New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

development

Urban Renewal History Project Seeks Local Records

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Broadway East Project proposed Land Use PlanUrban renewal was one of the most important — and controversial — domestic policies in our nation’s history. Between 1949 and 1974, the federal government spent over $7 billion to revitalize more than 1,200 cities struggling with economic and population decline.

The program’s goal was to provide local leaders with funds to demolish “blighted” areas and thereby to clear large tracts of land for redevelopment. Among the casualties were over 330,000 households, at least 90 square miles of urban cores, countless communities, and much of the nation’s architectural heritage. [Read more…] about Urban Renewal History Project Seeks Local Records

Adirondack Gentrification: Resortification & Urbanization (Part 6)

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Anti-gentrification graffiti in rural WalesRural gentrification has appeared in almost every region, from Big Sky territory to the Rockies to Prairie Country to New England to the American South. Outside the United States, it has been documented in Spain, Turkey, Sweden, New Zealand, France, Canada, Ireland, Japan, Taiwan, and especially Britain.

While the details vary from place to place, most gentrifying rural communities suffer the same consequences: the displacement of the rural working class, the decline of available space for social reproduction, and the aging of the vestigial population. Yet if rural America is united in its symptoms, it is divided by its disease. [Read more…] about Adirondack Gentrification: Resortification & Urbanization (Part 6)

Adirondack Gentrification: Seasonal Development & The Rent Sink (Part 5)

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The Point Lake PlacidIn the spring of 1989, the Adirondack working class received an alarming wake-up call in the unlikely form of Robin Leach. The Adirondacks, according to the garrulous host of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, were a hidden jewel just waiting to be discovered by travelers with a taste for wilderness and the purchasing power to claim a slice of nature-at-its-moneyed-best for their very own. The show had even gone so far as to list the remote and rugged mountains as an “upcoming hot spot for jet-setters” in its “Guide to the World’s Best Places.”

Leach’s prediction had been well borne out by the mid-1990s. “Rough It Like A Rockefeller,” proclaimed one strapline in the travel section of the Wall Street Journal, while an article in Vanity Fair encouraged readers to go “camp hopping in the haute Adirondacks” and Travel and Leisure billed it as a place where “the notion of escape endures.” Such articles, liberally sprinkled with posh photographic layouts depicting the rich at play in tastefully rustic lodges nestled on the shores of gleaming silver lakes, recommended such accommodations as The Point in Lake Placid, where guests could take in the clean mountain air for a mere $1300 a night.

Beemers had been traded for sport utility vehicles, and the Adirondacks, it appeared, had become an exclusive retreat for well-heeled consumers seeking respite from their taxing cosmopolitan lives in the newly fashionable wilderness. [Read more…] about Adirondack Gentrification: Seasonal Development & The Rent Sink (Part 5)

Adirondack Gentrification: Dispossession & Chronic Displacement (Part 2)

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Census Tables From the American Community Survey 2010 & 2019The shortage of children that closed the Raquette Lake School a decade ago was not due to a housing deficit. On the contrary, Raquette was chockablock with housing when the school failed, much of it sitting empty for most of the year.

While Raquette boasts some unusual features – some of its structures are accessible only by lake – it shares this same predicament with most other gentrifying Adirondack places, lake-locked or otherwise: plenty of lodging and nowhere to live.

How can any community with so many vacant dwellings suffer from a housing crisis? [Read more…] about Adirondack Gentrification: Dispossession & Chronic Displacement (Part 2)

The Devil’s Due: Adirondack Gentrification & Environmental Justice (Part 1: Displacement)

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Raquette Lake Rockets 1972“Just close the fucking thing.”

These words of quiet despair were uttered twenty years ago in the aftermath of a meeting at the Raquette Lake School, whose imminent demise was increasingly apparent to the people of the village. The atmosphere at the Tap Room, the unofficial community center where attendees had decamped to face the inevitable over a beer, was raw.

The man who issued the fatal prognosis relished it neither as a parent nor an alumnus. But the writing was on the wall. Pupils had dwindled to single digits, too few for a play or a baseball team, never mind the district budget for utilities, maintenance, transportation and salaries. With no babies on the horizon, the current crop of children would age out, and there would soon be none left to educate. [Read more…] about The Devil’s Due: Adirondack Gentrification & Environmental Justice (Part 1: Displacement)

How New York’s Suburbs Got So Segregated

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Levittown 1948 NYT Why is the population of Massapequa in New York’s Nassau County 98% percent white? Why do almost no Black families live in suburban Levittown, New York? Are we looking at free choices by families or underlying housing patterns that reflect the impact of past and current racist practices?

Newsday exposed racial channeling by Long Island realtors in an investigation that showed how they steered potential home buyers to particular towns based on their race and ethnicity. [Read more…] about How New York’s Suburbs Got So Segregated

Low Carbon Concrete Promotes Sustainable Construction

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low carbon concrete courtesy Ion SimonidesA new policy brief from the Rockefeller Institute of Government examines a policy initiative to promote low-carbon concrete in the Village of Hastings-on-Hudson and highlights the role state and local policy can play in reducing carbon dioxide emissions from concrete. [Read more…] about Low Carbon Concrete Promotes Sustainable Construction

The Environmental Movement That Tamed Adirondacks

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a wild ideaBook purchases made through this link support New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State.

A Wild Idea: How the Environmental Movement Tamed the Adirondacks (Cornell University Press, 2021) by Brad Edmondson shares the story of the difficult birth of the Adirondack Park Agency (APA). [Read more…] about The Environmental Movement That Tamed Adirondacks

36k Acres in the Adirondack Park Faces Development; Advocates Seek Legal Protection

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Salmon Lake stands in the foreground, part of the Whitney tract, with Rock Lake and Little Tupper Lake in the backgroundWhen John Hendrickson, the widow of recently deceased Saratoga civic and philanthropic leader Marylou Whitney, announced last July that the 36,000-acre Whitney Park lands were for sale an alarm was raised by advocates for wild lands concerned the sale would subdivide one of the largest privately held contiguous properties in the Adirondack Park.

Last week, Hendrickson said he will apply to the Adirondack Park Agency to do just that – fragment the tract into eleven estate lots for the uber-wealthy. [Read more…] about 36k Acres in the Adirondack Park Faces Development; Advocates Seek Legal Protection

DEC Announces Changes For Zoar Valley

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zoar valley multiple use and unique area mapNew York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has announced improvements and actions at the Zoar Valley Multiple Use Area (MUA) and Zoar Valley Unique Area in southern Erie and northern Cattaraugus counties. The improvements are designed to promote public safety and enhance the visitor experience at one of Western New York’s most scenic and ecologically diverse natural areas. [Read more…] about DEC Announces Changes For Zoar Valley