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]
There aren’t very many people like me at all in the bodega I go to.
“because the type of people who shop in boutiques, coffee shops, and gourmet markets ARE most of the time inauthentic, bland, and the same.
the cast of characters one meets in check cashing places, liquor stores, and bodegas are often quite intriguing, funny, and sometimes off the wall straight out bonkers. i will take this group any day over the other group.
*rob*”
Talk about self-loathing…..Rob (and I address this to you only for rhetorical effect- as I know you are too pig headed and in-authentic yourself to really understand),
The people in the Bodega are just as inauthentic and phoney (and crazy) as in the coffee shop – they are all (mostly) wearing the same clothing style, speak with the same mannerisms and affect, hold more or less identical political/social views, aspire to achieve (or not) the same things and are more or less clones of each other.
But because they are different from you (and your ‘regular’ peers) you think they are real, and cool but they arent any different – you just know yourself and your peers and you know how pathetic, insecure and phony they are – if you really knew the people at the “bodega” – you’d know that in their way and in their true peer group the vast majority are exactly the same.
“Bleecker St is fabulous. I can get a 5 dollar cupcake, 500 dollar sneakers and a 5,000 dollar raincoat all on the same block. That’s what NYC is all about people.”
I want a picture of that, please.
i read an awesome article in City Journal about landmarking and it’s negative effects on the development and economic sustainability of cities. i wish i could remember some of the points of it, but i dont really remember what they were.
but it was pretty much against landmarking. it really doesnt do any good for anyone except current homeowners.
*rob*
DH – totes mah-goats.
Benson, the gentrification of New York City is not caused by landmarking. Get a clue.
Benson, Jackson Heights is landmarked and it is NOT gentrified. It is an amazing mix of everybody. But when I lived there (2004 to 2008) there were absolutely no restaurants or other businesses geared toward arty single people.
fsrg- yes. exactly- and that was my earlier post. I was pointing out that it is benson who cries more over change while complaining about preservation. The steroids comment was not mine, but in the original article. It means something, you just didn’t get it.
fsrq, it’s called “NY Times-speak” No one in the rest of the country understands it either, nor do they care. LOL