The Debate: Jane Jacobs & Robert Moses On The Developing North Shore

​By Kelly Vilar,
Founder of Staten Island Urban Center & Let’s Rebuild Cromwell Community Coalition

Jane Jacobs said “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because and only when they are created by everybody.”  Her nemesis Robert Moses said “Those who can, build.  Those who can’t, criticize.”   And somewhere in between Jacobs and Moses are the plows of development sweeping across Staten Island’s north shore waterfront as many in the community watch. Some excited and some not so sure.
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Are we as Staten Islanders being ignorant? How many of us know the story of Williamsburg or the tales of Upper Yorkville and the Mason-Dixon line of 96 street?  Or perhaps there are some who are secretly wishing away the grit and soul of the neighborhood so property values go up, thinking this may be the way to better the neighborhood. Heck, we got a shiny new courthouse built to take care of all the bad guys, a luxury hotel for tourists, high end outlet shops for the high end shoppers, and a perfect urban utopia called Urby for the newcomers, but who’s on community patrol for the people that live here now? As the author of Naked City, Sharon Zukin puts it… “The pattern in places like Williamsburg, is dreary and inexorable: Middle-class “pioneers” buy brownstones and row houses. City officials rezone to allow luxury towers, which swell the value of the brownstones. And banks and real estate companies unleash a river of capital, flushing out the people who gave the neighborhoods character.”  Here in Staten Island, it’s called the north shore.

To the outside world, little is known about our loisaida-esque (Spanish slang for lower east side) enclave of a neighborhood, the north shore of Staten Island encompassing St. George, Tompkinsville, New Brighton, Stapleton, with Mariner’s Harbor, Port Richmond and Arlington to the west and Rosebank, and Clifton to the east. And inland there’s also Westerleigh and West Brighton.  It’s a beautiful urban town with a mixture of people from every income level, ethnicity, race and where many languages are spoken: Spanish, Italian, Polish, Russian, Caribbean Dutch, Mandarin, Korean, Patois, Hindi, Albanian, Sri Lankan Tamil or Sinhalese dialects, Liberian Kreyol and other West African pidgin. There is something very different here that the outside world (meaning the other 4 boroughs) don’t know. Because of our diversity and ability to live somewhat harmoniously together in the same neighborhood, we have potential power--potential community power to transfer the development of our neighborhood into something quite unique, not a Williamsburg or Hoboken, but into a very different place called the North Shore of Staten Island.

Yes, this is the very neighborhood where Eric Garner was killed, but we’ll leave that for another article. It is despite that horrific event that I believe we have potential.

The North Shore is where Jacobs would caution us about a number of things to look out for as our oxymoron town develops and deteriorates at the same time. If we as community folk don’t get involved, Jacobs would say there would be the loss of our ability to live here in the future as the goal is always buy low sell high; the loss of the mom and pop businesses as they become replaced. You know, it’s when Jerry’s Diner gets replaced by Starbucks. Jacobs would urge us to fight for the Rebuilding of Cromwell as it was a place of town gathering and had a richer meaning than any artificial utopia. She would urge us to take heed to the preservationists to not erase the landscape fabric of what is meaningful to community life. Jacobs would tell us that community folk no matter what other issues are present in their lives, that even if they have to crawl to be at the table discussing community growth, we must eradicate the notion that Staten Island’s culture is conservative and conforming, and rid ourselves of the idea that government officials are royalty and always know what is right, instead of people that need to be informed..

And Moses, well let’s just say, that unless there are a lot more people to get in the way, excuse me I meant, “who get involved”, is probably looking down on all this monumental waterfront development –the largest this city has seen in years, building of the observation wheel, the hotel, luxury apartments, high end outlet stores, the lovely walking trail and park benches which mimic all that he himself did many years ago and saying “I raise my stein to the builder who can remove ghettos without removing people as I hail the chef who can make omelets without breaking eggs.”

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