Movement: New York’s Long War to Take Back Its Streets from the Car

New York City has one of the most extensive public transportation systems in the world. Yet—from congestion pricing snafus to debates over how much space to allocate to parking—it can often feel like the car is king when it comes to policy decisions. 

In Movement, Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor to its City Journal, and a regular columnist for the New York Post, goes beyond the mid-20th century ideological battles between Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs and examines the long history of automobiles dictating the conversation around urban planning in New York.  

“Starting a century ago, the automobile changed the world—and helped drive New York City (and other cities) to the brink of irrevocable urban decline,” Gelinas writes in the book’s introduction, setting the tone for the rest of the book as a battle cry of sorts for renewed investment in public transportation and a rethinking of the city’s streetscape. 

Gelinas brings the conversation squarely into the present, arguing that moving away from car dependency is a key to New York’s long-term recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic toll.   

“It’s time to stop blaming Moses, a man who has been dead for more than four decades,” she writes, “and look to our current generation of leaders to give us the city we need.”

Throughout her time at Fordham, senior Olivia Griffin has been passionate about protecting the environment while supporting native communities. Now the Udall Foundation is recognizing her as a future leader in the environmental space. 

Griffin is a recipient of a 2024 Udall Undergraduate Scholarship, a highly competitive award for scholars building impactful careers in environmental protection, tribal public policy, or health care. The tribal public policy and health care tracks are only awarded to Native American and Alaskan Native scholars, while the environmental track that Griffin earned is open to all, meaning the competition is fierce. Out of 341 applicants in the environmental category, she was one of 37 who received the scholarship.

The benefits of the scholarship include $7,000 for academic expenses, connection to a vibrant alumni network, and a four-day orientation in Tucson, Arizona. Griffin especially enjoyed meeting fellow Udall scholars at the orientation this summer and listening to lectures about indigenous ecological knowledge. 

When she learned her application was successful, “I was ecstatic,” Griffin said. The scholarship is just her latest award — she also earned Fordham’s Trinity Financial Fellowship in Urban Studies for 2024. 

Connecting with Native Heritage and Mother Earth

Griffin grew up in Oklahoma City and is a member of the Cherokee Nation. She says she feels a strong link to the environment that stretches all the way back to her ancestors. She recalled a passage from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “Braiding Sweetgrass” that illustrates this connection. 

“It’s a pretty well-known creation story that varies from tribe to tribe of this sky woman falling down to the Earth and all the animals that help her with her landing. She brings these seeds down, and she creates the planet, sort of like a Mother Earth character,” said Griffin. “Tied into Indigenous origin stories is this inherent sustainability and care for the Earth.”

Environmental Advocacy at Fordham and Beyond

Griffin is a member of the Fordham College at Rose Hill Honors Program, pursuing a degree in Urban Studies with a minor in English. She’s also a member of the United Student Government at Rose Hill Sustainability Committee, where she plans events like cleanups and educational seminars and a member of Students for Environmental Action and Justice. 

Griffin has interned with Cherokee Federal, where she helped manage Federal environmental projects. The scholarship is making it possible for her to continue gaining valuable experience in the field alongside her studies. As part of an internship with Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, she’s started working with Bronx community members to study and address brownfield sites, former industrial areas contaminated by pollutants that can pose risks to human health. 

“The scholarship will help to cover my expenses since the nonprofit can’t pay me. That will definitely help compensate some of my work,” she said. 

A Rising Star in Sustainability

After graduation, Griffin plans to work for a few years before pursuing a master’s in urban planning at a school with a focus on indigenous planning and resource management. 

Combining urban planning, environmentalism, and tribal studies makes for a rare specialty, but Griffin hopes other scholars will follow in her path. “I’d like to see how my experiences and knowledge could help the Cherokee Nation, but also in a broader sense,” she said. 

—Alex Williamson

Q.     What inspired Left Bank of the Hudson?

I moved to Jersey City in 2005, and my relocation there in some ways was the genesis for this book. Also, I was working on my urban studies degree and had a strong interest in history. I saw this building being torn down and was perplexed as to why, because it was architecturally interesting and had this industrial aura to it—industrial chic, if you will. In so many cities and neighborhoods, this type of building was being preserved.

Then I happened upon an article in a local publication talking about how there was this artistic community in that building, the 111 1st Street community. Several hundred filmmakers, painters, sculptors, musicians, and artists had cycled through this building, and at one point it was the largest concentration of artists on the East Coast outside of Westbeth in Manhattan. But in 2005, they were evicted, and then they attempted to save the building for its historic value.

Q.     Was the building saved?

No. The building was torn down in 2007. The artists dispersed. Some are still in Jersey City, some are in Brooklyn, some live elsewhere in the country, some—quite a few—moved up to the Hudson River Valley. One artist I talked to quite a bit is the sculptor William Rodwell. He told me when he left, he had to move into a family member’s apartment. After he left 111 1st Street, he was basically couch surfing.

Q:        What happened in the neighborhood?

The neighborhood today is known as the Powerhouse Arts District, which is a misnomer because there are no artists and there’s no visible archeology or signs that there were artists there. It’s primarily high-end real estate. In the 1980s, you had the waterfront and downtown Jersey City becoming a very attractive option to people priced out of New York City and Brooklyn.

This neighborhood shifted with the zoning. I equate the 11-or-12-square-block area to a ship in a bottle, where you had this tiny cluster of preserved 19^th-century, early 20^th-century warehouses that could have been a really interesting piece of the city to preserve. In the book, I strike the comparison to Brooklyn’s DUMBO, which is a collection of warehouse and industrial buildings of roughly the same time period as this area in Jersey City. But New York developers saw the wisdom of preserving them. You go to DUMBO today and it still has its own feel, its textures, its cobblestone streets. There’s a lot of jobs that have migrated there, too.

Q:        Did Jersey City lack planning or lack vision?

I think all of the above. Jersey City in my opinion has a history of bad planning. When this building was being torn down and the area was being built up, the philosophy of the government was ‘any investment is a good investment.’ They chased after the tax dollars. It was build, build, build, instead of thinking, ‘okay it’s good to attract people, but with that comes other expenses and other planning.’

I guess what I’m pointing out is the city’s failings: New park space, transportation, and other needs not being met.

And by the way, the 1st Street property is just a hole in the ground now. They still haven’t done anything; it’s just sitting there. So I’m not sure what the rush was to push the artists out.

Q:        Have things improved?

I think the Jersey City government has not had a real vision of what the city could be, and I approach this 111 building as a microcosm for everything that was going on in the city, whether it be politics, economics, or the demographics, within that 30-year scope. Even with the artists forced out, if the city had followed the stated development plan, it could have been a really interesting piece of the city to preserve and use as an incubator for arts, business, new technology, or new residences.

And as cities become desirable again and there is rapid gentrification, my story is an example of what you don’t want to happen, and of the importance of learning how to manage forces within your community and make sure you have some input in the process.

(Goodwin will present his book along with several 111 artists’ works on Oct. 15 at Jersey City’s 111 1st Street: A Community of Artists.)

An entrepreneur empowers young women and girls through hip-hop

A native of Ohio, Kathleen Adams was excited to attend college in the Bronx, the birthplace of hip-hop, having grown up on the music of female hip-hop artists like Queen Latifah and Lauryn Hill.

But she soon realized that female hip-hop artists were often overlooked. So, in her sophomore year, she decided to do something about it. Teaming up with Lah Tere, then a member of the hip-hop group Rebel Diaz, she organized Momma’s Hip Hop Kitchen, an event showcasing female hip-hop artists—especially women of color—and providing a forum for women’s health issues.

They expected 75 people. Five hundred showed up. “We were shocked,” Adams says. “We kept hearing, ‘Make this an annual thing. Make it a movement.’”

Attendance grew to 1,000 the next year, and the event celebrated its 10th anniversary last March.

“Hip-hop is liberating,” says Adams, who double-majored in women’s studies and urban studies and also earned a master’s degree in urban studies at Fordham. “You’re offering a sense of freedom. I wanted to put a feminist tinge on that.”

Over the years, the event has focused on topics including violence against women, educational inequality, and overcoming obstacles through faith. Adams and Tere are now looking into spinning off Momma’s Hip Hop Kitchen to other cities.

Adams also has a full-time job as a strategic planning manager at the digital marketing firm SapientRazorfish, and is a founding partner at Angel of Harlem, a restaurant in Manhattan. She discovered her entrepreneurial and activist streaks early, starting a dog-walking service at age 10 and, in her teens, successfully lobbying her bosses at a grocery store to let female employees bag groceries so that they, too, could earn tips.

“That was powerful,” she says. “Identify the problem, propose the solution, and implement the solution. That’s Business 101.”

—Mariko Thompson Beck

Read more “20 in Their 20s” profiles.

With this in mind, a new collaboration spanning four schools across Fordham will revitalize the way real estate education is delivered at the University.

“Real estate is one of the largest industries in the city and in the country overall,” said Nestor Davidson, associate dean for academic affairs at the law school and co-director of the Fordham Urban Law Center.

“To be a successful real estate professional today, you have to be able to navigate multiple aspects—marketing, management, finance, law, policy. As a university, we’re well-suited to build that platform.”

Building that very platform is at the heart of FIRE, Davidson said. Its first objective has been to spotlight each school’s approach to substantive and pedagogical questions concerning real estate, and to examine how these approaches might formulate a holistic real estate education.

“This gets into questions of housing, of inequality, of what it means to be a city today,” Davidson said. “As the Jesuit university of New York City, Fordham has always been in the city and of the city… And, as a university, we have an obligation to engage with these questions.”

Second, FIRE has been reaching out to alumni from law, business, and the humanities who work in real estate to serve as resources and mentors for current Fordham students seeking careers in the industry.

The alumni will also benefit from the initiative, said Kevin Mirabile, DPS, clinical assistant professor of finance and business economics at the Gabelli School. Ultimately, the members of FIRE hope to establish executive education opportunities for working professionals.

These opportunities would be cross-disciplinary—much the same as the real estate industry itself.

“Once alumni graduate from their respective schools, the lines get blurred in terms of the actual work they do,” Mirabile said. “Often, a person in this field is called upon to have some legal knowledge, an understanding of urban economy, of accounting, and more.

“There’s a whole universe of people who go on to operate in a field outside of their original academic discipline or who need to manage people across disciplines. We think that’s an audience that would like to come back to Fordham for lifelong learning opportunities,” he said.

FIRE’s goals to offer continuing education and to align the University’s diverse real estate pedagogies are pertinent as the world becomes increasingly urbanized, said Rosemary Wakeman, PhD, director of the urban studies program. Real estate professionals will need to be prepared to grapple with these manifold challenges.

“It’s not just the number of people coming into cities, but what happens to the building and real estate industries under the pressures of housing demands, gentrification, commercial development,” Wakeman said.

“These are not just industry questions. These are also social and cultural questions, and they’re important ones for everyone involved… It’s an industry you have to deal with from a wide variety of lenses.” 

Good evening.

Thank you, Dean Mast, for the kind words. I would also like to thank you, Provost Freedman and Rose McSween for inviting me here tonight for this exciting milestone event for Fordham College.

This year marks the 30th year of my graduation from Fordham College of Arts and Sciences. Since that moment on I have been dabbling, exploring, and toiling in the field of real estate. During my undergraduate studies I had no understanding of the industry, no sense of its deep dimension, and certainly no inkling it could be the most exhilarating, challenging, and rewarding career path for me.

My serendipitous foray into real estate can be traced back to this fine institution and the political science department, where Dr. Bruce Berg suggested I apply for an NYC Urban Fellowship where between undergraduate and graduate work, a group of 20 would be chosen to experiment and experience public service. This highly competitive scholarship program was launched by then Mayor Koch as a recruitment tool to draw young and eager talent into public service before graduates flocked to the private sector.

With a wide, ambitious, and curious lens (compliments of Fordham), I opted for economic development. This is essentially real estate with public purpose. And so began my professional love affair with real estate. It has been in my veins ever since.

Today, this F.I.R.E. initiative is as important to our profession as it is to the school’s students. We are a country of cities, where for the first time ever in the history of the world, more people live in cities than not. The 21st century definition of livable cities is being crafted, honed, debated, and drawn up. In every city across the globe, with every large-scale development plan; every rezoning initiative; every new building design; every new infrastructure undertaking; every new commercial lending program; every bull run and every bear market, the business of real estate is at play.

What makes our field so captivating, so impactful and so meaningful is that real estate thrives at the intersection of so many subject matter experts–to launch a single project, the business will tap into every Zip Code from architects, engineers, planners, lenders, and insurers.

Real estate has critical relevance to both the public and private sectors–forging deeply complex partnerships that have the power to transform and improve the human condition in ways that are concrete, tangible, and impacted.

I think about how fortunate I was, thanks to Dr. Berg, to let real estate find me. I think often about how many young minds would be drawn to the field if they only knew… F.I.R.E.will ignite passion and purpose into the minds and hearts of Fordham students; it will tap into and unleash its formidable alumni base, and finally it will, in the true Jesuit tradition, bring enlightenment and understanding, ensuring that the level of play in our business is held to the highest possible standard.

Thank you again for allowing me to be a part of this exciting moment.

— MaryAnne Gilmartin

Martin, a senior at the School of Professional and Continuing Studies (PCS), grew up in a small town called Thompson’s Station that is about an hour outside of Nashville, Tennessee. She didn’t know anyone from New York, but she dreamed about coming here, she said.

During high school, she took a few sociology classes at a community college that introduced her to urban studies; this inflamed her already substantial interest in city life. At the time none of her high school advisers or friends knew anything about colleges in the North, so she researched on her own where to go to school.

“I grew up with the same people and everyone knew each other, the city was something that I never experienced before,” she said. “I didn’t know anyone past Virginia. I moved to New York on my own.”

She came to New York in 2010 to attend another university and racked up a substantial debt, she said. She then returned to Nashville and worked as a legal assistant during the day and as a waitress during the nights and weekends.

She said that a Fordham alumnus told her to apply here. It didn’t take long before she realized that PCS might be the best place for her to complete her undergraduate degree while working full time.

In the fall of 2014, she took the plunge back into big city life and returned to New York City. She started working at Hachette Book Group and taking night classes at PCS.

Nowadays, Martin volunteers with hospice patients, plays soccer during the warm months, and is on a skee-ball team when it’s cold. She studies—a lot.

“I always knew I wanted to come to New York, but I don’t know why,” she said with a laugh.

She has received two urban studies scholarships from Fordham: the Joseph C. Brennan Scholarship and the Trinity Financial Fellowship, named for Trinity Financial, which alumnus James G. Keefe, FCRH, ‘74, founded.
This month she was inducted into the Beta Rho chapter of Alpha Sigma Lambda, an honors society for evening-school students.

“My goal is to stay in school consistently,” she said. “At first I didn’t know there were any scholarships available to me, but Fordham really came through.”

She expects to graduate with her bachelor’s in 2016 and then take her LSATS to pursue a doctor of laws degree in urban and regional planning. She said that just as she was intrigued with an unfamiliar city, she now finds herself drawn to international urban issues.

“I don’t know what international looks like, but I’m willing to learn,” she said. “I feel that we often apply a Western ideology to solve international urban problems.

“You have to empathize and learn where people are coming from and not simply apply what works in New York to a city in Kenya.”

The team of Inside Out, a project by the artist JR, parked a customized box truck and photo booth on West 60th St. Project volunteers asked anyone walking by if they wanted to have their picture taken inside, for a larger-than-life-photo posting on the wall.

The project, which had been brought to the campus by the University’s Urban Studies program as part of its distinguished visitor series, attracted a medley of characters for their portraits. Residents of nearby buildings, members of the Fordham community, and teens walking from their school on Amsterdam Avenue to the nearby subway station lined up to be photographed. The visitor series is funded through a grant by the firm Podell, Schwartz, Schechter & Banfield, of which Bill Banfield is a 1974 graduate of Fordham College at Rose Hill.

Technical issues forced the team to print the portraits at their SoHo studio (and not in the truck, as planned), leading to a lag during which they were only able to take pictures. But once they began wheat-pasting photos to the wall, the event, which has taken place in cities internationally, began to take shape. The crew hung 28 portraits before rain forced an early closure.

The Inside Out team will return to the Fordham on Monday, March 30 to paste the rest of the approximately 100 portraits that were taken.

Mark Street, assistant professor of visual arts, said he first encountered Inside Out in 2013 when the crew photographed 6,000 people over three weeks in Times Square. He liked the project’s simplicity and accessibility to the public, so he approached the group on behalf of Fordham.

“Photography has always had a home movie, home picture sort of feel. This project takes street photography and makes it personal by taking literally anyone’s photograph and putting it on the wall,” he said.

The fact that the project was open to those outside of the Fordham community was important too, he said, because although Fordham is a private university, it shares a lot of space with the general public.

“The idea of Inside Out is to play with that liminal space of the public and the private a little bit. At its best, this wall will be an amalgam of whoever happens to wander by,” he said.

One random passer-by was Jacqueline Gonzalez, who was walking with her four-year-old daughter Mia back to their apartment. Mia, who proudly showed off her “funny face” for volunteers, had her picture taken; mom was camera shy. She loved the project though.

“It’s really busy around here, and I don’t really stop that much. But now that there’s art here, maybe I’ll stop more often,” she said.

Victoria Monaco, a junior at Fordham College Lincoln Center, found out about the project that morning and came by. She said street art is integral to New York City.

“I very much consider myself a part of the city, so to have my image physically be a part of the city as well, even it is for a short period of time, is really cool,” she said.

Vincent DeCola, SJ, assistant dean of students at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, made sure Fordham administration was represented on the wall. He counts himself a fan of public art, something he said the wall on West 60th St. sorely needed.

“Personally, I don’t like walking down a street with a big cement wall,” he said. “I’ll often go down another block where there are stores or activities.

“Its great to bring some life, and it’s sort of like the face of Fordham.”

—Video by Ninett Rodriguez

Before answering, there’s a catch: The land is heavily polluted and the site is only accessible via a two-lane bridge.

That scenario is one of the challenges facing Hastings-On-Hudson, a village of 8,000 people 20 miles north of New York City.

At 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 14, students from the master’s in urban studies program at Fordham will present ideas for retrofitting the village.

Working from the notion that cities aren’t the only places where the principles of retrofitting—improved connectivity, public amenities, affordable housing options, mixed-use buildings, and congestion easing—can be applied, they will present their findings at the Hastings-On-Hudson Public Library, 7 Maple Ave., Hastings-On-Hudson.

The presentation is the final project for the class “The American Suburb,” which was taught by Roger Panetta, Ph.D., visiting professor of history at Fordham.

The students will address issues of governance, housing, the downtown, transportation, and food and community. Their recommendations will come from a larger collaborative project that entailed a semester’s worth of interviews, document analysis and site visits that can be found here.

For more information, call (415) 533-9665.

Youths from the Bronx will experience hip-hop culture in Berlin as part of a trip organized by a Fordham professor.

Mark Naison, Ph.D., professor of African and African-American studies, and about 10 students from Bronx-based CUNY Prep are in Germany’s largest city this week for the final leg of Bronx-Berlin Connection—a transatlantic hip-hop project.

Hosted by GangwayBeatzBerlin, a music association in which young people experience hip-hop culture on the streets of Berlin, the Bronx-Berlin Connection engages young people from Bronx and Berlin in a year-round cross-cultural exchange program. They use music—particularly, rap and hip-hop—to explore and express the experiences of urban youths globally, the critical challenges they face and the solutions necessary to enact change in their communities.

The project will culminate in a full-length, multi-lingual, cross-cultural rap album to be released later this year.

An online diary by GangwayBeatzBerlin mentioned, “The crew from the hip-hop capitol of the world arrived today,” referring to Naison, Fordham Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) student Kathleen Adams, three CUNY Prep teachers and, of course, the students.

Likewise, Naison is reporting on the experience through the social media. In a Facebook message posted on Saturday, he wrote, “We are having an amazing time in Berlin! We met up with people from GangwayBeatzBerlin, who took us to dinner at a great Turkish restaurant and then took us to a community hip-hop jam in Wedding, an immigrant neighborhood in Berlin, where our kids produced a freestyle cipher. Great chemistry between GangwayBeatz and the CUNY Prep kids.”

A “cipher” occurs when two or more rappers freestyle together in an informal context. But hip-hop is not all Bronx youths have in common with their Berlin counterparts, Naison explained.

“Kids from the Bronx think that their situation is unique. When they get to Berlin, they’ll see lots of kids from immigrant families experiencing similar things—employment struggles, family problems, race issues—and who look at hip-hop as a way to express their feelings about the world they are in,” he said.

Immigrants in Berlin hail from Turkey, the Middle East and various parts of Eastern Europe, said Naison, who previously traveled to Berlin to lecture on the “Multicultural Roots of Bronx Hip-Hop.”

Thanks to GangwayBeatzBerlin, youths from Berlin visited Fordham and the New York City area in November 2008 and again a year later. Many of the young poets and rappers performed at Rose Hill.

“The students for CUNY Prep are going to think they are in the Bronx when they arrive in Berlin. They’ll see ethnic enclaves, graffiti, street food vendors and, of course, hip-hop music,” Naison said before he left.

The trip was subsidized by donations, many which came from Fordham alumni.

“We had an amazing outpouring of support from alumni. Without it, this trip wouldn’t be taking place,” he said.

The CUNY Prep students will perform on Sept. 13 at the United States Embassy in Berlin. They’ll visit and be interviewed at radio stations and a television news crew will be following them as they visit clubs and community centers, Naison said.

GSAS student Kathleen Adams is accompanying the group as a chaperone. A student in the urban studies master’s program, Adams said she hopes to teach youths in Berlin about women in hip-hop, which she researched for her thesis as an urban studies undergraduate at Fordham College at Rose Hill.

—Gina Vergel