Politics of Vacant Land in LES

Yesterday CUP (Center for Urban Pedagogy), led by Damon Rich gave a tour of the area known as SPURA or Seward Park Urban Renewal Area

We viewed Seward Park, the big brown bears of coop housing that line the east river, and the vacant parking lots that hug the South side of Delancey on the east side. How could you forget the wire fences with the tarps draped over them that say "Can you read this? Others can too! Advertise here!" as well as the treacherous moonlike ground cover- a mix of construction leftovers and the unwanted beverage containers from the cars going to Brooklyn on the Williamsburg Bridge. Maybe you've considered throwing something at this area as well when you're riding your bike onto the bridge, jumping the curb of the ridiculously inconvenient median that serves as a ramp up onto the bridge, also known as an obstacle course or death trap. The photo on the left is of a woman (THE WOMAN) who has lived in this neighborhood for 63 years, since she was 20 (I don't have her name because my handwriting got too messy by the last part of our walk). In lavender from head to toe, she passionately defends the LES in all its diversity as well as for its baked goods and its opportunities for working class living. I wonder if her kids know what a nearly extinct breed of revolutionary she is.
We were almost able to go up inside one of the coop buildings, which would have been cool. I had totally misunderstood these buildings, and I offer my apologies. They look like an army of evil bears from my ride on the bridges and from above the island they are so stark and, brown. I didn't realize the concentration of parks and culture that has evolved around and because of them. Of course there are the stories of tenements being leveled and people being displaced by less than generous private companies, but the people we met on the street were happy to show off their affordable NY residences. Yes, the idea of the buildings is frighteningly close to a Le Corbusier insular brutal-box of city with its own commercial, spiritual, health and recreational institutions, but this version worked. They have a strip mall of bakeries and several synagogues and shoe repair stores. It is the real old New York that me and my contemporaries 'missed', but the fact is that I didn't recognize it for the two point something years I have been in NY.
Keeping with the high threshold for acronyms that any government agency maintains, a new and novel one (for me) is what some of the coops have been titled: NORC = Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities. Aka old people are holding tight to their affordable soon to be priceless apartments. And so the neighborhood caters to them. It's quiet. Each coop has a mural in the foyer
by Hugo Gellert of important socialist visionaries (and Einstein). Prices for big apartments seem to be in the half a million dollar range, insanely inexpensive for Manhattan, and the LES seems to be a hotbed for a continued battle for affordable housing while it isn't even a conversation piece in most other parts of Manhattan.
The final moment of the walk'n'talk was standing in the vacant lots on Delancey with no particular destiny. The conclusion for the area seems to be a constant borrowing of space. The LES is a visual battlefield where the dialogue between old and new, wealthy and working has overwhelmed a lot of landscape in proportion to the relatively small island. Luckily they still have a couple ladies in lavender who are old-fashioned-fearless.