Crisply renovated tenements and a gleaming three-year-old police precinct speak to the neighborhood's striking transformation in the last decade, as community redevelopment dollars have replaced vacant lots with vital resources. The school looms next to them as an ugly reminder of the not-so-distant past, when drug gangs roamed the neighborhood, taking over entire buildings. The gangs didn't care that P.S. 90 was chock-full of asbestos. According to local lore, they used the school's basement to dump dead bodies.
But to Phil Thompson, a political science professor at Columbia University and an advisor to the Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement (HCCI), a group that has taken on major urban redevelopment projects in this neighborhood, the school looks more promising. In its boarded-up windows and flooded basement, he sees the future of Harlem.
HCCI leaders and Thompson envision P.S. 90 being reconstituted as a technology center for area residents, providing an array of high-tech training and services for residents and businesses desperate for skilled workers. HCCI's president, Rev. Preston Washington, promises nothing less than "the center for the most advanced technological and telecommunications found in any inner city community in the world."
But to hear it from Thompson, P.S. 90 also holds one answer to some of the most vexing problems of our age. Think gridlock. Air and water pollution. Shrinking open space. At the center of it all slouches that creeping monster known as sprawl. In the suburbs, sprawl is no longer merely a quality of life issue; in many communities, it has become public enemy number one. Spurred by rising public disenchantment, a loose coalition of planners, politicians, and activists has coalesced to form a movement calling for "smart growth" as a strategic response.
Smart growth encompasses everything from the promotion of growth boundaries, which prevent suburbs from consuming pasture, to public transportation, denser development and the protection of open space. And it's picking up momentum. In the last year, 37 governors mentioned sprawl in their State of the State addresses, and Vice President Al Gore has made his "Building Livable Communities Initiative" a key issue in his campaign. In 1999, state legislatures introduced about 1,000 land-use reform bills; 200 of them passed. Billions of public and private dollars have been set aside to buy up dwindling forests and farms. And last year, 30 philanthropic foundations--from the Bank of America to the Ford Foundation--came together to help form the Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities, which is looking for ways to make their money more effective. In the eyes of some longtime advocates for controlled development, like Richard Moe, President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, "sprawl is finally getting the attention it deserves."
Upper Manhattan couldn't be more different from the suburban and rural communities struggling with sprawl. Harlem residents live in high-density high-rises and rowhouses. They mostly get around by public transportation, and shop, by and large, in modest storefronts. But though it's not part of the problem, Thompson believes Harlem must be part of the solution.
