Crow Hill as a neighborhood
Comments
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Capt. Planet wrote: I clearly recall years ago an acquaintance telling me she had just rented an apartment in Park Slope. When I inquired where she had rented, she replied "on Windsor Place". In case you didn't know, there's an entire n'hood south of Park Slope called "Windsor Terrace". It's been there a long time and it's named Windsor Terrace because of Windsor Place. Why she said Park Slope is unclear but the relationship of Park Slope to Windsor Terrace is similar to that of Prospect Heights to Crown Heights.
I disagree. I think a better analogy between Prospect Heights and Crown Heights (especially the part of Crown Heights between Franklin and Classon) would be "South Slope" and the part of Greenwood Heights just South of the Prospect Expressway -
"drkman" wrote: [quote=Backinbrooklyn]but that appears to be motivated by real estate interests as you can command a better price if you state it is Prospect Heights. quote]
Yes, that was me that stated real estate interests and I do believe that is the reason for so much discrepancy behind different borders of neighborhoods. It is not a condemnation of realtor's or landlords. I have no issue with a subset of a neighborhood being called one name since everyone knows that it is a part of a particular neighborhood (i.e., Striver's Row is Harlem, Weeksville, is Crown Heights, Stuyvesant Heights is Bed-Stuy) but to misled people and say that Nostrand and St. Johns is Prospect Heights or to try to move the Prospect Heights border to Franklin Ave is dishonest and an insult to all of us Crown Heighters who happen to like our neighborhood. In fact, why is it that name of the neighborhood between Franklin and Washington is even in question since historically it has been known as Crown Heights.
Sorry, here's the quote I had meant to reference. My apologies to SBQ
Just my thoughts and I may be incorrect in saying real estate interests since it may be other influences as well. -
Drkman:
The problem with Crown Heights is that it covers a vast area, which includes many "subneighborhoods" with high crime. The media doesn't of course use these "subneighborhoods" but labels everything Crown Heights, so we get stories like the one below.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010.....ring_stay_for_nyc_to.html
Newcomers are natrually anxious and hungry for news about their new n'hood and when they or their friends see stories such as the above, they flip out and run away, even though the "subneighborhood" where they are moving to is much different than the one featured in the article.
I guess one possible solution is to educate the media about these subn'hoods via letters to the editor. Any other ideas? -
Seems the Daily News link no longer works.
Here's the same story in the NY Post, an even better source for reliable reporting. As far as I know, the story never made the NY Times, which is another problem.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/soccer_player_shot_and_killed_in_Uu2ApTyesmVa56ODsgE2PM -
Capt. Planet wrote: Seems the Daily News link no longer works.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/nyregion/31soccer.htm
Here's the same story in the NY Post, an even better source for reliable reporting. As far as I know, the story never made the NY Times, which is another problem.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/soccer_player_shot_and_killed_in_Uu2ApTyesmVa56ODsgE2PM -
While the media can help foster the image that CH is diverse in many ways (especially vis a vis the amount of crime in a given section), the ultimate mission of a good salesperson is to find the right buyer.
Real Estate is a very competitive field, and some (like Steve, mentioned above) find that misleading potential buyers is to their benefit.
I am pleased that Capt does not seem to be willing to engage in such practices, and offer him continued verbal reassurance that "he can succeed in CH as a real estate professional, despite the fact that many hold negative images of the neighborhood. Images that equal parts reality, and equal parts preconceived notions that are blown out of proportion."
In this environment, you must find that buyer.
....attempting to change the environment is likely to be a long process, perhaps once that is achieved long after we are all deceased.
While such efforts are still worthwhile, you must live and earn money now ...in the short term.
My advice is to partner with organizations and people that do great things for the 'hood, love it, and then introduce potential buyers to them.
Promising and providing yummy cookies at Open Houses also seems to work. -
MHA wrote: SpaHa -- instead of Spanish Harlem
Or NoUES- North Upper East Side -
CrowNo
Crown heights north. -
Whynot:
Your mention of developing a n'hood prompted a string of associations. IN the real estate biz, the area a broker works can be referred as his "farm".
In the agricultural game, farmers can either exploit their farm for quick gain, planting the same crop year after year, putting nothing back to replace what they have taken, quickly depleting the soil and ruining the land for future farmers, then moving on to another farm to repeat the cycle.
OR, they can carefully tend their farm, rotating crops, using crops, soil amendments and maintenance based on careful observation to build up the land for future generations. Wendell Berry, who farms his family farm on the Ohio River when he's not writing beautiful poems and essays, has written extensively about a a farmer's obligation to his farm. Here's a snippet of what he writes about:
Having once put his hand into the ground
seeding there what he hopes will outlast him,
a man has made a marriage with his place,
and if he leaves it his flesh will ache to go back.
To what extent does this agrarian view of land apply to a realtor's "farm"? An interesting question, but my sense is that is a pretty apt metaphor. -
As an undergrad in the Midwest, my fellow students were emotionally (almost religiously) attached to the land they farmed because it provided themselves and thier great grand parents with a means of support, as well as something that allowed them to part of a culture: "My family's farm is to the south of Fort Wayne".
In a way, NYC residents are no different, and -like the family farmers- they feel threatened when they feel they are losing control over something so important to them. Mechanization, GM crops, and encroaching cities are analogies that may work well to the "about to be displaced renter".
The Real Estate profession could be fairly (or unfairly) cast as something similar to the Monsanto rep.....
The farmers must adapt or restrict themselves to selling overpriced orgaic food at the local college town....
Section 8 and rent control are, in this way, similar to a subsidy received by a small farm. -
So Cap'n, does your crop rotation metaphor represent cycles of white flight, followed by gentrification?
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I want know his feeling about farm subsidies. ....Monsanto believes they distort the market, and reduce demands for their products by allowing farmers to engage in inefficient practices.
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Franklin Heights. Thats all.
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The federal landbanking program you refer to was as I understand it, an outgrowth of the Depression, when over production drove prices to the floor and farmers couldn't make any money no matter how much marginal land they farmed unsustainably. By subsidizing farmers not to grow on marginal land, the government is both protecting valuable wet lands/grass lands and allowing the farmer to make a living wage.
I'm not surprised that Monsanto doesn't get that. Their over all mindset is short term and quick and dirty. -
and returning to CH, where Real Estate professionals could be fairly (or unfairly) cast as something similar to the Monsanto rep.....
You may remember that as the bearers of bad news, the reps tell the farmers they must adapt or restrict themselves to selling overpriced organic food at the local college town....
In the CH version, reps are also bearers of bad news. They play a role of telling the residents and landlords they must adapt to the changing neighborhood. Sometimes they are even perceived as trying to give the new neighborhood a new name. :shock:
Yes, in an effort to "make the most out of the land", they encourage redevelopment of what has been no go zones (i.e. marginal land, wet lands, Section 8 buildings, rent control, etc). They are perceived as doing this even though those places are the very areas that:
Many hold on to as the only place they can live,
Many believed was deemed by the government to be in need of protection from outside forces.
Many perceived as crucial to the long term functioning of our city (um, "environment").
In this way, civil servants and health care workers, become an endangered species when the farm is fully used. By displacing such folks (areas?) under the guise of capitalism, and focusing on repeat sales (because properties that don't turn over often generate commissions less often), even the most well meaning real estate agents become viewed as not tending to the land
....the real estate professionals are instead viewed as tending only to thier commissions.
...to use the beat a dead horse, and use the prior analogy, they become viewed as practitioners of "Slash and burn" agriculture.
....like I said above, this doesn't mean the impression or analogy is fair.
....and it doesn't apply to all real estate agents of course.
But, yea, I like your industry's description of a neighborhood as being like a farm. And, I would completely love your co-workers to read this thread. -
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The idea that one could farm a neighborhood in the same a farmer farms his land is an intriguing one and might be worth writing an essay about in someone's spare time.
A generality that would apply to both n'hoods and farms I think is that change is good, but rapid change is bad. N'hoods that don't change become stagnant and boring in my opinion. Change keeps people evolving and engaged. Rapid change on the other hand, like that which Crown Heights went through in the 40's and 50's, when the n'hood from from 90% white to 90% black, is disruptive and destructive.
To make an analogy with farming, when a farmer rotates his crops, perhaps replacing a depleting but valuable crop like corn with another valuable but nitrogen-fixing crop like soy, this improves the soil and makes it more valuable. When he on the other hand, when he leases that land to BP who drills for oil and spills half of the crude into the creek, that is bad for the land.
In his brilliant book 1491, Charles Mann notes the many practices that native Americans (he refers to them throughout the book as "Indians") engaged in to continually improve the land without significantly disrupting it. They planted crops in small plots without fences, in land cleared by "girdling" trees. To grow crops with minimal effort and few inputs, they planted them in "guilds" the most famous of which are the three sisters, corn, beans and squash. Permaculturists are now studying the Indian ways to re-learn how to live sustainably on the land without breaking a sweat.
Interestingly one of Mann's key theses is that the human population living in pre-Columbian America was much higher than previously estimated, perhaps equal to that of Europe. If that's the case, the argument that to live sustainably we have to reduce our population just doesn't hold water. It's really more a problem of good land management.
How does that apply to Crown Heights? Can we have "guilds"? Disparate species and lifestyles that complement each other, that provide resilience and engagement through diversity? Hmmmmmm............. This may be worth looking into. -
Change is unstoppable.
...I don't expect real estate folks to attempt to stop it, nor do I blame them for participating in it. They certainly don't cause change.
We all play a role, and blaming each other for something that was going to happen anyway makes no sense.
As the linked film discusses, people who don't adapt run the risk of being left behind and existing in a fugue state of historical whimsy.
I agree, if we were distribute our resources this land could support far more people. ....but I am not convinced that is goal I wish to pursue.
I'd love a guild system, but they aren't real sustainable in a free market.
I must admit, I do kinda like the ring of Crow Hill, Crown Heights though -
The idea that one could farm a neighborhood in the same a farmer farms his land is an intriguing one and might be worth writing an essay about in someone's spare time.
A generality that would apply to both n'hoods and farms I think is that change is good, but rapid change is bad. N'hoods that don't change become stagnant and boring in my opinion. Change keeps people evolving and engaged. Rapid change on the other hand, like that which Crown Heights went through in the 40's and 50's, when the n'hood from from 90% white to 90% black, is disruptive and destructive.
To make an analogy with farming, when a farmer rotates his crops, perhaps replacing a depleting but valuable crop like corn with another valuable but nitrogen-fixing crop like soy, this improves the soil and makes it more valuable. When he on the other hand, when he leases that land to BP who drills for oil and spills half of the crude into the creek, that is bad for the land.
In his brilliant book 1491, Charles Mann notes the many practices that native Americans (he refers to them throughout the book as "Indians") engaged in to continually improve the land without significantly disrupting it. They planted crops in small plots without fences, in land cleared by "girdling" trees. To grow crops with minimal effort and few inputs, they planted them in "guilds" the most famous of which are the three sisters, corn, beans and squash. Permaculturists are now studying the Indian ways to re-learn how to live sustainably on the land without breaking a sweat.
Interestingly one of Mann's key theses is that the human population living in pre-Columbian America was much higher than previously estimated, perhaps equal to that of Europe. If that's the case, the argument that to live sustainably we have to reduce our population just doesn't hold water. It's really more a problem of good land management.
How does that apply to Crown Heights? Can we have "guilds"? Disparate species and lifestyles that complement each other, that provide resilience and engagement through diversity? Hmmmmmm............. This may be worth looking into. -
If we only knew "how fast of change was too fast", we'd be able to argue for or against such changes.
Otherwise, we are left in a situation like the Supreme courts famous blurry ruling on obscenity with regard to porn. "you'll know it when you see it"
the analogy works if you think about it.
Don't let your boss catch you thinking about such things while you work though.... -
Being an old pollster myself, the devil is in the details. Such as:
1. where do the respondents currently reside
2. how long have their lived in the n'hood
3. are they homeowners or renters
4. how exactly was the question worded
5. did all 70 of the respondents answer all of questions
Pollsters make a living telling clients what they want to hear. One of the ways they do this is by asking skewed questions. Another is pulling in respondents from desired demographic groups making the sample representative of only a fraction of the targeted population. Sometimes skewed questions have that effect. People who are excited about a topic are more apt to respond than those that don't give a damn. Making the poll consequently biased.
In survey work you have to select a controlled sample of people, then get a high response rate, controlling for key demographics like sex, age, income, ethncity, education, etc, to make sure that your respondents match the population of the area you are surveying. Unless you do that, the responses are not projectable and the poll really is more for entertainment than serious research.
It would be interesting to see how the responses varied by the groups in questions 1,2 and 3 above.
NP, do you have any answers here? -
Other people make it their business to dismiss polls based on criteria that they deem valuable. No poll meets that criteria, therefore they are never proven wrong.
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fact. I went to a meeting the other day called "Prospect Heights Democrats for Reform" to keep a friend company and see what was going on. I figured that, being from Crown Heights, I'd be the only out-of-neighborhooder. Turns out over HALF the group was from between Washington and Bedford and DID identify with the group's name....
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whynot_31 wrote: Other people make it their business to dismiss polls based on criteria that they deem valuable. No poll meets that criteria, therefore they are never proven wrong.
Especially polls that don't tell them what they want to hear.
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