Cornell Tech Urban Studies Post Doc Asks If Roosevelt Island Boudaries & Community Resilience In Time Of Coronavirus Crisis May Serve As Example For Future Policy In Preventing, Coping And Managing Spread Of Infectious Disease

NY State Governor Andrew Cuomo hopes that we have learned lessons from the Coronavirus Pandemic and will be able to build a better society because of it.

We are going through hell.

When this is all over, I want people to say, we went through hell but we learned lessons and we built a better society because of it.

— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) April 20, 2020

Sharon Yavo Ayalon. PhD. Architect, Postdoctoral Associate at Cornell Tech begins to raise some interesting issues that may be part of future lessons learned for Roosevelt Island and other urban areas in this excerpt from her article below:

... at a time when urban boundaries are redrawn for numerous reasons, the relative resilience of Roosevelt Island’s local community in this time of crisis may serve as an example for future urban development and policy.

... the definition of clear urban boundaries may prove key to preventing and coping with the spread of infectious diseases, or at least play a role in managing the process of getting ‘back to normal.’ Living on Roosevelt Island reminds me of the capacity of social boundaries to contribute to community resilience....

Here's the full article from Sharon Yavo Avalon:

The Healing Capacity of Urban Boundaries

As I write these lines while working remotely from my 23rd floor apartment on Cornell-Tech’s Roosevelt Island campus, I gaze out at the surreal emptiness of the Queensboro Bridge during the COVID19 outbreak. The cherry blossoms are in full bloom, a handful of go-getters are taking a morning walk on the water promenade, and the tram just left the terminal. Though we live in the most contaminated city in the world in these hectic times, with incessant news reports and risk alerts and constant speculation on social media, it is almost as if nothing has changed. The water barrier remains a wall separating the island from the rest of the city’s stream of infections and horrifying statistics – perhaps not in a medical sense, as we cannot truly be isolated from the virus, but in a social sense, highlighting a different aspect of the capacity of urban boundaries to protect a community. And I wonder: Might these well-defined boundaries offer sort of insight toward demarcating a route of egress from this pandemic?

Boundaries – physical and social alike – constitute a core concept of Urban Studies. Transportation systems and parks can function as physical boundaries, and hierarchies of ‘strong’ versus ‘weak’ communities, and ‘center’ versus ‘margins,’ serve as social boundaries. Defining the boundaries of neighborhoods is a common struggle among urbanists, but one that seems to resolve itself in the case of the unique urban phenomenon of Roosevelt Island: a residential neighborhood with the clearly defined boundaries of an island – physically surrounded by the East River, with Manhattan to the west and Queens to the east. Over the years, Roosevelt Island’s defined boundaries have facilitated and protected its unique characteristics, from its haunted history as a place for the quarantined or ostracized to its current status as a tourist attraction and a neighborhood in which most “real New Yorkers” never set foot. Its physical boundaries, insularity, and marginality have inspired and enabled the preservation of this unique character.

Roosevelt Island’s unique planning history consists of two phases that put “the social” first, followed by the current third phase of the establishment of a high-tech campus guided by economic logic. In its first incarnation, known as Welfare Island, the island was the site of public health institutions such as Renwick Smallpox Hospital, the New York City Lunatic Asylum, a workhouse, an alms-house, and a penitentiary. Through its designation as a place for outcasts, its physical boundaries demarcated a safe place for weak communities such as the mentally and chronically ill. The island’s second phase emerged from the utopian “community development” atmosphere of the 1970s, which facilitated its redevelopment as a mixed-race, mixed-income community. Johnson and Burgee’s master plan (1969) envisioned waterfront development that would provide affordable housing for people of different income levels. Although this plan was never fully realized and despite the later addition of luxury housing, Roosevelt Island has long been considered living proof of the feasibility of socially guided urban planning. The island’s third phase evolved in response to the fiscal crisis of 2008, when it was developed with the aim of strengthening New York City’s economy through tech-driven development. Cornell Tech’s campus, one of five high-tech hubs distributed throughout the city, opened its doors in September 2017. Nonetheless, the past decade has yielded several changes marking the end of Roosevelt Island’s two social phases. The demolition of Goldwater Memorial Hospital, during a period of intense privatization of the health sector, marked the end of the first chapter of urban planning that was focused on the welfare of its citizens. The privatization of affordable buildings and the development of luxury condos marked the end of the second chapter – that of a socially diversified community.

These changes are at the core of my research here. As a scholar of urban studies, I am exploring the current moment in time – when these changes are slowly displacing the social – and trying to define and learn from these processes. Will the financial, economic, and global logics currently leading urban planning traverse the water barrier and flood the island, or will the island’s defined boundaries hold back the rising tide and protect the social once more? And what role will the current pandemic play in these processes?

Whereas the urban changes that my research seeks to explain are tangible, prolonged, and nuanced, the changes of recent weeks – as the world and the city have been engulfed by the pandemic – are clearly defined and overwhelming. Aside from the rumors that have been circulating on the island for the past few days regarding the reopening of Coler Hospital for the treatment of patients infected with Coronavirus, the island’s calm atmosphere has maintained a safe place for the local community. Despite the requirements of social distancing, the island’s slower pace and beautiful scenery gives the feeling of a vacation resort of sorts, with parents spending more time with their children at playgrounds (before their closure by the authorities), booming local social media, a sense of kinship among neighbors, activist entrepreneurship, and more. Certainly, these are neither easy nor pleasant times; but Roosevelt Island’s relatively protected and contained community has provided its residents with a sense of safety and balance. Perhaps the neighborhood’s defined physical and social boundaries can help demarcate a way out of this pandemic.

Hypothetically, let us assume that we can divide the city into clearly defined contained neighborhoods and place these communities under complete isolation for two weeks. Once a neighborhood is determined to be free of the virus (after caring for all who have fallen ill), people can return to normal life within its defined boundaries, and public facilities within the bounded community (local grocery stores, schools and daycare centers, cultural activities, and workplaces) can gradually reopen – of course, with the stipulation that no one may enter or leave its defined boundaries. This is a problematic idea that raises many questions and requires significant further development. However, at a time when urban boundaries are redrawn for numerous reasons, the relative resilience of Roosevelt Island’s local community in this time of crisis may serve as an example for future urban development and policy.

Like firebreaks in forest management and the wide streets in Tokyo’s urban planning, both designed to prevent the spread of fire, the definition of clear urban boundaries may prove key to preventing and coping with the spread of infectious diseases, or at least play a role in managing the process of getting ‘back to normal.’ Living on Roosevelt Island reminds me of the capacity of social boundaries to contribute to community resilience. In an era of globalization, privatization, and the pursuit of economic growth, such an approach reminds us once again to make room for the social.