THE AGONISTIC CITY: Building The Political in Sunset Park

THE AGONISTIC CITY
building the political in Sunset Park

Michele Girelli, Verena Lenna
Research developed in the framework of the Atlantis Program
in collaboration with Parsons, Te New School of Design
Spring Term 2012
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Te author herewith permits that the present dissertation be made available for
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Venice 2012
THE AGONISTIC CITY
building the political in Sunset Park
Michele Girelli, Verena Lenna
European postgraduate Masters in Urbanism
Tis research would not have been possible without the support, critiques and encouragement of many
people. First and foremost, we express our gratitude to our supervisors Bernardo Secchi, Bruno De Meulder
and Paola Vigan for their inspiration and guidance.
We wish to thank them for their insights and continuous support during the research process and the along
the development of the whole Master Program. For having pushed us towards a critical view on the processes
that invest the city and for the valuable knowledge they continuously shared with us.
We would like to express our gratitude to American supervisors Miguel Robles Duran, Angel Luis Lara,
Quilian Riano and Maarten Van Acker who guided our studio and research in New York. Tey contributed
to develop a richer perspective concerning the condition of low-income communities in Sunset Park and the
power structures of the city, opening us to alternative models of engagement in urban practice.
We express our gratitude to all the members of La Union , for having welcomed us in the neighborhood, for
having shared with us their time, their knowledge and stories, pushing us towards an unexplored, exciting
research path.
Special thanks to Miodrag Mitrasinovic for his caring support during the time we spent in New York,
encouraging us to follow our inspirations; for having listened to our thoughts and shared with us the
important moments spent at Parsons; for having hosted us in an amazing context of research.
Tank you to all the students we worked with during the course of the EMU Master.
Finally, we are thankful for the love and support we received from our families throughout the whole study
period.
Michele and Verena
Acknowledgements
View from the window. Parsons Te New School for Design
12th foor 16th East 60
Premise
Tis research has started within the Atlantis Program, an exchange project between European and United
States university hosted in spring 2012 at Parsons School of Design, New York.
Te European Postgraduate Master of Urbanism thesis semester has been guided, for a four month period
through the design course Urban Ecology#1: Sunset Park, Brooklyn and oriented to develop a research that
have the capacity to grasp and operate inside the structures of a highly complex condition in the intricacies
of low income neighborhoods and its delicate urban ecosystem. Tis opportunity of exchange besides
personal interests in the topic of social inclusion in urban context is one of the reasons that input for this
investigation.
Te course proposed a research on the production and use of participatory mechanisms and collaborative
methodologies and as a means to develop collective action and organization around every process through
specifc action projects.
Besides the morphological and economical analysis of the site, a relevant amount of time was spent in
interviews and feldwork in order to understand the social dynamic and neighborhood complexity.
To understand the realities of the low income urban ecosystem, we have been working in collaboration
with members of La Unin, a community based organization in Sunset Park, with the intention of working
together to produce a thorough study of living quality in that area.
Tis perspective is aware about how social movements and communities are already producing expertise
and methodologies. Te general hypothesis is that this knowledge can provide useful insights for social
sciences and design disciplines.
Besides understanding the processes and actors that afect Sunset Park we speculated about socially,
environmentally and economically alternative models conceived as design frameworks and capable of being
adapted to other environments
1
. Te last part of this work has been produced during the next four months
afer returning to Europe, this has allowed us to take the needful critical distance to complete this research.
1 For a more comprehensive description of the course and methodology propsed see Urban Ecology #1: Sunset Park.
Unitary Urban Research and Design Speculations in Sunset Park, Brooklyn with Miguel Robles Duran, Quilian Riano,
Maarten Van Acker, Angel Luis Lara hosted in Spring 2012 at MFA Transdisciplinary Design, School of Design
Strategies, Parsons the New School for Design.
Inside and outside academia, during the period of staying in New York, we have been exposed to an
environment of interdisciplinary work. Besides working together with members of La Union and students
having very diferent background, also debate with artists, professors from diferent felds, activist and civil
society, has become relevant for the progress of this research.
During the four month of research a multitude of events, lectures, small action-project and social
manifestations within and as part of the recent social movement Occupy, fueled an intense debate on the
city.
Te slogan the right to the city closely associated with Marxist French philosopher Henri Lefebvre ,
nowadays reclaimed by big portions of civil society seems, generally accepted by recent wave of protests and
at the base of growing interest in social inequality.
Te recent economical crisis is increasing social inequality and disparity between the few very rich and
the multitude of poor, process of privatization and worsening labor conditions under the implementation
of neo-liberal policies, have highlighted social disparities and the need for a change. At the same time the
evidence of increased social inequalities become an occasion for social movement, grassroots association
and local organization to raise their voice and protest against an unjust state of things, a practice that have a
strong historical legacy in New York and more in general in the United States
2
. Te city seems to become, for
one more time, the arena for social struggles, and where groups can organize and jointly reclaim their rights.
Te network of solidarity percolating civil society especially low income groups at the neighborhood scale
and the need to imagine a more just future seems open for the exploration of alternative economical and
political models, these among many others are the reason of recent interest in Urban Ecology s theory.
2 Cartosio Bruno, 2012 I lunghi anni sessanta, published by Feltrinelli Editore, Milano.
MAP OF CONCEPTS
THE ECOLOGICAL THOUGHT
the rise of Urban Ecology within social and
environmental theory
SUNSET IN THE FRAMEWORK OF NEW YORK CITY
Sunset Park as a case study: transition and social justice
which opportunities and potentials:
- spaces, zoning tools, actors and Institutions
- local activation, within the realm of social movements.
LABOUR AND PROPERTY AS ENTRY POINTS
given the urgency of the social justice issue:
reclaiming bio-authoriality as a premise of the political
questioning:
role of space
role of Institutions
the conditions of the political
alternative property patterns
forms of welfare
role of architects and urbanists
towards the political:
the agonistic potential of the city
PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH
what we learned working with the people in Sunset Park
> people grouping in movements, associations, cooperatives are active and aware.
> we think Institutional role is relevant to empower, to guarantee accessibility, to
structure action
> forms of latency as opportunities for bottom-up forms of direct activation
RESEARCH BY DESIGN
exploring the ecological potential in Sunset Park
Potential:
available tools of planning
availability of organized citizens
vacancies and other spatial opportunities
> space reclaimed: new systems of property
> space reclaiming time: housing and public space
> actors and economical logics
space = time
>
>
>
Sections
Chapters
Materials
PREMISE
Brief introduction to Urban Ecology
SUNSET PARK IN THE FRAMEWORK OF NEW YORK CITY
Socio-economical profle
Conficts and internal migrations
Community based planning
A self-organized approach to community
Te present of social movements
SPATIAL FRAMES OF LABOUR
Prelude: I have no time
A.Spatial conditions of labour
A1 Geopolitical and social framework
A2 ( In )visibility of Labour
Transcalar conditions of labour: a dialectical approach
From the assembly line to the desk
Vacancy
Forms of visibility and invisibility of labour
Te embodied experience of precarity
Welfare reclaimed: under the political
FRAGMENTING PATTERNS OF PROPERTY
Housing as a right
Living models and social fragmentation
Property spatial fragmentation
Ownership and shrinking of the public
Alternative patterns of sociability
THE PROCESS OF RESEARCH ( AS DESIGN )
Participatory action research with La Union
La Union
La Granja
Figures of power
Drawing the sociogram
A block with a view: La Granja
A1+A2 Emerging negotiations and conficts
Looking for agon: where is agon?
Te process of research as design of the relational realm and
generation of knowledge
RESEARCH BY DESIGN
Te political nature of ecologies
Sunset Park zoning tools
Space becoming time
Emerging ecologies: spaces and actors involved
Open fnale
9
17
23
33
39
41
43
52
57
63
67
72
75
79
89
95
103
121
INDEX
BIBLIOGRAPHY
6
7
8
9
Since the term Urban Ecology is acquiring relevance for this research, it could be useful to remember
summarily its origins and implications in urban theory.
Conscious that the diferent approaches can have emerged some years before, we locate the origins of urban
ecology in two diferent felds and historical moments. One during the 1920s considering the relevant
contribution in social theory developed at the School of Chicago and the other during the 1970s since its
relevance in environmental studies in that period.
During the 1920s at the University of Chicago Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess developed a program
of urban research in the sociology department. In that period, scholars of geography economy and sociology
sought to understand the dynamism of the modern city founding inspiration in ecological science. Taking
their cue from ecologist Frederick Clementss theory that vegetation evolves through a series of predictable
stages, they argued that urban human environment functioned similarly. Tey eagerly read studies of plants
and animals in the hope of establishing human ecology as a discipline and developed a naturalistic visions
of cities. In numerous research projects focused on the city of Chicago, R.Park and E.Burgess elaborated a
theory of urban ecology which proposed that cities were environments like those found in nature, governed
by many of the same forces of Darwinian evolution that afected natural ecosystems
1
. R.Park and E.Burgess
suggested that the struggle for scarce urban resources, especially land, led to competition between groups
and ultimately to the division of the urban space into distinctive ecological natural areas in which people
shared similar social characteristics because they were subject to the same ecological pressures.
R.Parks proposed two social processes in the formation of the community. First a process of diferentiation,
that he called the biotic order producing a sorting that would group residents into a series of natural areas
within the geography of the city. Tese natural areas, are not only determined by physical attributes of the
city, being bounded for example by bodies of water, highways, infrastructure, or industrial areas but also
by historical, racial cultural linguistic characteristics of residents. Once natural areas are defned, a second
process begins: the development of a coherent moral order in each natural areas where physical space
become a locality with sentiments, traditions and history in its own in other words become a community
2
.
1 In that period Darwins theories where very infuential within scholars at School of Chicago see Burgess E. Park R.,
1925 Te city, published by the University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London. In particular chapter 3 Te ecologi-
cal Approach by R.D. McKenzie.
2 Burgess E. Park R., 1922 Introduction to the Science of Sociology, published by the University of Chicago Press, Il-
linois
10
R.Parks developed two very important arguments for that time and nowadays particular relevant for this
research. First, the link between the geographical space of the city to the mechanism of social integration
as network of relation among community members and second the notion that the primary locus of
integration in the city is the geographical subdivision we call community or neighborhood. More recently
some researchers neglected these arguments, afrming that certain key process of social integration and
social order no longer operate at the scale of the neighborhood in the ecological tradition recognizing
within an ecological approach, the non-isolated nature of urban neighborhoods. Nevertheless, Parks
understanding of community guided subsequent generation of sociologist attempting to understand the
production of urban integration in urban life. His approach proved to be particularly infuential during
the 1980s when social scientist began trying to understand the disturbing and unusual concentration of
problems in certain city neighborhoods. Parks ecological idea that biotic order of the city strives toward
equilibrium has been criticized and failed to recognize that society and urban transformation may in fact,
be driven by political and economical interests
3
.
During the last years, scholars of urban poverty and sociology began to consider the role formal organization
as potentially relevant to the task of creating social integration. Tis theory advance the hypothesis that poor
people beneft from involvement in neighborhood organizational activity and forms of integration within
the formal organizational structures of society can cut across the geographic boundaries of neighborhoods.
In environmental theory the term ecology was used long before in studies of natural phenomena and
biology but it is in early 70s that it becomes relevant and has an important moment of recognition in urban
studies. During this period, that coincide with an energetic crises in US, for the frst time a refection on
scarcity of resources and of environmental risks is produced. Te idea of a new relation between nature and
humans, supported by a strong social movement started initially in California, produce a crisis in the idea
of unlimited progress and resource consumption. It is in this period that environmentalists, encouraged by
what they saw as a public awakening to environmental concerns, issued books and reports that predicted
that if population, consumption and with them the global economy continued to grow, the world would
soon run out of food and other resources.
3 Castells M. ,1972 La question urbaine, Maspero, Paris.
11
On 4th Street the public space of Latin community people
gather in proximity of street vendors, informal workers
ofer traditional drinks and food.
12
Te sale of ethnic foods and drinks in the street become a
reason for gathering and space of sociability.
13
Te Club of Romes 1972 best seller, Te Limits to Growth, was associated in many reviews with dire
projections: for example, that the world would run out of minerals. In 1970, Paul Ehrlich, author of Te
Population Bomb, predicted that global food shortages would cause four billion people to starve to death
between 1980 and 1989. Further warnings poured forth in the Global 2000 Report 1980 and in annual State
of the World reports by Lester Brown and the Worldwatch Institute.
Ecologists begin to study the conditions of living organisms in relation to their environment in cities and the
maintenance of biological diversity of ecosystems in urban context. At the beginning studies focus on efects
of humans actions on ecosystems in order to help in minimizing the harmful efects of urbanization on
other species, later studies include humans in urban ecosystems and focus on the efects of humans on other
species and humans themselves. Generally more recent study approach considers a city as an ecosystem,
characterized by its history, its structure and function, including both biotic and abiotic components and has
its own spatial organization and distinctive patterns of change through time
4
and aims to understand how
human and ecological processes can coexist and help societies with their eforts to become more sustainable.
Because of its interdisciplinary nature and unique focus on humans and natural systems, the term urban
ecology has been used variously to describe the study of humans in cities, of nature in cities, and of the
coupled relationships between humans and nature. Recent literature on urban systems distinguish ecology
in cities, the study of ecological structure, function, biota in urban settings from ecology of cities a systems
approach to the study of entire metropolitan areas from an ecosystems perspective.
Urban ecology has been criticized for focusing too much on competition between species in urban ecosystem
at the expense of the cultural and subjective forces that shape the city. Arguing for the necessity of a spatial
turn E.Soja warns about the danger that an excessive focus to environmental problems risk to move the
attention far away from social problems and the question of social inequalities
5
.
Both approaches take their moves from natural environment studies but the two perspective seems relatively
distant each other, both approaches have inherent strengths and limitations. While in social theory urban
ecology is still careful to the relation between dynamics of production of the city and quality of life at
neighborhood scale, in environmental study urban ecology is pursuing the idea of city as ecosystem and
relation between species to be addressed as hole by multiple disciplines.
Te frst approach is too focused on the beneft from involvement in organizational activity at the scale of
the neighborhood, without considering the broader economical and political potential of local organization
at the general level. With the risk of focusing too much on competition between species in urban ecosystem,
addressing the problem managerially with the risk to stray from questions of social inequality, the second
does not consider the cultural subjective forces that shape the city.
4 McDonnell M.J. and Pickett S.T.A., 1993 Humans as Components of Ecosystems: Te Ecology of Subtle Human Efects
and Populated Areas, published by Springer-Verlag, Berlin.
5 Soja E., 2010 Seeking Spatial Justice, published by the University of Minnesota Press, MN.
14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14444
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BX18
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BX11
BX22
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brooklyn
manhattan
staten island
newark
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15
0 4 8 12 2
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15
0 4 8 12 2
Miles
2
Miles
land
SUNSET PARK IN THE FRAMEWORK OF NEW YORK CITY
16
Located in the western section of the New York borough
of Brooklyn, Sunset Park is one of the most diverse and
multiethnich neighborhood of the city.
17
Sunset Park, known as Community District 7 (CD 7) , is a rapidly growing district. Its population went from
an estimated 136,334 in 2000 to an estimated 150,460 in 2010. Te immigrants from Latin America and
Asia, as presented above contributed to the revitalization of the community afer the decline of the 1960s
and 1970s. Approximately 57.1% of the population in 2008 is foreign born. Many of the groups are similar
to the year 2000, but compared to 2000 there is a larger proportion of Chinese and Mexicans.
Located in the western section of the New York borough of Brooklyn, Sunset Park boasted a large
Scandinavian, Italian and Irish population into the second half of the 20th century. Historically a frst stop
for immigrants, beginning in the 1960s, a large infux of Latinos from Puerto Rico began to move into the
community. Today Latino population represents the majority of the community. More recently, immigrants
from Asia, primarily China, have reinvigorated the 8th Avenue area of the district and now represent almost
twenty percent of the population. Te Arabic population in the community has also begun to grow quickly.
Te dominant ethnic groups are Puerto Rican (13.8), Chinese (11.8), Mexican (11.4%), Dominican (5.2%),
Japanese (5.2%), Irish (4.1%), Italian (3.6%), Ecuadorian (3.6%) and Cantonese (3.4%). Afer hitting a low
of 98,567 in 1980, population grew to 120,063 in 2000 an increase of 22% (New York Citys growth rate
during this period was 13%).
CD 7 has a highly mobile population. According to the 2008 data, approximately 60% of the population
moved into their residence in the last nine years, therefore you may encounter a number of diferences
compared to the 2000. Sunset Park consists of a strong residential community, two viable commercial
strips as well as a large industrial area. Te Gowanus Expressway looms over Tird Avenue, separating the
industrial from the residential sections of the neighborhood as well the community of Sunset Park from its
waterfront. Te community holds the largest Federal Historic Housing District and has some of the oldest
cooperative apartments in the country.
Te big industrial area location of an active maritime and industrial sector that hosts much of the noxious
infrastructure that sustains New Yorks economy, including power plants, waste transfer stations, and several
of the regions most heavily-traveled highways and truck routes. Te waterfront is primarily, occupied by
industrial and commercial uses and has historically been largely inaccessible to the public. Te 58th Street
Pier is currently the only access community residents and workers have to the waterfront.
18
55TH
60TH
64TH
29TH
61ST
50TH
45TH
6T
H
40TH
62N
D
3R
D
36TH
37TH
4T
H
5T
H
7T
H
6T
H
8T
H
8T
H
30TH
5T
H
45TH
40TH
55TH
50TH
60TH
7T
H
8T
H
5T
H
4T
H
3R
D
Prospect Park
Cemetery
Brooklyn Army
terminal
Re-zooning Plan
Administrative Boundary
Vision Plan
19
While Sunset Parks industrial activities declined considerably in the 1960s and 1970s largely as a result of
global economic trends and development of containerized shipping - its strategic location on Upper New
York Bay, extensive industrial infrastructure, access to a large local labor pool, and connection to major
transportation networks serving New York City as well as the wider region, maintained its importance as
a working waterfront. Economic development policies and programs put into place in the last two decades
have generated substantial reinvestment in the area. Current industrial policies, aimed at diversifying New
York Citys economy and supporting and strengthening its industrial base, have placed renewed emphasis
on revitalization and full utilization of the waterfront. Sunset Parks upland communities are completely
disconnected from their waterfront and have, until recently, largely been excluded from discussions
concerning development of this important economic and natural resource.
Te New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC), the state, and federal funding is developing
a new waterfront park between 43rd and 51st Streets on the former Bush Terminal Piers 6-12 that claim to
strain the quality of life of local inhabitants. Tis plan is part of Bloombergs plan 2030. Released in 2007,
PlaNYC was an unprecedented efort undertaken by Mayor Bloomberg to prepare the city for one million
more residents, strengthen the economy, combat climate change, and enhance the quality of life for all New
Yorkers. Te Plan brought together over 25 City agencies to work toward the vision of a greener, greater
New York.
Te industrial area has fallen on hard times over the past few decades but recent investments and plans
point this area toward s a better future. Nowadays actual land use plan consider the cemetery that occupy
the 60% as recreational space. Waterfront is generally not accessible and the vision plan proposed for the
waterfront redevelopment does not provide new public spaces except the park. Te recent rezoning plan
proposed by community based organization is an attempt to control process of development and to preserve
the morphological characteristic and view of Sunset Park, since recently development with the old rezoning
was not good.
Te project is in danger of becoming a logistical platform, leaving very small room for the planned park. Te
waterfront redevelopment project claims to provide better condition of living but in reality, is at high risk of
fostering a new process of gentrifcation.
With the poverty rate of 23% Sunset Park is home to about 9,000 households living below the poverty line
and a median household income of $25.875. Te concentration of poverty in an area where environmental
White 19%
Hispanic 50%
Asian 25%
Black 2%
Other 4%
White 35%
Hispanic 20%
Asian 7%
Black 34%
Other 4%
White 35%
Hispanic 27%
Asian 10%
Black
24%
Data Source: U.S. Census 2010/NYC Department of City Planning
Sunset Park
Other 4%
Brooklyn NYC
20
1
11
Female occupation data Male occupation data
working in Sunset Park
1
14,3 %
5,9 %
On the corner
Domestic Workers
4,349 - 8,283 workers
are either employed or searching for work as a day laborer,
on a typical day in the New York metropolitan area.
200.000 in New York City,
43% of women working outside the home hire domestic workers:
this would bringthe number of domestic workers in New York City
closer to 600,000
wwwwww

DATA LABOUR
21
management occupations (except farmers)
business and fnancial operations occupations
computer and mathematical occupations
education, training, and library
arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media
healthcare practitioners and technical occupations
service occupations
sales and ofce
construction, extraction, and maintenance
28%
46%
66%
55%
35%
35%
production occupations
transportation and material moving
community and social services occupations
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
( except home health )
( public administration )
Unionization rates in New York City 5 Boroughs
Because these data are highly aggregated (mainly due to the limitations of the sample size), they fail to convey the full complexity of New
York unionization rates, which also vary by race and ethnicity. Tis too refects diferential racial and ethnic patterns of employment across
industries. U.S.-born workers are more highly unionized than foreign-born workers, while the unionization rates of those who have
become naturalized U.S. citizens, as well as those who arrived in the United States before 1990, are comparable to or higher than those of
U.S.- born workers. More recent arrivals, by contrast, have extremely low rates of unionization. Tese newcomers are relatively young, and
few of them are union members, regardless of nativity. Moreover, recent immigrants are disproportionately employed in the informal
sector, in jobs that have relatively low unionization rates.
Source: Te State of the Unions, Center for Urban Research and NYC Labor Market Information Service, CUNY. September 2010
52,1 %
25,3 %
Commuting
working in Brooklyn and other parts of New York
ghs
0 -5 %
5.1 -10 %
10.1 - 15 %
15 %
no data
Unemployment rates
22
military
port
gowanus
expressway
1st AGE
SUNSET PARK
MIDDLE CLASS
NEIGHBORHOOD
40S 50S
23
conditions compromise residents health and quality of life and refects the lack of housing options available
to poor households in New York City.
Tere were 29,723 total housing units, of which 95.8% occupied, 75.1% rented and 24.9% owned; the median
property value was $235,400. Te median household income in 1999 US dollars was $30,152, and the median
family income was $31,247; Te per capita income was $13,141; 27.9% of individuals, and 26% of families
were living below the poverty line. 93.9% of residents were of one race, while 6.1% were multiracial; Roughly
42.6% of residents were Hispanic or Latino, 36.2% were white, 29% were Asian (mostly Chinese), 3.2% were
black/African American, and 24.7% were another race/ethnicity.
Te history behind the development of the waterfront is inseparable from the human history of the waves of
Dutch, Irish, Polish, Scandinavian, Italian, Latino, and Asian immigrants who have, at various times, made
Sunset Park their home in order to beneft from and to advance the areas economic opportunities. Teir
energy and creativity have been one of the major driving forces behind Sunset Parks long and signifcant
history of economic success leading to the development of its infrastructure, its transportation linkages, its
historical role in maritime trade, and the incredible density and diversity of its industry. Nowadays, as in
the. past, the area continues to hold much promise for individuals and entrepreneurs looking to create their
future.
Sunset Park lies between Bay Ridge and Gowanus, stretching from 15th Street to 65th Street from 9th
Avenue to New York Harbor, Sunset Park is a demographically diverse neighborhood of approximately
150,000 people. Once known as South Brooklyn, and later considered part of Bay Ridge, Sunset Park was
named in 1965 for the 25 acre park built in the 1890s which overlooks the neighborhood. Tis beautiful
park, located on the slope of Dead Mans Hill in Brooklyn gives this neighborhood its name. Along with
playgrounds, a pool, basketball and handball courts, the western end of the park boasts a gorgeous view of
the Manhattan skyline. Largely rural until the mid - 19th century, the area began to grow rapidly in the late
19th century with the establishment of the Brooklyn waterfront as a major port for maritime trade. Fueled
by successive waves of immigration and a steady demand for labor to work in its factories, warehouses, and
piers, Sunset Park quickly became a Mecca for all who sought work.
1st AGE due to the strong investment for the port activity and Gowanos Expressway infrastructure during
the 40s-50s the neighborhood attracted fows of immigrant workers mainly from Italian Finnish and Irish
nationality. From the turn of the century through the 1960s ships from all countries sailed into New York
Harbor and lined up for berthing space at one of the many handsome fnger piers that dotted Sunset Parks
shoreline. To meet the cargo handling demands of these ships, thousands of longshoremen worked on the
docks loading and unloading goods. Several more thousand men and women worked around the clock
within the millions of square feet of manufacturing space in the area churning out the goods demanded by a
growing U.S. population. On any given day, each shif change was marked by hundreds of workers walking
through the streets to and from their upland homes. Te development of the neighborhood was been closely
linked with Bush Terminal, a complex of piers, warehouses and factory lofs, built by Irving Bush in 1890
and the Brooklyn Army Terminal built in 1919. In 1941 the Gowanus Expressway was built, connecting
24
waterfront
investment
gowanus
expressway
3rd AGE
SUNSET PARK
LATIN
NEIGHBORHOOD
80S 90S
waterfront
investment
VISION PLAN
investment
REAL ESTATE
investment
4th AGE
SUNSET PARK
MIDDLE CLASS
NEIGHBORHOOD
10S 30S
new freight
port
brooklin
waterfront
2nd AGE
SUNSET PARK
LOSS OF
PROPERTY VALUE
70S 80S
25
Sunset Park with surrounding parts ofNew York City. Te Gowanus efectively bisected the residential and
industrial communities and separated the neighborhood from its waterfront. As a consequence, 3rd Avenue
quickly lost its commercial appeal and 5th Avenue soon became the street of choice for shopping.
2nd AGE during 70s and 80s due the dismantling of military port and goods containerization we assist
to migration of middle class living in Sunset Park towards suburban areas, racially homogenous zones and
gated community (white fight) with consequent loss of property value and price of rents.. Brooklyn Army
Terminal Designed by Cass Gilbert and completed in 1919 as a military ocean supply facility. During World
War II as much as sixty three million tons of supplies and 80 % of the troops sent overseas passed through
it. Since 1984, the Terminal has been converted as space for small businesses.Big investments are oriented
to Newark port area.
3rd AGE during 80s and 90s the neighborhood has become home to a large Chinese population, as well
as Latin American and Indian. Te neighborhood become a good place for low income Latin community
mainly Portorican, Mexican and Dominican that work in textile industries near the port area, with a low
percentage of Asian mainly Chinese originally from Fhuzou area of China. Investments are tendentially
oriented to upper Brooklyn waterfront.
4th AGE Sunset Park today remains a frst stop for many newcomers to the United States. About half of
Sunset Parks one hundred thousand residents are Hispanic. As stated above, they include a large number of
Dominicans, as well as Ecuadorians, Nicaraguans, and Puerto Ricans, and, recently, many Mexicans from
the province of Puebla. Fifh Avenue in Sunset Park is the commercial center for this community, with many
restaurants, food shops and record stores refecting their countries of origin.
We witnessed, during last 20 years, that the port area became object of Vision Plan, as part of the project
of renewal proposed by major Bloomberg and later on implemented. Asian community is growing and
a process of gentrifcation from Park slope produced an increasing in rent price. Latin community that
tendentially rent the houses is sufering unafordablity of housing and is moving towards more cheap areas
in Newark.
26
Map redesigned from Planning for All New Yorkers: An Atlas of Community-Based Plans
A campaign for CBP by Te Municipal Art Society of New York
0 4 8 12 2
Miles
Atlantic Pacifc Yard: alternative project to FCRC
Bedford-Stuyvesant: comprehensive plan Red Hook Shoreline and Public Access Plan
Old Brooklyn District: Draf Plan
Sunset Park: draf plan recomandations
Kermit Place: zooning recomandation
Greenpoint Brooklyn: Draf Plan
Brooklyn Waterfront: Draf Plan
ATLAS OF COMMUNITY BASED PLANS
27
Te Community-Based Planning Section 197-a of the New York City Charter, provide community boards,
grassroots organizations citywide civic groups, planning professionals and academics with the opportunity
to develop and submit community-based plans to the City Planning Commission. Te original intent of
the 197-a plan was to provide a mechanism through which City agencies could consult with communities
when public policies were formulated and planning decisions were made since New York is composed
of many diferent neighborhoods, and because of its size and complexity, a strictly-centralized planning
process is inadequate.
Without planning staf or fnancial assistance being provided by government, community-based planning
have turned to foundations, institutions, banks and technical assistance providers for support in developing
their plans.
However, while on paper New York City has what appears to be strong support for community based
planning, this commitment is less apparent on the ground, in practice these plans are ofen adopted by
the City and then lef unused or unimplemented. Both community boards and local organizations that
plan ofen fnd it difcult to get their plans taken seriously and integrated into ofcial plans, policies, and
investments. Clearly, the current 197-a process is neither efcient nor efective.
Today there is an urgent need for timely development of afordable housing, open space, and economic
development opportunities community-based planning represent an unique opportunity to adopt a new
approach to planning that recognizes and values the ideas and contributions from the communities at
neighborhood scale.
Community-based plans, with their emphasis on these pressing issues, frequently ofer the most inclusive
answers and, in some places, have resulted in almost miraculous urban transformations.
Te CommunityBased Planning Task Force is working to secure a more meaningful role for New Yorkers
in the citys land use process, and to establish community-based planning as ofcial New York City policy.
Tis Atlas contains a number of 197-a plans developed
by community boards. In addition, the Atlas represents the
eforts of many grassroots, local organizations to present the
needed improvements for their communities.
SOURCE: Planning for All New Yorkers. A project of the
Municipal Art Society.
28 28 28 28 2888 28 2
29
A SELF-ORGANIZED APPROACH TO COMMUNITY
How would you describe your organization and the work you are doing?
I Began squatting in the late seventies in the Bronx., an area destroyed by forces of displacement at the time. Generally, people tend to see the problem of
homelessness and displacement in purely economic terms. Capitalism system is not interested in provide housing to poor people but we tend to join that
with analysis that has to do with social control. Decision made in late sixties and seventies has to do more with the idea of displacement from a political
point of view, both consequence as economical motivated decisions and requirements but as well of social control and disempowerment. Terefore, we
can say that homelessness can be seen as produced by economical forces but also from the desire of social control.
Which is in your perception the limit between legal and illegal when it comes to occupy abandoned spaces?
Squatting means occupation, renovation and defense of vacant space in order to create housing.
Te city of NY used to have legal means that allowed people to enter in vacant spaces and renovate them called urban home study program or sweat
equity. Tis means that you could work for a lease instead of paying with money, until middle eightys a group of people could fnd a building, apply
for a permit to the city to go in and work on that building. Tey could secure lease to that house, still owned by the city, by giving a report on a regular
basis to the city.
Nowadays most of the banks control vacant spaces. Before, the city controlled the vacant space trough the agency. In 1986, the city issues a proposal for
people who wanted to do this, these are groups that would want to live in a vacant buildings and work to renovate them. Trough a regular repolr ther
was a kind of relationships.

From 1986 until now there is no legal means by which people that were interested or needed to work on these houses could create housing, there is no
option available. From 1986, we are involved in occupying vacant spaces in what we call unpermitted way. We do not mention it in terms of illegality
because for us the crime is to have vacant houses when there are homeless people. Weather is the owners, the city, the banks, they should not be keeping
places of the market when there is people sufering, this should be criminalized.
What we are pushing for is for the city to restate legal means by which people can work and renovate these houses, but now everything we do is in an
unpermitted way.
30
Could you describe one process of squatting from fnding the right place and other tactics you use?
Organizing for Occupation (O4O) organizes diferent groups of people that take part in the process. First, you spot a vacant building, than you do a title
search and fnd out the ownership of the building. You identify the potential target that you would have to relate to once you make your frst move.
In terms of research, you want to get as much anecdotal information from the street as possible. Afer you have all the necessary information, the crack
team goes in to the house, in the morning or at night. Te team makes an evaluation of the house, we put our own lock then they clean out the house.
Te construction of the space does not follow the traditional priority. Priority is to get people inside in a limited space for a limited period of time.
Working in the same time, we have an intake team. Te intake team fnds potential people that need and have the ability to enter in this process,
interview the people to match up with the right space and we fnd the best situation.
We are not a development operation; we are organizing with and among homeless people. We get together with the people that are interested in that
space and we work together with the idea that they will get in that house. We get electric and water basic from basement or friendly neighborhood or
from the street. Basically, everything that a trained constructor knows how to do, we learn to do and when you learn how to construct, you can look at
one house evaluate costs required and count the time needed to renew it.
In NYC there is legal no right to squat unlike England where there was a way but there is particular tactic that we use: NYC thirty day law.
If you can show you are residing in a place for 30 days or more through the receiver of mail than you have to be evicted by court. Once you have the
mail going on for at least 30 days, it is harder to get evicted. Tey will go on but they will not evict you easily. Tat is why it is important to go about
this way. Te Court is not the end of the line.
Te other process is engaging and organizing in the neighbor for defensive capabilities if the owner shows up. Ideally, this happens simultaneously. An
eviction watch group is created in the neighborhood, makes awareness and horizontally tasks are fulflled. Over last fve years, most of housing are
owned by banks. It is important politicize the case, involving the media in a non-violent resistance that cost them money and negative publicity. We are
interested in organizing a counter pressure and open a potential for negotiation.
How long can you stay in a squatted house?
No limit to how long a space can be squatted. We have been in these houses since the mid 80s. Until 2002, we were total illegal. Tere is no limit to
how long one can stay in a house. And this is a neighbor that sufered gentrifcation. Orizontal organization. Build horizontal solidaritywith neighbors,
keep the level of speculation down, their house can be potentially a target, this we need to explain to people. In the late 80s in lower east side down price
some local newspapers attributed to squatters activity since developers do not want to deal with evicting people for time money reasons.
Which relations do you see between recent housing crisis and the past?
Te crises of homelessness is very present and politicized NY city leads the country in disparity. Te separation between rich and poor is the biggest in
time. Tings demarcably went down in the last twenty years. In the seventy emergence of homelessness, have seen as a mean to displace people at the
base in order to eliminate the potential of insurrection. People of color and students were seen as potential for revolution. Nowadays destabilization can
be seen as form of control.
31
2005 2006
2008 2007
New York Times Graphics Department analysis found that
foreclosure rates in the region were highest in areas with
high minority populations. The visualization highlights
the neighborhoods most stricken by the housing crisis.
Comparisons between 2005 and 2009 are indeed areas
with high minority populations, including Bushwick in
Brooklyn, Jamaica, Queens, and Newark, NJ.
Over 10%
5 to 10%
2.5 to 5%
Insufcient data
Under 2.5%
32
33
A movement engenders expectations that is not able to fulfll
Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Ann Barr Snitow, Te Feminist Memoir Project
Te months during which the research in Sunset Park, approximately the frst half of 2012, was developed
corresponded to an intense moment of engagement for the civil society of New York City, brought to the light
of the global scene by the public assemblies in Zuccotti square and proliferation of the Occupy declensions,
as an efort to achieve specifcity but also a strategy of visibility and empowerment.
Te Occupy Wall Street movement is the heir and the contemporary expression of a long tradition of social
movements for civil rights in the United States. A tradition institutionally framed in the Sixties but actually
part of a longer process, for some historians ( Dowd Hall, Cartosio )already in the Tirties beginning to
crack the politeness of the established order and growing through diferently successful paths, overlapping
reclamations and testing strategies at least till the half of the Seventies. Te true story of these movements
is longer than the ofcial version when relevance is given to the isolated gestures of minorities and single
individuals, which could not be correctly interpreted if separated from a common background stratifying
largely shared injustices and activation of groups in the framework of wider programs. Gestures thus
revealing a vast underworld of passions but also of awareness and strategic forms of organizations. Gestures
thus justifying the reframing of the ofcial history. In 1956, supporting the frst black citizens who performed
a sit-in in a public place - non accessible to them - , there was a whole network of groups having the purpose
and the strategies to multiply this gesture in the following days, prepared to deal with all the psychological
and legal implications of the situation.
Being aware of this past helps to cast a diferent light on the meaning and the reasons of strength or weakness
not only of the contemporary movements but also of the growing number of organizations and community
based groups which, in a market driven context such as the context of New York City, continue to claim
for basic rights. Barak Obama in one of his speeches at the beginning of his presidential career realistically
conveyed the attention on a number of diferent forms of exclusion and injustice still characterizing our
society, dramatized and deepened by the economical crisis especially in highly speculative environments
such as New York. But if Obama has been able to give that speech as President of the United States, having
faced a female adversary, Hillary Clinton, it is probably necessary to acknowledge that something has
changed through the years. Today, at least on a formal level Institutions are called to warrant justice and
equality without distinctions of race, gender and religion. Te eforts of the movements and of the civil
34
society have not been useless but still a good number of battles has to be won: despite its limits and the
incoherencies that have been remarked on diferent levels (Moufe, Marcuse) Occupy Wall Street, especially
in the peak moments of its action, has shown that passions are still alive. Coagulating the interest of diferent
parts of the society in some way OWS pushed on the stage the less glamorous battles daily sustained by
common people and modest community based organizations.
Within the perspective of this research, an important aspect of the action of OWS concerns the use of
public space. Inscribing themselves in an ancient tradition that has in the agora one of the most renowned
antecedents, the people participating to the public assemblies in Zuccotti Square recall to our minds one
primordial right connected to the use of public spaces, the right of expression and the exercise of democracy.
An obvious right to which corresponded the obvious reaction of the authorities of New York in 2012,
inappropriately implying a political judgment in the character of their interventions, thus forgetting about
their hypothetical institutional role, by defnition: to protect democracy and its forms of expression for all
the citizens.
Especially given the complexities of our society, welfare should go far beyond the efciency of sidewalks and
the safety of parks: it should also give an answer to the growing claim for democracy in a society as diverse as
the contemporary one, which exactly for its plurality cannot be framed in given schemes or given shapes, but
requires a sort of infrastructural logic, acknowledging and providing the opportunities for the appropriation
of the means and the specifcation of the rights as forms of political expression. Te experiences of Zuccotti
Square as well as the continuous multiplication of the community gardens suggest the pivotal role of public
space in supporting the defnition of rights. In this direction the role of Institutions and of the Planning
departments - among others - is crucially questioned: together with citizens called to conceive the spatial
infrastructure required for the achievement of the political.
While New York City has on paper what seems to be a strong support for community-based planning,
this commitment is less evident in reality. So for example it is important to recognize that if a map of
Community based project has been realized (Angotti) more than an Institutional openness this registers
the eforts of community based organizations motivated to intervene in the design and management
processes concerning the space of their daily lives, the welfare space. Also the rezoning plan of Sunset Park
is similarly resulting from the needs and the rights claimed by the local community through the voice of
Sarah Gonzalez as member of the Community. Tese processes and their results if on one hand declare the
latency Institutions, on the other hand encourage civil society to continue with their actions and strategies
and to consider these margins of inefciency as possibilities of democratic expression: margins that appeal
for new forms of institutional responsibilization, shaped through bottom-up processes and logics emerging
as urgencies in the everyday.
Map of the actions of the OWS mouvement and the Community
based organizations in NYC metropolitan area. Sources: http://
occupywallst.org/ and http://google.com
35
COMMUNITY BASED ORGANIZATIONS AND ACTIONS OF OWS
Actions of OWS
90
15
37
SPATIAL FRAMES OF LABOUR
Prelude: I have no time
Transcalar conditions of labour: a dialectical approach
Forms of visibility and invisibility of labour
38
39
Prelude: I have no time.
M. lives in Sunset Park, at the third foor of building along the 4th avenue. She moved there some years ago,
with her husband and children because she knew that in the neighborhood other Mexican citizens were
living, as part of a friendlier environment for her daily activities: shops selling Mexican food, better schools,
a small park where her children could play. M. arrived in New York at the beginning of the 90. As the great
part of Mexican migrating women, she moved in the United States hoping to fnd a work as nanny or house
keeper. Which was a likely perspective, given the growing tertiarization of the economy in New York, which
among other things afected also the activities of the Port of Sunset Park. Because of the tertiarization a
high number of women massively became part of the work system. But this did not imply a redistribution
of domestic tasks between men and women: simply women were replaced by other women, being waged to
take charge of the reproductive functions within the family.
Tanks to the solidarity network that also helped her to arrive in New York City, M. became one of those
domestic workers, for years living and working in the same house in the upper east side of Manhattan. She
used to work from twelve to fourteen hours per day and at the end of her day she could rest in her room in
the basement of the house. Her life was completely absorbed by her rhythm of work and by the space of that
house. One day she fnally found the courage to leave that safe work and salary and to face the risks related to
her condition of illegal migrant in New York, looking for another job in Brooklyn where she fnally met her
husband and built her family. At that time M. had no time. But today she is determined to take care of her
own family, as nobody else could help her not only her family is far, but at present it would be impossible
for her to be back and visit them: being non documented this will determine her impossibility to go back
in New York .
Particularly involved in the school activities of her children and in promoting other educational programs for
her neighborhood, she is also an active member of La Union, a community based organization of Mexican
citizens operating on many diferent fronts, from educational activities to the start-up of entrepreneurial
activities. La Union at present has no physical site, which means that meetings happen every time in a
diferent location. Tis on one hand is a good pretext to involve new citizens and spread the voice; on the
other hand, it is a problematic issue for those people - as M. with a busy schedule till the end of the day,
without the possibility to count on the help of someone to prepare the dinner for her husband and look afer
the children. Te model of Mexican families living in Sunset Park is still deeply based on traditional values.
If La Union had its own place where organize meetings and activities, at least some spaces to entertain
children could be organized by the community; some food could be provided thus encouraging a greater
number of people to join the meetings at the end of their days.
40
(
i
n
)

v
i
s
i
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i
l
i
t
y

o
f

l
a
b
o
u
r
g
e
o
p
o
l
i
t
i
c
a
l

a
n
d

s
o
c
i
a
l

f
r
a
m
e
w
o
r
k
A. SPATIAL CONDITIONS OF LABOUR
41
People that dont have time: especially women, being female the majority of the members of this community
based association. And in fact in New York City as probably in many other cases around the world - an
high number of associations is based on female initiative and participation.
So, if despite the wide range of activities and the high number of enrolled people La Union is facing an issue
of scarce participation thus of scarce efectiveness -, this is due not only to a lack of trust in the potential
role of the association - by an high number of people considered just as another institution, inefective and
sooner or later asking for money - but also to a lack of time. Time subtracted by distances to be crossed, by
fragmented and fexible schedules, by the inefciency or by the absence of spaces helping to condense eforts,
to support solidarities, to create synergies.
Given these premises then it is thus understandable the popularity of a small community garden, spontaneously
occupied by some Mexican inhabitants of Sunset Park, also part of La Union, and successfully managed in
the course of the years. Successfully because an abandoned space, perceived as unsafe and attracting drug
trafcking and prostitution, was transformed in a cleaner site, a meaningful place not especially for the
vegetables cultivated within its narrow perimeter , but because of the pretext ofered to a small group of
citizens to meet and share their stories, building collective awareness, reclaiming their time and their lives.
Transcalar conditions of labour: a dialectical approach.
Labour is not simply a subject of research, an entry point to observe and describe the socio-spatial dynamics
interesting Sunset Park.
Because of labour the story of M. as the story of many other Mexican citizens in Sunset Park, in Brooklyn,
in New York, in any part of the world is a story framed in between two scales: on one hand the geopolitical
scale where her condition of illegal, migrant worker is defned, supported at the same time by silent
cooptation and prohibition. On the other hand the scale where her daily life happens, the space of her
relational constructions, where her gestures and biorhythms still register the consequences of that decision.
M. migrated in the United States because of the promised work opportunities, in their turn determined by
the changing economic paradigm in New York City and the consequent, parallel agreements with Mexico.
Labour is an important part of our lives, not simply a means to bring home a salary, but a realm where
everybody should be able to express interests and skills, a realm through which to individually contribute
to the construction of society; a realm providing the occasions for personal growth. But work is also a tool
of domination and exploitation, engendering inequalities and establishing the parameters of exclusion and
inclusion.
As realm including the conditions in which work is performed and the dispositifs through which it is
engineered from the workspace to the forms of contract labour is part of the modes of production. As part
of these and in relation to labour, space has a crucial role being a primary factor to optimize the exploitation
of resources: raw materials, workforce, strategic positioning. Space organizes on one hand the platforms of
production, on the other hand the reproduction of labour force. Implying the interrelation between these
two diferent spatial realms, labour thus gives the possibility to explore them singularly and to highlight
their interdependency, as complementary parts of the modes of production. In order to observe the diferent
42
spatial domains of labour it becomes essential a continuous transcalar movement, from a daily environment
to the transnational level at which this has been predisposed. A dialectical approach seems to be suitable to
navigate among the diferent levels: the research has thus been developed through a questioning process that
in the end proved to be useful to consider and to correlate all the themes necessarily touched by the research.
Within this perspective the socio-spatial and economic dynamics interesting Sunset Park have been framed
in the context of the transformations happening in New York during the years of the economic shif from
Fordism to post Fordism.
Te diagrams presented in the following pages, Geopolitical and Social framework and (In)visibility of Labour,
have been used in order to organize, to represent and to elaborate the knowledge developed in the course
of the research, concerning many diferent levels afected by the mentioned change in the modalities of
production. Te diagrams can be conceived as layers (containing further sub layers ) within a larger scheme
concerning the evolution of the conditions of labour, which makes visible parallel and interconnected
transformations, occurring both at a material and immaterial level, from the scale of the workplaces to
the scale of global dynamics of power. I will briefy try to render the specifc and general relevance of their
contents and to introduce the transdisciplinary, unifying perspective required for their reading.
Te diagram Geopolitical and Social framework through diferent strata describes the strategies organized at
the geopolitical scale where global cities and corporations - more than States - decide about their economic
future together with the future of other cooperating/supporting territories. In the reorganization of space
these actors have a crucial realm of their strategies, as shown by dynamics of delocalized and fragmented
production, questioning and pushing to redesign relevant areas of the contemporary city. At a micro-
scale, neoliberal policies and postfordist forms of production produce a fragmented space, supporting and
requiring overspecialization and fexibility, engendering risk tolerating mindsets, fueling a society of control
based on fear and insecurity.
Te diagram highlights how the fragmentation of the space of production afects the possibility of the
workers to organize and to reclaim their rights : the weakening of the representative power of Unions is
clearly the consequence of lack of commonalities and motivations going in parallel with the exaltation of
free lance formulas and the attitude to fexibility.
A crucial layer the second diagram - is thus needed to describe the shif from visibility to invisibility. Te
increasing condition of invisibility is fueled by precarity and is fundamental to understand the shif from
fordism to post fordism as a technology of hegemonic
1
power ( Moufe ). Precarious workers implement
previously existing categories of invisible workers: invisible in the sense of non recognized workers, lacking
of rights and (syndical) representation. In the Fordist conditions of labour, workers could at least share the
same spatial framework, engendering relations and awareness, within given schedules programming work
and time for rest.
1 Hegemony is a class alliance by means of which one, leading [hegemonic] class assumes a position of leadership
RYHURWKHUFODVVHVLQUHWXUQJXDUDQWHHLQJWKHPFHUWDLQEHQHWVVRDVWREHDEOHWRVHFXUHSXEOLFSROLWLFDOSRZHURYHU
society as a whole. In 1985, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, reactivated discussion of hegemony with their book
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, in which they used semiological and structural-linguistic ideas to introduce the idea
of hegemony as a system of concepts which recognises the social functions of different strata while stitching all con-
cepts into a more or less closed system, capable of regulating social life while making any outside impossible to talk
DERXWRUHYHQLPDJLQHIRUPXODWHGLQWKLVZD\KHJHPRQ\LVXVHGWRWKHRULVHVRFLDOFRQLFWZLWKRXWWKHFRQFHSWRIFODVV
however, the concept of hegemony is in fact quite consistent with the concepts of class and class struggle, even in the
expanded meaning given to it by Laclau and Mouffe.
43
It is not possible to fully understand the life conditions of a Mexican non documented citizen working
in New York without tracing the map of geopolitical reasons and the spatial related transformations
regulating the status of its citizenship and the daily rhythms of his life, conditioning the range of rights
and opportunities. Applying a dialectical approach, the narratives of the interviews collected among the
inhabitants of Sunset Park pushed the research to reconstruct the overall scheme of socio spatial dynamics
of production, in particular following the changes occurred in the passage from Fordist to post-Fordist
conditions of production and the parallel reinforcement if neoliberal policies.
Te period of time considered begins with the late Fifies - Sixties and ends with the past decade. Te
shif from Fordism to post Fordism or better, the crisis of the traditional modes of production, becomes
relevant and its consequences undeniable at the beginning of the Seventies. Te progressive delocalization of
production in order to reduce costs at the same time fueling consumption afected also the economy of New
York City, where a growing number of sheds and factories progressively became vacant, in a high number
of the cases fueling various forms of real estate speculation. Soho and Brooklyn have been particularly
interested by these dynamics: the old red brick buildings are today part of a precious architectural inheritance,
increasingly at the center of urban renovation and gentrifying interventions. Some episodes can also be
observed in areas delimiting Sunset Park at North, as for example Slope Park.
Specifcally the economic relevance of the Port Area of Sunset Park started to decline with the end of the
Second World War, with the interruption of the military activities and the rise of truck-based freight shipping
and the functioning of new docks in New Jersey. Part of the manufacturing activities was displaced in
Mexico, where the number of maquilladoras the platforms of industrial production started to grow along
the frontier. Relevant movements of internal migrations were determined in between the Seventies and
Eighties by the progressive decay of area to which notably contributed the construction of the Gowanus
Within the realm of immaterial work and post fordism, more and more divided, non represented by the
traditional forms of Unionism, unable to organize because of the lack of time and the spatial conditions,
workers are being slowly dispossessed of their lives.
Putting in relation the two diagrams, an efort is done to render at the same time the chronological evolution
and the transcalar relations among - in some cases - apparently independent phenomena. As mentioned,
the dialectical approach has guided and pushed the research through many diferent strata, reconstructing
the connections and the parallel evolutions, mostly showing the relevance of space as a realm for top-down
policies and geopolitical strategies to materialize and to intersect.
Troughout the research the questions pointing at the relation between labour and space will thus concern
the role of space in order to organize and to engender awareness: spaces to reclaim the political and what will
be defned as bio-authoriality. Consequently, the role of architects and urban planners will be concerned, as
actors contributing to activate the mentioned processes and to support their development.
In the following chapters I will go through a more detailed description of the dynamics depicted in the
diferent layers, specifying them within the framework of New York City and Sunset Park.
44
Fordism
expansion of social right movements/organization
web
high
speed
development
technological /
production
evolution
DELOCALISATION
terziarization
Feminization of work
1975, Martha
Rosler.
Te Semiotics of
the kitchen
1935
National
labour
relational
act
increasing
wages,
decreasing
profts
1964
end of Bracero
Program
rapid
expansion of
maquiladoras
1979
Energy crisis
crisis
of welfare
need to open
markets
lower
costs of
production
1973
Coup in
Chile
1973
Oil crisis
1964
Coup in
Brazil
1990 1980 1970
1960
1954
Unions frst
peak
adherents
1955
AFLCIO
1979
Unions
second peak
adherents
21 milions
1986
Immigration
Reform and
Control Act
1982
USA bails out
Mexico from
bank crisis
A1.GEOPOLITICAL AND SOCIAL FRAMEWORK
45
Exclusive dispossession / accumulation
Post-Fordism
Mexico - USA
1995-2000
Dotcom
bubble
NO PROFIT
strong
development
reduced
municipal
revenues
1990
oil crises
Gulf war
1995
Giuliani
Welfare and
workfare reform
hi gh rates of
unemployment,
13%, the double
than the national
1994
NAFTA
47% increased
maquiladoras
increasing
demand
domestic
work
1992
5 in USA
2010
160 in USA
economical peaks of crisis
political peaks of crisis
New York
Structural change
and Development of Neoliberalism
labor policies
organizing labor
2000
1990
-30%
enrolled
members
in the
Unions
Increasing number of workers centers
Mexican immigrants
account for about 20%
of the legal immigrants
living in the USA
estimated 9.3 million
undocumented
immigrants in the United
States as of March 2002
46
vacant industrial buildings
vacant lots
vacant buildings
M1
M2
Te M1 district is ofen a bufer between M2 or M3 districts and adjacent residential or commercial
districts. Light industries typically found in M1 areas include woodworking shops, auto storage and repair
shops, and wholesale service and storage facilities. In theory, nearly all industrial uses can locate in M1
areas if they meet the more stringent M1 performance standards. Ofces and most retail uses are also
permitted. Certain community facilities, such as hospitals, are allowed in M1 districts only by special
permit, but houses of worship are allowed as-of-right.
In M1 districts space in an industrial building can ofen be converted to dwelling units, provided a
specifed amount of foor area is preserved for particular industrial and commercial uses. In M1-5A and
M1-5B districts mapped in SoHo/NoHo for example artists may occupy joint living-work quarters as an
industrial use in lof buildings.
VACANCY
47
Expressway in 1941
1
. Citizens of European origin, having been living in Sunset Park for generations, started
to abandon the neighborhood ( white fight ) moved by fear and feelings of mistrust generated by the
changing composition of the population; Chinese waves of migrants intensifed only afer 1997, with the
end of the Hong Kongs status as a British colony, while Mexicans started to increase their presence around
the end of the Eighties, attracted in this part of the city by the cheaper costs of housing and living and by the
opportunities of work, even if illegal or low-waged, mainly in the construction and services sectors.
While in the previous decades the activities related to the Port Area provided work and means of support
to a great number of migrating individuals, at the beginning of the Eighties the economy of New York was
overridingly tertiary: New York has been one of the frst cities in the world to face this epochal change,
experimenting some new technologies of labour management and strategies of consumption. Te crisis of
unemployment determined by post-Fordism was balanced by the explosion of an actually not new need:
care related and domestic works. A new generation of careers requiring fexibility, communicational and
organizational skills, elegant presence and a basic expertise concerning ICT opened the doors to a massive
number of female mainly American workers: who suddenly had no more time to take care of their
children, husband or partner and house.
As it has been remarked (Morini, Cartosio), this did not provide the occasion to redistribute traditionally
female duties and responsibilities among new members of society. Simply, waged women under the regime
of services were now in the position to buy their reproductive role, hiring other women, in their turn having
to rely on networks of solidarity and kinship for the care of their family and house, nevertheless working up
to twelve hours per day to fulfll the expectations of fexibility.
In the mean time, on the background and at a geopolitical scale, the United States bargained the continuous
multiplication of maquiladoras on one hand providing their help in the Mexican bank crisis; on the other
hand granting amnesty to three million of illegally migrated citizens
2
, required in the United States to
support the tertiarization of the big cities.
Trough the decades here observed, precarization of work increased enormously, for several reasons every
time rooted in a particular set of circumstances: in order to support the growing tertiarization and as an
efect of this in the Eighties; to absorb unemployment in parallel containing the human resources costs of
the administrative machine in the Nineties. Te reform of welfare and the massive development of workfare
initiated by Giuliani in 1995 perversely used the formula of voluntary work to cover with non waged work a
high number of administrative tasks:
Workfare is the practice of requiring recipients of public aid to work for their benefts[ Under Giulianis
administration in 1995] the expansion took WEP [ Work Experience Program ] from being a program requiring
under 10,000 welfare recipients to work, actively look for work, or to be enrolled in education and training
1 Sunset Park residents maintained a close relationship with their waterfront throughout the Tirties largely thanks
to jobs in industry, warehousing, shipping and freight operations but also through ferry services. Tis changed in
1941, with construction of the Gowanus Parkway on the pillars of the old BMT line above Tird Avenue. Te Parkway,
which was considerably wider than the elevated train structure and bore a continuous fow of vehicular trafc, in-
creased the amount of shadow, noise and air pollution along Tird Avenue, directly contributing to the decline of this
vibrant retail district, dividing the neighborhood into east and west, severing the community from its industrial roots
and from the waterfront upon which it was founded. Source: Sunset Park 197-a Plan
2 Te Immigration Reform and Control Act , defned in 1986
48
United States
delocalization
Head quarters of the
enterprises move in the core
business districts or engender
new centralities. Te
surrounding space is organized
according to the paradigm of
the society of services.
Workers shared the same
workplace daily, thus having the
possibility to organize in order to
reclaim their rights.
In 1979 the number of members
enrolled in the Unions reached
the peak of 21 milions.
Enterprises combine local
advanced specialization,
externalized production and head
quarters in the city centers
empty factories are
opportunities for real estate
speculation. Soho and
Brooklyn exemplify these
processes.
Fordism
visibility
Maquiladoras in Tijuana,
along the frontier with
United States
W
w
p
t
f
r
a
g
m
e
n
t
a
t
i
o
n
g
e
n
t
r
i
f
c
a
t
i
o
n

y
Residential street in
Sunset Park, mixing row
houses and small sheds
unemployed
geopolitical scale
transformations in the space of the city
f
o
r
m
s

o
f

o
r
g
a
n
i
z
a
t
i
o
n
labour force
A2. (IN)VISIBILITY OF LABOUR
49
Te new Worker Centers are hybrids, combining
elements of diferent types of organizations. Some
features are suggestive of earlier U.S. social movements,
civic institutions and unions. Other features are
suggestive of the civic traditions of the home countries
from which many of these immigrants came.
Labour is defned at a geopolitical
level, where powerful economical
actors determine favourable
strategies of production,
national politics and institutional
policies.
post Fordism
invisibility
for the workers of maquiladoras wages
are so low that they cannot pay for
their own car. Transport is organized
by bus
M
exico

m
i
g
r
a
t
o
r
y

w
a
v
e
s
care work, domestic work: waged reproductive functio
n
s
precarious work
tics and institutional
s

f
e
m
a
l
e

w
o
r
k
i
n
v
i
s
i
b
l
e

w
o
r
k
Feminization of work has
increased the number of
invisible / non
represented workers. Te
places where their
condition becomes visible
and activation becomes
possible belong the realm
of the reproductive city,
ofen spaces managed
within the institutional
welfare.
low cost workforce
invisible workers
parks
churches
courtyards, community
gardens, sport felds
Te new Worker C
elements of difere
features are sugges
civic institutions a
su ugg gggggggggggg estive of the c
from which many
50
51
programs, to being one requiring nearly 40,000 welfare recipients to perform work for City agencies and
contracted nonproft agencies. At frst, only recipients of New Yorks program for single adults were required
to work in exchange for their benefts. Since 1996, mothers of children have been compelled into workfare
assignments as well, causing serious obstacles for them in a city with acutely inadequate childcare provision.
( Krinsky, 1998 )
Not only workfare did not improve the conditions of the welfare recipients: it worsened the general
conditions of the workers increasing precarity and diminishing their professionalism, thus making them
more vulnerable in the labour market and non defendable by the traditional forms of Unionism. I will return
on this issue in a few lines.
Te word feminization is ofen used in order to describe these transformations of the labour conditions,
interesting many levels and occurring in parallel with the unfolding of other non spatial and spatial
neoliberal policies (Sassen). Te word describes more than the transformations of the modalities of work
in itself: it implies some relevant connotations, meaningfully concerning the history of labour and the
history of the related social movements. Te term does not simply refer to the increasing amount of female
workers: it highlights the institutionalization of some conditions of the work traditionally done by women
and systematically engineered by precarization.
Flexibility and sense of adaptation to other peoples schedules and continuously changing conditions;
communicational skills; emotional approach and investment in the execution of the work, in particular in
the Nineties
3
; ability to combine and perform a number of diferent tasks and even diferent jobs - ofen
implying overspecialization and fragmentation: all these can be considered as requirements highly sought
by headhunters, notoriously depicted as advantaging qualities on any curriculum vitae. In the framework
of this research It is not possible to deeply deal with the etymological reasons of this term, nor to trace a
larger framework of its sociological and spatial implications: I will simply quote Morini for a more precise
defnition, while for a broader treatment the reader should refer to the fnal bibliography.
[ feminization of work can be defned as] a restructuring of work that appropriates a number of characteristics
in the past normally associated with typically female work, performed only by women. Work is redefned as
literally feminine or feminized, independently from the fact that are men or women doing it. Being feminized
means being in a condition of extreme vulnerability. It means to be disassembled and ri-assembled, exploited as
spare workforce, being considered more as slaves than as labourers, working without consideration about time
schedules, being waged and unwaged.
Fulflling unique combinations of skills and availability, ftting in unique conditions of labour more and more
workers were and are being conveniently pushed towards unsecured and unprotected freelance careers,
becoming managers of their risks, misunderstanding isolation as autonomy, ofen deprived of solidarities,
non representable by traditional Unionism. On the foreground, where the processes of construction of our
society unfold, this logic currently fuels a growing defection towards public welfare structures.
3 Morini again: As in the case of care work, the injection of an emotional element has enabled bio-capitalism to gradually
transform the knowledge work towards an increasing gratuity. Te pleasure and love for the work done thanks to mental
and relational skills make difcult to neatly separate work and life, while making acceptable the gratuitous dimension of
work.
Industrial landscape in Sunset Park.
52
Concerning space, as already mentioned, the shif from the assembly line to the desk, from the shed to the
domestic walls - which very ofen also provide the space of work - is only a part of the story: in the name of
fexibility and efciency high speed means of transport are increasingly crossing the skies and the earthly
geographies. But most importantly, together with the lack of common reasons of struggle given the above
mentioned vocation to specialization, putting into question the existence of a workers class - the lack
of a Common space, a shared physical space to build resistance and to organize, has been paid in terms
of a weakened unionism, defected because unable to represent categories of workers, to begin with given
impossibility to identify those categories
4
.
A process which is still in course and which is fnally questioning the sense of any universalistic approach,
both in the realm of welfare and in the realm of unionism. At the beginning of the Eighties the amount of
people enrolled in Unions decreased of a 30% compared to the peaks moments reached in 1954 and 1979.
In parallel, a new generation of organizations started to develop: the worker centers. Next chapter will
deal with the shif from visibility to invisibility characterizing the conditions of labour: a shif to which the
fragmented space of post- Fordist production enormously contributed.
Forms of visibility and invisibility of labour.
Precarity is this form of exploitation which, by operating only on the present,
exploits simultaneously also the future. (Papadopoulos, Tsianos )
Te space of the city gives the possibility to directly observe the consequences of a delocalized production:
along canals or concentrated in the areas best served by disused infrastructural systems waterways and
railways a growing number of sheds is becoming vacant, providing a crucial potential on one hand to be
reclaimed by citizens for new housing or new public spaces; on the other hand by diferent forms speculative
dynamics. Something similar has been observed through the years also in Sunset Park, whose fortunes,
since its beginnings , have been strictly related to the activities organized in the port area. As previously
described, the containerization and the organization of the new docks around determined the progressive
collapse of its activities, thus afecting the lives of the families installed there for the cheapness of life and the
proximity of work places.
4 In a recent interview, a community organizer in New York City spoke of his groups eforts to organize workfare
workers in the citys Work Experience Program (WEP): All of us came to the conclusion that WEP organizing was very
difcult, that it was substantially harder than wed originally expected-for a lot of reasons: primarily that WEP workers
arent really workers, and they know it, and they dont want to put energy into improving their conditions on the job, be-
cause it aint a job. Tey dont want to be there ... Its important to organize them as a worker, thats the strength, but, basi-
cally, the problem is that the lowest-paid service worker wants to organize to get better conditions and get better pay. Te
WEP worker doesnt want to organize around job issues because they want a real job, and thats the fundamental thing;
they want a real job and they know that WEP is not a job. So the key political strength of WEP organizing is as workers,
but at the same time its a strength, its a drawback, because WEP workers dont identify themselves-they dont have frm
identity of themselves as workers. And so its a very long process, to get them to identify themselves as workers, and then to
organize them as workers. It adds a couple more steps to the organizing.
( Krinsky, 1998 )
53
Despite the diferent eforts made to revitalize the area as the conversion and rehabilitation of the building
of the American Machine and Foundry by Te Lutheran Medical Center in 1972-1977, the area never
regained the same level of productivity and vibrancy. Today precisely the noisy presence of the Gowanus
protects the area from a spreading gentrifcation, which is already interesting some nearby areas as Slope
Park.
5
, slowly beginning to occupy some of the empty sheds along the waterfront, low cost rented by Jewish
developers for the startup of artists studios, clubs and small workshops; as well in the sudden appearing of
high rise hotels along the waterfront.
Te visibility of labour and the progressive shif to invisibility - concerns more evidently the level of the
spatial transformations above described, thus stressing the undeniable relation between the way in which
productivity is engineered and the way in which the physical space is consequently organized.
6

But probably, most importantly, visibility or invisibility concern and end up at the level of the daily, physical
dimension in which work is performed. In the fordist conditions of production workers daily shared the
same space during defned time schedules , thus having the possibility to build solidarities, engender form
of commonality, organize resistance inside and outside the space of production. In other words, having the
possibility to be visible.
Te delocalization and the forms of fexibility implied in the shif to the post fordist conditions of production
defne and are defned by a spatial fragmentation whose workability is supported by technological
advancements concerning ITC. Tis fragmentation is installed as part and as cause of a regime of precarity,
and is the necessary condition of invisibility. Even if globalization could be considered as a condition able
to stimulate the emergence of new forms of commons based on intellectual resources and creativity -,
able to overcome dividing categorizations and to promote the aggregation of the multitude ( Negri ), it is
undeniable the loss of power of syndical organizations and unions starting from the Seventies, happened in
parallel with the progressive dismantling of the fordist conditions of production, as described in the socio-
spatial conditions of labour. Invisibility is a consequence and a form of precarization and fexibilization and
engenders lack of representativeness in the realm of workers claims: how could it be possible to claim for
rights when contracts are inexistent or project based or temporary? Which rights are we talking about, when
lacking stable positions, workers accept any form of regulation, unbearable amounts of hours, low wages
fearing to be replaced by the thousands of individuals obliged to the same feeling of insecurity and risk?
Because work in order to become productive becomes incorporated into non-labour time, the exploitation
of workforce happens beyond the boundaries of work, it is distributed across the whole time and space of life
(Neilson & Rossiter, 2005). Precarity means exploiting the continuum of everyday life, not simply the workforce.
In this sense, precarity is a form of exploitation which operates primarily on the level of time. Tis because
it changes the meaning of what non productivity is. Te regulation of labour in Fordism was secured in an
anticipative way independently of its immediate productivity. Te protectionist function of the welfare system is
5 Symptoms about the growing interest of the City towards this area of Brooklyn have to be captured in rare spots of activities and
organizations belonging to the realm of creative industries ( Source: Brooklyn Arts Council )
6 Te shif to post Fordism is based on organizational new needs deriving from the need to manage far away located assembly lines,
cheaper because of the low wages of the workers concerned. So the assembly line has not actually disappeared: it simply has been
moved in less developed countries.
54
55
Te embodied experience of precarity
Te embodied experience of precarity is characterized by:
vulnerability: the steadily experience of fexibility without any form of protection;
hyperactivity: the imperative to accommodate constant availability;
simultaneity: the ability to handle at the same the diferent tempi and velocities of multiple activities;
recombination: the crossings between various networks, social spaces, and available resources;
postsexuality: the other as dildo;
fuid intimacies: the bodily production of indeterminate gender relations;
restlessness: being exposed to and trying to cope with the overabundance of communication, cooperation
and interactivity;
unsettledness: the continuous experience of mobility across diferent spaces and time lines;
afective exhaustion: emotional exploitation, or, emotion as an important element for the control of em-
ployability and multiple dependencies;
cunning: able to be deceitful, persistent, opportunistic, a trickster.
( Papadopoulos, Tsianos )
56
a time management: it works by anticipating and securing the periods when someone becomes non-productive
(accident and illness, unemployment, age). In post-Fordism this form of time management disappears. Not so
only because future is not guaranteed, but also because the future is already appropriated in the present. From
the standpoint of the labourer, work takes place in the present, which is, though, incorporated into his or her
whole lifespan as a worker. (Papadopoulos, Tsianos)
It is relevant to highlight that precarious work incredibly expands the condition of invisibility to an high
number of workers, historically already including domestic workers especially but not exclusively, that of
housewives - care work, illegal work and day labour. Transversal to these and to visible categories as well
is the immaterial labour, by defnition universal and invisible, non representable because continuously
performed and indistinguishable from the great majority of activities, waged and non waged, from work to
any consumption related activity. In order to enter the complexities of this realm, a more supporting socio-
political background would be required: thus unfortunately this research does not provide the circumstances.
Coming back to space, the places where work is performed are thus more and more fragmented and
isolating, also in consideration of the development of information and communication technologies,
supporting the exchange of data elaborated miles away and replacing physical presence with images and
video communication.
Despite these conditions, other spaces continue to be available, the spaces where people move and perform
other actions, far from their productive routines and more related to their reproductive life. Spaces of care
self care and care of the others -, spaces of comfort, spaces where the forms of daily life are negotiated or
simply collide. Spaces hacking the regime of isolation and invisibility.
Part of the research has been devoted to identify those spaces in which the condition of invisibility of some
workers is weakened by a temporary visibility. Spaces in which unexpectedly people meet in the course
of their daily routines and out of their isolation they build relationships, they exchange knowledge, they
build awareness. Laundries, parks, churches, public spaces, the courtyard of a school or of a kindergarten,
community gardens, sport felds, etc provide precious occasions of encounter for an high number of people
segregated by their labour routines. Spaces where very ofen, based on the grouping of individuals having
similar needs, initiatives and actions could suddenly begin to bloom, giving voice and political presence
to citizens not regularly documented or non representable for a number of other reasons. Spaces in which
everybody represents specifc interests and building consensus is not even an imaginable project.
Some of these spaces are part of that realm normally regulated by welfare policies, hypothetical spaces of
comfort, neurotically based on schemes of compulsory consumption and conceived as devices for healthcare,
promoting education but ofen according to income based logics of exclusion. Te latency of institutions
whether premeditated or not opens a wide realm of research and critical refection, questioning the ways
in which inhabitants appeal to institutions, their role and a possible redefnition of welfare beyond the long
time prevailing universalistic schemes.
57
When we accept that every identity is relational and that the condition of existence of every identity is the
afrmation of a diference, the determination of an other that is going to play the role of a constitutive outside,
it is possible to understand how antagonisms arise. In the domain of collective identifcations, where what is in
question is the creation of a we by the delimitation of a them, the possibility always exists that this we/them
relation will turn into a relation of the friend/enemy type; in other words, it can always become political in
Schmitts understanding of the term
[] Te political cannot be restricted to a certain type of institution, or envisaged as constituting a specifc
sphere or level of society. It must be conceived as a dimension that is inherent to every human society and that
determines our very ontological condition
[] Once we accept the necessity of the political and the impossibility of world without antagonism, what
needs to be envisaged is how it is possible under those conditions to create or maintain a pluralistic democratic
order. Such an order is based on a distinction between enemy and adversary7. It requires that, within the
context of the political community, the opponent should be considered not as an enemy to be destroyed, but as
an adversary whose existence is legitimate and must be tolerated. We will fght against his ideas but we will not
question his right to defend them.
( Moufe, Te Return of the Political )
Flexibility and mythologies about iper-efcient performances are ofen the choice workers opt for in a
society controlled by fear and risk to escape poverty and exclusion. Ofen not being aware that the more
fexible they accept to be, the more interchangeable and professionally weak they become. Individual
awareness about this state of things would be thus the frst condition to create resistance and begin to change
the modus operandi
1
. As mentioned, the new generation of workers centers is orienting its action more
and more in this direction. In their most meaningful and orthodox spirit, still expanding, worker centers
operate on a more transversal level, most importantly with their action trying to develop individual and
collective awareness, empowering personal initiative and increasing technical knowledge concerning rights
and duties, developing tools to improve the workers professional profle , thus reducing the margins of their
interchangeability ( Fine ).
Promoting fexibility, the ultimate efect and result of neoliberal policies - of which labour condition are
expression at geopolitical and local scale is the dispossession of time. Time subtracted to personal growth,
to (self) care, to the construction of society, to the relational exchange that produces individual and political
awareness, to the organization of new forms of resistance. Because of the post Fordist modes of production,
space contributes not only in terms of physical segregation, but also in terms of distances taking time to be
crossed, multiplied by our fexible schedules: again, time subtracted to the core needs of our lives.
1 Concerning this, as proposed by Castells ( 2012 ), the real, most important and unifying contribution of contemporary
movements claiming for a wide range of diferent rights from Occupy Wall Street to the students of the Arab Spring
is the mental change triggered globally by the diferent actions, independently from their specifc and immediate
achievements.
58
59
And if it is true that thanks to technological advancements diferent forms of communication can overcome
geographical barriers and support new networks of solidarity ( Negri, Castells ), still space as physical
dimension is relevant and needed.
What it is possible to observe above all is that people meet and build trust in the physical spaces of their
everyday routine: more and more not coinciding with workplaces. Out of the domestic environments
nannies meet the nannies in parks and in the courtyards of the schools; students meet freelance workers in
laundries and restaurants; community gardens attract very diverse inhabitants having in common the need
to reclaim their time and share their stories. We need to reclaim space in order to reclaim time: both time
and space provide the necessary conditions for people to express themselves as individuals and politically,
giving shape and specifying their claims, as the right to the city must be specifed ( Moufe, Marcuse ) in
order to be acquired.
Te spaces above mentioned are the spaces of the reproductive city, regulated by the policies of welfare
which can be seen as a bridge between the strategies of growth of a given territorial and economic system on
one hand and human lives as part of modes of production on the other hand. Designed to produce comfort
but also working as part of controlling technologies, at the same time these spaces provide the environment
in which, reacting to injustice, according to patterns of resilience or resistance, relationships and diferent
forms of reciprocity organize, ofen as alternative practices for the citizens excluded by the politics of welfare.
Consequently, in these spaces it is ofen possible to observe the multiple forms in which well being
which cannot efectively fulfll a variety of needs when conceived in general terms, but must be specifed
according to given exigencies - is redefned: spaces as in-between margins where policies of welfare and the
spontaneous practices based on forms of solidarity collide; spaces in which the inefcacy and latencies of the
former explain the opportunities for action provided to or reclaimed by the latter; spaces that crucially allow
confict, negotiation, cohabitation, requiring the activation of citizens and thus empowering their political
role, as an alternative to less relevant forms of participation and delegation.
Tus, from the reading of the microcosms in which policies of welfare are redefned or contested, within
a bottom-up perspective, it will be interesting to reshape institutional welfare in infrastructural terms, re-
conceiving the realms and the scales of intervention. An infrastructure to be defned and completed at those
levels where the diversity of citizens and the needs of their bodies determine requisites of comfort and guide
towards the possible means to satisfy them: resulting from the specifcity of urban micro-ecologies that just
a couple of blocks away it would be almost impossible to seize.
But at the same time an infrastructure able to assure forms of distributive justice, taking care of those citizens
that for some reason - for choice of for necessity are excluded by the domains of social construction and
political expression.
Perhaps a relevant work of imagination will be required to transform a system of welfare conceiving it as a
common good, substituting forms of regulation of accessibility with infrastructural frames; designing spaces
as a sort of listening devices, where people meet and discuss, act materializing the conditions and the tools
for their well being, on the basis of individual balances, between the need of independence and the need to
share. I use the word imagination to evoke the kind of power necessary to overcome fxed formulas and the
ideological schemes according to which we create expectations concerning who has to do what, making us
predictable for neoliberal strategies voracious of any alternative expressing resistance.
Vacant areas along the waterfront
60
61
FRAGMENTING PATTERNS OF PROPERTY
Housing as a right
Ownership and shrinking of the Public
Alternative spatial patterns of sociability
62
Housing prices for 2-4 family appreciated faster between
2010 and 2011 than in any other community district in New
York City except for one. While prices for this property type
decline in the city as a whole, have increased and are at an
all-time high.

CD 07
300
1974 1980 1990 2000 2011
250
200
150
100
50
0
NYC
Rows of two-three foors family houses characterize
Sunset Park urban area.
Due high rates of undocumented citizens living and
working in Sunset Park, informal rental conditiond
characterize housing market whitin Asian and Latin
community.
63
House as a right
What is a house? A house can be defned as a place where people gather together, fnd shelter and where
sociability is produced, it is the foundation of peoples lives. It fulflls personal needs by providing a sense
of personal space, privacy and in many societies it also fulfll economic needs. A house contains, within its
very constitution, the premise that living together in equality and security is a right to be aforded by all
members of a democratic society. Te Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes housing as part of
the right to an adequate standard of living and as a basic human right
1
. Te access to adequate housing is the
right of everyone to acquire and sustain a secure home and community in which to live. Te fact of shelter
as a human need does not imply that governments must provide each one of their citizens with a house but
it rise the question on what governments should do to help people exercise their rights and obtain housing.
Citizens should be able to achieve the satisfaction of their rights and have the means for the achievement of
a satisfactory standard of living.
Scholars and professionals ofen oppose the right to good standards of living to homelessness conditions
and poor quality of living. Te United Nations estimates that there are over 100 million homeless people
and over 1 billion people worldwide inadequately housed. In New York City today, there are almost 40,000
individuals living in homeless shelters, including up to 10,000 whole families and children. During the last
four years the number of homeless in New York is doubled, due foreclosure related to sub-prime mortgage
and loans. Over 500,000 households are paying more than 50% of their incomes for housing, saving less for
clothing, food, care and other basic need, at the same time thousands of units of housing are kept of the
market for speculative and proft purpose. Te basic contradiction in our cities is that what is the foundation
of peoples lives, their home, is also the source of business proft for the real estate industry and the primary
form of accumulating assets for people themselves. While there is a shortage of afordable housing, people
sufering and worsening of quality of living in low income neighborhoods, there are thousands of units of
housing which are kept of the market in excess of several months or years, ofen as results of speculation by
owners and developers that adopt proft strategies
2
.
1 UDHR states that Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself
and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to
security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circum-
stances beyond his control
2 For more details see Picture the homeless Banking on vacancy. Homelessness and real estate speculation and Te right
to the city alliance People without homes and homes without people: A count of vacant condos in select NYC neighbor-
hoods.
64
0 500 1000 2000 m
Re-zooning Plan
Administrative Boundary
Vision Plan
High property value
New building 2010-2012
Partial alteration 2010-2012
Full dmolition 2010-2012
Prospect Park
Green-Wood Cemetery
Sunset Park
Brooklyn Army
terminal
Latin community
Middle-class
Chinese community
65
30%of MonthlyIncome =Afordable Rent
Asian MFI
in Sunset
Park
Latino MFI
n Sunset
Park
Median
Family
Income
Metro NY Area
36K 76.8K 20k 40k 60k 80k
$500 $1,000 $1,500 $2,000
YearlyIncome
extremely lowincome verylowincome lowincome moderateincome
30K
Afordable housing prices compared with median family income
During the driving group with La Union we test the
incidence of rents on family income within community
members providing the diagram. All members spend at least
more than 30% and more than half almost 50% for house
rent confrming Citys statistics.
Such legal practices are are unjust, lead to social-economical disparities and should not be allowed.
Picture the Homeless a local organization, founded and lead by homeless people living in shelters, produced
together with Hunter College a document on the availability of vacant building in New York. Te count have
been done by members together with students and volunteers, the document report that in one third of the
city there are enough vacant buildings to house three times the number of homeless people in New York.
Also in Sunset Park, a neighborhood which more than 30% of inhabitants spending about half of their
income for rents, we documented during the feldwork, that keeping property vacant is a common praxis.
Owners tend to keep their properties empty waiting for the good moment to invest and develop or sell it.
High commercial proft push owners to use mixed residential and commercial buildings only for commercial
purpose allocating the facade for advertisements. A second common praxis besides windows billboard is the
removal at ground foor of the stairs to allow the maximum capacity of the display that afect commercial
rents. Along the 5th Ave between 45th and 55th street, we have counted and mapped vacancy above the
shops in more than 40 commercial building. Several thousands square meter of residential buildings are are
lef in state of abandonment and kept empty. In proximity of the Gowanos Highway between 50th and 60th
street several lots are vacant, lef in a state of neglect but heavily fenced to avoid the entrance to visitors.
Owners are waiting to develop their land in a neighborhood inhabited mainly by low-income groups, where
housing is generally not afordable and there is a great need of public space this practices push housing far
from the possibility of several low-income families. Housing prices for 2-4 family properties appreciated
faster between 2010 and 2012 than in any other community district in New York City except for one, while
prices for this property type declined in the city as a whole, they increased by 26 percent in the area and
are at an all-time high. Latin community that dont tend to own the apartment where their live, risk to be
displaced and forced to move to New Jersey where they fnd better rent conditions extending the already
long time of commuting to workplace.
With the dismantling of military port and industrial activities the waterfront become an occasion for
investments and development. Te Waterfront Redevelopment Project, part of Major Bloomberg strategy
to redevelop the city, if on one hand it claim to provide better condition of living and work possibilities
on the other risk to foster process of gentrifcation. increasing property value and fostering the already
unafordable housing condition. According Jeremy Laufer District manager of Community Board 7 the
waterfront redevelopment project will speed up property value and it will result in a huge job losses for local
residents
3
.
Described as the capital of real estate
4
housing prices and rents have risen signifcantly in recent years,
pushing access to housing in New York out of reach for most families . Housing afordability is becoming
3 Notes from an interview with Jeremy Laufer District Manager Community Board 7 in NY on 15.03.2012.
4 Angotti T., 2008 New york for sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate, published by M.I.T. Press,
MA
66
5
th
1
4
5
th
5
0
th
5
5
th
5
2
th
4
6
th
4
7
th
landlord - owner tenants - owner
shop owner
need of display surface
tenants
need of good living conditions
closed window
stairs removed
oversized bill board

X
vacant building
interstitial space
vacant lots
mixed buiding
residential building
oversized billboard
potential element
closed windows
interstitial space
67
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max display surface
e
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ty
flo
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a
closed window
closed window
storage in basement
empty apt
shop
empty apt
entrance removal
shop entrance
closed entrance
closed window
closed window
an increasingly urgent concern in the city as whole and low-income neighborhoods are facing a serious
housing shortage.
Over the last ten years, New York City has lost over 200,000 units of housing that were afordable to low and
moderate-income families. In the same period, the city has seen a large increase in the number of luxury
condominiums being developed in low-income communities. This construction has often occurred despite
the objection of local residents who fear new development will gentrify working class neighborhoods
with the risk of displace low income groups. Moreover market also jeopardizes the citys large stock of
subsidized housing, as owners are tempted to convert to market-rate status when affordability agreements
and subsidies expire.
As one of New York Citys most racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods, Sunset Park is once
DJDLQDWDFURVVURDGVDVJHQWULFDWLRQSUHVVXUHVLQWHQVLI\GXHWRWZRVRFLRHFRQRPLFWUHQGV<RXQJZKLWH
professionals and artists who can no longer afford neighboring Park Slope are settling in once dilapidated
areas near Greenwood Cemetery and pushing the geographic boundaries of new neighborhood formations
into the northern sections of Sunset Park. A second gentrifying force is mobilized by an immigrant growth
coalition comprised of Chinese developers, realtors and ethnic banks in the development of condominium
projects scattered throughout the neighborhood. The working poor Latin community who did not abandon
the neighborhood and the immigrant groups who helped revitalize its local economy are increasingly at risk
of displacement.
Sunset Parks social diversity and building typology results from the strictly relation with the productive
vocation of the area and the need to house workers that found occupation in maritime related economy.
Many residents worked on waterfront docks and nearby factories, bolstered by the construction of Bush
Terminal since 1890.
During a period of industrial and urban growth between 1940s and 1950s the industrial waterfront was
SURYLGLQJ WKRXVDQGV RI HQWU\OHYHO MREV DQG QXPHURXV PDQXIDFWXULQJ UPV DV ZHOO DV PDULWLPHUHODWHG
RFFXSDWLRQVWRWKHSRUWDFWLYLW\DWWUDFWHGWR6XQVHW3DUNRZVRILPPLJUDQWZRUNHUVPDLQO\,WDOLDQ)LQQLVK
and Irish that found in the area an opportunity to settle. The construction of the Gowanus Expressway and
its expansion in the 1940s, an infrastructural connection implemented to provide a fast connection between
Long Island suburban area and Manhattan produced a strong physical barriers that severed the waterfront
from the rest of the neighborhood.
Since late 19th century two and three story brownstone and limestone row-houses dominate the character
of the neighborhood. The largely 2 and 3 story houses typology is related to social composition and family
structure of e working class neighborhood. Generally arranged in rows est-west along the streets a row-
KRXVHLVVWULFWO\RUJDQL]HGZLWKWKHQHHGRIWKHIDPLO\ZLWKWKHSRVVLELOLW\WRKDYHDWKLUGRRUXVXDOO\IRUD
second nuclei of the same family. The backyard garden and the front yard visually part of the public street,
become spaces for sociability, where people can meet and interact with different level of privacy with the
pedestrian in the street or towards the interior family garden. Row-house typology in principle allow people
meet and casually socialize, but in practice social interactions are limited beyond familys relations.
68
69
Mainly along north south avenues apartment buildings are maximum six stories tall. Built to maximize the
square footage often apartment have no room for communal area or anything that is not directly leasable.
Oriented to low-income groups they are often built with cheap methods and low quality of construction.
Usually lacking sound insulation and construction quality nowadays most of this buildings offer an inad-
equate quality of living if we consider that almost 10% of Sunset Parks Buildings don not have heating
and most of them are this typology. Grouped together with many other apartment buildings, in areas lacking
public spaces or restful open spaces, as in the case of Sunset Park, this do not contribute in producing sense
of communality. Since there is usually limited place for people to gather and meet in a pleasing setting,
usually stairs and entrance become the only opportunities for socialize.
With the introduction of new shipping technologies, such as containerization and declining international
competitiveness of domestic manufacturing, led to a massive de-industrialization and consequent shrinking
of employment. Losses of job opportunities coupled with a growing immigrant population where the condi-
WLRQVWKDWEURXJKWZKLWHHWKQLFJURXSVRZWRVXUURXQGLQJVXEXUEVZLWKFRQVHTXHQWFRQGLWLRQRIDEDQGRQ-
ment and decay, loss of property value and price of rents.
After Second World War begin the migration of middle class to suburban areas, towards more racially ho-
PRJHQHRXV]RQHVDQGUVWJDWHGFRPPXQLWLHVDQGWKHFRQVWUXFWLRQRIFDUEDVHGLQIUDVWUXFWXUH,WLVZLWKLQ
the need of connecting with a sort drive time Long Island suburban areas to Manhattan that the Gowanos
highway is implemented. The car infrastructure becomes essential for the achievement of the American
Dream, a single family house with private garden and a car in the low density city. Usually labor intensive
to maintain and despite of the fact that there are always people around, single family houses provide a lim-
ited sense of community and often owners tend to be isolated from their interpersonal personal relation and
look for communality away from their houses requiring use of cars or other mode of transport.
70
Since 1890s Brooklyn Army terminal,
industrial and port related activity attracted
fows of workers mainly Finnish,
Italians and Irish.
Brick, limestone and brownstone row houses typology
associated to the family structure of working class neighborhood
largely characterized neighborhoods building typology.
1850
In 1920s Finnish workers
established in Sunset park
the frst housing cooperative
in the City
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to

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o
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to suburban areas
Apartment building mainly located
along north south 'avenues' are
maximum six stories tall. Built to maximize the
square footage ofen built with cheap methods and
low quality of construction, usually do not have
room for communal area

unemployed
Founded during mid 1880
Tuxedo Park in Orange
County is considered one of
the most exclusive New York
gated communties.
PROPERTY SPATIAL FRAGMENTATION
71
Manhattization opposed
to Suburbanization. Car based
infrastructure allow living in
suburbs and work in downtown.

2012
Te communities of Breezy Point, on the
western end of the Rockaway Peninsula
are protected as much by their gates as by
their isolation.
Long Island
Mega Mansion
neighborhood
Condominium typology during the
last period has replaced the new construction
of the small multifamily houses, as it has
proven more proftable to the developers.
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Over the last years gentrifcation
pressures intensify due socioeco-
nomic trends. Young white
professionals and artists who can
no longer aford neighboring
Park Slope are settling in in the
northern areas near Greenwood
Cemetery nowadays redevelop
with high condominium.
Two and three foors traditional row
house is organized according the need
of the family. A third foor usually
housed a second nuclei of the same
family. Te backyard garden and the
front yard where spaces for sociability.
Nowadays developer thent to tranform
the building, fragmenting the tipology
in small apartment for middle class
single or couple.
Among others Levittown, one of the
largest mass-produced suburbs,
quickly became during 1950 a
symbol of postwar suburbia.
72
It is since this period that the worldwide sprawl of suburbs and gated residential neighborhoods, promoted
in name of safety conditions and freedom become a model fragmenting existing housing models producing
increased privatization and segregation.Together with industrial decline and urban disinvestment, the loss
of property value in the area offer a vast affordable housing stock, a convenient public transportation line to
Manhattan. Beginning from 1970s notable numbers of Portorican and later Latin and Asiatic groups settled
in Sunset Park contribute with their activity to revitalize the area.
*HQWULFDWLRQSUHVVXUHVLQWHQVLHGLQWKHDUHDGXULQJODVW\HDUVGXHWZRPDLQVRFLRHFRQRPLFWUHQGV<RXQJ
white professionals and artists who can no longer afford neighboring Park Slope are using the empty build-
ing in the port area for workshops or other activity and settling in once-dilapidated areas near Greenwood
Cemetery nowadays redevelop with high condominium in the northern section of Sunset Park. A second
gentrifying force is mobilized by an immigrant growth coalition composed of Chinese developers, realtors,
and ethnic banks in the development of condominium projects scattered throughout the neighborhood.
Condominium typology which has been on the rise in popularity during the last real estate boom period
has for the most part replaced the new construction of the small multifamily houses, as it has proven more
SURWDEOHWRWKHGHYHORSHUV,WVKDUHVWKHVHEHQHWVRIFRPPXQDOVSDFHIRUZKLFKWKHRZQHUSD\VLQIRUP
of membership fees but the prices of condos have risen to the levels of single family house prices, thus
excluding social diversity since space for sociability are very limited. Contemporary society has been on
a steady path of fragmentation and the spatial policies in place today are enforcing that it will continue on
this course.
Ownership and shrinking of the public
Simplistically it is possible distinguish between two forms of property ownerships, public and private. If we
GHQHSXEOLFDVDQ\SURSHUW\WKDWLVFRQWUROOHGE\DVWDWHRUE\DZKROHFRPPXQLW\RQWKHFRQWUDU\SULYDWH
is any property that may be under the control of a single person or by a group of persons jointly. Within
debate on housing provision controversial position argue for the effectiveness of public against private and
vice versa capacity to satisfy this basic need.
7KHDVVXPSWLRQWKDWWKHSULYDWHPDUNHWVDWLVHVWKHKRXVLQJQHHGVIRUWKHODUJHPDMRULW\RIWKHSRSXODWLRQ
do not explicit that very few families can afford to pay the full price of a home with only their own earnings.
Housing market is subsidized by a government guaranteed-mortgage market that secures the investment for
WKHQDQFLDOLQVWLWXWLRQVDQGHQDEOHVIDPLOLHVWKHSD\PHQWRIORDQV:LWKRXWWKLVPHFKDQLVPWKHVXEXUEDQ
housing market would not have been viable
5
7KHIUDJLOLW\RIWKLVV\VWHPLVFRQUPHGE\UHFHQWJRYHUQ-
ment banks bailing, having the government absorbing the debt together with massive foreclosures and high
unemployment rates. On the contrary welfare state provision of mass scale housing failed to achieved its
proposed goal, producing often homogeneous-segregated neighborhoods and promoting standardized qual-
LW\RIOLYLQJZLWKWKHLGHDWKDWSHRSOHFDQWLQULJLGSUHGHWHUPLQHGGZHOOLQJW\SRORJ\7KHVHDPRQJRWKHU
are the main reasons for the raised distrust in States capacity to provide mass housing.
Wests diminishing support of welfare state and recourse to private market in housing, is contributing in
6DVVHQ60RUJDJH&DSLWDODQGLWVSDUWLFXODULWLHV$QHZIURQWLHUVIRU*OREDO)LQDQFHLQ-RXUQDORI,QWHUQD-
tional Affairs vol.62 page 187-212.
73
FKDQJLQJWKHQRWLRQRI3XEOLFDQGUHFRQJXULQJWKHVSDWLDORUJDQL]DWLRQRIWKHFLW\SDUWLFXODUO\LQFODVV
WKHUP+RXVHLVEHFRPLQJPRUHDQGPRUHWUHDWHGDVDFRPPRGLW\WKDQDEDVLFKXPDQQHHGPDNLQJGLIFXOW
access to housing to the low-income groups.
Among other forms the worldwide sprawl of gated residential neighborhoods represent a form of privatiza-
tion of public space, their promotion in name of conditions of security are producing increased segregation
DQGUDFLDOO\KRPRJHQHRXVQHLJKERUKRRGZKHUH3XEOLFLVOLPLWHGWRVSHFLFJURXSV
The increased disaggregation of the public in last years is contributing in assigning a residual role to the
social support to housing provision. It is in this sense that housing can be considered a frame to discuss the
notion of Public, how it is changing, being divided and privatized. But it is based on a renewed-revamped
notion of a community network of social ties and resource sharing that we could advance some hypothesis
and envision different forms of habitat that include a renewed notion of Public.
$UHFHQWERRNSURYLGHDFRQWULEXWHLQWKLVVHQVHVKLIWLQJWKHWUDGLWLRQDOGHQLWLRQVRFLDOKRXVLQJWRLGHD
of living models able to house the social, models that are affordable but also afford forms of sociability,
collectivity and equality
6
.
In opposition to any form of ownerships, occupation and squatting can be considered a form of self orga-
nization approach to housing and communality containing a rejection of any form of State and as protest
to state of welfare failure.
Squatting is a practice in New York since late 1970s when the city loss more than 800.000 inhabitant and
HQWLUHEORFNVZKHUHOHIWDEDQGRQHGDQGLQDVWDWHRIQHJOHFWDVLQWKHFDVHRI%URQ[6LQFHWKDWSHULRG)UDQN
0RUDOHV D 3ULHVW IRXQGHU DQG PHPEHU RI 2UJDQL]LQJ )RU 2FFXSDWLRQ D ORFDO JUDVVURRWV RUJDQL]DWLRQ
helps community members that can not afford a house to squat abandoned buildings. According the orga-
nization squatting mean occupation, renovation and defense of vacant space, abandoned, in order to create
housing to help people that can not afford a house, the organization is involved in the organization to enter
and renovate the vacant space, creating the necessary solidarity within the neighbors
7
..
)URP22LVLQYROYHGLQRFFXSDWLRQLQXQSHUPLWWHGZD\)UDQN0RUDOHVGRQWPHQWLRQDERXWWKH
illegality of the action because for him the crime is to have vacant houses when there are homeless people.
Owners should be criminalized to leave apartment empty for speculation when there is people suffering and
in need of a house. During the last decades policy have been progressively criminalizing squatting activity
reinforcing de facto the right of owners on their private property.
(YHQLIIRUPVRIVHOIRUJDQL]DWLRQDQGVTXDWWLQJKDYHSRVLWLYHLPSDFWDWWKHGLIIHUHQWVFDOHUVWSURYLGLQJ
LPPHGLDWHVKHOWHUWRSHRSOHLQQHHGDQGVHFRQGDUHDFFRUGLQJ)UDQN0RUDOHVVTXDWWLQJFDQVORZGRZQSUR-
FHVVRIJHQWULFDWLRQZHFRQVLGHUWKLVSURYLVLRQDSUHFDULRXVFRQGLWLRQV
Doesnt seems possible to reconstruct the condition of Public rejecting any form of State and without
recognizing the role of institutions and considering the political role that grassroots associations can play as
agents to change the current conditions.
Since agricultural models based on work exchange to Paris Commune and more contemporary forms of
exchange several models have been produced, some have failed some have provided interesting alterna-
tives. The general hypothesis is that its necessary to restart from this examples to envision alternative
model of living and that it is fundamental consider the ongoing rising of an alternative culture based on
non-capitalistic modes of exchange and sharing
8
.
6 Erdemci F. and Phillips A.,2012 Actor, Agents and Attendants. Social Housing-Housing the Social: Art, Property
and Spatial Justice, published by Sternberg Press. And SKOR, Amsterdam.
1RWHVIURPDQLQWHUYLHZZLWK)UDQN0RUDOHVLQ1HZ<RUNRQ)RUPRUHLQIRUPDWLRQVHHwww.o4onyc.org
8 Castells M. 2012, Aftermath: The Cultures of the Economic Crisis, published by Oxford University Press, UK.
Several models of ownership not fully private nor public based on forms of co-habitation that take advan-
tage by sharing and forms of solidarity, among others cooperative housing is one of the oldest. Oriented
WRQRQSURWFRUSRUDWLRQFRVWVRIUHQWFRYHUVWKHLUVSOLWRIWKHPRQWKO\FRVWRIQDQFLQJDQGPDLQWDLQLQJ
WKHEXLOGLQJ7KHUVWKRXVLQJFRRSHUDWLYHVLQWKH8QLWHG6WDWHVZHUHIRUPHGLQ1HZ<RUN&LW\E\)LQQLVK
ZRUNHUVOLYLQJLQ6XQVHW3DUN)LQQLVK6RPHH[DPSOHRIVXFFHVVIXOFRRSHUDWLYHDQGFRQVLGHUDWLRQRQWKH
limits to this approach in Brooklyn have been recently described
9
.
Aware that narratives that contradict both state and private housing provisions and the notion of alternative
forms of shared housing bring the risk to fall into an autonomous village-commune, ending up being an-
other enclave in the compendium of enclaves that have atomized the city into isolated and fragmented parts.
We believe there is an acute need for a new dwelling typology associated with the culture and functions
of the 21st century city that take in consideration recent solidarity and social needs. In our perspective, to
GHQHQHZGZHOOLQJIRUPVZHQHHGWRGHQHQHZVRFLDOIRUPVDEOHWRNHHSSHUVRQDOGLYHUVLW\
Alternative patterns of sociability
Drawing on the idea that afordable housing should also forms of sociability and collectivity new social
forms need to be defned based on contemporary forms of living. In addition to sharing a living space, there
are many types of resources that can be successfully shared as services, food, clothes, transportation and
energy as well as social and emotional matters such as giving each other company, sharing laughter and sor-
row, protests and celebrations.
Te study of existing models implies the possibility to infltrate in existing institutionals protocols and nego-
tiate modest alteration. It is at neighborhood scale that that stealthy bottom up urban resilience can become
a device to transform top down policy. Communities have the possibility to participate in the construction
of a new political agenda. Situating this idea in the 21st century context we fnd a variety of possible way
that community can participate in the debate becoming a political infuential agent.
With people today involved in a dense network of activities, sharing home, labor and space what needs to
be created is an easy organizational structure that facilitate theses formal and informal networks of shared
resources. Current web-based social spaces are good tools networks can contribute but social cohesion
need also shared space
10
. For the most part, these forms of communal association dont require a change in
spatial policies, nevertheless they would greatly beneft from a change since fragmented space tends to cre-
ate a fragmented social structure. Tus we can reverse the process, creating by design more cohesive spatial
patterns that will help amalgamate and solidify social structures.
Te issue arises of the compatibility of people sharing a space in a culture that is deeply individualistic, the
possibility of sharing keeping personal diversity. It does not go without tensions, and rules must be estab-
lished and enforced if necessary. But by opening the possibility of shared living may reuse the built housing
stock adapting it to the means and needs of people. Te sharing of this space in the conditions of today may
provide a partial answer to the housing crisis on the condition that it goes hand in hand with a cultural
transformation.
9 Maxwell N.P. 2007, Bargaining Brooklyn. Community Organizations in the Entrepreneurial City, published by Te
University Chicago Press, Chicago and London.
10 Castells M. 2009, Communication Power, published by Oxford University Press, New York-Oxford.
76 76 76 76 76 76 76 76 76 76 7776 76 76 76 76 76 76 776 76 76 776 776 76 7777777776 76
77 77 77 77 77 77 77 77 777777 77 77 77 77777777777 7777 7777777777 7777
THE PROCESS OF RESEARCH AS DESIGN
Participatory action research
A block with a view : La Granja
78
79
Participatory action research with La Union
It would have been impossible to learn the same amount of things we learned without the intense engagement
of the inhabitants of Sunset Park we had the chance to experience during the four months of our research in
New York City. In parallel, an incredible amount of knowledge has been produced thanks to all the moments
spent to review and discuss with our colleagues and teachers the materials collected, the visits in Sunset
Park, the feedbacks received from the citizens.
Being a research proposed in the framework of an Academic program, the methodology has been clearly
introduced from the beginning, perhaps bearing the consequences of a scheduled time in terms of openness
of the process and in terms of relational construction. Te fact that 2012 is meant to be the frst of a fve
years lasting project, thus leaving good possibilities to respect the continuity of the process, anyway cannot
avoid the turnover of the groups of students engaging with the community, thus interrupting relationships
and forms of empathy.
Te methodology adopted is defned participatory action research, a dialectical process of research
characterized and structured by a rhythm of continuous expansion and contraction, the former corresponding
to a phase of collection of the information and production of knowledge, the latter being moments of
speculation and refection, also developing new knowledge, necessary before starting a new phase of
expansion. Te moments of contraction usually corresponded to assemblies, held within the classroom and
involving students and teachers; or held in Sunset Park and open to the local Community and the members
of La Union in particular. For this second case of assembly a driving group was organized, basically made
of the representatives of each group of research and a couple of teachers. Tis participatory approach
engenders a situated knowledge, which is the knowledge specifcally related to a situation. Bringing together
formal knowledge and social knowledge, the situated knowledge is continuously opening to new questions,
as scientifc and technical propositions of the former will be always questioned by the pragmatism, the
abilities and the daily experiences which are part of the latter.
Tree main phases have organized the diferent materials collected, progressively characterized by an
increasing level of interaction with La Union and the Mexican Community of Sunset Park.
In the phase of the documentary research diferent bibliographical and scientifc sources have been collected,
dealing with Sunset Park from the given entry points of the research
1
.
1 Te entry points framing the part of research here presented are labour and property. Te other themes were: educa-
tion, health, mobility and citizenship.
Te view on the private backyards and gardens of the block
of la Granja. Te inhabitants of the block have in their
garden an important space for their private life. One of the
mexican families has used the garden to build an extension
of their house.
80
Granja Los Colibries
Lutheran Family Health Center
Community Board
LA UNION
La Unin is a non-proft organization for social justice based in the neighborhood
of Sunset Park. It is a grassroots organization of people of the global south working
to advance the social, economic, and cultural rights of the communities where they
now live and the communities they lef behind. Te 600 members of La Unin are
predominantly from the Mixteca region of Mexico and immigrants from across
Latin America and even though its member base is large, the organization operates
in a very precarious situation. Te usual lack of funding and member
disorganization hunts La Unin on a daily basis, but this has not stopped it from
developing a small Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), working on fxing
the current broken immigration system through comprehensive immigration
reform, improving public education for immigrant families through parent and
student organizing, and fghting for various environmental and social justice issues
such as safe housing and access to healthy foods. What is stopping La Unin is their
nomadic status and the impossibility of acquiring a permanent or temporary space
for its operations. Today, La Unin moves from Church to Church, from
Community Center to Family Clinic to the Street, nomadism has its benefts but the
type of militant work that La Unin focuses on urgently requires a base.
unity Boardddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
Granja Los Colibries
Family Health CCCCCenter
os Colibries
81
In the second phase the interviews were collected, concerning people, civil society and Institutional
representatives, meant to provide information of primary level, but also to reconstruct the dynamics of power
and its perception embedded in the Community.
Finally, the last phase was characterized by the proposal of tools meant to be useful concerning the main issues
emerged from the interaction with the community. Tese tools have been conceived more for the continuation
and the empowerment of the social and relational processes already in act in the community than to the
abrupt introduction of spatial solutions , not really refecting the real needs of the people involved and the
spatial scale concerned by these.
Te three phases have been characterized by the dialectical rhythm: the assemblies organized punctuated
the whole process thus giving the possibility to continuously reconsider the contents and to prepare the
advancements of the research thanks to the feedbacks and the exigencies manifested by the members of La
Union. Te whole process, especially its relational development, has been considered as design, meant as the
continuous shaping and production of knowledge and the continuous evolution and growth of the relational
realm: any particular artifact having spatial implications or not - proposed in the course of the research was
not ending in itself but fnalized to empower the relational processes in course.
At least three important aims motivated the choice of the participatory action research. Te frst is to build
a relational form of knowledge, through which the social knowledge and the formal knowledge are being
continuously re-written questioning each other, by transgressing traditional disciplinary boundaries, thus
always embedding to the complexity of reality. Te second aim is to blur the distinction between subject and
object of the research, usually implying the regulating presence of structures of power. Tis happens given the
commonality and reciprocity of the process of knowledge, enriching any participant involved, overcoming
the defnition of initial roles. Tird aim is to trigger change through the action implied in and engendered
by the same process of knowledge production: the research provokes action via the knowledge produced,
URBAN ECOLOGY: SUNSET PARK SCHEDULE
Schedule of the research process throughout the semester
of the Transdisciplinary Design Program at Parsons.
82
LA GRANJA
Cleaned by some of the most active members of the organization, this long and narrow lot separating two
buildings of the residential block between the 33rd an 34th Street, facing the entry lot of the Green Wood
Cemetery, today represents a meaningful and important site for the history and the identity of La Union.
A part from representing a small fragment of the Mexican material culture, the orchard and the henhouse
provide more the pretext to build a sense of commonality and of community than a meaningful contribution
to the food system of the Mexican population of Sunset Park.
83
continuously fueling new questions. Te discussions developed in the classroom could not be divided from
what happened during the moments of feldwork, the questions of the research being constantly formulated
by the community or updated by their feedback. Te whole research is generally oriented to empower the role
of the community involved and to trigger the emergence of their discourses and their needs.
Interacting with the citizens of Sunset Park intensively and continuously operating on the basis of their
feedback, we have been using diferent approaches, complementary, diferently able to build trust, to produce
knowledge and to increase awareness, to bring to light conficts and diferent perspectives.
Among some specifc tools, in particular the sociogram and the spiral have been used. Te sociogram,
especially used in the realm of social analysis is drawn to describe the relations of power among diferent
members of communities and small groups eventually having some common goal. Te aim of the interviews
fnalized to this diagram is to compare and to frame the ofcial roles and positions of power of main actors
or common citizens with the perceptions and the actual roles concerning them, according to the members of
the community. One of the diagrams for example was realized collectively, directly involving some members
of La Union and other citizens of Sunset Park, identifying individuals belonging to power structures, civil
society and people; describing the relations among them in terms of weak, normal, strong or conficting. Te
process of drawing the diagram gave the possibility to visualize and share with all the participants real and
perceived relations of power: a crucial layer implied and hidden in the daily patterns as a conditioning factor
of the discourses, the initiatives and the potentials for action.
Te spiral diagram gives the possibility to imagine narratives about the process of change. Based on the
research done, some relevant categories are visually organized with a spiral lay out: threats, resistances, frailties,
strengths, actions, possibilities. Also in this case, diferent spirals have been drawn involving diferent groups
of people, thus bringing to light diferent frameworks for action. For example, for one of them both members
of La Union and of the Making Worlds Group - also part of Occupy Wall Street - were involved: a part from
being an exceptional moment of reciprocal contact and meeting of the two groups, it was also the occasion
to confront self-perceptions of the group with those from outside, in particular from other groups, thus
situating the discussion also on the level of inclusive and exclusive dynamics unconsciously in act for both of
them, enriching everybody with the new perspectives and approaches for action.
Concerning the interviews, in general these have been realized according to a semi structured formula,
combining the free emergence of information in the discourse of the interviewee and the presence of
guidelines concerning the topics to deal with, not revealed to the person involved. Te transcription of the
interviews has given the possibility of a detailed analysis of diferent levels of speech, crossing them with the
84
Randy Peers, Opportunities for a Better Tomorrow
R.
Aida
M.
3
1
2
4
3
4
5
6
6
5
5
2
1
Vanessa Bran
Golden Steps
certifcate and
to learn how
Te demographic of sunset Park is : the Latino Community, which has shifed from 2nd to 3rd generation, Puerto Ricans to the Central and
South Americans; and the fastes growing group which is the Chinese. And the gentrifying whites. Tat gets a lot of play, but the real
pressure in the community is the growing dynamic between the Chinese Community which is rapidly expanding and the Latinos, who are
feeling the pressure.
In Sunset Pak we never had our own school four years ago we opened up Sunset Park High school. Probably overtime, my gut is, youll
have lower dropout rats just because you have proximity. Of all things Ive done on the Community Board , that has been the thing I am
most proud of. We had a community processmade up of all the diferent stakeholders, community groups.. We wanted a comprehensive
high schoolwith three themes: health careers, business and the performing arts. I think the trend will be positive over timenot because
of demographic shifs, but because we have an Institution within the Community we can call our own.
.Llegu a Sunset Park y encontr trabajo como constructor, trabajar en los sitios de los proyec
construccin y no tiene otros sitios tiene que buscar un trabajo como "jornalero".
para nosotros, los trabajadores indocumentados son pocas las organizaciones que se ocupan d
proteccin de la salud, una defensa en el caso de abuso, etc. ...
El problema general, sin embargo es que lo que la organizacin hace visible la condicin de no
vida, soportando a veces inaceptables condiciones de trabajo y salarios por debajo de la media
nuestros derechos, no tienen seguro mdico y la posibilidad de una vida mejor son pocos ....
Y yo quando cruc la frontera yo no saba que estaba ilegal. Es bien peligroso cruzar la frontera. Los que tienen dinero trabajan con Visa, estn ms adelantados yo creo, pero
un le del 45 que si tu entrabas ilegal tenias que pagar una penalidad de 1000 dlares y te casabas, pero en 92-93 Clinton ha hecho otra le .. Si t entras ilegal tienes que irte p
pero la mayora tiene esto problema, o sea, no tienen visa.
La organizacin se enfoca ms en la justicia social, la Unin bsicamente hace eso, justicia social e no es de servicioporque hay muchas organizaciones que hacen servicio p
piensa que tenemos consciencia, que tenemos que hacer un cambio y hay mucho mas benefcio en esto que en los serviciosLeticia se ha puesto lobjectivo de la comunidad
Yo he estudiado derecho en Mxico y haba comenzado a trabajar en un estudio haciendo las bodas y los casos civiles y separaciones, pero no me pagan bien...
Un amigo estaba en Nueva York, as que decid mudarme con mi novia, para intentar una vida mejor
Tuve diferentes trabajos.... siempre hay necesidad. El primer trabajo para la supervivencia, sin embargo, no era lo que me imaginabael comercio de drogas y armas....Tam
la situacin es ms estable, he encontrado un trabajo en una fbrica para hacer las cubiertas de las lmparas de la calle, y piezas de plstico.... es un trabajo que tengo 2 o 3
Los Estados Unidos de Amrica no gastar mucho dinero para nosotros ..... No por el sistema de salud, y tambin no por la seguridad social a pesar de que pagan impuesto
tener en esta condicin de non documentado para la mano de obra barata. Y una empresa privada paga los gastos mdicos de para que los trabajadores sanos que trabaja
FIGURES OF POWER
85
nsburg, coordinator Center for Family Life
s just fnished a 12 week training program, which included business planning, learning the skills of the job, a graduate
d building a coop. CFL is an incubator: we house a project until it goes of on its own. we act as consultants, helping them
to make business decisions. Teres very low overhead because it is service-based
Power
Civil Society
1. We can Do it
2. La Union
3. Center for Family life
4. Opportunities for a Better Tomorrow
5. Labour Unions
6. Cooperatives
1. Community Board
2. City Council
3. Church
4. Lutheran Medical Center
People
ctos tienen diferentes tiempos.... a veces se trabaja por 3 meses ya veces hasta 2 aosy cuando se termina la
de la condicin de "trabajador del da", por ejemplo, la organizacin de la oferta y la demanda de los trabajadores, la
osotros invisibles indocumentados y esto nos expone a multas, las crticas y temores Trabajamos durante toda nuestra
a nacional, que contribuyen al crecimiento de este pas, pagamos impuestos, pero no podemos votar, podemos hacer valer
o nosotros no cribamos de estar aquHaba
ara Mxico de toda forma. Yo tengo papeles,
pero tienes que tener seguro social Leticia
d.
mbin trabaj en una fbrica que produce los ganchos para el cabello. Ahora
3 aos
os y las muchas horas de trabajo contribuyen al crecimiento del passe debe
an...
Interviews distributed among member of diferent levels of
power reveal something about the conditions of rights of the
citizens living in Sunset Park.
Te discourses of institutional representatives focus
on expanding opportunities and on the institutional
achievements through the years; Mexican non documented
citizens on the contrary highlight still relevant limiting
conditions afecting their daily life, mostly depending on the
fact of not having identity documents.
Te level of awareness concerning the dynamics of power
and exploitation of non documented citizens emerges almost
in all the interviews with the inhabitants of SP. Te unfair
balance between their contribution to the economy of the
Country and the rights and opportunities they dispose in
exchange is constantly highlighted.
Also relevant, the frm purpose to engender awareness as
a fundamental condition for the efectiveness of any action
and any process of change.
86
Te process of drawing the diagram gave the possibility to describe the relations among the diferent actors in terms of weak, normal, strong or conficting; to visualize and
share with all the participants real and perceived relations of power: a crucial layer implied and hidden in the daily patterns as a conditioning factor of the discourses, the
initiatives and the potentials for action.
DRAWING THE SOCIOGRAM WITH LA UNION
87
observations concerning also the body language tone of voice, gestures, facial expressions, posture, etc. -
which is considered to convey relevant parts of the information, especially those contents which for diferent
reasons cannot be expressed by words.
If these have been some specifc tools introduced in the course of the research through a precise defnition
and in specifc moments and phases, a number of less codifed forms of interaction emerged and took shape
through all the period of research, less conceived as part of the research process and more based on the
natural relational evolution of the relationship with some specifc members of La Union. Next chapter will
specifcally focus on the value of these moments and on their rich contribution to the research meant in
its deepest and most truthful sense as research fnally afecting ourselves: a process providing fundamental
fndings not only on Sunset Park, labour and the living conditions of its inhabitants, but also concerning
ourselves, our role as individuals and as urban planners or architects, questioned by the active involvement
in the diferently important moments of the real and specifc lives of M., R., M., in those occasions frst of all
representing themselves and of their stories, more than a community.
Finally, an extended refection - which in the framework of this research can just be suggested - would deserve
the theme of the forms of representation able to describe the complexity of the materials collected. Tis does
not mean that other forms of research and their related representations are simplistic or not concerned
by the complexity of reality: it means that in the course of this specifc research both revealing complexity
and representing it, in order to discuss and share the contents with everybody, were a major goal perhaps
more important that the fndings in themselves, in their isolated form. Tis is one of the main implications
of the dialectical approach and requires a transdisciplinary perspective in order to seize and describe the
technologies and the devices constantly at work in a control based society.
Maps and diagrams are ofen combined in hybrid representations as for example the exploded axonometric
views which try to render the indivisibility of the spatial transformations from the actors who determine
them or are afected by them; the processes and the synergies on which these are based; the transformations
and their temporal dimensions. Te technique is ofen mixed, combining technical drawings and handmade
drawings, thus breaking the rigidity of traditional projections in order to better describe some immaterial
contents such as the relational realm embedded in the space of a street or of a common garden. Digitally
generated renderings and photomontages are avoided on purpose, especially in the phase of research by
design, limiting as much as possible any visionary efect while giving more importance to the strategies, the
actors involved and their feasibility as directions to activate existing spatial potential, engendering new urban
ecologies.
88
La Granja has been a window open on the interior landscape of an urban block:
showing tensions, conficts and diferent forms and negotiation.
A1.EMERGING NEGOTIATIONS AND CONFLICTS
89
A block with a view: La Granja.
La Union has no fx physical site where activities could be developed. Tis could be considered as an
opportunity to involve diferent parts of the city and diferent groups of citizens, suggesting also an interesting
direction for all those associations initially having to struggle with the need to pay a rent. But as already
mentioned this could also represent a problem, altering the continuity of the activities in logistic terms thus
eventually creating difculties for those citizens having to struggle with the schedule and the spatial patterns
of their day. Te importance of a physical site to which the activities of a group could be associated thus
contributing to reinforce their presence and to acknowledge the right of their actions seems to be confrmed
by the role presently performed by a small community garden especially managed by a few members of La
Union, ofcially named Los Colibries but better known as La Granja.
Spontaneously cleaned by some of the most active members of the organization, M. and R., this long and
narrow lot separating two buildings of the residential block between the 33rd an 34th Street, facing the entry
lot of the Green Wood Cemetery, today represents a meaningful and important site for the history and the
identity of La Union. A part from representing a small fragment of the Mexican material culture, the orchard
and the henhouse provide more the pretext to build a sense of commonality and of community than a
meaningful contribution to the food system of the Mexican population of Sunset Park. Not necessarily
representing the interests of every member, the activities happening at La Granja give the possibility to the
citizens involved to express themselves; to enjoy a friendly common space out of the ofen segregating and
overcrowded conditions of their houses, to have a personal dimension of escape from their daily routines;
to meet other citizens, building new knowledge and awareness, consolidating solidarities. Remarkably,
through years of voluntary work an abandoned space attracting drugs and bad reputation individuals has
been transformed in a green corner showing to the children of the closest schools the wonder of growing
plants.
Introduced to this space in the course of the feldwork activities, it would be a poor acknowledgement to
say that the time spent in La Granja together with some of the members of La Union, was simply related to
the feldwork. On the contrary, it would be important to say that our presence there was ofen the result of
a spontaneous relational interest, developed through the diferent moments of the research, thus efectively
erasing the distance normally separating the subject and the object of the research. As previously mentioned,
we probably learnt more about ourselves than about their condition.
Te natural relational development has given the possibility to build trust and friendship, thus creating the
conditions to enlarge the framework of our discourses to the neighborhoods, enriching the research with
discourses which, thus, slowly started to grow, grafing the needs and aspirations of the inhabitants of the
block into those expressed by the members of La Union, fueling feelings of commonality but also of diversity
and self-preservation.
A common green space crossing the block, the common laundry, the kindergarten; another lot to implement
the existing surface of la Granja; the works to improve the space of the street; the possibility to create a nursery
or to involve in some form the nearby Public School: all these specifc requests gradually emerged from
the words and the imaginaries of the inhabitants, triggering interest and activation, but also encountering
resistances and revealing existing conficts. La Granja has been a window open on the interior landscape
of an urban block: showing tensions, conficts and diferent forms and negotiation. La Granja has revealed
the fundamental relevance of space as a dimension in which inhabiting is co-habiting, necessarily teaching
about the non essentiality of a harmonious coexistence of diversities.
90
Diferent moments of our research with some members of La Union.
91
Te frst great lesson of la Granja is about the opportunity provided by space in terms of political expression,
embedded and at the same time deriving from what I would defne bio-authoriality: the authoriality concerning
ones own life as a preliminary step to reach individual and /or collective awareness as a precondition of
the processes of social construction. Tis can also be meant as not so far from Foucaults thought according
to which the only possibility to escape bio-power is by creating new cultural and behavioural frames,
thus escaping the dispositifs of power. In the perspective of these fundamental, interrelated objectives, the
appropriation of the site and the work done by the members of La Union put them in an approximately
equal position than the one of the other inhabitants of the block, American documented citizens. As these,
they can enjoy their free time with gardening activities or with a barbecue, they can use this space to build
knowledge and to organize any sort of initiative, reclaiming their lives, thus contributing to the construction
of their and the society, despite their invisibility
2
. It has been thanks to this small garden, as a point of
reference that we had the possibility to spontaneously meet several times not La Union, but some of its
members, counting on the fact that each Sunday some of them were somehow taking care of the space.
La Granja reclaims and gives back time, thus providing the conditions to overcome fragmentation, lack
of relational construction and isolation as major aspects of the contemporary conditions of labour and
living; to engender awareness and mental shifs necessary to any person to grow and to improve her/his life
conditions; to perform the political and to organize for any given purpose.
Te Mexican citizens involved in that space certainly still have to deal with prejudices concerning their
cultural predisposition for the party and leisure time, for example: but as small, daily struggles these
have to be acknowledged more as an epiphany of diversity than as efects of a deeper hostility or sense
of antagonism. Diversity which anyway is irreducible in any sort of community, independently from the
ethnical composition and can be managed through delicate balances, without being comphletely erased.
A young American couple living in the block, despite being deranged by the late talks of the Mexican
occupants of the garden, still leaves them use their hosepipe and asks for their help in some carpentry works
for their house. La Granja seems to show that coexistence of diversities is possible and space not only creates
the conditions, it also challenges the whole society to take charge of them and to manage them: the second
lesson. Te real foundation of a democratic society is not consensus but the acknowledgement and the
acceptance of diversity: an acknowledgement that does not necessarily imply an harmonious coexistence, but
certainly a respectful acceptance of the right of expression of the other, thus advocating not an antagonistic
society based on the need to eliminate the adversary but an agonistic model, characterized by an equal
confrontation of parts, without any implied form of judgment (Moufe).
La Granja as agon the space for agonistic confrontation - shows the opportunities and the rights unfolding
in an agonistic society.
Given these premises, the role of Institutions is strongly questioned, not as an homogenizing actor, simplifying
the issue of wellbeing through the use of universalistic models, thus fattening diversities and creating
conditions of exclusion. Institutions are required to support the bottom up eforts aiming to reshape welfare:
eforts done to formulate precise requests, showing their relevance for the whole community and suggesting
their feasibility. Te crucial issue here is to not renounce to the possibility of political action and expression
of diversity deriving exacting from the forms of latency of Institutional welfare. If this could be considered
2 Te experience of exclusion is not only about sorrow, separation producing resistance and thus strength. Also the op-
pressed, not only the oppressors within their communities build relationships that will be crucial at the moment of the
fght, building solidarity and situating the group on a ethically superior level. Cartosio, 2012
92
as part of the devices through which bio-power is enounced and made efective, then the occasions of its
absence more or less intentional are precious gaps to be infltrated by bottom up initiatives, especially
when these come from citizens condemned to invisibility because of their lack of regular documentation -
but visible in terms of fscal contribution.
Wherever available, space, dispossessed and fragmented by labour conditions, is clearly the place where
to start, from reclaiming time to organizing and proposing specifc programs. Any space giving voice to
diversity is an opportunity to reclaim the political.
More than a lesson, this an invitation to question some a aprioristic convictions, concerning who has to do
what and how to guarantee an equally distributed wellbeing. Since this does not necessarily correspond to
real social justice and since it is possible observe on multiple fronts the failures deriving from the attitude to
delegate, then maybe this is the moment to take advantage of the Institutional weakness reconfguring their
powers and reshaping the forms and the procedures of welfare. Exodus is not an alternative, simply creating
new occasions for the empowerment of the dominant system. Engagement is necessary, but not enough. Te
critique and disarticulation of the Institutions must be followed by a phase of re-articulation thus avoiding
the simple reconfguration of the previous power structures.
Te practices of articulation through which a given order is created and the meaning of social institutions is fxed,
are what we call hegemonic practices. Every order is the temporary and precarious articulation of contingent
practices [] It is always the expression of a particular structure of power relations Every hegemonic order
is susceptible of being challenged by counter-hegemonic practices which attempt to disarticulate it in order to
install another form of hegemony [] Te process of social critique characteristic of radical politics cannot
consist any more in a withdrawal from the existing institutions but in an engagement with them in order
to disarticulate the existing discourses and practices through which the current hegemony is established and
reproduced, with the aim of constructing a diferent one. ( Moufe )
Considering the case of La Union a careful reading of their activities or of the initiatives of the single
members reveals their interest in looking for the institutional support, any time for specifc reasons defned
by the context in which their presence is required. Te Mexican citizens involved in the activities of la
Granja would like to ofcially involve the local Public School because this would legitimate their activities,
thus increasing their credibility and fueling trust in the neighborhood. M. is an active, voluntary promoter
of an educational program supported by the Lutheran Medical Center: acquiring the status of regular citizen
for her would fnally imply the ofcial acknowledgement of her activity and of her role by the Hospital. She
still considers a challenge of her life the possibility to enter the building of the municipality without having
to hide her illegal condition.
93
La Granja seems to show that coexistence of diversities is possible and
space not only creates the conditions, it also challenges the whole society
to take charge of them and to manage them.
A2..EMERGING NEGOTIATIONS AND CONFLICTS
94
95
Te whole process of research showed that La Union despite the difculties and its weak points as
collective subject and its members are engaged actors, aware and capable of diferent forms and grades of
entrepreneurialship; citizens appreciating the value of time and declaring their need. Surely through the
process everybody learned something, eventually increasing awareness which sometimes is engendered
through the eforts done to frame roles and identities. Certainly questions arise concerning the role of
architects and urban planners. If our presence was important for the Community to narrate itself ; if the
research led them to measure limits and potentials of their actions, the relevant aspect is that similar processes
would probably have happened and will happen again with any kind of interlocutor, not necessarily architects
and urbanists. Ten what is our role? Which specifc contribution could we bring, given the relevance of
space in supporting the organization of actions and the proposal of alternatives, under a political paradigm?
If as we previously said the space of agon, the space of the emergence and the confrontation of diversities
has to be considered as a right, as an opportunity for the afrmation of a political dimension, no more based
on representation, but on direct activation, thus accessible also to those citizens in a condition of invisibility,
then as architects and urbanists we must look for agon.
Tis means that our concern should be frst of all in identifying those urban situations in which agon is
already emerging or latent and creating the conditions to empower its expression as a right to a political
action/critique. Te shif between acknowledgement and empowerment is neither immediate, nor simple. It
implies diferent phases through which our role is diferently specifed.
Engaging with a community or with a group of citizens is the frst crucial step. Building trust is important
not only for a stable and durable relational construction, but is also necessary to obtain a precise framework
of the spatial conditions within which the group operates, the internal and external dynamics of power
concerning, among other factors that condition the expression of rights and the fulfllment of their needs.
On this bases it would be essential to identify the potentials to exploit, recognizing three diferent categories.
As according to our perspective, framed between property and labour, there are very good reasons to
reclaim space as directly showed by the case of La Granja , then the frst level on which potentials and
opportunities must be recognized is spatial. From vacant lots to temporary available surfaces, from shared
spaces to areas gained through bargaining: any of these could provide the basic conditions to organize or to
inhabit, in any case to reclaim the previous mentioned bio-authoriality. If M. and R. spontaneously occupied
Vacant plots in the blocks between the Tird and Second
Avenue in Sunset Park.
96
a neglected lot, it is part of our role to contribute with more precise mapping of the availabilities and the
identifcation of the formulas for their accessibility.
Tis leads to the second level, where the identifcation of possible ways to claim space should go beyond
improvisation and risky attempts especially risky for non regularly documented citizens highlighting
all the gaps and possibilities defned as part of the planning and ownership regulations. Te case of New
York City becomes particularly interesting in this sense, on one hand apparently acknowledging relevant
opportunities for participated forms or community based planning, inclusive both in terms of processes
and in terms of spatial justice; but on the other hand creating wide margins for speculation. If to this
ambivalence we add the fact that groups and / or individual citizens are not always in the condition to
understand and to access the relevant information, then it is clear that a technical contribution could help
to embed a given setting of conditions and opportunities in scenarios depicting possible evolutions together
with the strategies for their feasibility.
Crucial part of these strategies is the actors. Te spatial related conditions sought in order to organize or to
directly put into practice new urban ecologies cannot be easily obtained without a collective efort, implying
the participation of diferent actors, from the individual citizens to the organizations of the civil society and
the Institutions. Cooperatives and Community Land Trusts clearly exemplify the strategy of empowerment
pursued by their action, directly proportional to contribution of a number of actors.
Particularly interesting has to be considered the involvement of Institutions, important for several reason.
As previously mentioned, the dismantling of the current logics of power cannot be obtained via defection,
but requires a strategic engagement, able to suggest alternatives confgurations of power and the paths to
realize them. Tis is a frst essential reason to involve institutions from the beginning of any long term action.
Another relevant motivation is about the legitimating and empowering role they can assume especially
when the concerned actors are in a condition of invisibility, ofen impeding the accessibility to resources
and procedures. Considering the case of the Mexican community of Sunset Park, the Church could be an
interesting partner, not only inconsideration of the social relevance of its role and the special value for
the whole Community, but also for an initial availability of physical sites which could support the further
organizations of the groups and their activities. In part this is already happening: one of the members of La
Union is a non active catholic priest and the space of St.Jacobi church in Sunset park is ofen used for the
assemblies of various organizations and groups in Sunset Park, partially related to the activities of La Union.
Finally, another important reason to involve institutions is related to the need to intersect the activity of
a given group or association with the life of the neighborhood and of the city, thus avoiding the risk of
an isolated self-referencing community, increasing the number of occasions for trust building. Schools for
example could be part of educational programs based on the contribution of the members of the local
community on one side, but on the other side opening to the rest of the city because of their specifcity.
Te following section of research is meant to suggest the potential for the emergence of new urban ecologies
in Sunset Park and to test through design which could be limits and possible scenarios both in terms of
spatial reconfguration and in terms of engineering of actors, procedures, forms of solidarity.
97
White page to reclaim time.
98
10.03
31.03
13.04
18.04
21.04
27.04
23.04
talk with Jeanne Van Heeswijk
performing the question about invisibility
29.02
29.02
23.03
26 03
28.03
06.04
27.04
16.02
17.03
07.04
01.05
22.04
25.02
29.04
10.02
25.02
04.03
30.03
15.04
19.04
01.04
14.04
Jessie
Leticia
Margarito
Magda
Serjo
Rojelio
Rodrigo
Aida
Juan
Isabel
spiral drawing
realizing the cabine
meeting Serjo
interview withAdriana
interview with Aida
interview with Rodrigo and Margarito
interview with Randy Pears
meeting Magda
meeting at school
introducing methodology
2nd DG: sociogram of La Union
review with Teddy Cruz
feldwork with Civic City
1st driving group
walk and meeting
barbecue
La Granja. seeding plants
La Granja. building raised beds
ideas about the block
= assembly
THE PROCESS OF RESEARCH AS DESIGN OF THE RELATIONAL REALM AND GENERATION OF KNOWLEDGE
99
talk with Juan Babilonia
new ideas for the block
Adriana
Randy
Peers
Teddy
Cruz
Luis
Alex y su
familia
Begonia
Adelin
Leticia
Jelena
Juan Babilonia
Making
Worlds
Making
Worlds
Making
Worlds
Occupy Wall Street
Occupy Sunset Park
Alex
spiral drawing on Occupy
Forum on Commons
OWS 60 Wall Street
Lef Forum
Yippie Club. MW weekly meeting
Yippie Club. MW weekly meeting
May Day
Occupy Queens
Maria Bick
meeting the neighborhood
Te diagram shows the development of relationships on the base of the
diferent activities unfolded during the process of research on the lef, a
calendar is shown. Diferent groups have been involved and fnally entered in
a reciprocal relationship, as for example La Union and Making Worlds group,
also part of Occupy Wall Street.
101
RESEARCH BY DESIGN
Te political nature of ecologies
Open fnale
102
103
Te political nature of ecologies.
Do not crave to construct in the space for which you think that it lies in the future, that it promises you some
kind of tomorrow. Realize yourself today, do not wait. You alone are your life. Fernando Pessoa
Te political emerges as the space for the institutionalization of the social ( society ) and equality as the
foundational gesture of the political democracy. Erik Swyngedouw
Te drawings and design hypothesis presented in the following pages are based on the assumption that
dealing with space as inhabited realm, where diversities emerge and are reciprocally defned, an ecological
approach is needed to engender the conditions of the political, based on the identifcation of the structures
of power and their complementary forms of reaction.
In fact, ecologies result from the interplay between hegemonic technologies and forms of resistance reacting
to them, able to continuously reorganize in order to reach a just distribution of resources and opportunities
just taking in consideration the diferences of the starting situation.
For this reaction to unfold, some conditions must be confgured. First of all, the availability of space and
time for agon, the equal confrontation and identifcation of the parts involved. Secondly, the possibility for
an active role of the diferent actors, not more according to schemes of delegation and participation, but
pursuing a direct involvement, as the only way to express and form the diversity of needs and to specify
rights.
Te socio-spatial ecologies here introduced are developed and based on the convergence of inclusive schemes
of property and of spontaneous grouping of actors and citizens, coagulating to improve their specifc living
situation, making sense within and arising from the diversity of the microcosms continuously reshaped and
originated by the containing macro-ecology of the city.
Te design is based on the need to reclaim space as a right in itself and space as a condition to reclaim time,
based on the (re)organization of activities in the short term or/and in the long term, as a result of initiatives of
re-confguration of the dominant structures (initiatives which in their turn require an immediate availability
of time in order to be organized). Te strategies and the activities proposed are oriented in this direction,
towards bio-authoriality as the foundation of the political.
104
R6B
R6B
R6B
R6B
R7A
R7A
R6A
R6B
C4-3A
R6A
R6B
R6A
R6B
R6B
R6A
R6A
R7A
R6A
R6B
R4-1
R6A
R7A
Proposed Zoning District Boundary
Existing Zoning District Boundary
Open Space
M1-2D
M1-2
M2-1
M1-2
M1-2
R6B
R6A
R6
R-6
M1-2D
* inclusionary housing
R6A: FAR 3.0
R7A: FAR 3.45-4.6*
R7A: FAR 3.45-4.6*
R6A: FAR 3.0
Green-Wood Cemetery
Sunset Park
FAR is the ratio of the allowable built foor area of a building to the
area of the lots it sits on. Te above examples are of 1:1, or 1.0 FAR.
Lot SF
10.000 (100x100)
10.000 (100x100)
FAR
1.0
4.0
Allowable Bldg SF
10.000 SF
40.000 SF
street
street
contextual zone (e.g. R6A) non-contextual zone (e.g. R6)
quality housing
building
height factor
building
Surface plot 300mq
FAR 3.45
Surface plot 300mq
FAR 4.60
Lot coverage 60%
Lot coverage 60%
Surface plot 300mq
Floor Area 1035 mq
Surface plot 300mq
Floor Area 1380 mq
Inclusive Floor Area 276 mq
8
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
H

m
a
x

2
4
.
4
0

m
EXTRA Floor Area 345 mq
1
2
3
4
5
H

m
a
x

2
4
.
4
0

m
NON Inclusive Floor Area 69
TOT Inclusive Floor Area 69 mq
TOT NON Inclusive Floor Area 1311
Empty lot 40%
1 story
2 stories
4 stories
100% coverage 50% coverage 25% coverage
105
Sunset Park zooning tools
In early spring 2007, a development proposal for a twelve-story residential development stirred community
uproar about continuous out-of-context development on a residential block two- and three-story residential
row houses. To protest a community coalition composed largely of white home owners and Latino resident
quickly formed and proceeded to gather hundreds of signatures for a petition calling for zoning protections.
A few weeks later NYC Department of City Planning Director announced an expedited contextual rezoning
study for Sunset Park with an end of the year completion deadline.
Current zooning has been utilized to preserve neighborhood residential quality the existing character of
the low-rise row houses on Sunset Parks side streets, while upzoning commercial avenues accommodating
growth and new highrise developments along commercial avenues and near transportation nodes.
Te zooning contain regulation for Inclusionary Housing ofering an optional foor area bonus in xchange
for the creation or preservation of afordable housing, on-site or of-site for low-income households.
Te Inclusionary Housing Program requires a percentage of the dwelling units within a building to be set
aside, or new or rehabilitated afordable units be provided of-site within the same community district
or within one-half mile of the bonused development. All afordable residential units created through the
Inclusionary Housing Program must remain permanently afordable. Afordable apartments may be rental
units or, under modifcations made to the program in 2009, available in an ownership plan.
Even though the production record for afordable housing premised on bonus densities is mixed, the current
Sunset Park rezoning discussion has not generated any substantive provisions to prevent displacement or to
preserve the neighborhoods multiracial, multiethnic, working-class qualities.
Whereas the neighborhood has long been a place where many working-class and immigrant households
could fnd safe, adequate, and afordable housing, this is less and less the case as people being priced out of
more expensive areas such as neighboring Park Slope have begun to discover relatively afordable rent levels
in Sunset Park.
106
Grid infractructure
Vacant lots, parking and
underused Spaces
Parks and open spaces
Institutions and amenities
SPATIAL AND INFRASTRUCTURAL POTENTIAL
107
Vacant lot
0 250 500 1000
Industrial vacant building
Institutions
Vacant space above shop
55th
60th
Sunset Park
Green Wood Cemetery
108
SPACE BECOMING TIME
109
110
EMERGING ECOLOGIES: SPACES AND ACTORS INVOLVED
111
[6]
[9]
[8]
[5]
[6] Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church as leading partner act
as guarantor in the accress to forms of credit and legal aspects.
[7] [8]P.S.506 School and professionals support the housing program in the
development of inclusionary housing taking advantage by the extra volume
proposed by the zooning. Spaces and workshops within the cooperative
becomes accessible for afer school programs and student recreation.

[9][10] Te Brooklyn Army Terminal support the start-up of maintenance
service cooperative trading maintenance and cleaning of the commercial
and light industrial space.
[11] [12] Te community renovate, as work exchange a vacant industial
building for temporay use. Te workshop driven by cooperative members is
oriented to wood and metal crafsmanship and building renovation.
Brooklyn Army Terninal
Start-Up partner
COOPERATIVE
COMMUNITY LAND TRUST
P.S.506 School
Educational and training support
Lutheran Medical Center
Healt and care related
Market
Product Exchange
Housing
Housing
Workshop
Worker Center
Our Lady of
Perpetual Help Church
leading partner
[3]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[7]
[2]
[1]
[6]
[4]
[1]CLT established by the community organizing temporary housing
engendering forms of social exchange and common activities.
New inclusionary housing take advantage by the extra volume proposed
by the zooning.
[2][3]Worker Center support the cleaning service start up of a cleaning
service cooperative in collaboration with Lutheran Medical Center
[4][5] Educational program in collaboration with P.S.506 School and
Lutheran Medical Center are organized by the Worker Center.
[6]Temporary spaces are rented by the community for market and other
temporary uses
112
worksh
w
0 10
10
25 50 100
113
Brooklyn Army Terminal
hop
workshop
Worker Center
Temporary housing
Common activities
inclusionary housing
crafsman
learning
center
educational
spaces
Common activities
Common activities
workshop
workshop
and
market
TTTTTT
CC
TTTe
114
workshops
workshops and market
a space managed by the community for
workshops, temporary activities and a weekly
market, thus involving the rest of the city
CLT supporting the creation of new common
spaces: a community center, a kitchen, a
kindergarten. Forms of temporary housing are
provided for any citizen in need. Te development
of spontaneous solidarity networks is thus
supported on many levels by the availability of
these spaces.
Temporary housing typologies realized within the
Inclusionary Housing Program, as part of a CLT.
Worker Centers promoting educational programs in collaboration with
the Lutheran Medical Center and the local school. Spaces for workshops
are provided by the Community, with the economical support of the
Municipality.
115
common kitchen
and kindergarten
community center
temporary housing
worker center
Vacant lots are used not only to provide afordable housing, but also to improve the quality of the public space, redefning
the grid with common spaces and public passage crossing the blocs. Te section of the streets is redesigned: some become
pedestrians, others allow one sense circulation. Te rhythm of the neighborhood is thus redefned, giving more space to
children and to any other form of daily relational construction. Te shif from public to private happens gradually,
through diferent degrees of commonality.
116
0 10
10
25 50 100
P P P P
P P P P
A vacant industrial building is refurbished
and used as temporary workshop for
handicraf and building construction.
Brooklyn Army Terminal
Work
shop
Work
shop
Workshop
117
P P P P P
P P P P P
P P P P P P
Te cooperative provide afordable housing and new public space alterating
the traditional grid structure. Within the new buildings community spaces
allow the promotion of educationl program oriented to promote alternative
forma of collaborative entrepreneurship.
59th Street
56th Street
57th Street
118
119
Open fnale
M: so we were saying that fragmentation does not imply the expression of diversities but at the same
time any process that tent to recompose contain the risk of simplifcation...
V : no, not at all. A fragmented state is a state of weakness, of lack of solidarity, of invisibility..which means
absence of rights and vulnerability...
M ...given the fact that our lives get increasingly fragmented how is it possible to recompose this
condition?.....surely social networks and technological virtual worlds infuence and contribute to
reconstruct social networks and personal relation...
V: I do not agree not only they dont help, but they increase our emotional frailty, creating an illusion of
being connected, while on the contrary we are simply adapting ourselves to our segregating lives, unable
to organize, our time being stolen in many ways, most of them related to our permanent obsession for
fexibility, for ubiquity....
M: ...at the same time I think space still plays a fundamental role for sociability. People continuously
establish relationships in the physical space and build trust on the basis of bodily sensations. We need to
meet, to talk together, socialize and sharethink about recent forms of exchange and solidarity .. What
lack is a space that fosters this practices...
V: . the space where this happens is the space normally concerned by Institutions, by welfare then of
course you could say that this space is part of the conditions of production - in terms of reproduction - but
its up to us to infltrate the gaps, to reclaim our political role and to critique the way in which Institutions
operateand again its up to us to propose alternatives...
M:.participative models have always been there.. New York has a highly participative system but it is not
enough efective, just consider the limited participation in the case of Sunset Park rezoning or the valuable
resources as community based plans that are not efectively implemented and slightly scratch the surface
of political system...
V: what I think is that we need to go beyond participation and representation, as they are based
on consensus, on creating homogeneity while I think the future will be not about defning forms
of agreement, but about creating the conditions for diversities to express themselvesan equal
confrontation, which does not necessarily imply a happy ending.. we simply have to learn to respect
and to need the other as occasions to question ourselves, to learn about ourselves.. In this perspective
Institutions should provide an infrastructural support while the citizens should be motivated in specifying
any service according to their needs..
122
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123
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