in downtown public streets in a car-based society, developers deny free-speech's access to pedestrians in their private malls.

Although Mall of America's developers maintain that living there would be a desirable proposition, the tragic situation is that they believe people would rather live in a sedating fantasy world of a mall than in the public realm. Rights of free speech and assembly may sometimes be unsettling, but they are more precious than false security. The public realm may be uncomfortable at times for its messy reality, but Mike Davis's vision of mall life is even more frightening:

"Ultimately, the aims of contemporary architecture and the police converge most strikingly around the problem of crowd control. [Designers of malls] enclose the mass that remains, directing its circulation with behaviorist ferocity. It is lured by visual stimuli of all kinds, dulled by musak, sometimes even scented by invisible aromatizers. This Skinnerian orchestration, if well conducted, produces a veritable commercial symphony of of swarming, consuming monads moving from one cash point to another."26


Chapter 4 Endnotes



1. The largest mall in the world, at 5.2 million square feet, is the West Edmonton Mall, whose developer the Triple Five Corp. is also the co-developer of Mall of America. The Del Amo Mall in Los Angeles, at 3.0 million square feet, is the third place contestant. See Margaret Crawford, "The World in a Shopping Mall", Variations on a Theme Park, New York, Hill and Wang. 1992, pg. 3.

2. Although Mall of America's statistics vary wildly from one article to the next, the numbers listed in this paragraph are from the Mall of America's opening press package. See also John Voelecker, "At New Mega Mall, Security is Outta Sight", Metropolis, July/Aug. 1992, pg. 14.

3. Mary Ann Galante, "Mixing Marts and Theme Parks", New York Times, June 14, 1989, pg. B1.

4. The term edge city comes from Joel Garreau's book of the same title. He sets the requirements as: has 5 million or more square feet of leaseable office space (which Mall of America does not have yet, though nearby construction for relocating corporate headquarters might just do the trick), 600,000 or more square feet of retail space, more jobs than bedrooms, is perceived by the population as one place, and was nothing like a city 30 years ago. See Garreau, Edge City, New York, Noonday Press, 1991, pg. 6-7.

5. See 2.

6. All refences to other malls in this paragraph can be found in Crawford, ibid., pg. 25. See also E.B. Wallace, "Houston's Cluster and the Texas Urban Agenda", Texas Architect, Sept./Oct. 1984, pg. 4.

7. I will go much further into this topic later in this chapter. See William Kowinski, The Malling of America, New York, W. Morrow, 1985, pg. 354-9.

8. Southdale had two department stores and opened to the public three years later, in 1956. Gruen had already built several other pioneering malls, most notably Northland, which was still open-air. Kowinski, ibid, pg. 115-119.

9. Crawford, ibid, pg. 22.

10. The term coined by the mall industry refers to the similarity between television and the mall, except that the mall's "programs" are the indistinguishable from "advertising." Kowinski, ibid., Chapter 8.

11. Crawford, ibid., pg. 12-13.

12. According to the press release.

13. The estimate given for the protestors, excluding the 86,000 Bloomington residents was 84,000, see Wilkesron, "Megamall," New York Times, June 9, 1989, pg. A14. The press release boasts an average of 90,000 weekday visitors and 200,000 weekend visitors.

14. Wilkerson, ibid, pg. A14.

15. Trachtenberg, "Big Spenders," Wall Street Journal, Oct. 30, 1990, pg. A14.

16. According to the press release.

17. Jerry Jacobs, The Mall, Prosepect Heights, IL, Waveland Press, 1984, pg. 55.

18. All the information on official sponsors is from the press release.

19. From an interview with P.R. Manager Michele Biesiada. The polls were taken in August and in April.

20. Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 6, 1993.

21. In the press release and in the Mall of America Magazine distibuted for its opening.

22. Ibid.

23. Chapter 37 of Kowinski, ibid, is an excellent source of legal history concerning free-speech and malls.

24. Rhonda Hillbery, "Report Cards, Credit Cards Vie at the Mall," Los Angeles Times, Dec. 26, 1991, pg. A5.

25. The Salvation Army has well-documented problems getting malls to even allow them onto the premises to solicit contributions at Christmas time. See David Streitfeld "The Malling of the Salvation Army," Washington Post, Nov. 28, 1989, pg. C5.

26. Davis, Fortress L.A., pg. 257.


Public Space and Public Policy



Battery Park City enjoys its physical isolation from New York's urban fabric by virtue of its design and its political and financial organization. Municipal housing ideals are altered for a privileged segment of society. Los Angeles gated communities, created by powerful homeowners associations, enjoy political autonomy that grants them exclusionary zoning rights while enjoying county-subsidized municipal services. The Mall of America is the prototypical new town center minus the rights of free speech and assembly, where leisure and consumption are inextricably bound.

The urban landscape is shaped by public policies formulated within our political system. As demonstrated by Battery Park City, gated communities in Los Angeles and the Mall of America, our public policies seem to encourage privatization of the public realm. Exclusionary zoning, suburban separatism and privatizing municipal property and services also encourage the socio-economic polarization of our cities, where true public spaces, such as streets and parks, are the only spaces left to the disenfranchised. Without broad-base support, public space degenerates in the poor communities. Meanwhile, those with better financial means pay for the maintenance of only their own small neighborhoods.1 At the other extreme, the shopping mall completely eradicates the public realm, while it masquerades as the new town center. Though public space once meant that it was owned by -- and accessible to -- the general public; public space is no longer easy to define. There are now rules defining who owns it, who maintains it, who has access to it and who does not.

...

The quality of public space depends on more than exciting formal elements and elegant design solutions. Ultimately, underlying political, economic and social initiatives bear most of the weight in designing public space -- even if architects and urban designers are loathe to admit it. While Battery Park City may fulfill many of its various programs, its public space is not necessarily successful simply because it is an enjoyable place to visit. By making Battery Park City's main entrance through intimidating, austere office complexes, it undemocraticly filters out the respectable public from the undesirable public. The BPC Owners Association's territorial mindset negate any trace of civic duty. Disguising the development as a great generator of low-income housing, albeit in the Bronx and Harlem -- areas so economically devastated and crime-ridden that adding more low-income housing there seems like a plan devised to maintain the homeless service industry2 -- hides the fact that Battery Park City's wealthy residents work hard to keep the undesirables out of their immaculate neighborhood, or at least kept well out of sight.

While New York City has a large population of renters, Los Angeles idealizes the individual homeowner. Foundations of homeownership-- believed to create better citizens, since they have a financial stake in the well-being of the nation3 -- rely on the unquestioned primacy of private property. A public street or park sold to a Homeowners Association (HA) becomes private property, whose new owners have the right to restrict its access. The Lakewood Plan allows middle-class HAs to zone out the undesirable renting population4 while enjoying county-subsidized municipal services. The county gets money for its infrastructure, which it has long since paid off, and for municipal services that it would have to supply anyhow. The county justifies its loss of real estate taxes by the fact that Los Angeles real estate taxes are artificially low (to encourage homeownership). HAs erect gates around their compounds and hire private security guards to monitor the movements of the now private community. On the other end of the spectrum, poor communities find barriers rising around them, controlled by the Los Angeles Police Department. The militarization of LA's public spaces and private communities reflects the growing fear and antagonism between the racially and economically polarized communities.

The Mall of America is the largest super-regional mall in the United States and, fitting with its ambitious scale, attempts to provide the amenities of a traditional town such as commercial space, schooling, childcare, recreational space, health services, transportation and, soon, hotels and residential quarters. It does not entirely succeed on all points. After all, the mall concept is still founded purely on consumerism. Everything else comes second. The extras are pale versions of the originals and are provided only to lengthen a shopping trip or increase a shopper's spending. The schoolrooms are for the children of employees, providing the mall with young consumers as well. Camp Snoopy allows parents to shop while their kids amuse themselves spending money in the seven-acre theme park. The Pepsi Pickup Shuttle transportation system takes shoppers through the 78-acre mall, and for longer distances, vans connect them to the nearby airport and area hotels. What is really missing from the mall, besides spontaneity and bad weather, is access to free speech and the right of assembly. Now that the mall is the new town center for most Americans, it still does not supply the public forum needed for civic activities. It most likely never will, since this would complicate mall management and might possibly infringe on the mall owner's commercial profits.

...

These postmodern developments show how privatization of the public realm occurs in an urban city, suburban city and edge city. Battery Park City began tabula rasa with vacant landfill in a dense urban environment. Gated communities in Los Angeles establish themselves on the existing suburban landscape. Mall of America redeveloped a cleared site, once home to the Metropolitan Stadium. But their similarities outweigh their differences.

All the developments model themselves on real places. Battery Park City tries to be like Riverside Drive and Gramercy Park. LA's gated communities are a cross between fortified cities in feudal times and Levittown. Mall of America imitates Times Square, the Champs Elysee and Main Street, all under one roof. They are all ambitious simulations that are trying to capture and compress the character of places that have evolved over time. What is missing is the authenticity of the place, or as Walter Benjamin would say, the aura of the place.4B These simulated places were built over a very short time and are planned around immediate financial gains. Nothing is left to chance, every aspect has been detailed and controlled. The character of these places are therefore safe, predictable and sterile.

Since financial profit -- in the form of municipal bonds, tax bases, property values and consumerism -- is the primary purpose of these places, developments focus on the benefits and pleasures of the privileged private citizens while trying to exclude the disenfranchised. Even Greece -- the pinnacle of public civility -- limited democratic representation only to free males, with women, children and slaves left in subjugation. Now, a much larger portion of society makes up the public, including the underprivileged, and a larger portion of the public now has the financial means to purchase goods and services once limited to an elite segment of society. Traveling, dining out, buying luxury products, leasing personal security guards and living in gated private communities are no longer tokens of success and have become affordable for even the middle class.

The most serious result of privatizing the public realm is this elimination of potential forums for protest and revolution. The more isolated the public becomes -- and the less information the public has access to -- the easier it is to control and manipulate. Business-as-usual can prevail. While this may sound alarmist, this nation was founded on the belief that democracy and the democratic process does not happen without informed public input. The democratic process is not a natural tendency; it has to be learned and practiced. Voting for a candidate every four years -- presenting his/her platform through short-sound bites -- does not insure political, economic and social integrity. By denying forums for unfettered social contact and expression of discontentment -- by privatizing the public space or by allowing public space to become so degraded that no one wants to inhabit it -- the possibility of practicing democracy is made much more difficult, and civic life is made much less satisfying.

Civic centers, redesigned as vast empty plazas, have become irrelevant for a population that drives through cities on high-speed freeways. Reaching out to a car-based society is much harder when everyone is insulated in the safety of their cars. Any information that reaches these people will come through the media. The media, however, has its own interest in mind -- and those of its commercial sponsors -- and ought not be the only source of information for the masses.5 Sexy news items sell better than mind-boggling financial and political policies and tend to get more coverage. (Amy Fisher has captured more of the public's attention than perpetrators of savings and loan crisis.) Complex stories and ideas are reduced to sensationalistic three-minute sound-bites, allowing unsavory or intricate issues to slip past the distracted audience's ever-shortening attention span.

If free speech is to reach the public, it must be able to find the public. The public used to be found in the cities and towns, but now it is more often in malls, which thrive because the public realm has become too unpleasant -- with its increasing extremes of poverty and wealth. The privileged have abandoned truly public spaces that cannot exclude the disenfranchised, for a safer, cleaner semi-public realm like private gated communities and shopping malls.

Cities are at the mercy of corporations and developers because they have the power, organization and capital to dictate development in cash-hungry municipalities. Corporations obtain special zoning allowances and tax-abatements by simply threatening to relocate their headquarters to exurbia. Developers control the development of cities in an economy where municipal governments no longer have the financial backing to fund their own projects. We give owners of semi-private spaces -- such as malls, gated communities and privatized "public" spaces such as Battery Park City -- the rights of private property even if they profit at the public's expense. Limits to their powers should be established.

Without investing in and maintaining public space, addressing the social problems of poverty and rectifying our public policies, current trends will only get worse. Communities will become more polarized, distrustful and antagonistic towards one another. Experiencing the public realm will only become more difficult and unfulfilling, civic activities will become increasingly futile, and the public will be easier to control and manipulate.




Chapter 5 Endnotes



1. Robert Reich, The Work of Nations, New York, Vintage Books, 1991.

2. Camillo Vergara, from "The New Urban Landscape" at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in the fall of 1991.

3. The agrarian ideal originated with Thomas Jefferson. See Chapter 1 of Dianne Ghirardo, Building New Communities, Princeton University Press, 1991.

4. Rental housing has ties to disenfranchised. According to page 15 of The State of the Nation's Housing 1992, produced by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, the median annual income of the renter ($18,000) is slightly more than half the income of the average homeowner ($32,000), and homeownership is still the principal mechanism for building wealth in this country. A homeowner has a net wealth of $78,000, while a renter has a net wealth of only $2000. New York City, however, is the only housing market that breaks the rules.

4B. Walter Benjamin, "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Illuminations.

5. See Francis N. Wete "The New World Information Order and the U.S. Press" in Cynthia Schneider, Global Television, New York, Wedge Press, 1988.


List of Illustrations



1A. Mike Davis, City of Quartz, New York, Vintage, 1990, pg. 259. All photos are by Robert Morrow.

8A. Feliciano, "BPC's Brave New World," Architectural Digest, Nov. 1990, pg. 149.

9A. Postcard pamphlet from the BPCA.

11A. Pamphlet from BPCA.

12A. Postcard pamphlet from the BPCA and Douglas Lever, "BPC 2000,"Downtown Express, July 20,1992.

13-15A. Photography by the author.

17A & B. Photography by the author.

18A & B. Photography by the author.

19A. Photography by the author.

23A. Davis, ibid., pg. 175.

24A. Charles Jencks, Heteropolis, New York, St. Martins Press, 1993, pg. 26-27.

24B. Davis, ibid., pg. 83.

25 A & B. Robert Fishman, Bourguois Utopia, New York, Basic Books, 1987.

26A. Davis, ibid., pg.