Navigating the Sea of Generica: Towards Abolitionist Land Use Activism
August 2022 - May 2023
If you find yourself in Brooklyn, NY, a physical copy of my thesis booklet lives at Interference Archive.
A sea of generica is forming in New York City, as redevelopment prioritizes profit over neighborhood character and resident input. The allure of uniformity makes it easy for developers to replicate cookie-cutter designs, sacrificing the unique identities of communities for financial gain. This predatory land use process allows real estate developers to sculpt neighborhoods into a unified vision of modernity and conformity. The growing chasm between resident priorities and profit motives breeds friction, mistrust, and a pervasive sense of hopelessness.
However, land use activism emerges as a powerful counterforce, offering communities a pathway to reclaim agency and assert collective control over shared land.In this project, I examine two strategies of land use activism in New York City to elucidate the ways that fighting back can take form. I counterpose the two strategies: 1) the racial equity report, recently-passed, city-wide legislation that requires a report on the demographic effects of land use change during a rezoning’s land use review process, and 2) the Land Use Intervention Library, a performance art piece that demonstrated collectivism and autonomy through the ephemeral take-over of a public street end. To deconstruct these examples, I introduce abolition as a guiding framework for activism that encourages configuring new methods for change and collectively taking control of our communities. I uncover the ways that both policy reform and experimental performance art are essential to push forward land use activism. While they work in different realms, they act symbiotically. One day perhaps residents will matter more than that profit. Until that day, abolitionist land use activism will guide us forward.
For my master’s thesis, I designed a 6-inch x 9-inch booklet that combines my written research with photos, collages, and hand-drawn maps. I hand-made 30 booklets of my thesis to distribute to my graduate cohort, interviewees, and friends using the Japanese bookbinding technique, stab binding. I wanted my thesis to incorporate my own embodied labor in its final product. I additionally use my own handwriting as the header font to accentuate the manual process.
