It is quiet in Co-op City, the nation’s largest housing cooperative, even though some 50,000 people live there. So quiet that the sound of footsteps crunching on icy sidewalks was louder than the wail of distant police sirens on Friday afternoon. So calm that fewer than a dozen people boarded the express bus, the fastest link to Midtown Manhattan, for its hourlong 2 p.m. trip.
This middle-income development, with 35 high-rises and clusters of townhouses, is isolated from the rest of the northeast Bronx by two expressways and the Hutchinson River. The nearest subway stop is a local bus ride or a 20-minute walk away. With its own shopping center and schools, it is self-contained, so much so that some residents say it has been years since they have been to Manhattan.
A plan is afoot that might shift all that. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, in his State of the State address last week, revived a transportation proposal that has long been discussed: the creation of a new Metro-North rail spur that would link the New Haven line with Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, with stops in Co-op City and three other eastern Bronx communities along the way.
If the spur is ever completed, Metro-North says commuters could travel from Co-op City to Penn Station in 27 minutes, and to Stamford, Conn., in 31 minutes, providing a new link for Bronx workers to employers to the north and the south. It could also start a transformation in Co-op City, which remains, residents said, a bit of a real estate secret: It is a safe, leafy place where a three-bedroom co-op costs $27,000 to buy and less than $1,500 a month in maintenance fees.
Tatyana Markaryan, for example, has lived since 1993 in a 21st-floor two-bedroom apartment with a balcony. She and her family have...
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...t change in buses.
Roughly 12,000 of Co-op City’s residents are over 60, and some, like Ms. Savlowitz, have been there since the development opened 40 years ago. “For the first 30 years I lived here, the botanical gardens were like my backyard,” she said.
Co-op City, managed by RiverBay Corporation, is a Mitchell-Lama development, a form of subsidized affordable housing for middle-income buyers. The sales prices are fixed, based on $4,500 for each room in an apartment, and there are maximum and minimum income requirements for buyers. For a five-room apartment, for example, the income range for a family of four is $35,000 to $116,000 a year.
But while hundreds of people are on waiting lists, the wait can be as little as a year for some size apartments, which is shorter than at some other Mitchell-Lama developments, according to a state website that estimates waits.
Roder, David, and Spielman, Fran. “Condo, town houses planned near Cabrini-Green.” Chicago Sun Times. 30 May 2002.
Throgs Neck is a friendly neighborhood for example, if someone was to ask me, “Where do you live?” my response would be “Oh I live near the water, you know right across the bridge next to I.S 192.” Most people seem to know what I am talking about yet most have never been, even if it is just across the Bridge. People seem to know the neighborhood well. Throgs Neck is located in the Bronx between the East River and the Long Island Sound. Walking out of my house, I could see City Island just across the East River. Down the block from me is the neighborhood corner store, which has been there for many years. Country club is just a few blocks away from me as well as Pelham Bay Park. There is also a small park to my right near Edgewater called Bicentennial Veterans Memorial Park. On my right and up the block is a middle school, not too far from there is an elementary school as well. There is also a local New York City Public Library where you will notice kid’s hangout after school. Throgs Neck’s main street road would have to be East Tremont Avenue. Where you would find your local supermarkets, drugstores, and family ...
When people think of Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, they think of crime and violence within the neighborhood. I myself have thought this about Bedford Stuyvesant before I did research and actually visited the neighborhood for myself. Bedford Stuyvesant in my opinion, has two different sides. The side the media portrays to us, the people, and the side people who actually visit/live in the neighborhood see for themselves. My visual representation above shows the two different sides of Bedford Stuyvesant. The first image shows the typical view of what people think of when they think of Bedford Stuyvesant, the projects. When people think of this neighborhood, they think of project buildings housing low income black families. The media portrays Bedford Stuyvesant as a
The arrival of immigrants triggered a rapid urbanization of the major cities in the United States. New buildings were built to keep up with the city’s population increase, new modes of transportation were built in order to get across the city faster, and settlement house were created The immigrants rushed into cities causing skyscrapers and tenements to be build. As a result of limited land, businesses decide to build the business up instead of out. In addition, many of the immigrants were poor, so the tenement was invented. A tenement is a building full of small apartments that would house many families. Document two shows an immigrant family living in one of these tenements. In addition, to changes in building there were also changes
The small river that divides the Washington Heights and Harlem from the South Bronx area, makes up "one of the largest racially segregated concentrations of poor people in our nation" (Kozol 3). This segregation increases the inequality problems by overpopulating the inner-cities that do not offer as many employment opportunities. As a result of the inequalities in this district, the children are not allowed as many opportunities as other fortunate individuals may receive growing up in a separate society. Kozol seems to think that the odds of these South Bronx children obtaining wealth and moving out of the area are ...
code in the country is a few train stops away from Low Income Housing Projects. Despite
Reshaping Metropolitan America provides an outlook of the next fifteen years for infrastructure development in the United States. Nearly two-thirds of the buildings that will be necessary to handle the projected half billion residents of the Untied States by 2030 are not built yet. We also need to reshape our cities to handle the inversion trend; families and the next generation want to move back and live near downtown. Richard C. Nelson, the author, supports this population shift but does not strongly support it. Instead of trying to create room and additional infrastructure in downtown areas, Nelson believes that metropolitan areas should start to urbanize its suburbs to accommodate desired urban living. The American population is also changing
Herbert Gans piece on the mass production of suburban styled homes like Levittown with its homes on the outskirts of the city and mixed land uses closer within the core “ analyzes the suburbs and makes it evident that they are not a utopia” no matter the societal segregation they represent (Herbert Gans). These areas have their burdens resulting in physical and social isolation, no access to transportation, the start of gender roles, and inadequate decision making. In comparison, Pleasantville was a society of segregation due to the land constraints and urban planning of the society. Its visible that there is an increase in segregation between the suburban population and inner city. The higher class living in the suburbs would remain in that area unless it was for work.
The arrival to Manhattan was like an entry to a whole new world: from the sea, its breezes, color, and landscapes, to the heart of the city beating louder than ever at the Whitehall Terminal. I could smell New York’s bagels in Battery Park with a mixture of the most relaxing scents: the coffee people were holding while walking down the streets, the old walls of Castle Clinton ...
Five star general and 34th president, Dwight Eisenhower once said that, “this world of ours... must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect”. When established in 1624, New York was only a very small colony of French Huguenots from the Netherlands where everyone was seen as equal to one another. However, as New York began to develop and change, a wealth gap developed between the wealthy and those who lived in poverty. This wealth gap led to many domestic problems emerging in the city. In George Templeton Strong’s journals, he outlines what the city New York needs to do to become a healthy functioning city. In doing this, Strong is confident that New York will make the necessary changes in order to have a very bright future ahead where many more opportunities will be available for its citizens.
Jonnes, Jill. “South Bronx rising: the rise, fall, and resurrection of an American city.” New York: Fordham University Press. (1986).
Gentrification is the keystone for the progression of the basic standards of living in urban environments. A prerequisite for the advancement of urban areas is an improvement of housing, dining, and general social services. One of the most revered and illustrious examples of gentrification in an urban setting is New York City. New York City’s gentrification projects are seen as a model for gentrification for not only America, but also the rest of the world. Gentrification in an urban setting is much more complex and has deeper ramifications than seen at face value. With changes in housing, modifications to the quality of life in the surrounding area must be considered as well. Constant lifestyle changes in a community can push out life-time
The South Bronx, New York City: another northern portrait of racial divide that naturally occurred in the span of less than a century, or a gradual, but systematic reformation based on the mistaken ideology of white supremacy? A quick glance through contemporary articles on The Bronx borough convey a continuation of less-than-ideal conditions, though recently politicians and city planners have begun to take a renewed interest in revitalizing the Bronx. (HU, NYT) Some common conceptions of the Bronx remain less than satisfactory—indeed, some will still express fear or disgust, while some others have expressed the fundamentally incorrect racial ideas studied here—but others recall the Bronx with fondness, calling it a once “boring” and “secure” neighborhood.(BRONX HIST JOURNAL, p. 1) What are we to do with such radically different accounts between The Bronx of yesterday, and the impoverished borough of today? If we speak in known, contemporary cultural stereotypes, then segregation is strictly a Southern design, but natural otherwise—but to record this as a natural occurrence, no different than a seasonal change or day turning to night, would be to ignore the underlying problem. The changing role of white Americans from majority to population minority in the Bronx, coupled with the borough’s title of “poorest urban county in America” (as of 2012), is the result of careful orchestration and a repeating story of economic and political gain superseding civil rights. (GONZALES, BRONX) (BRONX HIST JOURN, HARD KNOCKS IN BRONX @ poorest note ) It is not coincidence.
When you associate anything with New York City it is usually the extraordinary buildings that pierce the sky or the congested sidewalks with people desperate to shop in the famous stores in which celebrities dwell. Even with my short visit there I found myself lost within the Big Apple. The voices of the never-ending attractions call out and envelop you in their awe. The streets are filled with an atmosphere that is like a young child on a shopping spree in a candy store. Although your feet swelter from the continuous walking, you find yourself pressing on with the yearning to discover the 'New York Experience'.
street in Syracuse, New York (Winders, 2011). It will look at how the built environment of