Author: Lina

crjurban-step-3

Topic: How has gentrification affected NYC and specifically Brooklyn? 

1. In this article the main focus is of course gentrification within Brooklyn, which referred to as Black Brooklyn. In the beginning they speak about the history and what is made up of ‘Black Brooklyn’. This article focuses mainly on the placement of area, in other words instead of talking of Brooklyn as a whole they look into the areas. They use data tables such as charts and maps to show the incline of gentrified white Brooklyn and the decline of Black Brooklyn. The focus of gentrification is in North West Brooklyn and West Brooklyn. In the article a major part of their arguments was how the Black people in Downtown Brooklyn have decreased vastly and instead of being residential area it is now mostly commercial and has little to nothing having to due with Black culture. Also, in this article touches on the racial segregation seen in Brooklyn. When the article talks about racial segregation they are referring to the more obvious look of ‘who is in what neighborhood’ instead of treatment of people. They refer to the income level of Whites, Blacks, and Latino people to compare why the lower income people are gettin pushed out if their homes. This article gives an overview of what ‘Black Brooklyn’ consist of prior to gentrification, in what are is gentrification going on and, racial segregation based on living and income status by supporting with charts and percentage data of residents. 

Chronopoulos, T. “What’s Happened to the People?” Gentrification and Racial Segregation in               Brooklyn. J Afr Am St 24, 549–572 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-020-09499-y

2. This article is based of the book ‘The Mandibles’, which is about about a family who has to adapt to a new life style. Although this article is written about a book, the writer compare this to Brooklyn gentrification because it has to do with the problems that come along with Brooklyn Gentrification. When we think of gentrification we often think of a narrative where White people move into a predominantly Black and Brown community and start to make fancy buildings and high rent residential buildings but we never think about the ‘how’ of gentrification or try to understand gentrification first. In the article the writer wants us to use the book The Mandibles’ to think of what gentrification really means. In his article he says “We can think of gentrification as a refiguring of territory acquisition within the structure of the capitalist nation-state.’ this meaning that gentrification is not only to make a community better but it’s to show that ‘this is now going to be my property and I will make it into what I want’. This article also briefly mentions the connotations that come with a gentrified neighborhood like racial issues and just using words such as ‘civilized and uncivilized’. 

White, C. (2021). Brooklyn Gentrification and the Act of Settling in Lionel Shriver’s The Mandibles. Humanities, 10(1), 26. MDPI AG. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/h10010026

3. In this article the writer breaks down the book ‘What The Signs Say’, the book focuses on placement of signs to understand what Brooklyn is about. This article will tie into my topic of gentrification because it specifically touches on the placement and signs that come with commercial stores. In the article, it mentions that Brooklyn is turning into a place where everyone is looking to come form tourist to Manhattan residents because they like that urban ambience of Brooklyn. But what does this do for Brooklyn residents? The article focuses on the the placement of new commercials and it’s meaning in places like Crown Heights, it mentions that when a new commercial is placed in predominantly Black and Brown communities -or what you would think a ‘Brooklyn neighborhood’ would look like- yes it might be the beginning to a Gentrification process but why? New businesses are out into place to attract a specific type of audience, which can then lead into a process of gentrification because this new group of people will be seen more often. When relating this back to ‘signage’ like in the article, it brings ups an example of a new commercial store that left some bullet holes in the walls for an aesthetic purpose and as a result they had to shut it down because to wasn’t pleasing to the community already there. The owners were looking to bring a new type of audience to this area but they weren’t thinking about the residents already living there and how traumatic it would be for them to see bullet holes every time they stepped into the store. This can relates to the idea of gentrification because when these big money politics want to put these new commercial store and high rent residential homes, what does this do for the already living community? How does this affecting them?

Trinch, S. & Snajdr, E. (2020). What the Signs Say: Language, Gentrification, and Place-Making in Brooklyn. Vanderbilt University Press. 

4. In this article the writer defines gentrification and explains the different parts that come gentrification. The article defines gentrification as ‘process of spatial and social differentiation’ in a part of the article, gentrification is all about the community and how the community changes with new structures put into place. The article not only speaks on present day gentrification but they briefly mention that gentrification was always around, it is nothing new. When they everything began to become more modern in society- the industrial age- that was already gentrification, it just didn’t have a name to call it. Once again placement is also looked at in this article but at an internal point of view. This article mentions that placement of higher price rent calls for displacement of lower income families which ultimately becomes a problem because as stated in the article when residents get moved out of low rent places because the rent is too high, when relocating the rent will often be higher anyways. So the thought is, if gentrification is causing low rent residents to move out because of high rent and when they search for new homes rent is still high because of gentrification, what happens to them? When business owners think to locate new commercial spaces and residential homes they only think in the economic part. In the article they mention LGBTQ+ community being widely seen in these new gentrified areas and this brings economic benefits because as a new safe space is created for the community, new entertainment and restaurant commercials are built. This article makes gentrification as a theory rather than an issue, because the writer wants us to understand why gentrification happens. 

Zukin, S. (1987). Gentrification: Culture and Capital in the Urban Core. Annual Review of Sociology, 13, 129–147. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2083243

5. This article looks at gentrification is a different aspect rather than looking at pre and post gentrification, this article looks at how beneficial new urban communities are- specially after a natural disaster. In October of 2014, NYC was heavily affected by Storm Sandy. This Storm destroyed many homes and newly built structures throughout the city. The article compares Far Rockaway and The Lower East Side, on how the process was in trying to rebuild and come back from this storm. The reason why they chose these 2 areas to evaluate was because they were similar in terms of community but the difference is that sinceThe Lower East Side was in the city, there was gentrification going on. In The Lower East Side, they wanted to take this opportunity of already having to renew the area because of this storm, to gentrify the are and make it more appealing. The article refers to ‘They fear that “beautifying the waterfront” may bring in new develop- ment projects for more privileged residents and accelerate gentrification’ but they were also considering it because they realized that many residents would be forced to move out their homes. Rather than in Far Rockaway the main priority for the residents was to build a stronger socio-economic place, meaning that they were focused on getting shelter, food banks, and just making sure that there residents were getting on the right track. This article will relates to the issue in gentrification because through this article we can get an idea of how politics has a major impact when deciding on how they will go about certain communities and the priorities of communities. Also, we see that natural disasters can cause gentrification to happen unintentionally. 

The influence of urban development dynamics on community resilience practice in new york city after superstorm sandy: Experiences from the lower east side and the rockaways. (2016a). Global Environmental Change, 40, 112–124.

My topic will focus on the neighborhood of Flatbush in Brooklyn. Flatbush in my opinion can be called ‘the heart of Brooklyn’ because it runs straight down the middle of Flatbush. For my research project will be focusing on the gentrification impacting the population in Flatbush within residents and homelessness. Beginning from the Brooklyn Bridge down to Kings Plaza Mall, it’s 2 different environments. The Brooklyn Bridge is more modernized while from Church Ave further is what we know to be Brooklyn. Pre gentrification- specifically starting from Atlantic was a place were many people calle home but due to gentrification residence had to move out, many of which did not know any other place besides Flatbush so they just moved down Flatbush. Till this day as gentrification still goes on, residence just move down the line to the next available area in Flatbush, which is where the overcrowding of people come in. As well as overcrowding in these areas because of gentrification giving a new modernized and clean ‘vibe’ homelessness is seen less in these areas and more predominate in the ‘regular’ Flatbush area. Gentrification has had a tremendous impact for not only the residence having to relocate because of higher prices but it also impacts the surrounding communities.