Author: Claudine Guerra

Angotti’s chapters “From Protest to Community Plan” and “Community Planning for the Few” discuss instances in which community members attempted to influence city planning, to various degrees of success. In both Cooper Square and Melrose Commons, activists efficiently mobilized to construct an alternative plan to challenge the area’s master blueprint. Angotti explains that local visionaries have had just as profound of an effect on the city as Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs: “Urban historians have largely overlooked stories of … working-class people throughout the city whose organizing and ideas have left an imprint on the city” (126-127). Zukin concludes The Naked City with a perspective on the search for “authentic” spaces and how this argument is used to shape the city’s landscape.

Continue reading “Yielding Planning to the Masses in Melrose”

In the three works “New-Build Gentrification and the Everyday Displacement of Polish Immigrant Tenants in Greenpoint, Brooklyn” by Filip Stabrowski, “The Right to Stay Put, Revisited: Gentrification and Resistance to Displacement in New York City” by Kathe Newman and Elvin K. Wyly, and “Does Gentrification Harm the Poor?” by Jacob L. Vigdor, Douglas S. Masset, and Alice M. Rivlin, all authors examine the consequences of gentrification upon those of lower-income. Many people visualize gentrification as simply the physical displacement of individuals, families, and communities from their previously-occupied land. However, Stabrowski explains that there are numerous other factors of displacement that contribute to the bigger picture, such as economic, community, and resource displacement (798). By interpreting gentrification as the concept of changing experiences and dynamics of a community, it is easier to digest that it is possible for dislocation to occur whilst remaining on the same property. Conversely, physical dislocation may occur without the feeling of alienation stemming from a shifting neighborhood (Stabrowski). Stabrowski focuses his analysis on the transformation of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, which has rapidly gentrified in recent years.

Continue reading “Greenpoint’s Housing Landscape Before and After Gentrification”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqogaDX48nI]

In Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places, Sharon Zukin explores how Brooklyn became “trendy” as a borough. Whereas the East Village had already experienced gentrification and a thriving arts scene, artists and avant-garde individuals sought a new area to express their creativity. Across the East River, they looked towards Brooklyn as a nesting place for their ideas and expression.

Continue reading “Brooklyn’s Beginnings as a “Gritty” Borough”

In our class’s discussion of visions of our city, we have discussed so far Moses’ perspective of an automobile-centric city and Jacobs’ four important points of a bustling city: a multifunctional district, short blocks, mixed-age and conditioned buildings, and a dense population. However, though we often credit Jacobs for halting Moses’ vision of an overdeveloped city, she did not herself offer a tenable answer on how to approach the potential problems of a growing urban center.

Continue reading “Examining the “Creative Class””