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Digging Deeper on White-ification of Bed Stuy
The blog All-City New York posted some interesting commentary at the end of the day on Friday concerning the New York Times’ story about the rising white population in Bed Stuy. The post echoed some things that readers were saying in the Brownstoner comment thread earlier in the day:
The Times completely misses a gigantic factor in both these stories, which is the growth of the Hassidic population in Northern Bed-Stuy between Myrtle and Flushing, in favor of their general gentrification narrative. But more importantly, the Times seems to think the story of the city is that of young, white people with disposable income and their varying migration patters, and the impact of these migration patters on the rest of the city (the flaws of which I wrote about here). While this is certainly A story, it is not THE story. It is not even a large story.
The blog then followed up with some more detailed analysis in this post on Sunday, which included the map above.
Out of the 16,000 new white residents that have arrived in Bed-Stuy in last decade, which this NY Times article references, 4,569 (28.5%) – of them are concentrated in just one census tract: Brooklyn Tract 1237. 1237 is bounded by Taffe Place, Nostrand Avenue, Flushing Avenue, and Myrtle Avenue. Take a walk through this area. You will find a lot of new apartment buildings with scores of small balconies jutting out awkwardly. You will find a lot of signage written in a strange, but somewhat recognizable alphabet. You will find a lot of guys dressed in black suits, a lot women dressed in long skirts, and a lot of children running on the sidewalk. You will not find very many people like the Jazz musician Arthur Kell, or Lawyer and Coffehouse owner Tremaine Wright, or anyone else the Times references in the article.
Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic, who blogged about the article on Friday morning, follows up on this analysis with some more thoughts:
There is a rather weird fascination with the “poor blacks vs.hipster whites” dynamic that pervades the conversation well beyond the Times. As I alluded to in the last post, I think this because of lengthy and particular history of social engineering directed at African-Americans. We would like to believe that blacks have the same sort of purchasing power as their fellow citizens. Confronted with the fact that they don’t, and our own socio-political paralysis, we react with a mix of guilt, frustration and nostalgia.
Lots going on here!
08/08/2011 9:46 AM
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Big Demographic Shift in Bed-Stuy as Whites Move In
Today the Times looks at the 2010 census numbers for Bedford Stuyvesant and reports that the neighborhood has shifted from 75 percent to 60 percent black over the past decade, while “in the older Bedford section west of Throop Avenue, according to the 2010 census, blacks have recently become a minority of the population for the first time in 50 years.” The white population in this part of Bed-Stuy was up 633 percent from 2000, according to the story, accounting for the biggest racial or ethic group increase in any area of the city. The article sounds familiar notes of gentrification: One resident compares the changes in the neighborhood to “what I saw happen in Fort Greene starting in 1997,” while John L. Flateau, a professor of public administration at Medgar Evers College, says “there are also a number of white families and single hipsters moving into Bed-Stuy, as renters and owners, who seem to be disconnected from, unaware of, and oblivious to Bed-Stuy’s rich, historical legacy of social capital, community networks and its politics.” Henry L. Butler, the chairman of Community Board 3, says that the increase in real estate values has been a boon for homeowners but pushed some renters out. Still, he says: “You’re getting new money, new people, you get different types of services and stores, and you get more police protection.”
Striking Change in Bedford-Stuyvesant as the White Population Soars [NY Times]
Photo by dorywithserifs.
(more…)
08/05/2011 9:30 AM
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The Only Problem With Gentrifiers?
There’s a post on Brooklynian this morning by a handle you might recognize (Armchair Warrior) on everyone’s favorite topic: “My only problem with gentrifiers is…The ones who want to bring suburbia to NYC. They hate high density always trying to block new zoning to bring in more tall buildings etc…High density is good for the environment and good for business.” Grammatical problems aside, this statement seems kinda silly. Sure, many “gentrifiers” tend to lean towards preserving the village-like densities that attracted them to Brooklyn in the first place (as do many long-time residents!) but that doesn’t mean they are against all tall buildings as a rule. It’s more about context. And while it’s true that in general density is environmentally friendly and good for businesses, that statement ignores the reality of the infrastructure needed to support such density and the problems that can ensue if it’s not in place. The other problem with the rant is that poster seems to want new buildings but not suburban culture. But, more often than not, it’s the big chain stores that end up renting the retail space in the tall new buildings and what’s more suburban than a Walgreen’s? Hard to have your cake and eat it too! Agree?
08/02/2011 10:15 AM
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Report on ‘Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn’
Regular Brownstoner reader/commenter Mopar filed this report about yesterday’s panel discussion on gentrification in Brooklyn emceed by Suleiman Osman, author of the new book “The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York”:
Tuesday night’s panel on “The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Race and Gentrification in South Brooklyn” at the Museum of the City of the New York focused on Brooklyn’s former slums where brownstones now sell for $2 million and up.
“For me, the Park Slope of 2011 is a limousine parked in front of a public school, said “Prospect Park West” author Amy Sohn, explaining that just that day she had seen one parked outside PS 321 waiting for a parent. “I feel the book [Osman's] is about my life. I came from Mitchell-Lama housing and now we live across from [actor] John Turturro.”
Was the brownstoning movement of the 1960s and 1970s a success? It depends on who you ask. Author of “The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York” Suleiman Osman, who grew up in Park Slope and is a professor of American Studies at George Washington University, did not pick a side.
“If it’s about increasing real estate values, then it’s been very successful,” said Michelle de la Uz, executive director of the Fifth Avenue Coalition. “If it’s about the urban ideal of diversity, then it’s failed miserably. We need public policy with equity and justice at the forefront to achieve that urban ideal we were all attracted to and decided to stay in New York for.” (more…)
03/16/2011 4:00 PM
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Time to Talk Gentrification
We’ve been enjoying reading “The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York” so we’re sure that tomorrow night’s panel at the Museum of the City of New York emceed by the book’s author, Suleiman Osman, should be an interesting one. Panelists include Michelle de la Uz, executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee; Eric Demby, co-founder of the Brooklyn Flea; and D. Kenneth Patton, former divisional dean of the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate. Mention Brownstoner when you call to reserve tickets at 917-492-3395 and get the membership price of $6.
03/14/2011 12:21 PM
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Census Reveals A Changing Brooklyn
Both the New York Times and New York Magazine take a look at the latest census figures, which were released Tuesday, and note the dramatic population shift in many Brooklyn neighborhoods since 2000. “Some of the largest population gains since 2000 were recorded in places that not long ago might have been considered marginal, including Bedford-Stuyvesant and Williamsburg in Brooklyn,” the NY Times article says. Despite population gains, the Hispanic population has decreased in Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint with the black population fell by double-digits in Prospect Heights, Clinton Hill and Fort Greene. Despite these decreasing figures, New York Magazine still finds that that “Kings is gaining on Queens for the title of most diverse county in the nation, and possibly the world.” Brooklyn’s cultural map is dictated heavily by the constant inflow of immigrants, making it hard to keep track of neighborhood dynamics. As the article states, “Sunset Park is becoming less Chinese and more Mexican, Bensonhurst less Italian and more Chinese, Flatbush more Jewish and more Muslim at the same time.” The map, via NY Magazine, shows the densest population of certain immigrant groups in the borrough.
Region is Reshaped as Minorities Go to Suburbs [NY Times]
…Brooklyn and Queens Competing to be Most Diverse City in the World
Map via NY Magazine
12/15/2010 11:10 AM
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Attack of the Chain Stores in Williamsburg
On Friday The Times looked at the tension arising in Williamsburg as chain stores move in. With CVS moving into The Edge, a Duane Reade already on the waterfront, and a Starbucks possibly moving onto Bedford, some residents aren’t too happy. “Williamsburg is the Berkeley of New York, says one resident. (Really?) If anyplace is going to reject a chain store, it’s Williamsburg.” A Facebook group has also popped up called I’m Boycotting Duane Reade to Save Williamsburg. But another resident, a transplant from the Upper West Side, would love to see a Dunkin Donuts or Food Emporium make the move into the neighborhood. For some reason, she said of the naysayers, they don’t want corporate stores. They don’t want convenience. Demand for retail spaces are undoubtedly going up, with rising rents putting pressure on the mom and pops in the neighborhood. “It’s becoming the East Village,” says a resident, lamenting the loss of one bohemian neighborhood to the other.
Williamsburg Unhappily Graduates to Chain Store Territory [NY Times]
11/15/2010 9:00 AM
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Gentrification on Franklin Avenue
I Love Franklin Avenue has a good post about the changing face of Franklin Avenue over the past two years. To break it down: “21 new businesses have opened their doors since the summer of 2008, with another 7 coming soon. 17 businesses have undergone (or are undergoing) some type of renovation, and 15 business (including 2 new ones and 2 renovated ones) have closed. The vast majority of this action has taken place in the four-block stretch between Eastern and Park Place.” While gentrification is clearly at work, the writer points out the pattern is somewhat unconventional: some businesses opening as a result of gentrification couldn’t make it, with other less typical businesses are still thriving. Also the rising rents are causing many business owners to struggle with a customer base that doesn’t always shop locally. Some questions that remain at the end of the piece include how commercial displacement may lead to residential displacement (there are three new developments around Franklin Avenue) and what are “the best strategies for making changes [to] serve the widest portion of the neighborhood possible.”
Two Years of Commercial Development on Franklin Avenue [I Love Franklin Ave.]
11/02/2010 10:12 AM
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Foodies as the New Gentrifiers
The Brooklyn Paper has an article this morning about the gentrifying effect of upscale food establishments. The artists might get to a new neighborhood first, say the article, but in recent years, a new cafe or thin crust pizza restaurant is the sure sign that a neighborhood has hit its tipping point. “Food is the new art in the urban cultural experience,” said Sharon Zukin, author of Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Culture. “You used to have artists moving in and opening galleries, now there are foodies moving in and opening up cafes.” The examples are legion: K-Dog in Prospect Lefferts Garden, The Farm on Adderly in Ditmas Park, Northeast Kingdom followed by Roberta’s in Bushwick, Saraghina in Bed Stuy. Even Kensington made it only the foodie map recently with the opening of Brancaccio’s Food Shop. Of course, not all pioneering restaurateurs are met with success: Abigail’s proved too pricey for Crown Heights and Bread Stuy’s recents problems have been well publicized. Another other good examples you can think of? Surely the L Cafe in North Williamsburg and Diner in South Williamsburg deserved mention. Others?
Foodies Now Leading the Gentrification of Brooklyn [Brooklyn Paper]
03/01/2010 9:29 AM
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The New Gentrification
The Friday Times took another look at the work of Jane Jacobs, who “waged heroic war against planners who dreamed of paving the Village’s cobblestone streets, demolishing its tenements and creating sterile superblocks.” According to Sharon Zukin, a Brooklyn College sociology professor and author of Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places, saving the cobblestone streets and old architecture may retain a neighborhood’s character superficially, but is doesn’t do much for the community who gave the neighborhood its soul. Zukin paid a visit to Williamsburg (“the East River gold coast”), where she pointed out “a low-slung old granary with a MacBook-speckled coffee bar” and said, We’ve gone from Jacobs’s vision to the McDonald’s of the educated classes. Are you buying what Zukin’s selling?
A Contrarian’s Lament in a Blitz of Gentrification [NYT]
02/22/2010 8:59 AM
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Closing Bell: Got Gentrification?
Tonight is the kick-off party for Mocada‘s latest show, “The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks.” The group show (including some artists who’ve been displaced by gentrification) delves into “how urban planning, eminent domain, and real estate development are affecting Brooklyn’s communities and how residents throughout the borough are responding.” The public is welcome at the opening reception tonight from 6 to 9 p.m. at 80 Hanson Place.
02/04/2010 4:00 PM
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‘What’s Wrong With Gentrification?’ Asks New York Mag
This week New York Magazine takes a view on gentrification that is, if not contrarian, at least a little controversial. (The article follows a similar one in the semi-annual magazine n+1). As will come as no surprise to most readers, gentrification these days is treated as something of a dirty word. Why’s that? Mostly because it conjures up associations of, as n+1 wrote, “the forced displacement of the urban working class by mobile, college-educated professionals.” This may be more myth that fact though: In his recent book There Goes the ‘Hood, Columbia urban planning prof Lance Freeman found that poor residents and those without a college education were actually less likely to move if they resided in gentrifying neighborhoods” and that “the discourse on gentrification has tended to overlook the possibility that some of the neighborhood changes associated with gentrification might be appreciated by the prior residents. In other words, the rehabilitation of an old house or the opening of an upscale bakery isn’t necessarily a zero-sum game in which the long-time residents are lose out. Not only that, claims the New York Magazine article, but gentrification is the only hope that many urban centers have of saving themselves: “The ailing cities that save themselves in the 21st century will do so by following Brooklyn’s blueprint,” the article says in closing. “They’ll gentrify as fast as they can.”
What’s Wrong With Gentrification? [New York Magazine]
Photo by kathyylchan
12/15/2009 10:01 AM
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Closing Bell: Gentrification Indicators
Over on Nostrand Park, they’re trying to put together a list of indicators that your neighborhoods being gentrified. The author suggests three (including coffee shops and blogs) and luckily no one’s mentioned flea markets yet. Other suggestions?
Photo by rymerster
11/03/2009 4:00 PM
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Rosie Revisited
First Rosie was on Brian Lehrer. Then we blogged about it. Then she led a panel at WNYC. Then New York Magazine cornered her and blogged it. Here’s a clip from the New York Mag post:
Perez got pretty slammed on the Brooklyn blogs for her comments. As much as I find Rosie Perez to be a decent actor, sexy and certainly part of NYC’s charm, I must say comments like these make me want to kick her in the shins, wrote one commenter on Brownstoner. We cornered Perez after the show, and she was happy to clear up what she worried was a hostile comment. What I really wanted to say was that, yes, I’m nostalgic for the past, but I’m also excited about the present and hopeful for the future,” she explained. “Things do change. Water always has to flow or else it becomes stale. But with change, you can bring along some of the good minerals that came from the top of the waterfall.” She said she’d read some of the blogs and seen the nasty comments. “I think it’s their guilt of being the gentrifiers. They don’t know how to take it,” she said. “But I had to look at myself and I realized it came off a little hostile, to be honest.
Her parting words? “Even if you’re in a bad mood, just give me a nod. We’ll do one better: Come to the Flea tomorrow, Rosie, and we’ll buy you a pupusa!
05/08/2009 9:29 AM
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“Life Deserved” Slogan Sets off Gentrification Debate
A post on Clinton Hill Chill last week (originally posted on blog With a Brooklyn Accent) that started with a deconstruction of the marketing slogan of a condo development in the area erupted into a debate about everything from race and class and to the efficacy of community organizations and the role of churches. The comment thread ultimately turns into a head-to-head between Putnamdenizen and a commenter known as X; their arguments show how easy it is for people to speak past each other and epitomizes why the emotionally-charged issue is so hard to discuss in a constructive manner. Thought-provoking reading, for sure.
04/22/2009 10:52 AM
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Wrestling with Fort Greene’s Transformation
In a first-person piece in The Times this weekend, artist Nelson George laments how Fort Greene has changed since he and his black artist contemporaries put down roots in the leafy brownstone neighborhood more than two decades ago. We’re interested to hear how the essay struck readers. What we thought was missing from the article was an acknowledgment of the current generation of black artists and intellectuals in the neighborhood and how they feel about the composition of the neighborhood. A mention of a place like Madiba where the diversity of the area is on full display, for example, would have added some valuable context for his discussions of the clientele at the Brooklyn Moon. Then again, this wasn’t meant to have been anything more than one man’s coming to terms with the changes around him. Thoughts?
Fort Greene: Strangers on His Street [NY Times]
Photo by niznoz
04/06/2009 10:00 AM
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Brooklyn Manhattan’s St. Paul, Not Compton
In a lengthy article in New York Magazine’s 40th Anniversary issue in which he points out, among other things, that economic downturns in New York City have had silver linings in the past, Kurt Andersen reflects on the changes in Carroll Gardens over the last two decades.
The progress of gentrification wasn’t only a result of the precinct-by-precinct diminution of crime. My bit of Brooklyn, Carroll Gardens, was a very safe (and almost entirely white) working- and middle-class quarter when I arrived in 1990 with my wife and baby daughters. Nor were we exactly pioneers; a couple of editors had already renovated our brownstone. But at some moment between the eighties, when I knew exactly two people in Brooklyn, and the end of the century, when at least half the younger people of my acquaintance were living there, the borough not only lost most of its stigma but acquired an unprecedented aura of stylishness. It was an emergent rebranding as alt-NYC, driven first by the invisible hand (cut-rate real estate just across the river) and then by the self- propelling presence of more and more People Like Oneself. I can peg the tipping-point moment fairly precisely in my neighborhood: As I waited to vote in 1992, I was the demographic outlier in the polling-place crowd of retired longshoremen and their relatives; when I returned in 1996, almost every voter in the place, I swear, was some kind of writer or graphic designer or MTV producer a decade or two my junior. And the following year, all at once, Smith Street changed from a dreary Poughkeepsiesque stretch where we went only to catch the F train to—abracadabra!—a groovy restaurant row thick with recently expatriated young Manhattanites. Manhattan is not over, certainly, but for the city’s creative class New York is no longer a one-borough town. Brooklyn has become St. Paul, maybe, to Manhattan’s Minneapolis, rather than Compton and Glendale to its Hollywood and Beverly Hills.
We prefer the analogy to London, but then again, we’ve never been to St. Paul.
Boom-Bust-Boom Town [New York Magazine]
Photo by MNkiteman
10/02/2008 10:51 AM
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Williamsburg Comes to Crown Heights?
The New York Sun took a look at Franklin Avenue in Crown Heights yesterday, noting that “bodegas, hair salons, and fast-food restaurants lining the section of Franklin Avenue that runs between Eastern Parkway and Atlantic Avenue, on the western boundary of Crown Heights, are slowly being replaced by organic markets, cafés, and clothing boutiques.” One resident likened the newfangled street to Williamsburg, noting his own store has started stocking organic produce to please the new residents, moving in for the relatively cheap rent; one broker says apartments are about $300 less a month than similar pads in nearby Prospect Heights, and that retail rents can be $1 or $2 less per square foot. Not all residents think that if the street changes it will become a Bedford Avenue; Smith Street and 5th Avenue were invoked, as well, noting the new beer garden, Franklin Park (which apparently draws residents old and new to its halls), a fancy boutique, Point de Couture, a cafe and a tattoo parlor. A 21-year veteran is redeveloping his own building into a residential complex. Question: Is it possible for a neighborhood to shift like this without becoming Park Slope or Williamsburg, to withstand an influx of residents and retail and still be very much Crown Heights? If these new establishments manage to speak to those who’ve lived there for years, maybe we’ll see an example of it. What do you guys think?
Franklin Avenue Changes as Crown Heights Shifts [NY Sun]
Houses, Crown Heights. Photo by gkjarvis.
09/12/2008 10:27 AM
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Do Generalizations About Harlem Hold for Brooklyn Nabes?
It was hard to read this weekend’s NY Times story about the changing demographics in Harlem without considering the extent to which the article applied to some of the predominantly black neighborhoods in Brooklyn that have been attracting waves of white newcomers in recent years:
In the past few years, the Village of Harlem, as older residents still call it, has become a 21st-century laboratory for integration. Class and money and race are at the center of the changes in the neighborhood. Lured by stately century-old brownstones and relatively modest rents, new faces are moving in and making older residents feel that they are being pushed out. There have been protests, and anger directed as much at the idea of the newcomers as at them personally.
While this particular story focused on what it felt like for the white, middle-class arrivistes trying to make a home in a place that has been predominantly black for decades, it also touched on an aspect of gentrification that often gets overlooked— Middle-class black gentrification— as well as differing attitudes depending on generation. Older blacks didn’t have any choice but to live in a black neighborhood, said Mark Thomas, a 29-year-old African American man who recently moved from Atlanta to Strivers’ Row. So they get nervous when a white person wants to move in. But if you talk to young African-Americans, they want the neighborhood they live in to be integrated. Do you think that’s a fair generalization to make about neighborhoods like Clinton Hill and Bed Stuy?
In an Evolving Harlem, Newcomers Try to Fit In [NY Times]
Photo by rfullerrd
09/08/2008 9:30 AM
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Onion: Gentrification Being Trumped by Artistocratization
Given all the outpouring of nostalgia last week for the good old days of more crime and fewer flea markets, this excerpt from a recent Onion article titled Nation’s Gentrified Neighborhoods Threatened By Aristocratization provided some much needed comic relief:
Many of those affected by the ostentatious reshaping of their once purely upmarket neighborhoods said that they often wish for a return back to the privileged communities they helped to overdevelop just a few years ago. Among the first to feel the effects of the encroaching aristocracy have been local business owners like Fort Greene, Brooklyn resident Neil Getz.
“Around here, you used to be able to get a Fair-Trade latte and a chocolate-chip croissant for only eight bucks,” said Getz, who is planning to move back in with his parents after being forced out of the lease on his organic grocery store by a harpsichord purveyor. “Now it’s all tearooms and private salon gatherings catered with champagne and suckling pig. Who can afford that?”
“It’s just a terrible shame,” Getz continued. “There was this great little shop right across the street from my duplex apartment where I bought my baby daughter a Ramones onesie a couple of years ago, just after she was born. That whole block is an opera house now.”
Just as long as the aristos don’t tie their horse-drawn carriages up to the castle scaffolding, everything should be okay.
Nation’s Gentrified Neighborhoods Threatened By Aristocratization [Onion]
07/29/2008 9:59 AM
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panyl
May 21, 2012 | 02:16 PM