The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

From Tribeca to Triburbia
Lately, Triburbian real estate interests have been promoting the
creation of a local Business Improvement District (usually depicted in the
media as an expression of Jeffersonian democracy on the part of like-minded
property owners). A BID is a state-chartered entity that allows commercial
property owners to assess a surtax (which is most likely then passed on to
consumers) on their property and then use the money for their own social
service delivery system: trash collection, street cleaning, and even welfare
assistance for the homeless. The current city government supports BIDs at
the same time it is contracting out social services and firing municipal
workers in neighborhoods all over the city. In Triburbia almost everything
the middle class would want or need is provided: a new elementary school
was built by the city in 1988 and a middle school is planned, while in poor
neighborhoods schools are literally falling down.
Landmark district status was granted to the area in order to safeguard
real estate investments as much as the buildings. Friedrich Engels
claimed that “the bourgeoisie, from which the jury is selected, always finds
some backdoor through which to escape the frightful verdict.” 23 Triburbanites
will make sure that its middle-class domain of high property values and
services will not collapse while the poorer parts of the city continue to erode.
Ironically, New York City property taxes are now very low when compared
with suburban communities, and this disparity is working to the city
dweller’s advantage. Because the city feels at a disadvantage with the suburbs
in providing a high level of services it cannot raise taxes to their level
or the remaining middle-class residents will flee. With great schools in the
privileged neighborhoods, the middle class is enjoying the best of both
worlds—high services and low taxes. In fact, middle-class residents moving
into Triburbia now expect a high standard of services, and the city seems
willing to provide them even as similar services are contracted out in poor
neighborhoods. The result is that the typical American suburban pattern
has become the typical urban pattern—new, privileged, self-contained
pockets for the wealthy and underserved areas for the poor.
In many respects this new, privileged Triburban city form, like the
outer-city suburbs that it emulates, comes together around parks and green
open space. In 1967 Paley Park was created on the site of the old Stork Club
on 53rd Street in midtown Manhattan. Built at the time when many large
corporations were fleeing Manhattan for the suburbs, this park was promoted
as a model of a green restructuring that could enable the city to
compete with the suburbs. Likewise, in 1983 the city created Washington
Market Park: a walled, gated, and privately patrolled space designed in an
Olmstedian eclectic and naturalistic style. A walk around its child- and
nanny-filled lawns speaks of the suburban world of family-centered leisure,