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]
Well, white suburbs pretty much do suck.
I mean the bland but comfortable familiarity so prized in suburbia.
Oh, OK ecoux; I thought you were joking based in DIBS’s 9:16 comment, his profession, and his choice of neighborhood. Fortunately I don’t think MY neighborhood will ever look like the UWS, but I see your point.
DH;
Accept the Brownstoner othodoxy: white people suck. White suburbs suck the most. Come and believe!!
quote:
Since the architecture is so vastly different, I’m assuming you mean “WHITE.”
no, i think he just means elitist, snobby, and fauxrban.
*rob*
In the end all of Brooklyn could look like the Upper West Side: just another Connecticut suburb.
Posted by: ecoux at February 22, 2010 9:40 AM
I’m young and white. No one likes me 🙁
“Gentrification is a product of capitalism. And you can’t stop either unless without going against some fundamental American value – money talks.
While ‘preservation’ is nice, that does nothing except preserve the aesthetics of the neighborhood but ironically also increases the cost of living. If you need to ‘preserve’ a cobblestone road, an old library, etc – it is already too late. The old immigrants of that neighborhood an already NOT afford to live there and probably have moved out 4-7 years ago.
Posted by: crimsonson at February 22, 2010 9:36 AM”
Crimsonson;
Excellent. You go to the head of the class.
I read this piece in the Times and was not sure what the author wished. She seems to be lamenting that though historic buildings and streetscapes are being preserved, the human beings living in them are different. How young is this person? Human lifespan is woefully short and people don’t last as long as buildings. The turnover of generations is a natural and a good thing for cities. The saddest thing is to visit an historic town or city where all the young people leave and only the old stay behind.
The best we can do with enlightened preservation and zoning is to save the context, the environment, the people who chose to dwell in the environment is up for grabs and that is how it should be unless we wish to become a monster authoritarian state like North Korea where government approval is required to relocate one’s family or rent an apartment.
In the end all of Brooklyn could look like the Upper West Side: just another Connecticut suburb.
Posted by: ecoux at February 22, 2010 9:40 AM
Since the architecture is so vastly different, I’m assuming you mean “WHITE.”
Let’s see where this goes.