(Re)-Education: Everybody Wins
February 10, 2004
“Everybody wins” seems to have become the unofficial motto of Columbia University’s planned expansion into West Harlem. Manhattanville, the story goes, is a wasteland, while Columbia is a world-class institution with a need for space. Students who have questioned this representation have in large part been kept out of the official conversation—written off as ill-informed activists who have romanticized the 1968 student riots and don’t want to graduate without having locked themselves in a building.
In fact, student and community activists challenging the official University line are refusing to romanticize Columbia’s history or avoid the issue of gentrification. Gentrification involves the development of space such that the character of neighborhoods changes; poor and working class people in and around these new developments must contend with changes in price and the neighborhood itself. Let’s agree that gentrification is a complex phenomenon with a number of implications, some of which are welcomed by most members of a given community. But let’s also put on the table that, whatever verbal commitments Columbia makes to historical or community preservation, gentrification is the inevitable consequence of having a rich institution like Columbia in a neighborhood like West Harlem.
We should be realistic and not pretend that we are only talking about the 10 block area of Manhattanville. This plan will affect not only Manhattanville, but the surrounding communities as well. The University has called this the first phase of a 30-year plan, which, if unchallenged, will lead to continued space acquisition, formal and informal. At present, the University is acquiring and seeking to develop property not only in Manhattanville, but also in Washington Heights and around 110th Street. So, instead of romanticizing what gentrification is, let’s be frank about what it’s not.
Gentrification is not the only or inevitable solution to the problems of urban communities. While not unlivable or unused to the extent that some people seem to believe, the Manhattanville area certainly has its problems, among them unemployment, underemployment, and abandoned buildings. But it also has its own community organizations, with strategies for addressing the needs of the area. The proposed expansion has been the subject of lively debate among community residents and activists. Community Board 9 is currently proposing an alternate development plan, the 197-a plan, emphasizing the needs of the community rather than the needs of Columbia University. In short, Columbia may need Manhattanville’s space, but Manhattanville does not need Columbia to speak for it.
Gentrification is not a simple question of neighborhood “improvement.” Even to those who support the expansion, or accept its inevitability, aspects of Columbia’s plan have been troubling. Columbia officials have been reluctant or unable to commit to the preservation of affordable housing on Columbia property, or to the training of local residents for new jobs that will require skills different from those that local residents and displaced workers currently possess. New security measures, including the mounting of surveillance cameras throughout the area, have been the subject of some debate. Columbia’s stated desire to collaborate with community groups has been undermined by a lack of transparency in the planning process—plans have generally been made public in their final stages.
Gentrification is not a numbers game. We cannot look at the before and after figures and say, for example, that expansion will be successful if the net total number of jobs increases. What we are dealing with is not a change in numbers, but a change in lives. The difference between being a self-employed mechanic and being an unskilled employee of Columbia University is not simply a change in income. Institutionalized space is quite different from a familiar neighborhood. There are real people involved in these transactions, and it’s not up to Columbia students or administrators to decide what changes are necessary or desirable in other people’s lives.
Ultimately, the University holds the balance of power in this situation. The power dynamics are not so different from what they were in 1968—a large, rich, white University and a neighborhood that is none of those things. Anyone who thinks that interactions between powerful and powerless entities always result in their mutual benefit should pick up a CC text or a newspaper.
Luckily, we have the power to be vocal, to be skeptical, and to change the terms of the debate by introducing new perspectives. We, as students, can demand transparency, and wonder whether the advantages of expansion are worth the cost. If the University cannot publicly acknowledge the validity of such critiques, it is either naïvely myopic itself, or disingenuously counting on the myopia and naïveté of its student body. I am skeptical of this University’s ability to carry out a project like expansion in a way that does not rely on and perpetuate the existing power imbalances. Unless student and community members continue to insist upon their inclusion, and the public release of information related to the expansion, it will benefit a limited few at the expense of the residents and employees of Manhattanville and the surrounding areas.
