I found a video on YouTube about an elderly African American woman, Mrs. Loretta, who shows viewers around her Brooklyn neighborhood of Boerum Hill and discusses how much has changed since she was younger and since gentrification began. She starts by talking about how it used to be in the neighborhood. She says that it was “like a little country” and that everything anyone needed was within a few blocks.
Williamsburg: The Cooler Manhattan
Brooklyn used to be a place for immigrants and factories. Rent was cheap and people lived in neighborhoods with other people like them. At the same time, Manhattan was rapidly changing and becoming more expensive. People from the “creative class” like writers and and artists wanted to find a cheaper place to live, so they moved to Williamsburg. This neighborhood quickly changed to become a place where white, “cultural” people wanted to move to. The industries changed from factories and local shops that were once there to vintage clothing stores, restaurants, bars, and clubs. As the creative class started noticing how “cool” Williamsburg was becoming, they started moving in and rents increased. Private developers and public officials didn’t intervene, allowing for rents to soar, and the people originally living there were forced to leave.
Brooklyn: The Start of Ghetto Tourism
Sharon Zukin in her book the “Naked City” highlights the changes going on through Brooklyn throughout the past century as an immigrant filled melting pot changes it’s identity to a gentrifying and seperated community leading to diverse standards of living and lifestyles for different residents in different districts of Brooklyn. While places like the Brooklyn Yards and Williamsburg have changed from gentrification and have had white upper class settlers move in displaying the African American and working class people to places like Bushwick, gentrification seems to have a firm grip over all people in Brooklyn whether it benefits them or not.
Authentic Brooklyn BBQ?
After reading about Brooklyn in the book “Naked City”, by Sharon Zukin, I thought Twitter would be the best place for this week’s assignment. A quick search of the words “authentic Brooklyn” were exactly what I needed. I happened to stumble upon a slew of tweets (some angry and others funny) in the past two weeks about how “Brooklyn BBQ” is not authentic at all.
Brooklyn’s Beginnings as a “Gritty” Borough
[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”
Documentation of 65 East 125th Street
The notion of race has played a prominent role throughout the housing and fiscal situation in New York City. Sharon Zukin highlights these factors as major playing fields in the shaping of present day Harlem in her novel, “The Naked City: The Life and Death of Authentic Public Places.” She speaks on the unique gentrification that has played in this area. There are the usual displacement of low income families in replacement for upper middle class residents. Race plays a major role in the shaping of Harlem, however, Zukin makes an interesting note to discuss how there is presence of white families displacing African American families, but also the notion that wealthier African America families are also displacing the original lower income residents of Harlem.
Affordable Housing and its Issues in New York
Williamsburg is a site for gentrification. This processes had been accelerated by the Bloomberg administration who, with the City Council, ignored a proposal by Jane Jacobs with the wellness of the current residents of people in mind. Bloomberg ignored Jacobs’s suggestions to not destroy manufacturing jobs or to not create housing in the area that current residents could afford. The City Council created waterfront and luxury housing in large buildings which replaced factories and warehouses (Zukin 59). By doing this the area gentrified: real estate upscaled and rents increased which displaced residents. The process of gentrification is not always catalyzed by city officials. It is a natural process caused by the socio-economic system with many positive and negative effects. To counteract the negative effect of displacement, New York has received federal funding to create public and affordable housing. In doing so, poor and current residents of gentrifiable neighborhoods stand a chance to keep their rents low. To incentivise the building of affordable housing, tax subsidies are offered to developers if 20% of their housing were affordable rental apartments. Continue reading “Affordable Housing and its Issues in New York”
Photos of Brooklyn Before & After
The Impact of the Need for “Authenticity”
The idea of “authenticity” has its stake in many different conversations and debates, including a push towards the truth in a time when facts are scarce, a quest for originality, and an emphasis on going back to the fundamentals behind embellishments created in our society. “Authenticity” becomes an important topic of discussion when focusing on culture, whether that be for cities of America or of a group of people in a lesser known country on the other side of the world. Sharon Zukin, in Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places, identifies this idea of authenticity as a type of culture used as a cause for waves of migrations of certain people in particular areas like Williamsburg (49-50), as an appropriate description of the hip hop cultures formed by African American communities of “black Brooklyn” (56), and the semblance of the history of Harlem used to create a specific image of the “dark ghetto” and the “Harlem Renaissance” (68-71). In trying to define the “authenticity” that attracted people to these areas, Zukin focused on the people and history of each of the areas as the basis for why they were considered authentic and why people fought to protect it or to follow it.
Continue reading “The Impact of the Need for “Authenticity””
The Rise of Brooklyn, What’s Wrong and What’s Right
The word “gentrification” brings, to the typical New Yorker, an image of evil—where lower and working class residents are pushed out of their homes by the upper class, and when the culture and community of each neighborhood gradually loses its identify. Alan Ehrenhalt’s NYTimes article, “The Rise of Brooklyn, What’s Wrong and What’s Right” localizes the effect of gentrification to Brooklyn, and discusses the glossed-over aspects of the process by referring to an assessment done by Kay S. Hymowitz.
Continue reading “The Rise of Brooklyn, What’s Wrong and What’s Right”
