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In 1961, Project urbanization meant to Robert Mosses to tear down homes of people leaving in lower Manhattan, by creating highways. In his eyes he perceived the lower downtown area as slums and he felt that it needs to be altered into something that will bring more traffic into the city in the name of rebuilding of the city. In his opinion he looks upon an area that is a working class to be considered as one of the worse area of Manhattan. He wanted to bring about a vast renewal project that serves as three free flow of a highway. The vision that Robert mosses that seemed was to swamp down many neighborhoods just for the sake of his vision, not considering thousands of people will lose their home and business along the process. The determination of many of the residents had driven to sought out a change to stop the destruction of communities. To help their fight was a journalist Jane Jacob, who was a common individual that understood the devastation of the residents. Jacobs used the power of journalism to reach out for change for these citizens. Jane Jacob and her colleagues banded together to fight local neighborhood in Manhattan by holding rally, staging demonstrations and attacking in public hearing, trying to stop him plan. She had a different kind off vision she held was to create a more harmonized neighborhood, and create an integrated community. Her tools where not only her writings, but rather she fought with her mind by rallying and walking in marches with the residents. People living in these neighborhood acknowledged her effort and her fight to save their homes and history. The fight brought many individuals together that created a powerful change. Many oppositions disagreed to Moses view about building an expressway as he favored expressways over people’s home.

In my opinion, Robert Moses is like one of the current day developer who reconstructs an area, thinking that they are doing the right thing, but due to his arrogance, he doesn’t see the harms his views are affecting to the common people. His ideas are to create more ways for automobiles to pass, by destroying the homes of people. The question lies that are those expressways worth more than the affect it will have on lives of humans living in that community? Jane Jacob proved Moses wrong by demonstrating the true meaning of urbanizing the city and geared it in a rightful direction by exemplifying determination of her vision to fight for the residents of that are. In reflection to this Gownus area in Brooklyn, there is a canal inside Gownus that has been polluted. This canal needs a lot of reconstruction due to the former industrial waste. Although many developers are planning to develop modern architectural buildings and create a gentrified neighborhood, these developers are forgetting that the canal is a part of the neighborhood that can’t be overlooked. The canal serves as a historical monument. To contribute change to Gownus the residents should part take in the reconstruction of the canal.

Nijjar_Gurjot_2017_02_LibraryVisit (revised)

Nijjar_Gurjot_2017_02_LibraryVisit

site report #3 Brooklyn Public Library BPLA

Nijjar_Gurjot_2017_02_GCC visit

“My Brooklyn” a film by Kelly Anderson was able to open our eyes to an ongoing issue that currently is hitting Brooklyn. But, sooner or later it will be faced by other boroughs in New York city. The documentary showed us the harsh reality of gentrification affecting the neighborhoods of Brooklyn. New York city especially Brooklyn is known for its culture and diversity, that’s what puts the heart and soul in Brooklyn. One may say that so called changes will bring more revenue in the city and it might good for the city but, we need to understand who is actually profiting out of all this and who end up paying the real cost. By zoning and gentrifying an area forces people with low income or middle class to migrated to other places. This cause that neighborhood to lose its culture and its identity. People who have lived their entire life in these neighborhoods are now being forced to leave the area so that new apartment complexes or big store chain can take its place.

Throughout the film, we learn how these developers are paving the road for the upper class with the state of the art apartment complexes but for the middleclass residents, they get forced out of their own neighborhood without a proper dwelling. What the film taught me that people with power like the councilman, developers, investors or government officials dictates the structure of New York city and others don’t get to have a say in it.

From my personal experience and watching this film made me realize one thing, that everyone or everything has a price. Once, the zoning of the area gets approved either the developer will try to buy you out from your own neighborhood or the landlord will raise the rent so much that it will make it nearly impossible to keep up, hence forces you to migrate. Slowly by slowly all these neighborhoods are being changed and its causing the neighborhood to lose its soul, sense of culture, people they grew up with. All this is happening, just so that richer can get rich.

I was happy to see how few people united to fight these changes or to fight for what seems fair. The group call FUREE was one of many that were shown in the film, who went to these powerful people to get justice and what seem to be fair. I was happy to see the strength that came from these local people who tried their hardest to preserve their history of the neighborhood. It made me hopeful to see the people gave their heart to fight for justice for the middleclass.

I just hope in the end that regular middle class gets fairly treated. In all this run for the money, I hope we don’t end up losing something valuable that we can never get back.

On Thursday September 14, 2017, we had our first in class guest, Joseph Alexiou. Joseph is also the author of a book called Gowanus: Brooklyn’s Curious Canal. He shared his vast knowledge of New York city with us especially Brooklyn based. Listening to him in class felt like we were taken on a tour of history of Brooklyn. He spoke with such passion about the Gowanus from the very beginning till today, we couldn’t even tell when the class ended. There were a lot of topics that were discussed in the class like from farming to industrialization to gentrification.

In class, Joseph depict about from the very beginning of history of Gowanus starting in 1826 Dutch were the first settlers. The Dutch preferred the area of Brooklyn and long island for farming because they witness the nutrients rich soil, so they traded for the land from the Native red Indian tribe name Lenepe that spoke Mansi. Another reason they choose to settle at the Gowanus was 8 miles stretch water canal that made the mode of transportation accessible. The Dutch also brought their technology of water mills, which they used grind grains, chickpeas etc. Joseph also mention the fact that during this time African American slaves were utilized for the labor work such as digging to have water made accessible for the boats to go to Manhattan for the trade.

During 1830’s more people from Europe started migrating to America for work and the population was 2000. By the end of 1870 the population was up to 10,000. There was big a misconception that the area around the canal was swamps but in fact they were marsh’s. By this time, they were bringing thousands of dollar worth merchandise for trade and they build factories around the Gowanus canal and everything was being dumped in this canal. By this time the canal was so polluted that the water life begin to end. The canal’s water itself changed the color to lavender as it was full of oil, human waste, toxic chemicals and bunch of other harmful substances.

By 1906 the city of New York build a water treatment plant to oxygenate the water to clean it. But, one thing i learned from the guest speaker that money was the biggest reason that why we still haven’t been able to clean the Gowanus canal. One of the reason is that throughout history is that the engineers have proposed a promising way to clean the canal but it costed much more than the city wanted to pay for. Hence, they choose the cheaper route which is till the date is unsuccessful.  In today’s date, the water is polluted with the mixture of toxins from the gas plants, ink and paint factories, coal tar, various harmful chemicals. Below the sediment layer of canal, it created this toxic substance known as, “Black Mayonnaise.” The estimated time clean the canal is by 2030.

This lecture was very different than expected and it gave a lot of information about the history of Brooklyn. Although Gowanus is very upcoming urban area but its in a dire of cleaning the pollution out of the canal.

Learning Places Fall 2017

Hi my name is gurjot nijjar but I prefer to be called monty. I am currently taking this course as part of my requirement. I am currently studying Bio Medical Informatics.

The closest train to my house is A train and also its last stop lefferts blvd. unique thing about this train station is that for the past ten years I always find people lost at this train station who are trying to go the jfk airport but end up getting lost. I currently reside in south Richmond hill in queens. I live very close to lefferts blvd and liberty ave, which is the most popular area of this neighborhood. For me, I feel that I have a lot of facilities around me. I am surrounded by four different buses q10 that goes to jfk or kew gardens to E and F trains, Q8, Q41 and Q112 that takes to Jamaica bus terminal from where I can go anywhere. Lirr is fairly close to my house as well. Also I have A train a block away from me, that can take me to city tech within 35 minutes or manhatten in 45 minutes.

My neighborhood is diverse, I have very Asians here, but its heavily dominated by east Indian and west Indians and Caribbeans. Out of east Indians, sikh religion people (people with turban and big long beards) resides here the most as we have 3 temples in this neighborhood. Another thing is that because all the facilities here the house prices have gone up very high reaching to an average of 1 million, and there zero parking in this neighborhood most of the time or if you pay like $150 for private parking. This area lies between urban and suburban area, because we have a lot of stores here but there also a lot of residential house here. We have a lot grocery stores, a lot of Caribbean food stores. This area is also very popular for its Indian/Punjabi foods and restaurants. The crime rate is fairly low but this area doesn’t have good standards when it comes to public schools. We have maybe 4 or 5 apartment buildings here but it doesn’t mean everyone owns a house a lot of people here privately rent in these house. Even though the rent right now is very high but it still doesn’t stop people from renting it. It takes about a week to rent out a whole house, each floor differently. My neighborhood is also known for celebrating Indian festivals like holi where they celebrate with water gun and dry colored powder and Diwali which is very similar to 4^th of July with the fire works. It takes me 5 minutes to walk to all the food places and I have a variety to choose from like from traditional to snacks. Although it’s a 5 minutes away but its takes forever to decide because of the all the option that are available. I do love my neighborhood and I would love to purchase a house here one day but after living here 10 years+ I feel I should try other places or states.