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,…
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]
benson- I read your comments as just another slap in the face to working class Black neighborhoods (I mean, since you think b’stoner is the refuge of self-loathing people, perhaps you’ve been looking in the mirror again). I’ve seen enough gentrification to know that mopar gave the right analysis. And furthermore, the people in Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights who pursued landmarking did not do so because they cared about property values. As far a most of them are concerned, their homes and n neighborhoods are priceless and landmarking is a way to protect their beauty and livability. I know you can’t credit such motives because you can fathom that idea yourself.
As mopar also pointed out, the rezoning happens to allow big buildings to come in.
As far as landmarking being the reason old timers are forced out- not so. The usual course of things is that people looking to afford a property find them in neighborhoods like CHN. It usually isn’t until gentrification really takes hold, that people go for landmarking (if at all). Long time residents are already moving on or out- CHN and Bed-Stuy didn’t need gentrifyers to “save” them. Or to tell them how valuable their neighborhoods. They were motivated far more by pride and community activism.
NYC neighborhoods are always changing. You constantly talk about tearing down the old to build the new. Yet you are the loudest when it comes to whining about your old neighborhoods and how much better things were in the good old days. Can’t have it both ways.
quote:
free higher education
i agree with everything you said except that. free higher education will just water down and make useless an already watered down and useless institution.
*rob*
dirty probably said it all, but i’ll add.
to me, just another old person lamenting lost youth.
the “village” is alive and well, just moved.
has this chick even been to bushwick?
seriously, art, music, house parties, really really interesting gallery exhibitions, etc….
young people and innovation have not left new york lady!
The West Village and the East Village are two of the least desirable places I would want to live.
Benson, you may think you are standing up for the little guy, the blue collar guy, by your absurd statements about landmarking, but you are selling them short. Who says the Con Ed worker doesn’t care about the historic qualities of his brownstone, and would not go the extra mile, if necessary? Who says the plant worker would trade an underground condo parking lot for the street, if that means giving up his historic home? People are as different as can be, you can’t assume by someone’s job or status, what their views on preservation, or anything else, is. You don’t speak to the monolithic views of the working class, anymore than I speak for the monolithic views of black people. There is no such thing in either case.
I know plenty of people from all walks of life who love their historic neighborhoods. I(and Bxgrl) have been working for the landmarking and preservation of my neighborhoods for a long time. I know better than you who wants it here in Crown Heights/Bed Stuy, better than you do, and you are wrong. Property values are not even brought up as a reason for preservation. And these are certainly not upperclass neighborhoods, they are working class, and the working classes here want preservation because they understand and love the historic and beautiful architecture and quality of life in these homes, churches and buildings. They want to protect that which makes Crown Heights and Bed Stuy the communities they have chosen to live and raise their families in. If propping up our property values was the only reason for preservation, then a lot more of us would have sold out and gone elsewhere three, four years ago. That didn’t happen because more people are interested in protecting what they have for the future, than cashing in now. Those same postal workers, clerks and Con Ed workers would rather endure the bureaucracy of LPC and the city, rather than give that up for the bland ordinariness of your new city.
Agreed, nostalgia is not what it used to be and
those historic districts are so crowded no one goes there any more.
This is all just so much chatter.
We need jobs, industry, free higher education, and health care that isn’t tied to a McJob so maybe you can start a new industry — and also not die if you are unemployed.
She is lamenting the loss of the West Village to gentrification????? Holy 40 years too late…..
The Village has been gentrified since the 1920s, and she is only now just noticing that the size of Sarah Jessica Parker’s paycheck doesn’t jibe with the Village’s romantic image?