Interview · moment 3 of 28
The Bronx, Gentrification, and Urban Planning Failures
from Louis CK | The Tim Dillon Show #317 · #317
3 min
Guest
They discuss how the Bronx has resisted gentrification unlike other NYC boroughs, debate whether brutalist urban housing projects 'failed' depending on the actual goal (packing poor people in cheaply), and connect it to hip-hop emerging from the Bronx's poverty.
- The Bronx has resisted gentrification while every other area—Jersey City, Harlem—has been transformed.
- Tim describes the Bronx as frozen in 1972, with long Oldsmobiles covered in graffiti and men in leather jackets.
- The Bronx represents the clearest failure of urban planning when you examine the massive housing blocks built there.
- Urban planners succeeded at their actual goal: packing as many people as possible into cheap buildings for maximum developer profit.
- Hip-hop emerged from the conditions in the Bronx, something that never could have come from Long Island.
- Hip-hop couldn't have emerged from Levittown Long Island, where Tim grew up.
BronxBrooklynhip-hopMadison Square GardenBarclays Center