ENTANGLED; NATURE, CULTURE, & CLIMATE IN BUSHWICK
Bushwick, New York City, Lenapehoking
By Isabelle Groenewegen
ecology, gentrification, land sovereignty, more-than-human, vacant lots, activation, soil, biomimicry, art
Exploring the indigenous history of Bushwick as a lens to recognise ecological ways of being during rapid urbanization and displacement.
Before colonists arrived at Lenapehoking - land that stretches from Western Connecticut to Eastern Pennsylvania - what is now ‘the concrete jungle’ of New York City was a thriving ecosystem stewarded by the Lenni Lenape.
Zooming in, the area that comprises Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint was the territory of the Canarsie, Munsee-speaking people of this region. The Newtown Creek that straddles Williamsburg and Greenpoint created a wetland that reached the fringes of what is now Bushwick, an anglicization for the dutch heavy woods. People collected oysters and fish from the creek, where they intermingled with waterfowl and deer amongst other species native to the land.(1)
Since the ‘sale’ of this land to the Dutch West India company four hundred years ago, the territory has become unrecognizable. Newtown Creek’s now stagnant water and soil is the site of the nation’s largest underground oil spill. It is an EPA designated Superfund site with multinational companies such as National Grid, Exxon, BP, Phelps Dodge, and Texaco identified as the main parties responsible for it’s toxic reputation.
The same flows that provided nourishment now produce poison due to a legacy of industrial dumping. The stark contrast in ecosystem health reinforces political scientist Elinor Ostrom’s assertion that the tragedy of the commons is a result of exploitation by people with no relationship to the land. (2) A healthy ecosystem is stewarded by its inhabitants.
Despite the unhealthy state of our ecosystems, urban or otherwise, we must reconnect to them if we want to meaningfully address the climate crisis and the environmental and social justice issues it exacerbates. In a recent interview with S.D Smith (Owl), an environmental ambassador of the Ramapo Mountain people, he said that one of the most obvious ways to connect to nature in New York City is through water. Like a sick grandparent, you do not stop caring for contaminated waterways nor stop loving them just because they are polluted. What if we took an indigenous approach, recognizing the flora and fauna that make up the land as our elders, as beings we have a lot to learn from?
While Bushwick was named for its many trees, the community district that became a fertile plane for European settlers to grow tobacco and food has become a concrete food desert. (3) While community gardens such as Bushwick City Farm have sowed seeds for self sufficiency, the neighbourhood has far more ‘vacant’ lots than public green spaces.
While most are private and thus prohibit human activity within their fenced confines, these ‘vacant’ lots are home to living organisms; teeming with flora and fauna. The vines that creep through the fencing and cats that scale them are a reminder that the boundaries of public property are porous.
The thriving ecosystems of ‘vacant’ lots in many ways parallel the self-advocacy of Bushwick residents in the 70s and 80s, who created a community despite the municipal neglect and disinvestment of their neighbourhood. Bushwick is now getting unprecedented attention by real estate developers and young professionals lured in part by the neighborhood’s ‘authenticity’ that is paradoxically being erased. While many ‘vacant’ lots have stayed so for decades, Map PLUTO data provides the zoning codes for each one. Most of Bushwick’s 180 vacant lots are designated as R6, allowing for the development of high-rise luxury condominiums at market-rate, inevitably pricing out the long-term residents that call Bushwick home.
Many building owners create Limited Liability Companies (or LLCS) that anonymise them, thus effacing their local responsibility in a way that recalls how distant multinational corporations polluted Newtown Creek with impunity. Without connection to the land, it becomes an abstract construct rather than a living ecosystem. Unlike long-term community members who see their neighbourhood as home, developers and real estate agents see it as a commodity to sell - or in this case rent - to the highest bidder. Bushwick’s ‘vacant’ lots are at once a metaphor for self-advocacy and community organising as well as harbingers of future development that will not adapt to the existing ecosystem so much as replace the people that make it a community.
These maps, images, and other relevant research will contribute to an ongoing project that approaches urbanization and gentrification through an intersectional lens, acknowledging the entanglement of culture, climate, and economy. This framework will be applied to the activation of ‘vacant’ lots; engaging local youth in the visualization of soil microorganisms by employing citizen science and reverse graffiti techniques.
Reverse graffiti imagery is the public facing element of a stratigraphic approach to learning about Bushwick in socio-cultural, economic, political, and ecological terms by examining the soil of ‘vacant’ lots. Graffiti touches on a complex history of criminalization and gentrification tied to the neighborhood as well as the complex role of art as simultaneously strengthening the socio-cultural fabric of a neighbourhood and threatening to reinvent it for a new demographic of residents.
Soil is a fertile ground to understand the creation of and preservation of communities in ecological terms, as well as touching upon land access, community health, and climate vulnerability.
I have used Felt to prototype a collaborative online map that identifies mutual aid organisations and art galleries that operate in the area to hint at the ties between creative spirit and the gift economy. The intention going forward is for this map to be a community resource that helps make the connections between arts and advocacy more visible and easier to develop and maintain. It contributes to my belief that we are already being ecological when we engage in creative practice and in mutual aid networks. I will continue working towards visualising this connection in an effort to reignite our relationship to the ecosystems that we are part of, whether we recognise it or not.
Citations:
- Newtown Creek Alliance (2022) The history and geography of newtown creek, ArcGIS StoryMaps. Available at: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/4d38389f05a94d5e8bb67ef7e5b03b32 (Accessed: 08 December 2024).
- Ostrom, E. (2015) Governing the commons. Cambridge Univ Press.
- NYC Food Policy (2024) Foodscape: Bushwick, NYC Food Policy Center (Hunter College). Available at: https://www.nycfoodpolicy.org/foodscape-bushwick/ (Accessed: 08 December 2024).