Page 1

Revitalization: Newark's Tale of Two Cities ...continued

By Navdeep Mathur

It is important to note precisely why "renaissance" is not a term many who live in Newark would use to describe their lived experience here. In spite of the many economic development projects worth billions of dollars in investment that have occurred in Newark since the early 1980s, the structure of new opportunities created has tended to exclude the average Newarker. For example, the 2000 census counted Newark as one of the top 10 racially and economically segregated cities by neighborhood.

In spite of massive reform efforts over a period of decades, the quality of education and schooling has yet to improve by all accounts. Newark continues to have one of the highest rates of infant mortality in the country (13.2 percent), despite a 5 percent fall from 1990, giving it an infant mortality rate more than double that of New Jersey as a whole.

Zero Population Growth's Kids Friendly Cities Report Card ranked Newark as one of the worst cities for children (136th out of 140 cities). In 2001 the Association for Children of New Jersey found that one of every three Newark children live in poverty, at risk of hunger and chronic illness, and each month 123 Newark children under age 19 contract a sexually transmitted disease and over 76 children are admitted to the hospital with asthma. In spite of a nine percent increase in vaccination coverage of 2 year olds from 1996 to 1999, Newark remains among the lowest jurisdictions in vaccination coverage.

Newark's unemployment rate is still almost double the national average at 10.7 percent, and school enrollment is dismal. These statistics find parallels nowhere so much as in Third World countries.

How did Newark get to this state of affairs? In the mid-1800s, Newark was a thriving industrial town that exported its manufactured goods to Southern towns. Its leading industries were the manufacture of carriages, shoes, hats and saddlery hardware, tanning and soap factories, iron and brass foundries and malleable iron foundries. Carriage manufacture made it a significant contributor to the transportation industry.

The factory system resulted in significant increases in Newark's population. As real estate values climbed and housing became scarce, the living conditions of the common folk deteriorated. The laboring poor were huddled together in crowded quarters above factories or were squeezed into the fringes of town. The low lying fringe by the Passaic bay and the Newark bay was malaria infested. This area, first known as down-neck and then as the Ironbound, was home to Newark's poorest immigrant settlers. At this time it was known as the "Nation's Most Unhealthiest City". The city did not enforce even minimal environmental ordinances. The housing that was built was substandard and near polluting industry. There were 10,000 cesspools that caused untold disease, sickness and death.

While the pre-World War II period brought a population boom to the city, unemployment grew rapidly leading up to the depression. Newark had already become the center of the electrical and chemical industries, as well as of the insurance and banking industry. In the early 1920s Newark witnessed a building boom that included skyscraper office buildings, department stores, theaters, and churches which entirely transformed the skyline in a few short years. What is striking about Newark at this period is the optimism of its ruling classes, who pushed economic, civic and social development in the city. This attitude became known as "boosterism."

World War II brought economic recovery to Newark but without the pre-depression optimist and boosterism. Instead, a compulsive pessimism and spirit of renewed retrenchment and civic retreat on the part of the city's business elite tempered the new prosperity. In 1940, the Newark Chamber of Commerce placed a moratorium on all non-defense public works. The Chamber of Commerce restricted private funds to pay for municipal expenditures, and created disincentives for further growth in Newark, only to shift these resources out to the rapidly growing suburbs.

By 1940 the flight to the suburbs of the economically better-off elements of Newark's society was well under way. The suburbs afforded a higher level of services, an economically and racially segregated living environment that was much sought after by the city's elite. They sought to escape the problems of crowding in the cities and the growing population of blacks who came to look for jobs in the factories, as well as other groups such as Catholics and Jews.

The subsequent outward movement of factories and retail from Newark coincided with their relocation in suburban industrial complexes, and separate retail malls. This trend was also seen in the outward movement of the financial industry, as well as a large proportion of the insurance sector. This marked the beginning of "benign" neglect of Newark's increasingly black and brown population, and deepening problems for civic/business groups as well as state and federal agencies.

Zoning for the city was adopted in 1920, yet this regulatory feature had little impact on the housing shortage, conditions and residential planning. Instead, the city responded to the housing shortage by providing tents. City taxes as well as the cost of maintaining government rose tremendously. This response of the city is symptomatic of the dichotomy of the two Newarks, a trend that is still prevalent in Newark today, and one that seems to have been embraced under the James administration judging by the dichotomous approach to development in the last 16 years.

Newark historically allowed polluting industries to coexist in proximity to residential neighborhoods. Leather goods and tanning, paint and varnish manufacturing, and brewing caused enormous pollution problems. Industrial pollution increased in the 20th century due to the complexity and size of chemical plants. The Passaic River eventually made it to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's list of the most endangered waterways in the nation, owing to cancer-causing dioxins produced as a by-product of the pesticide plants which released these wastes directly into the river.

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) also initiated their formal policies of redlining Newark (along with other cities). In 1939, not a single neighborhood was given an A rating. Even supposedly high-class neighborhoods like Weequahic Park, Clinton Hill, Vailsburg and Forest Hill received a B rating. Other attractive neighborhoods like Roseville, Woodside, East Vailsburg received a C rating. The remainder of the city including the Ironbound as well as every black neighborhood was rated as hazardous. FHA commitments in Essex County simply went to the suburbs.

Appraisals made by governmental agencies of Newark's residential neighborhoods also influenced the appraisal decisions of the private banking industry and further caused damage to Newark. This meant that it was impossible to secure ordinary loans for residential properties. In addition, federal tax policies allowing mortgage interest deductions and transportation policies favoring individual automobile use further contributed to the outward movement of population from Newark. To this day, Newark suffers from this past stigmatization. If not for non-profit involvement in new housing and improvement efforts, the amelioration of the past few decades would not have been seen.

Compounding Newark's ills was a long tradition of government incompetence and corruption. Louis Danzig, the long-time director of the Newark Redevelopment and Housing Authority is credited with pushing some of the worst urban renewal programs in history. His stated justification for destroying neighborhoods, including those that were healthy and vibrant, was "modernization." Echoes of this "modernization" mantra can be heard today in the new housing being built described as "moving Newark into the 21st century."

A massive public relations campaign over the last few years has virtually reinvented Newark as a metaphor of urban renewal. This cheerleading discourse of civic boosters in Newark tends to undermine the political importance of discussing its social conditions in the public arena.

One example of this reticence to confront important social issues is the fact that in the face of possible large future investment projects like the Nets/Devils Arena, there may be a huge displacement of population and businesses that do not find explicit accommodation in the economics of market penetration symbolized by the "new tourism business."

Similar displacements in the past have led to increased pressures on social services at the most basic level: public housing and resettlement costs, homelessness and crime, and increased frustration with the political establishment. This was the case with the establishment of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and the land cleared for the Rutgers and New Jersey Institute of Technology complexes. There was no explicit resettlement option that was deliberated as an independent portion of a new zoning or land-use plan or any social impact analysis.

To emphasize the historical context so far, is to specifically state that Newark never had a "heyday." This phantom heyday's reinvention in the rhetoric of "renaissance" attempts to create an altogether new city, leaving indeterminate how Newark will actually accommodate its different cities under the Renaissance City tent.

In the past, the city was judged primarily on the basis of its downtown. There has always been a somewhat bustling downtown with big stores and shops, wealthy merchants, the museum and the library, along with an unbreachable gap between the downtown and the neighborhoods, co-existing with deep resentment and antipathy towards African-Americans and new immigrants.

Large industrialists, city officials, bankers and urban reformers through rhetoric and image building have contrived to maintain an attractive image based on the downtown. However, as a result of the disconnect between the downtown and the neighborhoods, the latter gradually declined with no improvement in housing infrastructure to accommodate new immigrants or provide new jobs. Neighborhood businesses suffered also.

The riots of 1967 were set in a context of extreme social and racial exclusion and oppression, where a decade-long struggle organized by blacks to win representation in, if not control of, the municipal government, board of education, and police among other civic institutions culminated in violence. At the time Newark was also characterized by some of the worst levels of poverty, infant mortality, crime, venereal disease, poor housing, and racial antipathy in the nation.

After the riots neighborhoods decayed, white flight that started with the suburbanization of America in the 1940s quickened, and the gap between the neighborhoods and downtown continued to widen even further. The political economy was characterized by corruption, although the proportion of representation changed to reflect Black and later Hispanic interests. The system of spoils and corruption continued, however, and social mobilization all but died. Government remained isolated from the residents of the city, while creating investment incentives for large downtown office buildings. As a result, non-profit establishment efforts were the vehicle for social development in the neighborhoods, as well as for constructing an alternate discourse of development based on creating social opportunity, development of skills, provision of affordable and decent housing and community empowerment.

In all the current economic development and revitalization policy discourse, the race issue has been conspicuously absent. The language of "revitalization" constructs an urban space upon neglected deeper social cleavages, attempting to garner consensus on a "group-free" basis. The argument is put forward that development will help everybody alike regardless of race or ethnicity.

Similar arguments were put forward when the Newark Central Planning Board released its renewal policies as a Master Plan in 1947. While this plan documented the fast decline of dwellings in Newark, lack of plumbing, electrical wiring, and health and sanitation conditions, city officials showed insensitivity to those problems and went ahead with plans focused on retail, parking and new business development. Since the portion of the population living under these substandard conditions was largely poor and black, this illustrates the argument that Newark had a history of racist policy-making prior to the election of Ken Gibson as Newark's first black mayor in 1970.

The policy history of revitalization in Newark suggests that every major effort to construct new policy solutions ignored black identity formation and allegations of continued discrimination. The discourses surrounding new policies ever since the riots conveniently camouflaged racism in policy development as past policy failures.

The riots that occurred in July 1967 were said to be the culmination of racism, progressive disenfranchisement and the extreme exclusion that followed. Demands for black appointments (and more qualified ones) to the Board of Education, and rethinking the construction site of the University of Medicine (now UMDNJ) were met with rejection. Long-term demands of greater political representation, better living conditions and better health care were only met with plans to improve business opportunities. There was no direct effort to meet any black demands even though the knowledge about the black community's rapidly deteriorating living conditions existed and was discussed behind closed doors at the Chamber of Commerce, municipal government and a little more openly in the media.

The New Community Corporation led by Msgr. William Linder was among a few neighborhood groups that attempted to rebuild lost homes, stores and provide a safe haven for citizens in the aftermath of the riots. It is currently the largest community development non-profit corporation in the United States that is involved in the provision of housing. In addition, it also built schools, provided employment skills training, transportation and retail establishments over the years in Newark.

The repeated effort to keep Newark's "blackness" out of the limelight is indicative of the social attitudes and values that permeated policy-making and civil administration in general. For civic boosters, the perception of Newark's "blackness" and its deprivation were seen as a major obstacle for attraction of new business development. As a consequence, attention was diverted towards Newark's proximity to New York City, its fantastic transportation network, and its rich cultural past.

Revitalization policy-making today follows a very similar trajectory of "positive image-building" and advertising. While Newark's arts infrastructure, transportation facilities, proximity to New York City, and touristic potential are highlighted, there is no mention of actual living conditions in its neighborhoods for mostly working-class and poor black, and now also Hispanic, residents.

The massive investments in the downtown area of the central ward helped to isolate an island in Newark where policy successes could be pointed to. This discourse excludes the deprivation and substandard living conditions, poor quality of schools and decaying neighborhoods where most of Newark's residents live.

In almost every decade in Newark, city government has produced promotional policy texts touting Newark's strengths to outside investors in the hopes of revitalizing it. These policy documents were produced usually by a consulting firm that was specifically hired to assess Newark's assets against its weaknesses, and in addition, either by contract mandate or on their own, have studied residents' perceptions about the development needs and direction of social goals for Newark.

The recommendations that are made attempt to reflect a balance between market-oriented development that will focus solely on infrastructure development, and human development that is conceptualized as existing outside the bounds of market oriented economic development. This human development has been conceptualized as improved quality of schools, health-care, public safety, and job opportunity, enabling upward social mobility, and availability of financial opportunities to local entrepreneurs as a first step in being integrated in market oriented ventures.

However, the city's boosters would select the corporate and business development recommendations for framing their rhetoric about Newark's potential and leave out the recommendations that specifically focused on resident's needs. They claimed that the city would only be able to get the resources for focusing on neighborhood development through the economic benefits that would one day accrue from business development.

The priority was very clear: business development and market integration. There would be no explicit attempt by government to organize residents in order that they could participate in economic development activities that were touted as being for their benefit.

In one example, when UMDNJ was proposed, the city was obsessed with having such a huge infrastructure development event take place in Newark. Mayor Carlin and others boosted this project as the best thing that could lead the way for Newark's future. The promise was held out of providing health-care to all Newark residents, many of whom had little access to health-care. What was unsaid in this booster rhetoric was that about 20,000 people‹families and individuals who lived in the area designated for the medical school campus‹would be displaced from their homes. Most if not all, of these Newark residents were black, and had no role to play in the decision-making that led to the site designation of the medical school.

Large numbers of reports have been produced on Newark's perpetual reinvention and transition. Suffice it to say, community participation is not significant in any of these planning processes. Planning in Newark has always been an elite process and has actively excluded neighborhood residents from meaningful engagement in shaping the future of the city through democratic policymaking processes.

So what is meant by the "disconnect" that Cory Booker claims he will bridge if he becomes Mayor of Newark? The disconnect is not so much physical, between downtown and outlying neighborhoods, but symbolic, of the degree of opportunity for ordinary residents, citizens of a city, versus business interests whose roots are difficult to locate and have a limited stake in an active city citizenry.

Unless there is a significant shift of power to resident groups and organized neighborhood interests, and the city and corporate industry become less of a paternal partner in development and policymaking, not much will change other than the increasing prevalence of decay. The question is, what incentive does a new mayor have to change the status quo that provides benefits to a number of powerful business interests, state and county interests and local economic elites? It goes without saying that James can only continue the current pattern.

It remains to be seen whether anti-James frustration over a deepening economic divide in Newark tips the balance against him and for Booker. Regardless of the outcome of the election, Newark's "Renaissance" in its current pattern is a failure for its residents. It is a pattern of reinvention repeated in every phase in the city's life, promoted only for short term political gain, and for the maintenance of power and economic interests between the state and local level.

Navdeep Mathur is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Public Administration at Rutgers Newark. In 2000 and 2001 he served on the Mayor's Economic Opportunity Task Force, and he is a member of the Newark Master Plan Working Group. Previously, he interned at the Newark Economic Development Corporation.