SoiferI VtP Annotation: Reading Places

Eminent domain played a big role in establishing this place, particularly as it is situated within the history of Columbia University’s previous expansions. In regard to the Expansion itself as it has started up and running in one of the new buildings, it is meant to contribute to the knowledge economy (hard sciences with a particular focus on neurobiology) and the arts, both of which will benefit primarily students and faculty. Local supermarkets, restaurants, bars, and stores have been replaced with more expensive alternatives. Interviews with construction workers are displayed on the Expansion’s website, but what will come of their jobs after construction is finished is left to be explained. What place does “home” and “placeness” have in these systems and power structures?Eminent domain is a major factor that undergirds late industrialism in this place: by taking the power of the law into their own hands, with the assistance of the state of New York, Columbia asserted its right to expand into Manhattanville for “public purposes,” even as a private institution. Columbia benefits from a wave of “innovation” and “knowledge economy,” playing into the city’s push to join others in the race to the next economic breakthroughs. The innovation economy is regarded as the next logical step (for making a lot of money), and anything outside the purview of the “proper” sciences and arts is relegated to the margins. Via the strengthening of security, including a large number of cameras set up around the Expansion, the mass police raid at Grant and Manhattanville Houses, and generally increased number of security personnel in the area surrounding Columbia and the Houses, Columbia’s use of eminent domain and pursuit of the knowledge economy are fortified. By inexplicitly (and explicitly) policing West Harlem, Columbia establishes itself as a hegemonic figure of sorts in control of the neighborhood’s mechanisms.