Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Expanding The Boundaries Of Food Policy: The Turn To Equity In New York City, Nevin Cohen, Rositsa Ilieva

Publications and Research

Policymakers acknowledge that the food system is multidimensional and that social determinants affect diet-related health outcomes, yet cities have emphasized programs and policies narrowly connected to food access and nutritional health. Over the past fifteen years, the boundaries of food governance have expanded to include a wider range of issues and domains not previously considered within the purview of food policy, like labor, housing, and education policies. This paper illustrates the processes by which this shift occurs by presenting the case of New York City, which has broadened its food governance to a larger set of issues, requiring cross-sectoral initiatives …

Snap At The Community Scale: How Neighborhood Characteristics Affect Participation And Food Access, Nevin Cohen

Publications and Research

Cities are spatially diverse, with enclaves of particular demo- graphic groups, clusters of businesses, and pockets of low-income individuals living amid affluence.

This essay presents data from New York City to illustrate the importance of measuring and addressing neighborhood characteristics that affect Sup- plemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation and the purchasing power of SNAP benefits: pockets of “eligible-but-not-enrolled” in- dividuals, proximity between SNAP participants and jobs, and variations in food prices across neighborhoods.

It concludes with 5 exam- ples of how addressing these community-scale issues can increase SNAP participation and food access.

The Housing Crisis And The Rise Of The Real Estate State, Samuel Stein

Publications and Research

This article — an excerpt from my book, Capital City, with elaborations on a number of key points — argues that the housing crises endemic to contemporary capitalism must be understood as a result of the concentration of global capital into real estate and the the re-orientation of state planning capacities around the demands of the real estate industry. The first half of the article explains the dimensions of the crisis in the US and the rise of "the real estate state." The second half explores policy alternatives to contemporary urban neoliberalism and the kinds of movements necessary to …

Food Justice In The Trump Age: Priorities For Urban Food Advocates, Nevin Cohen, Janet Poppendieck, Nicholas Freudenberg

Publications and Research

Every constituency – regardless of political ideology – must analyze the effects of the election of Republican majorities in Congress and Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. This is particularly true for advocates involved in eliminating food insecurity and hunger, fighting malnutrition and health inequality, and ensuring sustainable and fair urban food systems with high quality jobs. Anticipating the new administration’s efforts that may undermine food justice enables advocates, researchers, and policy makers to choose priorities and forge strategic partnerships.

Eating In East Harlem: An Assessment Of Changing Foodscapes In Community District 11, 2000-2015, Cuny Urban Food Policy Institute At The Cuny School Of Public Health And Health Policy, Nicholas Freudenberg, Melissa Fuster, Diana Johnson, Marissa Sheldon, Michele Silver, Apoorva Srivastava, Janet Poppendieck, Ashley Rafalow, Nevin Cohen

Publications and Research

The report analyzes changes in five domains -- food retail, food insecurity and food benefits, institutional food, food and nutrition education, and diet-related health conditions -- in East Harlem from before the election of Michael Bloomberg through the first two years of the de Blasio Administration. Its goal is to assess the ways in which food environments in East Harlem have improved, stayed the same, or worsened in this 15-year period in order to inform setting food policy goals for the next 5, 10 or 15 years.

Although East Harlem is blessed with a multitude of organizations and individuals dedicated …

The Influence Of Urban Development Dynamics On Community Resilience Practice In New York City After Superstorm Sandy: Experiences From The Lower East Side And The Rockaways, Leigh Graham, Wim Debucquoy, Isabelle Anguelovski

Publications and Research

While (urban) resilience has become an increasingly popular concept, especially in the areas of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA), it is often still used as an abstract metaphor, with much debate centered on definitions, differences in approaches, and epistemological consider- ations. Empirical studies examining how community-based organizations (CBOs) “practice” resilience on the ground and what enables these CBOs to organize and mobilize around resilience are lacking. Moreover, in the growing context of competitive and entrepreneurial urbanism and conflicting priorities about urban (re)development, it is unclear how urban development dynamics influence community- based resilience actions. Through empirical …

Theorizing More Inclusive Cities: A Relational Model Of Boundary Transformation And Urban Research Agenda, Leigh Graham

Publications and Research

To generate more inclusive environments for marginalized urban communities of color demands a strategy that privileges symbolic boundary change and uses it as the inroad towards spatial changes. This paper theorizes a three step relational process of a) communicative democratic activism, b) "multicultural" capital brokers providing access to the policy making process, and c) practices of community building that reflect the role of cities as key sites for sociospatial boundary transformation. An emphasis on discursive and ideational change, relying on communicative democratic processes steeped in historical, comparative analysis opens up our minds towards different classification schemes for stigmatized groups. Participating …

The Geography Of Global Urban Greenhouse Gas Emissions: An Exploratory Analysis, Jochen Albrecht, Peter Marcotullio, Amdrea Sarzynski, Niels Schulz, Jake Garcia

Publications and Research

The purpose of this paper is to describe global urban greenhouse gas emissions by region and sector, examine the distribution of emissions through the urban-to-rural gradient, and identify covariates of emission levels for our baseline year, 2000.We usemultiple existing spatial databases to identify urban extent, greenhouse gas emissions (CO2, N2O, CH4 and SF6) and covariates of emissions in a “top-down” analysis. The results indicate that urban activities are significant sources of total greenhouse gas emissions (36.8 and 48.6 % of total). The urban energy sector accounts for between 41.5 and 66.3 % of total energy emissions. Significant differences exist in …

Advancing The Human Right To Housing In Post-Katrina New Orleans: Discursive Opportunity Structures In Housing And Community Development, Leigh Graham

Publications and Research

In post-Katrina New Orleans, housing and community development (HCD) advocates clashed over the future of public housing. This case study examines the evolution of and limits to a human right to housing frame introduced by one nongovernmental organization (NGO). Ferree’s concept of the discursive opportunity structure and Bourdieu’s social field ground this NGO’s failure to advance a radical economic human rights frame, given its choice of a political inside strategy that opened up for HCD NGOs after Hurricane Katrina. Strategic and ideological differences within the field limited the efficacy of this rights-based frame, which was seen as politically radical and …

Razing Lafitte: Defending Public Housing From A Hostile State, Leigh Graham

Publications and Research

The contentious politics of the demolition of Lafitte public housing in post- Katrina New Orleans and its replacement with mixed-income properties is a telling case of the strategic conflicts housing advocates face in public housing revitalization. It reveals how the qualified outcomes of HOPE VI interact with local institutional and historical circumstances to confound the equity and social justice goals of housing and community development advocates. It shows the limits to public housing revitalization as an urban recovery strategy when hostile government leadership characterizes a region, and the state is recast as an adversary rather than revitalization partner. This case …

Dilemmas In Contemporary Planning And State Of The Practice Of Ppgis, Laxmi Ramasubramanian

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Weaving Color Lines: Race, Ethnicity, And The Work Of Leadership In Social Change Organizations, Sonia Ospina, Celina Su

Publications and Research

For social change organizations working to address intractable social problems throughout the USA, tackling race may not only be unavoidable; it may represent a way to fully engage stakeholders in social change work. We argue that illuminating the relationship between race and leadership can advance our under- standing of how social change leadership happens in practice. We build upon scholarship that emphasizes the ways in which seemingly essentialist, intractable racial categories are actually mutable, and the simultaneous emergence of academic research calling attention to the constructed and collective dimensions of leadership. Using a constructionist lens to analyze narratives from 22 …

Permanently Failing Organizations? Small Business Recovery After September 11, 2001, Leigh Graham

Publications and Research

Small businesses in Lower Manhattan after September 11, 2001, paint a telling portrait of vulnerability after disasters. This qualitative analysis of recovery for small retail and service firms with 50 or fewer employees is based on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and documentary research from September 2001 through 2005. A postdisaster emphasis on place-based assistance to firms conflicted with macro-level redevelopment plans for Lower Manhattan. Small business recovery was impeded as aid programs responded to a new sense of urgency, attachment to place, and prestorm conceptions of the neighborhood at the expense of addressing community-wide economic changes accelerated by the disaster. Ingredients …