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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.

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Transportation to Hudson Yards

While looking at articles about Williamsburg and its land market prices for my research project, I came across this article about Hudson Yards and how it will be a “transportation torture center.” Right now, the only train that goes directly to the Hudson Yards is the 7 train and this article discusses why the 7 train simply can’t accommodate all the people going to and from Hudson Yards after everything is built. The author, Lois Weiss, writes that an expected amount of 37,335 people will be leaving at a peak hour in year 2025, but as of right now, only an expected 32,670 commuters can be moved each hour on the 7 train. This does not account for the fact that people will already be on the train and that the station can only hold 25,000 at its peak. It is said that by 2025, 170 new buses will be needed to serve Hudson Yards alone.

I find this article really interesting because, as discussed in class, Hudson Yards is the biggest public-private partnership project that is happening right now, but they managed to overlook how transportation will be affected. Many tourists will be visiting this place, and while it does have a lot of attractive sites and will bring in a lot of business, it will create a lot of congestion in both the area and on the 7 train line. The 7 train is not expected to run without any problems, now or even in the future after all the buildings go up in 2025. In the future, unexpected problems and congestion will further affect how people will view Hudson Yards. Similarly, this reminds me of Williamsburg and when it became popular, the L train definitely became more crowded as people started going there. However, when the L train shuts down in 2019, there will be a necessity of more buses or alternative train travel routes. While it seems like a small problem as we all wait for trains and buses that are not overly crowded so we can actually get on, extra money will have to be put into these areas to accommodate for the heavy masses of people travelling in and out of popular neighborhoods. As for the 170 new buses in Hudson Yards, it may cost around $50 million.

You can find the article here.

Weiss, Lois. “Hudson Yards Will Be A Transportation Torture Chamber.” Bisnow. Bisnow, 27 Mar. 2017. Web. Mar. 2017.

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Gentrification in Crown Heights

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/nyregion/gentrification-in-a-brooklyn-neighborhood-forces-residents-to-move-on.html

This New York Times article deals with gentrification in Crown Heights, more specifically, lower income residents being pushed out by raising rent prices and the many ‘immoral’ ways landlords are doing it. I’m not going to go in-depth about how it relates to class because it’s fairly obvious. Instead, I’m going to talk about my ‘favorite’ lines in the article as I found it so ridiculous.

  1. “Cocktail bars are opening where fried chicken used to be sold from behind bulletproof glass.” — God, I hope that’s just an overstatement because I have no words. And if it is in fact true, IT MAKES NO SENSE compared to the rest of the article as it continues to say many residents did not want to move into other neighborhoods as they thought them unsafe. YOUR FRIED CHICKEN PLACE HAS BULLETPROOF GLASS, HOW MUCH SAFER CAN IT BE?
  2. “The monthly rent on Shirley De Matas’s two-bedroom apartment at 1170 Lincoln Place was $800 in 1999, when she, her husband and their three children moved in. By 2014, it had risen to nearly $1,300” — OMG in 15 years your rent went up $500 dollars. Why do people assume that rent will stay the same way forever? That there is no such thing or inflation or GASP raising prices. And $500 in 15 years is not that much in terms of the forever raising prices in NYC. And $1,300 for a three bedroom — in NYC — deal of a lifetime.
  3. “With a backyard and a car, she has found life in Virginia affordable and pleasant, but “extremely boring,” she said.” — This is in relation to someone who moved out of Brooklyn as it was getting too expensive. I’m just going to leave this here…

 

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“Gentrification and the Nature of Work”

While looking for articles related to gentrification in Williamsburg, I found an article from a former MHC seminar syllabus in my results, and I knew I had to check it out. I also noticed that some of the readings for this week were by the same author, Winnifred Curran. Curran’s article, “Gentrification and the nature of work: exploring the links in Williamsburg, Brooklyn,” is about how gentrification in Williamsburg was/ is causing obsolescence of blue-collar workers and small businesses. She argues that manufacturing is still an important part of Brooklyn’s economy, and that by replacing small businesses/industrial spaces with new residential areas, we are “encouraging industrial displacement” which leads to the break-down of blue-collar work (Curran, Environment and Planning A 2004, volume 36, 1243).

Much like Curran’s article that we read for class, “In Defense of Old Industrial Spaces: Manufacturing, Creativity and Innovation in Williamsburg, Brooklyn,” the article about the “nature of work” highlights the importance of industrial spaces for Williamsburg locals and workers. However, I find that her article about the “nature of work” fits into a more scientific mindset, which fascinates me. At first glance, her paper looks like a science research paper with figures and a methods section. But, as you read the details, you begin to analyze the social issue of gentrification with a scientific mindset as well (which is why I think sociology is super cool). Curran helps to separate the emotional ties to gentrification that some mainstream media outlets have (either pro or against gentrification) from the facts derived from her collected data. By analyzing gentrification in Williamsburg with a sociological and scientific point of view, Curran is able to tell us that gentrification is hurting blue-collar workers and that industrial spaces are still needed in Brooklyn, whether we like it or not.

Curran, Winnifred. “Gentrification and the nature of work: exploring the links in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.” Environment and Planning A 2004, volume 36, pages 1243 – 1258. Click here for the article

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Can tweets shape the city? Seminar 4 Twitter List

Twitter is a great way to see the conversations taking place between city planners, urbanists, and historians! View the list: NYC Urbanism

Curated specifically for Seminar 4, NYC Urbanism shows tweets from over 100 accounts related to New York City, urban planning, policy, and history.

The list includes official city accounts like @NYCPlanning and @NYC_DOT, authors from the course reading list including Brian Tochterman (@btochterman) and Richard Florida (@Richard_Florida), as well as accounts chosen to help with the research project such as digitized archival collections (NYPL Archives) in addition to tweets from accounts related to social science methods, GIS, and mapping like @SocialExplorer, and @pewmethods.