Besides the impact gentrification has had on the people who live in cities, Winifred Curran examines how manufacturing businesses are being forced to move out of cities and either relocate or cease to exist. Rather than placing the blame on competition between global manufacturing businesses and deindustrialization, Curran makes a case for real estate pressures making it difficult for manufacturing businesses to hold a spot in the city that allows for future growth and ensures stability of location. In the article “’From the Frying Pan to the Oven’: Gentrification and the Experience of Industrial Displacement in Williamsburg, Brooklyn”, Curran details various experiences of manufacturing business owners who either relocated from the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York or closed their businesses as a result of issues originating from real estate. One of the primary issues seems to be that landlords want to take advantage of the lucrative market for residential space and push manufacturing businesses off their land. The interaction between landlords and manufacturing businesses in some of the interviews Curran describes reminded me of the song “Hello, Goodbye” by The Beatles.
Source: The Beatles YouTube Channel
Throughout the song (lyrics can be found here), an exchange of conversation seems to be taking place between two parties that have conflicting desires. The phrase “I don’t know why you say goodbye, I say hello” (John Lennon, Paul McCartney) is repeated in many places throughout the song and comes before and after other phrases that contradict each other. The two parties that could be pictured having such a conversation of conflicting desires are the landlords and the manufacturing business owners. Whereas owners would like to renew their leases, landlords refuse and would insist on having empty buildings so that they could have their land rezoned for residential space rather than industrial space. This process causes some manufactures to leave the city entirely, which may have a domino-like effect that influences other businesses to leave or close since manufacturers make up those businesses’ customer base. Like the contradicting lyrics of the song, some manufacturing business owners are also their own landlords and may decide to relocate or close their businesses in order to eventually zone their land for residential usage.
The exchange of contradictory phrases in The Beatles’s song can also be applied to the relationship between the community and the manufacturing businesses. Some employees and residents may be surprised that manufacturing is leaving Williamsburg and depend on those businesses remaining for providing low skill labor that provides moderately high wages and benefits. Other employees and residents may have discovered how landlords purposely push out manufacturing tenants and maintain vacancy of the whole building in order to rezone their land. In view of this relationship and comparing it to the song’s lyrics, the phrase “You say goodbye and I say hello” (John Lennon, Paul McCartney) can be used to portray, from the perspective of a landlord, that the community of Williamsburg can do nothing but say “goodbye” to many manufacturing businesses, while landlords greet the rezoning of their land and earn higher rent for placing apartment buildings or condominiums in place of old factories. Though residents may make complaints to community boards and discover how landlords are taking advantage of a real estate market that favors residential buildings, rezoning can still take place legally and it may be difficult to prove that landlords are forcing manufacturing businesses to leave rather than being unable to find a suitable manufacturing business to lease the land to.
Questions to Consider:
1.) Should there be policies that regulate a landlord’s right to ask for zoning changes? Why or why not?
2.) Should residents of a neighborhood be allowed to dictate what kinds of buildings landlords can have developed on their land? Why or why not?
3.) What other kinds of businesses could satisfy a need for low skill labor that pays moderate to high wages in the city?
