Brooklyn has become one of the trendiest places to live in the country and possibly the world. Brooklyn has always been something special, but it has evolved into what is special for generation x and generation y creative types and others. I guess the neighborhoods I'm referring to are Williamsburg, Park Slope, Dumbo, Carroll Gardens/Borem Hil, Forte Greene and even parts of Bed Stuy. Ditmas Park has always been really pricey with big mansions, but there are even similar cultural changes happening there also. For this post I'm going to focus on Williamsburg.
I remember living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 1998. Rents were cheap, but they were already going up. I was paying 800 dollars a month for a 2 bedroom basement just a few blocks from the L train which was slightly more than a friend was paying for sharing a space in a loft two years earlier (300 dollars a month). A little bit more than 10 years later the rents have about tripled and that's even after the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. In 1998, my grandmother, who came to NYC from Russia in 1910 and spent her life in Manhattan and Brooklyn, came to visit me and we went to eat on Bedford Avenue and her first reaction was, "This is Brooklyn?" Bedford Avenue was a quiet strip of low-rise buildings with a few cute shops and restaurants. Today Bedford Avenue is increasingly getting more crowded, while the shops and restaurants continue to multiply. Bedford still remains the main strip, but locals often spend their time on other main streets as well, such as Grand Street. Williamsburg has extended into Bushwick as well and real estate brokers now seem to be calling as much of the area Williamsburg as they can. My husband recently read an article that gave the statistics of the increased passengers on the subway lines that go through Williamsburg and Bushwick, the L, J, M and Z lines. The J, M, and Z lines were only inhabited by local New Yorkers in the 90s.
When you walk the streets of Williamsburg, one of the most noticeable things is the fashion. Women are often wearing dresses and both women and men either have the latest fashions or unique styles. There are numerous vintage stores in the neighborhood that have already sifted through second hand clothes to bring shoppers fashionable things to wear at decent prices. There are also numerous boutiques that sell the work of local artists and designers. A weekend market called Aritsts and Fleas is close to Bedford Avenue and anyone can rent a space to sell crafts and clothes. Local fashion sends a message that creativity is close by. Although many new inhabitants of this thriving neighborhood are young professionals that are far from the arts, artists and designers still linger. There are galleries and studios in the neighborhood, as well as music and performance art spaces. Almost the whole neighborhood is filled with middle class, mostly white, people between 20 and 45.
Well, this is all true in the gentrified world of Williamsburg. North Williamsburg still has some older people who have lived here for much longer than the mid 90's. There is also a hispanic population on the south side of Williamsburg, and further south the neighborhood is filled with Hasidic Jews. The area that borders Bushwick is very industrial and has more African-American residents. Williamsburg borders Greenpoint, which is also gentrified, but is filled with Polish immigrants. Since the boom of gentrification in Williamsburg and the banking bubble, many condos have been built around the neighborhood. These condos are in buildings with multiple units and are as expensive as houses (500,000 to over 1 million). Houses in Williamsburg are well over 1 million dollars, even after the financial crisis. Although Williamsburg had more foreclosures than all of the Bronx, people are still slowly moving in and purchasing the abundance of new homes in the neighborhood. People come here, mostly from outside New York City, and do not want to leave.
In the past few years, I've noticed that this type of gentrification is not only happening in Brooklyn, but seems to be happening in major cities throughout the world. Within the past 2 years I've traveled and noticed similar neighborhoods (young professionals, cool fashion, and condos in formerly working class or run down neighborhoods) in Paris, Barcelona and Chicago.I'm not sure about other cities, but gentrification is not very new to New York.
This was going on in the East Village/Lower East Side in the 90's when similar gentrification was taking place in that part of Manhattan. I remember seeing a show by Penny Arcade (http://www.pennyarcade.tv/biography/index.html) in which she told stories of people who were displaced due to the gentrification in the neighborhood. In fact, Williamsburg is the spill-over gentrification from the East Village in the 1990's. Last semester when I observed the art teacher in the elementary school in my neighborhood, she explained how the student population is decreasing because students' families are leaving. It's too expensive to live here. There is also an art show going on in Fort Greene until May 16, 2010 about the gentrification of Brooklyn and how it affects New Yorkers (http://www.mocada.org/).
Artists are the ones who typically start these trends of gentrification. They move into neighborhoods that are low-income and cheap. They beautify the space and it draws in young professionals who want to live a similar life. Soon, the rents, and the neighborhood prices overall, rise. This forces the original low-income residents, as well as some of the artists who have contributed to the changes, to leave. As the years pass by, I am becoming more interested in having a decent job and a stable lifestyle. I understand the issues of gentrification from one point of view; get these people to go back to where they came from and leave our neighborhood as it
was. However, there are some original residents who enjoy the beautification and increased socio-economic level of their neighborhood. There is also the point of view of the people who want somewhere to live and enjoy living in these environments. As the article below points out, it's a complex issue. I'm assuming that the talks The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (http://www.mocada.org/) will address these issues, but will they come up with a solution? I'm not sure, but I do know that they've created art that will add to the beautification of life that drives gentrification.
http://fort-greene.thelocal.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/artists-reflect-on-role-in-gentrification/
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