Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

The Rise And Fall Of Airbnb In New York, Nomin J. Ujiyediin

Capstones

The homesharing website Airbnb has been a controversial presence in New York City and New York state for years. This capstone explores the company's political contributions, lobbying and public relations strategies in the city and the state.

A link to the project can be found here: http://nominuj.com/airbnb

Catering Hall Harbors Immigrant Families Through Underground Employment, Kimberly J. Avalos

Capstones

A catering hall in Queens serves as a hub of work for immigrant families and holds a collection of Latin American migration stories and insights into illegal immigration in the United States.

The stories of the catering hall workers—younger and older, longtime residents and new arrivals—reflect the different struggles of immigration across the different generations of immigrants who work there. Their stories also show the common bonds for the different generations and the longstanding dreams of America.

immigrantworkers.kimberlyjavalos.com

Nyc Waterfronts, Pollution And Access, Guglielmo Mattioli

Capstones

This capstone is about the waterfronts of New York and their relation with access and pollution.

The city has come a long way since the 80s in terms of cleaning up open waters, rivers, and creeks. Many new promenades have been open and development spurred along the city shores. Yet too many miles of waterfront are still not accessible to the one most in need.

Jamaica Bay, Newtown Creek, and Flushing Bay are some of the most representative examples of where there is little access to the water and pollution levels are still too high. This capstone, organized in two …

The Latino Population Of New York City, 1990 - 2015, Laird W. Bergad

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

This report is an update to the CLACLS report "The Latino Population of New York City, 1990-2010" issued in November 2011. It uses the most current data from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2015 American Community Survey released in October 2016. The report examines a wide range of social and economic variables tracing how these changed for Latinos in general within the City in comparison to non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, and Asians. It also examines the changes within the five largest Latino nationalities in the City: Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Ecuadorians, and Colombians. There has been a definitive transformation in Latino …

Post-Apartheid Citizenship And The Politics Of Evictions In Inner City Johannesburg, Anthony Johnson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Based in Johannesburg, South Africa, this ethnographic study examines the phenomenon of eviction within the context of the post-apartheid constitutional right to housing and legal protections against evictions. Rather than view evictions as a singular event, evictions are treated as a lived experience intrinsically linked to the historical, political, and economic life of inner city Johannesburg and more broadly South Africa. I address how South Africa’s constitution creates both a platform for housing advocates to contest evictions and also allows property owners to evict tenants. To analyze evictions, I collected data through participant observation, media sources, archives, interviews, and legal …

Losing Values: Illiquidity, Personhood, And The Return Of Authoritarianism In Skopje, Macedonia, Fabio Mattioli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

On May 17, 2015, over 50,000 people took to the streets of Skopje, the capital of the Republic of Macedonia, protesting against Prime Minister Gruevski and his party, the conservative neoliberal Internal Revolutionary Organization of Macedonia (VMRO). After nine years of authoritarian government, it was the first significant demonstration in which the population demanded accountability for Gruevski's despotic system of rule. This dissertation is the story of how Gruevski's system of power was built and why it lasted for so long. I argue that a series of failing financial processes, which included the use of illiquidity, created the material and …

Suburbs In Black And White: Race, Jobs & Poverty In Twentieth-Century Long Island, Tim Keogh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Suburbs in Black and White” examines how economic development shaped African American suburbanization on Long Island, New York from 1920 through 1980. After 1940, the fortunes of Long Island’s growing black population shifted from widespread poverty to upward social mobility, though by the 1960s, a divide emerged between the rising black middle class and black working poor, and distinctly ‘black’ suburbs emerged with problems familiar to postwar inner cities. While urban racial inequality is often framed in terms of housing segregation and the city/suburb divide, census and labor market data reveal that structural economic change across the New York metropolitan …

The Price Of Cosmopolitanism: Globalization, Class Structure, And Language Endangerment In Shanghai, Fang Xu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the last two decades, Shanghai has experienced an unprecedented transformation, as China’s economic globalization and urban expansion have increased rapidly. Looking beyond statistics and architectural spectacles, I examine a seemingly personal choice in Shanghai, speaking Putonghua Mandarin, the official language, or the Shanghai dialect. This study contextualizes the contested urban linguistic space, and illustrates the political, social, and cultural conditions in this China’s globalizing city.

Through archival research, fifty in-depth interviews, two hundred and fifty survey questionnaires, and ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai in the fall and winter of 2013, I document the impact of three sets of state policies …

From Marginality To Mattering: Linguistic Practices, Pedagogies And Diversities At A Community-Serving Senior College, Andrea Springirth, Hannah Göppert

Publications and Research

The cultural diversification of colleges and universities which initially targeted the needs of a specific minoritized group raises questions concerning the inclusion of every individual and the maintenance of the advances which have been made for the original population. This paper provides insight into the challenges and merits at the intersection of linguistic and racial/ethnic diversification within CUNY’s Medgar Evers College. Historically tied to the Black Campus Movement, the college is committed to being an agent of social transformation for the surrounding community. Aiming to understand the perspectives on language and diversity of the key stakeholders at the college, a …

Gifts Among Strangers: The Social Organization Of Freecycle Giving, Sofya Aptekar

Publications and Research

The Freecycle Network, with its millions of members gifting objects to strangers, is a stalwart fixture of the increasingly popular sharing economy. Unlike the wildly profitable Airbnb and Uber, the Freecycle Network prohibits profit-making, or even barter, providing an altruism-based alternative to capitalist markets while keeping tons of garbage out of landfills. Why do millions of people give through Freecycle instead of selling, donating, or throwing away items? Utilizing participant observation of two overlapping Freecycle groups and a survey of their members, I investigate motivations for giving and the social norms that guide it. I find that while members of …

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 …

Development, Security And Displacement: An Ethnographic Case Study Of Rocinha And Other Key Favelas In Rio De Janeiro, Marcos D. Burgos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study highlights the complex and generally overlooked relationship between development, urban space, and security, and does so through a multiyear ethnographic study of Rocinha, Brazil’s largest favela (slum/squatter community).

Since 2007 unprecedented resources have been devoted towards improving Rio de Janeiro’s favelas (slums), mainly in the form of large-scale favela upgrading and security programs. Coinciding with the historic improvement schemes in Rio, and in large part responsible for them, Brazil’s economy experienced one of its most sustain period of growth during the first decade of the twentieth century. For the first time, strong economic growth and a historic decrease …

A Decision Model For Recommending Which Building Occupants Should Move Where During Fire Emergencies, Norman E. Groner

Publications and Research

This paper describes a decision model for managing the movement of building occupants during fire emergencies. Currently available guidance from standard practice, egress modeling, codes and the re-search literature, is too general to provide much help to persons charged with the responsibility of where groups of occupants should be located given a fire scenario. The occupant movement decision model described in the paper uses three basic yes–no questions to divide building occupants into groups during a fire emergency. For any particular group, the decision model recommends one of two basic actions:(1) people remain where they are already located; or, (2) …

Afroreggae And Grupo Cultural Afro Reggae: A Study Of The Early Years, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

The following study of AfroReggae and Grupo Cultural Afro Reggae (GCAR) calls attention to Brazilian presence and community organizing in the field of Hip Hop studies with a long memory framework: placing AfroReggae and GCAR in a long history of Africana resistance through music in Latin America. !990s GCAR group arises when reggae and Hip Hop music had become new global forms of solidarity among urban marginalized youths worldwide, making use of old and new strategies of social healing (Fernandes 2011). A close look at lyrics from the Hip Hop fusion band and the associated nonprofit organization shape the concepts …

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 …