New Yorker's article on Prospect Heights

whynot_31

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/painting-the-gentrification-of-prospect-heights

suppleknuckles

beautiful drawings

whynot_31

yup.    

Prospect Heights is changing so rapidly that if you remember things from a merely decade ago, most people consider you a long time resident.

Whereas in many towns in America, that would mean very little.   

van_bon

Love these!! Shout out to Andy! http://www.andyfriedman.net

mike dunlap

Great conclusion:

When I catch myself complaining about the rate at which my neighborhood is changing, I remind myself that the makeover is happening at exactly the same speed that it always has in this town. Every new building robs someone of a view, and, at the same time, becomes the apple of somebody else’s eye.

ehgee

Prospect Heights (especially around Vanderbilt) is, to me, an neighborhood that has always been fancy and that I will never have the budget to live in. Because it has been like that as long as I've lived in NYC.

So it's strange to see it contextualized like this.

psbklyn

I think the changes to Prospect Heights have happened very quickly, more quickly than in Cobble Hill (where I lived from 1995-2007), where over more than a decade Court Street has evolved into something more like a tony street in Scarsdale or Summit, NJ. The feeling now in that neighborhood -- notwithstanding the charming brown and brickstones -- is completely different, and not in a positive way, in my view.

Prospect Heights (lived there 2009-2014) has changed radically in just about five years. It seems to me that has occurred hand in hand not only with the construction of Barclays Center, but also with the explosion of high-rise apt buildings in downtown Brooklyn. Every time I'm back in Prospect Heights (I'm in sleepy South Slope now) and look toward Manhattan when I'm walking across Flatbush and see nothing but high-rise apt complexes, I'm saddened. The demographics of the neighborhood have really changed in just five years, although thankfully some old timers and lifelong residents are sticking it out.

I get that developers see these neighborhoods and lick their chops over the opportunity for development and "improvement," and some businesses are clearly benefiting, which is a good thing. But it's just become too overdeveloped (and overpriced) for my taste and as a renter, which is an important distinction; people who own their homes have a much different perspective of the changes to these neighborhoods -- they tend to be far more sanguine, and who wouldn't be with their property rising sharply in value? 

ehgee

psbklyn said:

I get that developers see these neighborhoods and lick their chops over the opportunity for development and "improvement," and some businesses are clearly benefiting, which is a good thing. But it's just become too overdeveloped (and overpriced) for my taste and as a renter, which is an important distinction; people who own their homes have a much different perspective of the changes to these neighborhoods -- they tend to be far more sanguine, and who wouldn't be with their property rising sharply in value? 

The high rises are a symptom of skyrocketing property values, not the cause. Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens are both profoundly expensive neighborhoods, despite lacking any high rises.

NYC is growing (it's added the population of Pittsburgh or St. Louis in the past five years) and the only other options beyond new high-rise development are even more displacement or even more crowding.

Those high rises, in a significant way, absorb high-end demand that would otherwise be pushed further out into Brooklyn.

Yes, it'd be nice to curtail high-end demand by reinstituting a 70% top marginal tax rate, but that doesn't seem very likely any time soon.