Urban Ecosystems and Edgy Ecologies in Greenwich Village

The Bitter End and its neighborhood

Woody Allen debuted at The Bitter End club in Greenwich Village in November 1962.  He was a big hit � the "most refreshing comic to emerge in many months" pronounced The New York Times.  He told of being kicked out of the Boy Scouts because he tried to rub one stick together to make a fire ("very Zen � but not Boy Scout"), and explained his urban survival strategy of carrying a sword: press the handle and it turns into a cane, "so I can get sympathy".

           

Like Woody Allen's jokes, The Bitter End's neighborhood hasn't changed much since 1962.  Most of it dates from the late 1800s, when it attracted working class immigrants.  A recent report, "South Village Historic District Proposal and Report" by Andrew Dolkart (available here) explains this area's significance:

"The incredible concentration of tenements of every style and configuration � pre-law, old law, new law, Neo-Grec, Italianate, Romanesque Revival, Beaux Arts � is virtually unrivalled in New York, as is the frequency with which precious details such as original storefronts, cornices, and iron work � so often lost over time on tenements � remain intact. The South Village is also tremendously rich in early nineteenth century rowhouses, albeit particularly modest ones. Within its boundaries are more than fifty intact rowhouses in the Federal style (1800-1835), twenty-five in the Greek Revival style (1835-1850), and an additional 150 Federal or Greek Revival houses which have been completely transformed over time for commercial or multi-family use. These houses, combined with the stables, back houses, loft buildings, reform housing, and institutional and ecclesiastical structures created to serve the immigrant communities of the South Village, also define the neighborhood and tell the story of its working-class roots."

But it's a different story across the street.  Here, it's all high-rise housing:

What happened here happened to neighborhoods across New York.  Throughout the mid-twentieth century, enabled by Title I of the Housing Act of 1949, entire neighborhoods were condemned as slums, and replaced with new housing � usually towers in parks.

In 1953 such a plan was proposed for Greenwich Village south of Washington Square Park:

Source: Eggers & Higgins Architects, �Aerial View of Planned Washington Square Redevelopment,� Greenwich Village History, http://gvh.aphdigital.org/items/show/665, Public Record

But this didn't happen.  After a "long, determined and last-ditch fight by both residential and commercial occupants of the existing site to save their properties" (The New York Times, November 19, 1954), a smaller plan was set in motion: clearing three superblocks, replacing them with high-rise housing and buildings for New York University.

Even this would be quite the transformation.  Nevertheless, the man in charge assured everyone that demolition and redevelopment would not change the neighborhood's character:

Sure, Bob.

But the fight continued.  Jane Jacobs and her neighbors went to battle over the plan to extend Fifth Avenue through Washington Square Park, to connect with a widened West Broadway (to be renamed South Fifth Avenue).  And, in a story that has entered the mythology of Jacobs and New York community activism, the plan was cancelled, allowing the park to continue its career as the city's favorite small space:

Friday afternoon in Washington Square Park

(Other aspects of the plan were also modified.  In the mid-1960s a soft real estate market and NYU's housing needs led to a new plan for the southernmost block: three concrete towers designed by James Ingo Freed and I. M. Pei -- the development in the photo above.)

So let's look at what the partial redevelopment of Greenwich Village has given us.  On the west side, an older neighborhood, with diverse buildings and activities.  On the east side, a younger neighborhood, dominated by a single building type and activity -- a planner's dream, as James Scott has said about these exemplars of the technocratic ambition to keep everything in its place.  A messy hodge-podge of urban life, right next to a landscape of purity and focus.

Where else have we seen this contrast?  Out in the woods, of course.  There's an interesting parallel between these two Greenwich Villages and the contrast between an intact and a clear-cut forest:

Source: By Calibas (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Like the redeveloped Greenwich Village, a clear-cut forest will be replanted with a single species growing straight and tall: like a high-rise tower, it's a more economically productive use of the land.

Clear-cut city, clear-cut forest: a fairly obvious parallel.  But the really interesting story here concerns the boundary between these adjoining ecosystems.  Ecologists talk about "edge effects" � how neighboring ecosystems influence each other.  Seeds are carried by wind or birds from the forest into the clear-cut.  If the soil is not too dry or hard, these seeds will take root, and a new forest will begin.  With the right design, adjoining ecosystems can form a partnership, ensuring the health of both.

Edge effects abound along the boundary between old and new that runs through Greenwich Village.  Along much of it the new buildings are little more than blank walls, with little opportunity for transfer:

Blank Wall (obviously)

Elsewhere, however, seeds have traveled across the edge, generating the unexpected, creative outcomes characteristic of edge(y) ecosystems.  On land left over when plans for widening West Broadway were cancelled, there's a community garden, where anything grows.  Nearby, there's a modest line of businesses, breaking up the monolithic character of Washington Square Village:

Like a forest cut in two, with one half left intact and the other clear-cut (the history of forestry science is full of such experiments), Greenwich Village is an interesting experiment in not just the impacts of redevelopment, but what happens after, when relationships develop between the part redeveloped and the part left intact.  An ecological perspective can help us understand these relationships.   (And after all, Jacobs' ecological view of cities, as expressed in The Death and Life of Great American cities and Cities and the Wealth of Nations developed out of her close observations of Greenwich Village.)  One reasonable conclusion is that good design matters a great deal, as it can provide opportunities for creative exchange between urban ecosystems.  So can serendipity.

City planning has come a long way since the days when replacing neighborhoods with towers was seen as the only path to the modern city (goodbye to all that, Le Corbusier).  But there's still lots to learn by watching what happens after the clear-cut, as the urban ecosystem heals itself.