Mapping Sunset Park // 映射日落公园区 // Mapeo de Sunset Park
By: Tina Wang
Tags: NYC, Social Justice, Mapping, Community, Gentrification

A Brief History

As an entry point to the history of Sunset Park, we begin by acknowledging the rich history of the land. Before the violent colonization of this area by the Dutch, it was “mainly marshland drawn and shaped by myriad creeks that ran uphill from the bay and crested at what is now 6th Avenue” (Kaufman, “Neighborhood History”). The Canarsee peoples, a local Lenape tribe, was forced to sell their ancestral lands under threat of attack to the Dutch, and was to “never return to live in the district” again (Henry, “Rarely Told Story”). It is under this knowledge that I continue to pay tribute to those who were and are displaced by colonization, imperialism, and transnational capitalism.

The first major wave of immigration to this area was a result of the potato famine in Ireland in the mid-1800s, followed by mass immigration from Poland and Norway, and smaller numbers of Finnish and Italian immigrants around the turn of the 20th century (Kaufman). The Great Depression and the end of the World War II left an economic vacuum as jobs decreased, and the construction of the Gowanus Expressway along 3rd Ave. cut through the core of the neighborhood.

As white flight occurred due to these economic changes, Puerto Rican migrants began settling in Sunset Park in large numbers, mostly along the Western end of the neighborhood. In the 1990s, there was a dramatic increase in the Chinese population around 8th Avenue in the east, due to easy access to Manhattan’s Chinatown through the N train, where rents were steadily rising, and an influx of Mandarin-speaking Fujianese populations. Today, Sunset Park is truly a multiracial neighborhood, with a pan-Latine community (people from Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Mexico, and others), a Chinese community, and even a smaller Arab-American and Muslim community (Berger, “History of Sunset Park”).

The waterfront area, formerly called Bush Terminal, was the economic center of what is now Sunset Park. It was deindustrialized due to a shift to a service-based economy. Sites of industry were replaced by garment factories displaced from Manhattan due to low rent and “cheap domestic labor in the form of risk-taking entrepreneurs and exploited workers”, which re-industrialized Sunset Park in the 1980s, aligning with an influx of Asians into the area. Many Asians and Latines in the neighborhood were employed in the garment industry: over 10,000 workers in 348 shops in 2001 (Hum, “Mapping Global Production”).

Tarry Hum introduced a “carrot and stick” analogy in relation to the Sunset Park garment industry — where vulnerable small business manufacturers felt the effects of policing and investigations into “sweatshop” conditions but did not receive the carrot, which are actual benefits and resources that would have helped improve labor conditions. Only “legitimate” and established firms received formal assistance, while informal and cheap labor were continuing to be exploited (“Mapping Global Production”).

Sunset Park also experienced a lack of resources to support sustainable development. The waterfront area in recent years became an “overburdened site of environmental pollution and toxic facilities” and effects of global warming, where many areas near the waterfront are considered high-risk for flooding. It has also “been scarred by highway construction” of the Gowanus Expressway, where cars driving past will dump carcinogens into the air, and “served as a dumping ground for a meatpacking plant, waste transfer stations, power plants, a federal prison, and sex shops” (Hum, “Making a Global Immigrant Neighborhood” 14). The result of environmental disaster has become a public health issue as well: studies have shown that many nearby residents have suffered above-average rates of asthma and cancer(Bader, “UPROSE”).

The rise of Industry City as an “urban renewal” project is further evidence that the state and developers do not care to include the community in development initiatives. Rezoning parts of the waterfront to accommodate luxury hotels and real estate initiatives only serve to maximize “income-producing assets rather than protecting and promoting small manufacturing businesses and their workers” (Hum, “Get Ready Sunset Park”). If rents keep increasing, garment manufacturers are at risk of being displaced once more, linking their struggle to that of other low-income communities that are being similarly displaced. Industry City is largely owned by a company called Jamestown, who have perfected the practice of gentrifying neighborhoods, from Chelsea Market and the Milk Building in Manhattan (which used to be in a working-class neighborhood) to the Innovation and Design Building in Boston (located in the now heavily-gentrified Seaport district). This struggle is linked globally as well. Jamestown secured a $403 million loan from Bank of China shortly after acquiring stake in Industry City, tying Chinese investments to the displacement of Asian and Latine residents (“Get Ready Sunset Park”).

The effects of these changes are vast: rising rents, evictions, pollution, public health crises, closing of small business to where there are only around 100 garment firms employing slightly over 1000 people in 2017, roughly 10% of the total people employed less than two decades earlier (“Get Ready Sunset Park”). Looking towards the individual, how are people navigating and responding to these changes? How does it play into the everyday?

Mapping as Politics and the Personal

I am deeply fascinated by the ways that people relate to their surroundings: how does the way they navigate space shape political, cultural, and social identity? How do people map their everyday interactions and lives? These questions are about networks of relationships with people and space, and, in the context of historical change and displacement and globalization, how people rework these relationships. Many “long-time residents have a map in their minds of the places they live in that others lack” (Wang, “The Pleasures of Protest”), meaning places and buildings and routes hold emotional and historical meaning that are lost in larger histories about a place. If “space is the text the body reads by traversing” (Kim 60), what do these texts hold and what stories do they tell?

A definition of map, according to Wikipedia, is that they are a “symbolic depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some space” . What often comes to mind when we think of maps is the idea of “objectivity”: when scientific and official state data is used, it’s accepted as a universal truth. This is because maps assert and reassert power hierarchies — they have been marketed as “official” documents precisely to cement a dominant party’s control over land and people through the drawing and redrawing of borders. Many geographers “go as far to say that cartography produces territory; it does not just describe it (Kim 62). In this way, maps are inherently political, social, cultural, and economic. They are not neutral representations but rather accompany and often justify settler colonial and imperialist violence.

The rise of Internet and digital tools allows for more do-it-yourself mapping opportunities. At the same time, the accessibility of online and mobile software such as Google Maps can further shape the ways that people encounter and think about places. A Slate article published in 2016 noted the Google Maps “areas of interest” feature, an example of remaking visual representation of place to become more consumer-based.

We view maps and the world around us, often in a bird’s eye view, far above an actual place, which “doesn’t consider the humanity of living on the landscape” (Loften and Vaughan-Lee, “Counter Mapping”). Indigenous communities have often led the movement to counter-mapping, as a way to reclaim and “convey a relationship to place grounded in ancestral knowledge and sustained presence on the land” (Loften and Vaughan-Lee). This is because they are the primary victims of maps as colonization tools: the division and redrawing of native lands all over the globe.

“Counter-mapping” exposes these structures of power, and is an alternative form of engaging with colonized land, that is focused on “experiential qualities of space”, rather than the “representation of environmental space” (Kim 73). There is no formal structure or creative process in creating a counter-map — it is highly dependent on personal and collective relationships with a space or landscape. As Jim Enote, a Zuni farmer and A:shiwi activist, notes, “Modern maps don’t have a memory” (Loften and Vaughan-Lee). Counter-maps are bursting with memory.

A similar concept, participatory mapping, is a collective process rooted in self-determination and agency, where community members can participate in a democratic mapping project. This allows mapping to become a collaborative “socially engaged political practice” (Kim 75). In the context of Sunset Park, my intention was to create as close to a participatory map as I could. As a result, something dynamic could come out of the process — where “place remains central to Asian American community building and identity formation” (Hum, “Making a Global Immigrant Neighborhood” 9), and community ties are central to social life, a collective map could be a site of visualizing resilience and history.

There are many critiques to participatory mapping as a practice as well. Many involved in these projects tend to be outsiders to a community, as I am, which may introduce various “problematic relative power positions” (Kim 78) and has the potential to become extractive rather than truly transformative for a community (Juarez and Brown, “Extracting or Empowering?”). Thus, I approached this project with a set of reflective questions to help guide the research process:

What is my positionality/ where do I stand in relation to these issues?

How can I design my research questions and methods in a way that is individual centered but not extractive?

Who will I chose to participate, and how can I be as accessible as possible in that process?

What is the afterlife of this project? How I can use my work to benefit or reach the community? And, what long-term relationships can I start engaging with?

It would be useful, then, to state my entry point into this work. This is a final project for an NYU Gallatin seminar called Asian American Politics. I understand the implications of conducting academic research that attempts to center participants’ stories, and the tendency for this work to become inaccessible to the very community it focuses on. I am also aware of the privilege of being able to attend and afford an extremely expensive university that participates in gentrification of New York City, and of my relative position as an outsider to Sunset Park, a community I have not previously engaged with.

My intentions are to design my research questions in a way that will focus on relationships and spatial navigation:

How do people interact spatially with Sunset Park? What are spaces (not living or working) that they frequent, either now or in the past?

How is gentrification rewriting these spatial connections? How are lives shifting due to these changes?

As for methods of creating a dialogue with residents, I designed questions to be open-ended and easy to translate into Chinese, as I want to be as inclusive as possible with my slightly limited Mandarin abilities. They also focus more on personal feeling, affect, and visceral relations rather than strict observation:

What are places near your community that you love? Why?

Have you noticed change near here? How does that make you feel?

In a general sense, what do you feel when you think of your community/Sunset Park?

In a previous proposal, I had a highly structured form of interaction that I now realize was too restricting and dependent on the nature of dialogue on the ground. So, I revised my methods to only include the following: noting and fighting biases on who to interview, covering as much of the neighborhood as possible (in terms of land area), and making my interactions closer to a dialogue than an interview or interrogation.

This map was created using Genially, as it was convenient to create embeddable interactive content. It resembles a bird’s eye view much like conventional maps: it is simply a rendering of the route I took in navigating this neighborhood, stripped bare of streets and buildings and “recommendations” like on Google Maps. Modern maps are often busy and crowded and heavily curated. This was about my experience alone, and places and people I met along the way.

Due to resource and time constraints, I was not able to conduct a full creative process in participatory mapping as I wish I could have done. I tried my best to center individual stories while also keeping it clear that this project was through my observations as an outsider.

Many people I’ve had conversations with have not noticed much change occurring in their area. It is worth noting that many of these residents lived closer to 8th Avenue, which is a bit removed from the waterfront and Industry City. I wonder, how would have answers changed as I walked closer to those industrial areas? And, as few of the people I spoke with actually interact with Industry City and surrounding areas, how has the gentrification of the waterfront, the construction of the Gowanus Expressway along 3rd Avenue, and the decrease in small manufacturing jobs affected the ways that people interact with the neighborhood as whole? How has the waterfront become viscerally divided from the rest of Sunset Park?

Something I noticed from many of the residents I spoke with is that some people tend to gravitate to and have special relationships to green spaces. This seemed to be true of many others — during my visits to Sunset Park and Leif Ericson Park, among other smaller community spaces, the community spaces were bustling with life. Not only were green spaces a popular area, but it was a site of community and social life. People go to these parks to dance with others, participate in and watch chess matches, have conversations with neighbors and friends, watch children run around together, and even organize grassroots cleanup initiatives. Green spaces are some of the few non-commodified public areas in cities, and as a site of social cohesion, are a necessary part of building and maintaining neighborhood communities.

In the context of Sunset Park’s pollution and environmental concerns, some residents have also expressed dismay at trash buildup and conditions nearby. And, these sentiments have manifested in the form of intergenerational grassroots organizing around environmental and climate justice. Groups like UPROSE (United Puerto Rican Organization of Sunset Park) and POWWA (Protect Our Working Waterfront Alliance) have been working in the areas of climate resilience, public health, and community-centered development for decades. Then, what does it mean for residents to gravitate towards urban parks and green areas as sites of community? And, how will climate change, not only in Sunset Park, but globally, continue to affect the ways people relate to their surroundings?

Continuing to link Sunset Park to global processes, immigration and migration has historically shaped the fabric of Sunset Park. The area’s declining manufacturing sector is intricately linked to the increasing globalization of the garment industry and the exploitative working conditions of workers under capitalism. The influx of overseas capital to Industry City will also continue to fund projects that will further displace residents.

“Socially Engaged Political Practice”

Thinking about the changing landscape of Sunset Park, how will this project serve to be political for the community? I aimed to use more accessible rather than academic language, and to allow this project to live on this platform, so that it’s publicly and conveniently accessible. Publishing articles on Medium also may help this article rise higher on searches on Google (which, in itself, is something fascinating to study — how has the Google algorithm affected the production and spread of knowledge?) I hope that, for people unfamiliar with Sunset Park, this project can be an entry point. And, for residents, I hope that this work does some justice to their narratives and helps re-articulate some of the political consequences of what is happening today.

That being said, the real political change is being conducted on the ground every day. The focus of my work was on spatial practice and change, which Annette Kim calls “both subversive and creative” (61) in the way that residents adapt and resist to change in everyday life. And, when “one actually takes time to observe on the ground, one might find some surprising and revelatory ideas for spatial practices of resistance” (Kim 61). Everyone will have different ways of relating to their environment, whether that’s through direct action or just everyday practice.

These are not neutral or random actions but a constant re-assertion of one’s position within a cultural, social, and political environment.

Contrary to dominant thinking that Asian (among other) immigrants are “apolitical”, radical and grassroots organizing are extremely prevalent in Sunset Park. Here are some groups that conduct valuable work within and for Sunset Park:

UPROSE — “organizing & building intergenerational, indigenous community leadership through advocacy & activism at the intersection of racial & climate justice”

POWWA — “committed to protecting the industrial character of the Sunset Park waterfront to: protect and expand career-track manufacturing jobs, protect working class residents from displacement, and develop for climate resilience”

Occupy Sunset Park — “We are the 99%! ¡Somos el 99%! 我们是99%” “Our local communities are in crisis and we have many legitimate needs. Come to our meetings at Trinity to raise some of these concerns and help us start a local movement to fight for social and economic justice.”

Neighbors Helping Neighbors — “committed to providing the highest quality of service in order to educate and counsel working New Yorkers so they can help themselves; organize people so they can act collectively and help one another; network with other community organizations; and serve as an advocate for and conduit for resources to the communities it serves”

I am appreciative that many people were willing to stop and speak with me. I value the opinions and insights they have given me: many thanks again to Steven, Zhao, Lin, Zhang, Mohammed, Emilssi, Luis, Anthony, and others who have lent their voice and opinions to this project. Thank you to Professor Diane Wong for her wonderful and supportive teaching over the course of this semester, and for encouraging me to continue to nurture my writing and thinking.

Some (greatly simplified and reductive) definitions for unfamiliar terms in this project:

Settler colonialism: the displacement of Indigenous people by non-native settlers who permanently occupy this stolen land, and continue to extract resources from and subjugate Indigenous peoples.

Imperialism: often political, economic, and/or cultural influence and control over another nation.

Gentrification: placing capital over low-income residents; the process of displacing populations to create “urban renewal” and luxury areas on cheap land.

Transnational capital: flow of capital and economy across state and national borders.

Globalization: flow of political, cultural, economic processes around the world.

Works Cited

Bader, Eleanor J. “UPROSE Uplifts Sunset Park.” The Brooklyn Rail, Apr. 2013.

Berger, Joseph. “THE HISTORY OF SUNSET PARK .” The Peopling of New York.

Hum, Tarry. “‘GET READY SUNSET PARK, ‘BROOKLYN’ IS COMING’: THE REAL ESTATE IMPERATIVES OF AN INNOVATION ECOSYSTEM.” Progressive City, July 2017.

Hum, Tarry. “How Eighth Avenue Became Chinese.” Open City, Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Sept. 2014.

Hum, Tarry. Making a Global Immigrant Neighborhood: Brooklyn’s Sunset Park. Temple University Press, 2014.

Hum, Tarry. “Mapping Global Production in New York City’s Garment Industry: The Role of Sunset Park, Brooklyn’s Immigrant Economy.” Economic Development Quarterly, Aug. 2003, pp. 294–309.

Hum, Tarry. “Supercharging the Gentrification of Sunset Park.” Gotham Gazette.

Juarez, Jeffrey A., and Kyle D. Brown. “Extracting or Empowering? A Critique of Participatory Methods for Marginalized Populations.” Landscape Journal, vol. 27, no. 2, 2008, pp. 190–204. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43332448.

Kaufman, Isabel. “Neighborhood History: Sunset Park, Brooklyn.” New Women New Yorkers, May 2017.

Kim, Annette Miae. Sidewalk City: Remapping Public Space in Ho Chi Minh City. University of Chicago Press, 2015.

Loften, Adam, and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee. “Counter Mapping.” Emergence Magazine.

Henry. “The Rarely Told Story of the Real Bay Ridge Natives.” HeyRidge, Aug. 2015.

Wang, Esther. “The Pleasures of Protest: Taking on Gentrification in Chinatown.” Longreads, Aug. 2016.