1501: The Contested City: Newark and the Struggle for Sustainable Urban Regeneration-Ports and the City
Department of Urban Planning and Design
Studio Option
8 credits
Tuesday 2:00 - 6:00
Thursday 2:00 - 6:00
Instructor(s)
Toni Griffin, Robert Lane
Course Description
The Contested City: Newark and the Struggle for Sustainable Urban Regeneration
Newark City Lab Overview
Middle-class attraction strategies are frequently explored when trying to revive an urban center back to economic health. Investments in market rate housing, mainstream retail and destinations of cultural and civic pride have brought many urban cities back to life. But what about the underclass - their collective voice is often felt to be unheard, their needs unmet and their quality of life unchanged.
With new leadership and an eye towards its future standing in the region, can Newark begin the rebuilding process with an approach that first focuses on uplifting the current resident population to a place of economic and social stability? Can Newark move beyond its race and class tensions in order to allow for a more diverse citizenry and can the political context of the city balance near term priorities with creating long-term stability?
In 2008, Newark is primed to drive the state and region by achieving what Mayor Cory A. Booker has called "a national standard for urban transformation." With vision and strategic planning, Newark will shift forward to a highly visible revival, which is spread equitably across people and place, and positioned so that the city and its neighborhoods will continue to grow and improve. Newark is ready to put behind the "cycle of disinvestment" that has plagued it for much of the past 50 years, to achieve a "cycle of success". The cycle of success relies on achieving three primary goals:
1) NEWARK AS NEW JERSEY'S ECONOMIC POWERHOUSE: If Newark and its residents are to become true economic drivers for the state and region, Newark must increase its employed workforce by 50% in 2025 by increasing the availability of jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities, and doubling its revenue by attracting new regional development and supporting innovation.
2) NEWARK AS A MOSAIC OF HEALTHY NEIGHBORHOODS: If Newark is to serve as an ongoing regional resource and sustainable urban center, the benefits of its revival must be spread justly throughout the neighborhoods of the city.
3) NEWARK AS THE URBAN CENTER OF CHOICE: If Newark is to house the region's population of young adults, immigrants, baby boomers, empty nesters, and elderly individuals, the city must become a truly desirable urban center for both new and current residents.
The Contested City: Newark and the Struggle for Sustainable Urban Regeneration will be a two-year academic effort designed to bring critical research and studio course work to the challenges of planning and development in one of America's most challenging economic, political and social urban centers. The following themes will be addresses in two studios and two seminar courses.
1. Wealth creation: Modern industrial development in an historic
industrial city
2. The ethnic majority, neighborhoods and gentrification
3. Race, class, politics and urban redevelopment
Fall Studio Course Description
The Contested City, Part I
The Ports and the City
Instructors
Toni L. Griffin, Design Critic, Director of Planning & Community Development, City of Newark
Robert Lane, Regional Plan Association, Loeb Fellow '09
Once isolated, air and seaports have become a part of a larger urban system and transportation network in urban centers. This urban morphology requires a deliberate negotiation between the two urban systems: the port and supportive operations (industry and transportation) and the city (housing, commercial open space, small business). New land development policies and spatial strategies are needed to advance economic growth for the city, resident wealth creation and environmentally sustainable neighborhoods. These policies and strategies must consider:
- Reconciling the integration and adjacencies of living and working
spaces
- Accommodating clean, dirty and green industries
- Connecting industry and the immigrant, prisoner, low-killed worker
- Reducing unemployment and increasing the number residents working in
Newark
The Contested City, Part I studio will use site visits; interviews with public officials and community organizations; readings; case studies; demographic, economic and development trend analysis; and spatial analysis, to propose social policy, land use, zoning, urban design, building typologies and real estate strategies for advancing both the Port of Newark and Newark Liberty Airport's competitive position, increase economic growth opportunities for Newark residents and create more sustainable industrial and mixed use neighborhoods.
Newark in Perspective
Newark, New Jersey has been on the brink of "revitalization" for nearly 50 years. A once prosperous industrial city, the combination of suburbanization, federal interventions and civil unrest has left a physical and social infrastructure with little resemblance or connection to Newark's economic position as the largest urban center in the state. In fact, the last half-century has created a generation of residents that are more divided by race, class and education than their grandparents. A persistent and sometimes volatile combination of economic, social, racial and political forces has kept Newark in a cycle of disinvestment and perpetual "rebirth" without yet truly lifting the city and its residents into the modernity of economic health and prosperity.
Imagine a city where XX% of the total population are people of color (XX% immigrants), with 32% of the population living in extreme poverty and 40% of the adult population left out of the workforce. Now picture a region with the largest employment center in the state and region (second to New York City), five centers of higher education, two Olmsted county parks, and an annual untapped local spending power of over $600 billion. Anecdotes of the city's unparalleled regional infrastructure and access to Manhattan have not been enough to overcome its perception of crime, corruption and a downtown filled with dollar stores, suitcase street vendors and groups of unemployed men of color claiming street corners as public gathering space. A one-dimensional and exaggerated image shaped by the civil unrest and racial divisions of the 1960s, has created barriers to essential private investment in New Jersey's largest and most important city.
As Newark sits in the sphere of one of the world's mega-cities, it is more poised than ever to capture the regional growth predicted for the New York Metropolitan area. It is essential that Newark seize this moment in order to enhance the quality of life and well being of its current residents so that they are positioned to participate in the regional economy and revitalization of the city.
Contested Lands: The Port Area and its Challenge
The Port of Newark/Elizabeth and Newark Liberty Airport are global economic drivers that any city would crave, and both are projected to experience phenomenal growth. Unleashing the full potential of these assets, and connecting those benefits to Newark residents, will be a boon for the entire state and the region.
The Port of Newark and Newark Liberty Airport employ over 40,000 jobs to the city. Because airports connect highly skilled people across metropolitan areas, and seaports offer opportunities for lower-skilled workers, the most striking trends in urban development over the past thirty years has been the rise of edge communities built around these international employment centers. However today, only 21% of jobs in Newark are located in port area, yet only 6% of the resident workforce finds work there.
The 5,000-acre area surrounding the air and seaports include large-scale industrial uses, underutilized and obsolete sites and the mixed-use, high-density Ironbound neighborhood. Currently, many physical barriers continue to separate residents from employment and business opportunities and the Port/Airport areas are not operating at their highest capacity. There are also land constraints to developing near the ports that must be overcome including diffused land ownership; too many underutilized parcels /low job-producing uses with many non-port-dependent users; widespread environmental contamination a significant issue for redevelopment; the need for larger footprints to accommodate facilities; and the adjacency of industry and a nearby residential community that was traditionally a mixed-use industrial community that is now populated with immigrants, low skilled workers and spatial crowding.
The Studio Approach
The studio work will examine and develop strategies using the following exercises:
Newark in the Regional Economy
Target growth sectors; Scales of industry; Port operations; City economic development and revitalization priorities
Industry and the Newark Worker
Population demographics and needs assessment; Workforce profiles including immigrant, Low-skilled worker and prisoner re-entry populations
Spatial and Political Models of successful City|Port Intersections
Genoa, Italy; Rotterdam, Netherlands; Lisbon, Portugal; Barcelona, Spain; Oakland, California; Paris, France (new industry models)
Spatial Analysis
Land use and zoning patterns; Historic development patterns; Physical constraints; Waterfront and land-based access (public and private); Opportunity Zones
A New Framework for Growth and Sustainability (city and port relations)
Land use, zoning, development and sustainability controls; Transportation and infrastructure needs; Environmental needs; Industry clusters and districts (industrial innovation zones); Architectural typologies
Student Participation
The studio is open to urban planning and urban design students, but encourages all disciplines to participate in this multi-disciplinary problem of social policy, land use regulation, urban design and development strategy.
Studio Meeting Times
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:00pm - 5:00pm
Two required trips to Newark / New York