I live in a neighborhood where I have experienced the type of gentrification that Sharon Zukin discusses, currently occurring in Williamsburg and the Village. When I tell people that I live in Park Slope, they assume that my family is rich and snobby because that is what it has come to be. Well, not exactly. Park Slope is an up-and-coming neighborhood for a more specific type of person: young white couples looking to start a family or raise a child. In Zukin’s examples, she refers to usually a younger single-person person who is not necessarily wealthy but has a creative and new age mind. I’m quick to defend myself and my family after I say where I live, informing my inquirer that my parents moved there twenty years ago when below 5th avenue was still a strong drug scene. Slowly, that scene of the neighborhood was pushed further west and the Park Slope I grew up in was characterized by its safety, friendliness, teen spots and overall out-and-aboutedness.

Many of the longstanding residents have remained through this rapid change, but their presence and makeup of Park Slope’s “authenticity” is diminishing, as Zukin also describes. I believe that their right to stay is just as strong as newcomers’ right to move in and this goes for any neighborhood. Even if there is not a cycle being followed, nature runs its course in everything including the movement of people. There wouldn’t be a dynamic history or story of New York City neighborhoods if a change did not occur. Whether it is due to the state of the economy or a rise in political activism, change is natural and completely fair. If authenticity were forced to remain through whatever legislation and zoning regulations Zukin suggests, we would not feel nostalgia and there wouldn’t be a “bringing back” of any trends or neighborhood styles.

Zukin refers to the city having “lost its soul” but it is simply that a new soul is being built. It incorporates the originals as it changes and it will completely transform in many cases. But these residents that want to be interesting, artsy and creative, just like what a neighborhood used to be, are still people and not just evil sponges trying to absorb and thrive and take over. I will miss some of the parts of Park Slope that “used to be” and I will dread being mistaken for the new stereotypes, but I believe either some of it will return as Park Slope changes again and again in the future, or the next phase will be what it’s meant to be.

– Lucy Snyder