City
Policies and Controlling Difference and Public Space
In the 1990s, the
Guliani mayoral administration has increasingly
employed city agencies to regulate and modify the
uses of public space, from sidewalks to empty lots.
The political regulation of public space and social
behavior has advanced the commercialism of the East
Village legacy of subversion and counterculture.
Under the guise of "improved quality of life,"
city policies have driven the once public
expression of cultural radicalism and subversion into
the private realm – most notably, into
commercial and residential real estate spaces where
desirable references to difference are employed to
theme development. With the power of effective new
policies, both significant and banal (such as public
passageway laws, park regulations, and even
jaywalking ordinances) the city has systematically
regulated and controlled public spaces, fundamentally
excluding many of Loisaida’s low-income and
minority residents from the "revived" east
side.
In addition to efforts
to "clean up" East Village parks, empty
lots and sidewalks, the city has targeted the
remaining neighborhood squatters. Demonstrations and
violence over the status of occupied abandoned
buildings resurfaced in the 1990s as private
developers and service providers pressured to utilize
city-owned property.
Images
(click
to enlarge)
 Listing of gardens destroyed by
the City.
|
 More resistance to City policy.
|
 |
____________________________________
The book upon which this
web site is based,
Selling
the Lower East Side,
is available
directly through 
or order through 
Site design © 2000:
Kurt
Reymers and Dan
Webb.
(University at Buffalo, Department of
Sociology)
|
