Author: Sandy Mui

Sandy Mui is a Journalism and Media Studies major at Brooklyn College. She got her start in journalism by covering NBA basketball for two campus newspapers: Brooklyn College’s The Excelsior (where she is now Web Manager) and Macaulay Honors College’s The Macaulay Messenger (where she is now Co-Editor-in-Chief). Sandy is best known for her coverage of the Brooklyn Nets for various online publications, including: Nothin’ But Nets, The Brooklyn Game and Brook-Lin.com. Her endeavor in journalism has expanded to the industry as a whole, and she is most interested in examining how social media is used for journalistic purposes.
Posted on

Community Action in Bensonhurst

Though not directly related, the reading “From Protest to Community Plan” by Tom Angotti reminds me of the residents of Bensonhurst taking action against a garbage station that was going to be built in Southwest Brooklyn, near Shore Parkway and Bay 41st Street. Here is the petition on Change.org that calls for the NYC Department of Sanitation to “Dump the Dump” (this phrase was popularly used during community rallies).

Although residents aren’t being displaced if this garbage station was to be installed, my mind immediately went to rallies condemning the garbage station as I pored over Angotti’s work. This was an issue that affected my community (Bensonhurst), as well as other surrounding neighborhoods (Bath Beach, Gravesend, Seagate, Coney Island, Brighton Beach, Sheepshead Bay, Bergen Beach, Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Mill Basin, Gerritsen Beach, Canarsie, Manhattan Beach). It shows the kind of issue that can bring a whole community together to stand up against. And perhaps like much of community action that voices disapproval against city planning, the rallies in Bensonhurst fell on deaf ears. Construction of the Southwest Brooklyn Marine Transfer Station began in 2014 and unsurprisingly, was stalled after asbestos were found at the transfer station. In the original petition that argued against the construction of the dump, it stated:

“If built, this garbage station will cause serious public health, environmental, and safety concerns for neighborhoods throughout southern Brooklyn and all along the waterways of New York City and adjacent states.”

How ironic that something involving environmental and safety concerns would be the thing that stalled the transfer station’s construction?

Posted on

Gentrification in Williamsburg

Since some of this week’s readings talk about Williamsburg, I decided to choose an article about that neighborhood as well.

AM New York published an article last May discussing a report from NYU’s Furman Center that shows Williamsburg leads NYC in gentrification. The report showed that Williamsburg had a 78.7 percent surge in average rents between 1990 and 2014, while citywide, average rents had only increased by 22.1 percent in the same timeframe. Ivan Pereira also points out that “this isn’t new news,” but just looking at the numbers is astounding. Similarly in sports writing, you can gauge change by consistently watching game after game, but statistics can back up your claims of how and why a certain team or player has improved or regressed.

I’m really not all too familiar with Williamsburg, aside from the fact that the neighborhood is used as a running joke for “hipster town,” or just as the most heavily gentrified neighborhood in general. For the most part, I think of Williamsburg as an odd food haven, simply because I see Facebook videos and Instagram photos all the time of delicious-looking food at restaurants in Williamsburg. Of course, the fact they’re in Williamsburg already means I won’t be going, but it makes me wonder if I’d get more of an “Eeeeats” vibe from Williamsburg (similar to Greenwich Village), or if I’d get more of a “foreign land” kind of vibe (like where am I even?).

If Williamsburg is anything like Bushwick, I’d probably get more of a “foreign land” vibe. For some reason, I pair neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Bushwick together. I suppose it’s because they’re both on the L line and I would hate if I had to go to either one, plus they’re two common neighborhoods people refer to as gentrified ones.

I have actually been to Bushwick once. Never. Again. I had the absolutely worst hipster macchiato (or cappuccino or something, I can’t recall) for $3 or $4, and it wasn’t even lukewarm. Well, I can already tell things in Williamsburg are overpriced, so on top of hipsters and commute time, these are the reasons you’ll never find me there.

Posted on

Does Gentrification Actually Help the Poor?

Since this week’s readings are centered around possible positive outcomes of gentrification, I thought I’d look for an article that focuses on that as well.

A Business Insider article states that there is little evidence that actually points to gentrification being responsible for displacing the poor and minorities. It also talks about how gentrifiers make life better since “they put pressure on schools, the police and the city to improve.” Here’s my favorite line towards the end: “However annoying they may be, hipsters help the poor.”

We’ve talked about it in class through Alexis’ demos of Social Explorer, but there’s no single statistic that can measure the impact of gentrification. There are the more obvious ones–income breakdown and racial demographics for instance–but more factors may be in play that lead to changes in those statistics. This is why people can argue that there is little to no evidence that indicates gentrification is detrimental to low income citizens and minorities. It’s difficult to claim that gentrification is the sole source of displacing these groups of people.

Additionally, after a conversation with a group of people yesterday, the “positive” results of gentrification may end up overshadowing the negative effects of people getting displaced. One acquaintance who lives in Long Island said he doesn’t want to hear anymore about people saying that gentrification is a bad thing, because it’s brought all these Starbucks to his neighborhood and helped reform in his community (and thus, less crime). “And what’s so bad about that?” There were two other people in the group who immediately chimed in, “hello, people lose their homes?” In this case, I could see for myself that this was an attitude of, “if it (gentrification) doesn’t directly affect me in a negative way, then it’s a good thing.”

Source: Economist, The. “Gentrification Is Good for the Poor.” Business Insider. Business Insider, 21 Feb. 2015. Web. 22 Mar. 2017.