1. What is the THESIS of this piece? What is the main point that the writer expresses. Copy/paste the exact sentence or sentences that make up the thesis. 

The thesis of this piece or the main point that the writer expresses is that the buildings must change.  “New York is not a great city because of its buildings. It is a great city because it provides people with the opportunity to build better lives. To preserve that, the buildings must change.”

2. What kind of evidence is given to help prove the point? Evidence can be in the form of…

  • Statistics “Historic district cover roughly just 4 percent of the city’s land, but it’s not easy to build in the other 96 percent of New York, either. New York’s zoning laws, which define the limits of potential development, provide little room for new housing.”  

                        “In 1991, the median monthly rent is New York City was $900. By 2021, the median renter was paying $1,500 a month for housing. 

  • News

                        “Mayor Eric Adams has spoken of a “moonshot” goal of building 50,000  homes in next decade.”

  • Reports from credible organizations

                        “An analysis by the architectural firm PAU concluded that New York could add more than 500,000 homes around transit stations by replacing vacant lots, parking lots, and single-story retail with new housing, subject to a neighborhood height limit.” 

  • Expert quotes
  • Scholarship
  • History

                        “Look around most neighborhoods in the city, and you’ll find that the stage on which New Yorkers live and play, the physical city, hasn’t changed much in a very long time. More than half the city’s housing is in buildings constructed before 1947.”

  • First-hand experience

                        “Moffat lived in at least nine places between 1829 and 1851, mostly in a neighborhood known as the swamp, a leather making district on the northeast edge of the modern financial district. None of the house there have survive. … But Moffat’s final New York home has survived. By 1852, his leather business prospering, he had moved across the East River to a brownstone that still stand on Willow Street in Brooklyn Heights.”

  • Anecdotes (informal stories the writer has heard)

                        “Some years ago, as my mother and I were walking on New York City’s Upper West Side, she pointed our a red brick townhouse in the West 70s where, she said, my great-grandfather has lived as a child, It was an awkward building, the door set back under a large arch, the roof sharply peaked, and I wondered that it had survived as the city rose around it.” 

  1. Acknowledgement of counter-arguments: Does the piece acknowledge any flaws in the video’s argument or address the other side?

          This counter argument is in favor of keeping the buildings where they are and law are enforced to keep it that way. In the passage it said “Like other American cities, New York has erected layers of laws to protect existing buildings and to impede the contraction of new ones.” 

  1. Are you interested in the way that the essay ends? What does the piece do in an attempt to keep the reader engaged at by the conclusion? of the piece?

          I was interested in the way the essay ended because it almost gave a full circle effect. It went from the author walking in the Upper West Side with their  mother to the author hoping that someday he too will be able to walk on the Lower East Side or Upper West Side and see the change he so badly wants to see. It brings an emotional aspect to the writing piece that allows the reader to connect to the reading in some way.