Wasn't New York City More Grimey In The 80s & 90s In Constrast To Now

[quincy powell]

Right. My biggest problems with gentrification are the pricing out of the middle class and loss of culture. Like Spike Lee said, his father was a jazz musician for 30 years and had the cops called on him for a noise complaint by his new neighbor. But we all enjoy living in filth and poverty.

Leave it to NT to have dumb **** like this said.

This. We are losing recipes.

 

[goldenchild9]

Crackheads, real thugs and drug dealers don't care about gentrification.

Don't even know what it is. They move like a plague to the next viable location before gentrifiers even show up. It takes their absence to really get the wheels rolling.

Its the Black city workers, working 2 job to try to get their kids into college, Uncle Tito and Clarence that used to own the local merengue and jazz clubs and the first generation immigrant families that get priced out of neighborhoods that they have poured capital into for the last 40 years.

 

[goldenchild9]

*shrug*


The people who complain about gentrification are the people who enjoy living in the filth and poverty of it an more than likely will never leave that hood and continue the cycle.


 

THIS

 

BS.

Gentrification takes the people that actually cared about their hood and did their best to help turn it around....and it forces them into another hood. Turning their lives upside down, denying them of the upward social mobility that they worked for and killing the local culture & institutions.

Always the cats with the loudest opinions, with the least insight and spouting the most BS.

You're painting with an EXTREMELY broad brush if you're trying to say that gentrification mainly affects the people that actually cared about their hood and did their best to help turn it around.

IT DOES.

Harlem and Bed-Stuy was always a majority of working class Black & Latinos. Even in during the height of the crack era black and brown business owners and city/hospital workers held down those historic brownstones and apartments. Legit black & brown cultural institutions kept the neighborhood identity intact throughout everything. Every block in Harlem and the Stuy had those hard working parents that bust their butts to make sure their children stayed on the right path and their homes were being paid for. Now they are being priced out the places that they built up with their blood and sweat by city sponsored developers that have made the average price of ownership in these communities over or close to a million dollars.

If there was no cultural draw or valuable real estate in these locations, hipsters would have never levitated to them in the first place. It's the people that held it down that get shafted the most.

 

[Coromanti]

Right. My biggest problems with gentrification are the pricing out of the middle class and loss of culture. Like Spike Lee said, his father was a jazz musician for 30 years and had the cops called on him for a noise complaint by his new neighbor. But we all enjoy living in filth and poverty.

Leave it to NT to have dumb **** like this said.

Loss of culture?

What culture is lost?

The crime? The drug use? The drug sales? The problems and issues it all creates

Obviously not everyone is like that but come on.

What culture is being lost

Just jumping in here.

You as a gentrifier may not see it (as you often don't), but the spirit and feeling of a neighborhood changes whenever gentrification happens.

Does poverty, crime, drugs, dirtiness, and other negatives of the hood go away? Absolutely.

But then there is the "vibe", "aura", whatever goofy synonym of those words you'd like to use.

For example, I live in Lefferts/East Flatbush (on the border) in Brooklyn.  This neighborhood is majority Caribbean immigrant and Caribbean American.

Since about 2008/9 every year the number of White, Asian, and Indian (from India) permanent residents in the neighborhood has increased.  As a result,

Labor Day Parade (also known as NYC West Indian Day Parade aka NYC Carnival) has been significantly dampened. People are being unfairly pushed out of their homes

because landlords want to make space for rent hikes.  People feel like any minute they are on the street.  Summer parties aren't what they used to be (damn noise complaints).

The feeling of the neighborhood is different.

 

[cedric ceballos]

Gentrification is a double edged sword.

Seeing neighborhoods become safer is always a good thing. However improving neighborhoods while many people who lived in these areas are getting pushed out and having to move elsewhere. The only reason its more of a police presence and safer feel in these areas is because they want that hipster money, whereas if they put the same effort to give a damn about these areas beforehand these areas wouldn't have been as bad to begin with.

I'm not really to big on hipsters though, most of them come to a neighborhood, suck its culture dry, make no real attempt to socialize or fit in with the rest of the area that's been there, then after a few years move back to their Midwest city after mommy and daddy get tired of paying their rent and financing there "I want to live in New York dream" and then another hipster takes over the spot they left.

Less crime and safer neighborhoods is a good thing but it shouldn't take people of a lighter complexion to move in in high numbers for this effort to crack down on stuff and clean up the area when the city should've shown this same effort in the 70's, 80's etc

 

[gottabeem21]

This is the same guy that wore a Brooklyn Before Gentrification shirt the other day. Who's being snarky?

So all you do is equate culture to crime? Cool. If that's all you identify Urban America with, then you have a problem. Gentrifiers have no culture.

why do gentrifiers have no culture?

 

[ninjahood]

Right. My biggest problems with gentrification are the pricing out of the middle class and loss of culture. Like Spike Lee said, his father was a jazz musician for 30 years and had the cops called on him for a noise complaint by his new neighbor. But we all enjoy living in filth and poverty.

Leave it to NT to have dumb **** like this said.

Loss of culture?

What culture is lost?

The crime? The drug use? The drug sales? The problems and issues it all creates

Obviously not everyone is like that but come on.

What culture is being lost

you seriously can't be that naive can you?

if a certain demographic is priced outta their neighborhood, they're taking ALL of their culture with them...

if all da chinese got displaced by da soho/noho hipster overflow their wouldn't be Chinatown restaturants that host their ethnic foods and cater to that group.

gentrifiyers are people that take ADVANTAGE of da fact that da working class took a hood that was run down, made it serviceable and thrive

and then they wanna come and price everyone out...opportunity vultures.

my hood for example has been on da upswing, NOT because of gentfiyers trying to price everyone out, but by OUR OWN PEOPLE investing into our community

and bringing up da quality of life ourselves with restaurants, clubs, lounges, stores, etc. that all cater to us.

 

[rell826]

Because culture is all about drug addicts and people shooting each other on the block:

[h1]'My Brooklyn' Tells a Story of Gentrification and Loss[/h1]

• Sarah Goodyear
• Jan 07, 2013
• Comments

My Brooklyn

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The word 'zoning' may be one of the least sexy in the urban planner’s vocabulary, usually eliciting polite but blank stares from members of the general public. Even the sound of it is snooze-inducing.

Wake up to reality: Zoning is one of the most powerful tools that government has to shape places and the lives of people who live there, for better and worse. A new film by Kelly Anderson, My Brooklyn, aims to document the very tangible effect that rezoning has had on Downtown Brooklyn over the past few years. You can guess from the film’s tagline – "unmasking the takeover of America’s hippest city" – where the director’s sympathies lie.

Not with the city’s Economic Development Commission, or with the planning department, or with the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, all of which pushed for the 2004 Plan for Downtown Brooklyn. The plan rezoned key parts of the borough’s core commercial district, including the Fulton Mall – which, unbeknownst to many New Yorkers, had long been the third-most-profitable retail area in the city, after Manhattan’s Fifth and Madison avenues.

The Fulton Mall flew under the radar of many New York residents because it catered predominantly to African-American and Caribbean customers. It was never just a place to shop, but also a place to meet friends, flirt, debate politics, and show off the latest fashionable looks. The mall and the surrounding neighborhoods were an epicenter for New York’s emerging hip-hop culture in the 1970s and ’80s, and Anderson shows us that time through the wonderful photos of Jamel Shabazz.

Fulton Mall in the 1980s, photo by Jamel Shabazz. (Courtesy 'My Brooklyn')

But New York never stands still for long. In some of the film’s most enlightening segments, Anderson and the film’s producer, Allison Lirish Dean, delve into the history of redlining, the banking practice that helped propel white flight for an earlier generation, drove down property values, and made the later return of white “creative” types like Anderson herself possible. When she moved to Brooklyn in 1988, she was typical of the borough’s changing demographic. The transformation picked up momentum as the economy started to boom and whites like herself bought affordable real estate in neighborhoods that had long been predominantly black.

The villains of her story are the developers and city officials who smilingly insist that "change is good."

By the early 21st century, the city and developers saw an opportunity in the Fulton Mall and the long-neglected streets around it. Here’s how the thinking went: back in the 1950s, this was an upscale shopping strip, which had since become the province of sneaker shops and cell-phone stores. Why shouldn’t it go upmarket again, now that Brooklyn was the place to be? Opening up downtown Brooklyn to high-rise office and residential development, the Bloomberg administration argued, would create jobs, improve shopping options, and restore the borough to its erstwhile glory.

But as Anderson documents, the transition has been marked by pain, loss, and alienation for the small business owners who had kept the Fulton Mall thriving for all those years. In some of the film’s most powerful sequences, Anderson interviews the people being displaced by the rent increases and demolitions resulting from the "improvements," and their stories are wrenching. The barber who took such pride in giving Isaac Hayes a shape-up; the wig store owner who wonders how she will pay her children’s college tuition; the man who ran the diner for 26 years and watches helplessly as his business is taken out from under him. It’s hard not to feel that H&M and the Gap are a poor replacement for these locally owned enterprises. The character and cohesion they bring to the street will surely vanish with them.

Anderson doesn’t pretend to present a balanced picture here. The villains of her story are the developers and city officials who smilingly insist that "change is good," and the residents at a nearby farmer’s market who dismiss, with oblivious racism, the place where generations of black Brooklynites came of age and created a culture that the rest of America is still busily consuming. She creates an ugly portrait of a city where disregard for the needs of the less privileged is as stark as it ever was in the much-maligned days of Robert Moses.

This is not an organic sea change, argues one scholar interviewed for the film, but rather a deliberate strategy on the part of city government. "It’s actually about tearing down neighborhoods and building different neighborhoods," he says. And this: "This is not the only way a city gets governed. This is not the only way that development happens."

In the past 10 years, Brooklyn has become a kind of Rorschach test onto which urban observers can project their ideas about the future of cities. Is gentrification a scourge or a boon? Are white, yuppie newcomers a positive part of the borough’s revitalization or the harbingers of its fatal homogenization? My Brooklyn is a powerful, deeply researched telling of the borough's story from one woman’s point of view, a lament for the human price paid by many to ensure great profit for a few.

After seeing it, you probably won’t think that zoning is dull any longer. It can, as Anderson demonstrates, create human drama on an epic scale.

 

[aNYone]

lol Harlem been getting gentrified. It will be complete sooner than later

yea thats what i thought especially the lower part of harlem. do you think theyll ever be able to change 125th from what it is.Not saying that its bad but i cant see it ever looking like "Williamsburg" 

Nah, I'm not trying to cut *** on the Bronx by giving it a negative tone. I love my Bronx pride and how thing's are shaping up. The North definitely is more quiet, I have a cousin that lives near the last six train stop, I don't know the street name exactly. But it's mad quiet, nice *** houses, etc.

Yea thats the pelham bay park stop. what people fail to realize is that the bronx still has a lot of green left and is not as concrete as manhattan or downtown brooklyn. a lot of neighborhoods up here are straight suburbs. A matter a fact Riverdale is basically Weschester

 

[ninjahood]

Its the Black city workers, working 2 job to try to get their kids into college, Uncle Tito and Clarence that used to own the local merengue and jazz clubs and the first generation immigrant families that get priced out of neighborhoods that they have poured capital into for the last 40 years.

bingo, people that invested in their OWN HOOD long before these outta towners tryin to pluck luxury condos in every other damn block

and yet da landlord doesn't wanna renew their lease because all of a sudden mr "big box retailer" or "real estate agent" wants in on da foundation da immigrant

community galvanized on their own with no help, and price out da people who wont seen da fruits of their labor from not giving up in their neighborhood.

 

[goldenchild9]

BS.

Gentrification takes the people that actually cared about their hood and did their best to help turn it around....and it forces them into another hood. Turning their lives upside down, denying them of the upward social mobility that they worked for and killing the local culture & institutions.

Always the cats with the loudest opinions, with the least insight and spouting the most BS.

I've lived in the hood.

Grew up in Camden

Them changing the area and moving out the problems that cause the hood far outweigh the few familes of upstanding citizens that leave.

And majority of folks who are part of the reason a hood is a "hood" grow up, get smart and leave regardless.

You know who stays? That's right the people who forced it to become that way.

What are you even trying to say?

 

[gottabeem21]

is it still gentrification if black people are doing it?

Spoiler

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/ne...ception-chicagos-changing-neighborhoods/4233/

 

[dayman]

as a korean kid living in the bronx in the early 90's, i remember getting beaten in the school bus during pre-school (age 4), getting picked on and getting into fights in kindergarten, and getting jumped in 1st grade with my brother who was in 3rd grade. I hate that garbage of a borough. 

one of my earliest memories i can still vividly remember is the preschool school bus incident...bunch of black kids punching and kicking me and one even swung a seatbelt at my head. Of course I didnt know I was getting beaten at that time since I was so young, but I did realize what had happened when I got a bit older...plus, I remember my parents talking to the bus driver outside my apartment on briggs ave. 

 

[rell826]

He's saying nothing.

You understand why neighborhoods become this way right? The lack of political intervention to improve said spaces forces those who were displaced there to make due with what they have. Failing schools? That's not the people's fault. No healthy alternatives to fast food? That's not the residents fault. Some find a way to overcome these obstacles while others who were failed by the system resort to criminal activity.

You're from Camden and the Nomad is from Detroit. Y'all both saw what happened when manufacturing left the area.

 

[goldenchild9]

El Barrio and Harlem are perfect examples of the griminess of gentrification.

Hardworking Latinos and Black people who have been holding it down Uptown since the Harlem Renaissance are the one's now being kicked out so already well off people can live in desirable locations for cheap and become even more well off.

The Spanish restaurants, clubs and stores were what kept El Barrio culturally popping and economically afloat, now 116th street is starting to look like downtown and the architects of the community are being forced out. Latin culture is hanging on by a thread in EL BARRIO. S_ is sad.

The Black families that were extremely politically and culturally active in Harlem in the 90's...changing the City College curriculum, running out the drug dealers, getting the Schomburg center built, changing street names, making the EBC, Rucker and Gauchos hot etc....they are the ones being forced out under the city mandate.

The real good for nothings have long since scattered out and left. It's the people that held it down that are being forced out.

 

[7thave btn 31stn33rd st]

Neighborhoods change. Cant really help that. Little Italy and Chinatown has decreased, the Hasidic neighborhoods decreased. Look at Harlem, damn near everything west of Lenox ave. has changed. Kew Gardens, use to be mostly middle class Jewish population, now its mostly Korean just as another example. My grand father use to own an auto body shop on College Point blvd in Flushing. Cant even tell you how many times things have changed in my 29 years.


People are being "pushed out" because people see opportunities in that particular neighborhood, does it suck for the people that have been there for generations. Of course it does.

 

[gllahone84]

Does Bill Clinton still have an office in Harlem?

 

[rell826]

is it still gentrification if black people are doing it?

No, as the article itself says:

The city seems less willing or able to change its perception of Bronzeville. In Anderson’s interviews with white middle-class Chicago residents, it sounds almost as if they can’t distinguish between poor and middle-class blacks living there. It’s as if gentrification can’t happen without an influx of white residents, and so it must not be happening there. How can the neighborhood’s prospects have really changed if its demographics haven’t? Bronzeville's historic "blackness" – to borrow a term from the academics – appears to overwhelm any sense of its identity as a neighborhood on the way up.

Plus, the neighborhood that middle class Blacks are moving to has been black for decades.

 

[dahuhuhyah]

Washington Heights is next......

 

[the nomad]

Loss of culture?

What culture is lost?

The crime? The drug use? The drug sales? The problems and issues it all creates

Obviously not everyone is like that but come on.

What culture is being lost

THIS

People are trying to justify why there aren't rich or can't afford to live in these neighborhoods. Truth is there was an excuse 50 years ago, even 30 years ago. TODAY with the wealth of FREE technology and education there is no excuse for the deterioration for prime real-estate.

People who renovate these areas, purchase them at CHEAP prices, and the appeal isn't in the property it's in the PEOPLE who NOW live in the property. Desirable individuals, from a far. It kills me how dudes will blow thousands or sneakers, gadgets, jewelry, rims, and other stuff but won't save for PROPERTY, defend the property with their own lives and create a safe environment for THEIR own people.

White flight, is a state of mind ...stop chasing those type of white people's ideologies of success. It's the reason they "explored" because they were bored with looking at each other all day. They got a taste of Native American Pocahontas yambs and were floating over here wearing stupid wigs in BOATLOADS, while wanting NOTHING to do with the people who inhabit the land....just the money and yambs.

That's the problem in a nutshell, everybody want to be in white people face all the time, get out their face if they don't want you around. Those aren't the type of white people you want in your life anyway.

The value of your neighborhood begins with YOU, stop killing your own people, stop being scared of them, treat your neighborhood with pride, guard it with your life, SPEND MONEY IN YOUR OWN COMMUNITY (New Yorkers: the guy selling stuff merchandise on the corner, candles, sculptures, art, books etc).

This "elite" class of white people who are demonized for getting money, wouldn't even HAVE anything to define "success" or social class by if people just get out of their face and do their own thing. Think outside the box revolutionize the current way we define wealth and class. 

But truth is most people in these communities are lazy and stupid, too lazy to even THINK ...they'd rather complain about anyone who has a smile on their face and the money to shut them up and move them out.

That's the truth.

Gentrification = 

,,,cats forgetting Native Americas gentrified America before it was America within their own classes of people, so did Africans, and so did Native South Americans.



Stop being weak and stupid...period.


 

Washington Heights is next......

Ninjahood and all his sneakers gonna be out on the streets like: "what happened to Da Heights b?"

 

[americangenius]

I feel like we get this topic every month. While I agree some of the change has been forced onto neighborhoods and carry negative effects, many of the original citizens of these neighborhoods took part in this as well. Many friends of my family owned homes in Park Slope/ Bushwick and were offered 20% above market value for their homes by prospective investors and sold out. Local businesses are actually improving as well as this new influx of people have loads of disposable income and love trying out NYC foods and shops.

Double edged sword, but we will see how things play out in the next 2-3 years when those coming for the short term experience leave.

 

[ninjahood]

BS.

Gentrification takes the people that actually cared about their hood and did their best to help turn it around....and it forces them into another hood. Turning their lives upside down, denying them of the upward social mobility that they worked for and killing the local culture & institutions.

Always the cats with the loudest opinions, with the least insight and spouting the most BS.

And majority of folks who are part of the reason a hood is a "hood" grow up, get smart and leave regardless.
 

so smart that they get pushed out by da gentrifyers to enjoy what they built up....

 

[rell826]

White flight is a state of mind

Discussion not even worth having anymore. You're more entertaining when you're making up fabricated stories.

 

[goldenchild9]

I said my piece.

I'm out.

 

[the nomad]

White flight is a state of mind

Discussion not even worth having anymore. You're more entertaining when you're making up fabricated stories.

 exactly.  You wouldn't even know where to begin to have a SERIOUS conversation with ME on gentrification. Stay in your lane.