Disconnected Borough

Highline.jpg

Manhattan Highline

The long-standing rift that has been between South Bronx residents and the City of New York can be traced back to the early 1970s, when the city made it clear that they did not have the borough's best interest in mind. 

The Bronx lost more than 97% of their buildings to fire and abandonment between 1970 and 1980. And despite the aggressive and persistant nature of the neighborhood's blight, in 1971 then-Mayor Lindsay asked a South Bronx fire chief to allow for local budge cuts so as to support other areas, so that the city could avoid going bankcrupt. To make the specific cuts, Lindsay appointed RAND-Institute, which ended up, "[recommending] closing 13 companies, oddly including some of the busiest in the fire-prone South Bronx, and opening seven new ones, including units in suburban neighborhoods of Staten Island and the North Bronx." 

The trend of moving assets from, or simply obstaining from offering amentities to the South Bronx can be seen as having continually developed over the last several decades. Two examples that Kamber thought appropriate to represent the favoritism was through spacial and cultural amentities. The first had to do with parks: "You know Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan have miles of riverfront parks. [We] have no riverfront parks. Zero, none. The entire Bronx, there’s just like, certainly south of Fordham Road, there’s nothing." Indeed, the Manhattan highline project (which converted an old raised railway track in Chelsea into a public park, with vendors, spaces to congregate, and cultural exhibitions and events routinely held) cost over $150 million alone, not to mention its extraordinarily close proximity to the West Side Highway, and the miles of Hudson-side parks that are updated each season.

The other example Kamber gave had to do with cultural institutions (like the BDC) themselves: "The statistic that I love to quote is that [I] added up the budgets of all the arts organizations -- arts and cultural organizations -- in the Bronx, and combined, combined, their budget was like nine million dollars a year... and I just read this ... New York Times article about Lincoln Center, which is rehabbing one concert hall. They’re spending 600 million dollars, to rehab one concert hall in Manhattan. And we get nine million dollars a year for the entire Bronx ... it’s just, the inequalities in terms of spending."

"I think what we really have to focus on is … is opportunities for young people. For teenagers, and young students. I think that really has to be the focus. And there’s a whole array of programs that I won’t go into, but I think that should be the focus. I think that that’s the future. I think that’s something that could affect and keep young people in the Bronx; successful young people." 

Disconnected Borough