How Urban Planning Created Hip-Hop

I know what you’re thinking right, ‘Alex, you is cray!’, and you could be right, but you must also be thinking ‘Hey Maybe planning does have some street cred’. 

This story begins in the most unlikely of places, not the South Bronx Projects but in 1920s Paris. The true godfather of hip-hop monsieur Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known by his street name as Le Corbusier. The first of his grand urban releases was the Ville Contemporaine in 1922, which like many of the early hip-hop artists, caused a great amount of controversy. Now what does he have to do with hip-hop you ask?

During the 1930s as much as 15% of the urban population were living in poverty. The solution in the US? Public Housing Projects or soon to be known as, ‘The projects’ and guess who was the inspiration for the superblocks? Grandmaster Le Corbusier. Word! This urban planning policy led to the creation of large residential towers to house poor working families and migrants.

South Bronx NYC in the 1960s

Fast forward to the South Bronx, New York City where in the late 1960s, the city adopted a social urban policy of concentrating welfare households in the South Bronx. The white flight to the suburbs meant that the majority of these households were poor black African Americans and immigrants. As a result of the Cross Bronx Expressway as many as 60,000 homes were destroyed and many of the neighbourhoods affected are still regarded as deprived areas due to the lowered property values caused by the expressway. Poverty, crime and segregation of the community were major problems for the residents of these projects. Between the late 1970s and early 1980s, New York had reached its bottom. The murder rate was the highest in the western world. Muggings, slashing and robberies had become epidemic.

The dire situations in the Bronx in regards to gang culture, poor housing, lack of government assistance and deprived public schools definitely led to the creation of a cultural environment which left many youth feeling frustrated. These frustrations created a fertile ground for youth, who were looking for an outlet to vent their frustrations by creating a community through acts of rebellion and resistance. This became the perfect setting for the birth of a radical artistic youth culture which is now referred to as hip-hop.

Enter Jamaican born Clive Campbell aka DJ Kool Herc, who would play music on his turntables different to the mainstream music of the uptown discos and radio stations. At a time when the Bee Gees were staying alive and Hot Chocolate was being sexy, Kool Herc was spinning records from the likes of James Brown and Booker T & the MG’s. He and his sister began hosting parties in the recreation room of their building. At these parties, he developed the style that was to become the blueprint for modern day hip-hop music. 

New York’s housing developments have since become some of the most well-known incubators of hip-hop talent in the world. Artists like Jay-Z, Biggie, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Busta Rythmes, Grandmaster Flash, Ghostface Killah, Method Man, all found their voice through their childhood in these projects.

The concept of the environment (built and natural) influencing culture, specifically music, isn’t as farfetched as you might think. The entrepreneur Berry Gordy copied the production system he saw in Detroit’s car manufacturing industry and applied it to music to create the Tamla Motown record label. Interestedly, one of Detroit’s most popular singing groups, the Supremes, spent their youth growing up in the Brewster’s Projects and guess what they looked like.

The influence of the social and built form on the environment on music is not unique to New York; Detroit had Motown, Nashville was a Mecca for country music, Memphis gave rise to ‘Rock and Roll’ and New Orleans had Jazz. Nor is this unique to the US, just look at English pop songs by Lennon, McCartney, Ray Davies, Elton John and Bernie Taupin who have all so poignantly described urban and suburban landscapes from Penny Lane to Strawberry Fields Forever and from Waterloo Sunset to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. 

So let’s (w)rap it up, hip-hop culture was a partial function and product of the large African American and immigrant urban ghettos of New York, created by modernist urban planning ideals and social policy. Along with the introduction and rapid spread of crack cocaine this space provided the forum of exchange and cultural incubator which helped hip-hop culture and music flourish.