Spaces & Flows: Ninth International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Abstract

“One October” is a documentary directed by Rachel Shuman and Executive Produced by actor Edward Norton. It is a time capsule that offers a window into the shifting heart of New York City. Filmed entirely in October of 2008, a moment when gentrification is rapidly displacing longtime residents, Wall Street is plummeting, and Senator Obama is making his first presidential bid, the story begins with Clay Pigeon, a radio host who takes to the streets of New York to talk to citizens who are facing the uncertainty of change. As part of what he calls a “radio experiment,” this transplanted Iowan roams the streets, from the Brooklyn Bridge to Harlem, bearing a handheld recorder and a kindly probing nature: “How has New York changed?” “When is the last time you’ve had a regular roof over your head?” “Do you love America?” Pigeon’s encounters interweave with observational passages that poignantly reveal urbanist Jane Jacobs’s idea of the “ballet of the good city sidewalk.” Amid these celebrations of daily life, we see the shifting landscape of the city: big-box stores replace mom-and-pop shops, giant glass buildings are erected where flea markets once stood, and luxury condos loom over small brick tenements. Using New York as a case study, “One October” explores the need to conserve the old amid the glorification of the new, affirms that a diverse streetscape is essential to a dynamic metropolis, and begs the question: “How do you love the places you live and save the places you love?”