The super-gentrification of Park Slope, Brooklyn (original) (raw)
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At the end of the 20 th century, nearly all of the major American cities were under the influence of gentrification -a social, cultural, and economic phenomenon that was reshaping their usually devastated and blighted inner-cores. Nowhere this trend was, and still is, more visible than in New York City, more specifically in Brooklyn, its most populous borough. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how gentrification influenced recent urban development of Brooklyn. In order to describe this process more accurately, I will concentrate myself on two specific neighborhoods that can serve as examples of a classic gentrification and something that can be called a cultural gentrification. These neighborhoods are Park Slope and
Race, Class, and Gentrification in Brooklyn: A View from the Street, Lexington Books. 2016
In this modest volume we are “revisiting” two more and less well known neighborhoods in Brooklyn, New York: Crown Heights/Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, and Greenpoint/Williamsburg. These are complex urban communities in which we have been personally active for almost half a century and about which we have extensively published. On these pages we will describe, discuss and give examples “Then” (1970-80) and “Now” post 2000? of how these increasingly iconic neighborhoods developed over this occasionally tumultuous period, while paying close attention to the persistently contentious issues of race and social class. Since our perspective is taken essentially from the street level as opposed to looking down from the proverbial ivory tower, it will also be necessary to discuss the different approaches we employed in our urban neighborhood researches and analyses. At the time of our initial studies we both were, for want of better words, “community organizers” in reluctantly changing neighborhoods. Therefore we will give special attention as well to the formal and informal organizational strategies local actors used to both resist and promote changes in the composition of their residential communities, or perhaps better phrased controlling who might become their “neighbors.” The image of Brooklyn as a whole, as well as its well-known individual neighborhoods such as Flatbush and Coney Island, has always been a powerful independent force in creating and maintaining its concrete reality. Today, in 2015, Brooklyn by all accounts in the popular media is decidedly an “in” place. It occupies an elevated status as a gem in the crown of a Global City and is fast becoming a popular tourist destination in its own right. By almost every measure the “Borough of churches” has moved far beyond “renaissance” and “revival” to enjoy a hard earned, successfully promoted, chic and hip image that is presented to the rest of the world. As opposed to the “bad old days” in the 1960s and 1970s the major challenges likely to confront local community and political leaders in the Twenty-first Century arise from such “problems” as the rising cost of housing resulting from upscale gentrification by which investors compete for any available development space. A few decades ago the problems were exactly the opposite. No one at that time could have ever imagined a hip travel guide, Lonely Planet, would name Brooklyn as one of the top world destinations for 2007 (Kurtzman 2007).
Identifying, Explaining, and Rethinking Gentrification
2018
This dissertation is composed of three essays. The three essays have different topics, research questions, methods, and conclusions. The first essay focused on how to identify gentrified areas. This dissertation employed census tract data of the urbanized areas within 12 metropolitan statistical areas in the United States of America to identify gentrified census tracts. To discern gentrified census tracts, this dissertation created the Gentrification Index which is composed of Neighborhood Transformation Index and Displacement Index. Among 12,803 total census tracts, 11,690 census tracts (91.31%) have been identified as no gentrification, 843 (6.58%) census tracts have been recognized as somewhat gentrified, and 270 (2.11%) census tracts have been verified as gentrified census tracts. The second essay asked whether or not gentrification process is different depending on the regional context. Therefore, this dissertation hypothesized that the urbanized areas that are in Rustbelt, Leg...
Gentrification: What It Is, Why It Is, and What Can Be Done about It
Geography Compass, 2008
This article outlines the key contemporary debates on gentrification, most of which arise from variations in the process: in interpretations, assessments of displacement, the agents involved and the forms that gentrified cities take. The variations are so extensive that some scholars argue that gentrification has become too broad a concept to retain analytical coherency. Others counter that the logic of gentrification is now so generalised that the concept captures no less than the fundamental state and market-driven 'class remake' of cities throughout the world. The article agrees with the latter position and proposes that gentrification should be considered part of a broader continuum of social and economic geographic change, replacing the useful but outdated stage model but still accommodating the myriad of variations within its underlying logics. Understanding gentrification as a complex but coherent concept highlights the importance of time and place in the viability of progressive policy responses to gentrification's inequitable effects.
Gentrification and Displacement New York City in the 1990s
Journal of the American Planning Association, 2004
Gentrification has been viewed by some as a solution to many of the problems facing older central cities. At che same time, many are wary of the potential for gentrification to displace disadvantaged rcsidcms. To date, however, surprisingly little reliable evidence has been produced about the magnitude of this problem that could guide planners, policymakers, or community-based organizations. The study described in this article attempts to fill this void by examining residential mobility among disadvantaged households in New York City during the l99os. We found that rather than rapid displacement, gentrification was associated with slower residential turnover among these households. In New York City, during the l99os at least, normal succession appears to be responsible for changes in gentrifying neighborhoods. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for planning.
Middle States Geographer, 53: 51-60, 2020
Since the 1960s, academic and journalistic literature on gentrification has proliferated as neighborhoods have experienced residential and commercial upgrading, along with higher property values, escalating rents, and social displacements. Through real-estate investment, renovation, and redevelopment of the building stock, assorted gentrifications have significantly altered the class, race, and ethnicity of such neighborhoods. Historically the phenomenon has waxed and waned along with economic cycles. Still, over time increasingly potent waves of gentrification have transformed cities of the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, including the global South. With the phenomenon's new worldwide reach and variability, some scholars now prefer to use "gentrifications" as plural. Given debates of comparative urbanism regarding gentrifications' diverse meanings and dynamics, this essay retains a national scale. We review seven books published between 2017 and 2019, including several written by geographers and others highly relevant to urban geography, to illustrate recent trends in the study of U.S. gentrifying cities. It is now an opportune juncture to assess the contributions of notable books over the last five years. The works under review raise questions about historical identity and authenticity, real-estate policy, racial displacement, gentrifier ethnography, gender and sexuality, generational conflict, and green gentrification. Such recent innovations suggest that the study of gentrification, nearly seven decades after the term first arose, remains an active research topic in urban geography.
The changing state of gentrification
Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie, 2001
Gentrification has changed in ways that are related to larger economic and political restructuring. Among these changes is the return of heavy state intervention in the process. This paper explores heightened state involvement in gentrification by examining the process in three New York City neighbourhoods: Clinton, Long Island City, and DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). We argue that state intervention has returned for three key reasons. First, continued devolution of federal states has placed even more pressure on local states to actively pursue redevelopment and gentrification as ways of generating tax revenue. Second, the diffusion of gentrification into more remote portions of the urban landscape poses profit risks that are beyond the capacity of individual capitalists to manage. Third, the larger shift towards post–Keynesian governance has unhinged the state from the project of social reproduction and as such, measures to protect the working class are more easily contested.
Fit to Print: Hudson’s Gentrification in the New York Times, 1985-2016
2017
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………78 Article List……………………………………………………………………………………...84 4 the media are important because they often play a role in framing the image of disinvestment to an audience of potential gentrifiers. Many scholars have also cited the business interests of mass media corporations in pushing forward production-based models of gentrification. In their book Urban Fortunes, John R. Logan and Harvey L. Molotch point out that newspapers profit from increasing circulation and ".. . therefore have a direct interest in growth" of subscribers from a class of people able to boost the circulation of and/or advertise in newspapers. 4 Other theorists like David Croteau and William Hoynes argue that the media "tends to reflect the views and interests of those with wealth and power." 5 In her book Branding New York: How a City in Crisis was Sold to the World Miriam Greenberg points out that the media legitimizes dominant groups which in turn impose certain visions of a city onto the public., 6 Japonica Brown-Saracino, and Cesarea Rumpf contend that the media contributes to gentrification by "promoting a vision of a city that appeals to tourists and investors or by disparaging the poor and the spaces in which they live." 7 Gentrification can also be a result of policy shifts. Daniel J. Hammel and Elvin K. Wyly argue that gentrification is now synonymous with housing policy. In their 1999 study of gentrified US cities, the scholars note the importance of housing policies, like Section 8 or voucher programs in the process of gentrification. 8 They find that the construction of these policies can catalyze or stagnate gentrification in a certain area. The media is connected to this
2007
The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. ABSTRACT Bronx buildings appear to face a split possibility for their future: gentrification, as the city housing market continues to tighten; or abandonment, as inflated prices come down and leave owners in the red. This thesis takes stock of the buildings, the players and regulation, and looks at what could happen and what should be happening in order for Bronx communities to build the capacity to plan for the future of the housing stock. In light of the new Bronx environment, the means of preserving and regulating housing stock necessarily look different than before. They demand a more comprehensive approach to regulation that reaches investors as well as physical buildings. They demand a physical monitoring system that doesn't bank on tenants to report or landlords to self-cert...