what s missing in bedstuy and how could we improve it

Subject: Re: WHAT BEDSTUY NEEDS.....

Ms. Johnnie wrote: This is about keeping Bedstuy from turning into Ratner's backyard and not pushing people out that have lived here for years and have pride in their community.

Subject: Re: WHAT BEDSTUY NEEDS.....

Ms. Johnnie wrote: Not shocking to consider however, let's be real. A resident that has lived here for 20 yrs. has a little bit more vision than that. They wouldn't dare open up a Starbucks they would open up a JAVA NOIR. LOL. For real this is not about Starbucks (trust me I patronize them in the city when that's all that's around and I'm craving a frap). This is about keeping Bedstuy from turning into Ratner's backyard and not pushing people out that have lived here for years and have pride in their community.

Subject: Re: WHAT BEDSTUY NEEDS.....

queencallipygos wrote: [quote=Guvna][quote=Ms. Johnnie]Not shocking to consider however, let's be real. A resident that has lived here for 20 yrs. has a little bit more vision than that. They wouldn't dare open up a Starbucks they would open up a JAVA NOIR. LOL. For real this is not about Starbucks (trust me I patronize them in the city when that's all that's around and I'm craving a frap). This is about keeping Bedstuy from turning into Ratner's backyard and not pushing people out that have lived here for years and have pride in their community.

Subject: Re: What Bed-Stuy Needs is You

guru wrote: [quote=Crystal]Bed Stuy needs more support from its residents. We have way too many people sleeping here, storing their furniture here and living all over the rest of the city. If your block association hasn't said "let's take a group trip down to a good local business and each spend $$$ your association is with itself and not the greater community. If you are educating your children elsewhere without looking at the conditions in our local schools please leave. If you have individually been walking by new businesses for months and even years without patronizing please hurry up and leave. Finish your packing tonight because we just don't need you.

guru wrote: Carmen, I think Crystal would be correct in telling you to hit the bricks!

Flag Wars tells the story of what happened to the Olde Towne East community in Columbus, Ohio when the neighborhood went through the process of gentrification in the mid-to-late 1990s. For much of the twentieth century, urbanists, policymakers, and activists were preoccupied with inner city decline across the United States, as people with money and options fled cities for the suburbs. But widespread reports of the American city's demise proved premature. Beginning in the 1970s, urban life slowly began to regain prestige, particularly among artists and the highly educated. By the turn of this century, many cities were thriving again, and their desirability among the wealthy and upwardly mobile was putting intense pressure on rents, real estate prices, and low-income communities.

What is Gentrification?

Gentrification is a general term for the arrival of wealthier people in an existing urban district, a related increase in rents and property values, and changes in the district's character and culture. The term is often used negatively, suggesting the displacement of poor communities by rich outsiders. But the effects of gentrification are complex and contradictory, and its real impact varies.

Many aspects of the gentrification process are desirable. Who wouldn't want to see reduced crime, new investment in buildings and infrastructure, and increased economic activity in their neighborhoods? Unfortunately, the benefits of these changes are often enjoyed disproportionately by the new arrivals, while the established residents find themselves economically and socially marginalized.

Gentrification has been the cause of painful conflict in many American cities, often along racial and economic fault lines. Neighborhood change is often viewed as a miscarriage of social justice, in which wealthy, usually white, newcomers are congratulated for "improving" a neighborhood whose poor, minority residents are displaced by skyrocketing rents and economic change.

Although there is not a clear-cut technical definition of gentrification, it is characterized by several changes.

Demographics: An increase in median income, a decline in the proportion of racial minorities, and a reduction in household size, as low-income families are replaced by young singles and couples.

Real Estate Markets: Large increases in rents and home prices, increases in the number of evictions, conversion of rental units to ownership (condos) and new development of luxury housing.

Land Use: A decline in industrial uses, an increase in office or multimedia uses, the development of live-work "lofts" and high-end housing, retail, and restaurants.

Culture and Character: New ideas about what is desirable and attractive, including standards (either informal or legal) for architecture, landscaping, public behavior, noise, and nuisance.

How does it happen?

America's renewed interest in city life has put a premium on urban neighborhoods, few of which have been built since World War II. If people are flocking to new jobs in a region where housing is scarce, pressure builds on areas once considered undesirable.

Gentrification tends to occur in districts with particular qualities that make them desirable and ripe for change. The convenience, diversity, and vitality of urban neighborhoods are major draws, as is the availability of cheap housing, especially if the buildings are distinctive and appealing. Old houses or industrial buildings often attract people looking for "fixer-uppers" as investment opportunities.

Gentrification works by accretion — gathering momentum like a snowball. Few people are willing to move into an unfamiliar neighborhood across class and racial lines¹. Once a few familiar faces are present, more people are willing to make the move. Word travels that an attractive neighborhood has been "discovered" and the pace of change accelerates rapidly.

Consequences of Gentrification

In certain respects, a neighborhood that is gentrified can become a "victim of its own success." The upward spiral of desirability and increasing rents and property values often erodes the very qualities that began attracting new people in the first place. When success comes to a neighborhood, it does not always come to its established residents, and the displacement of that community is gentrification's most troubling effect.

No one is more vulnerable to the effects of gentrification than renters. When prices go up, tenants are pushed out, whether through natural turnover, rent hikes, or evictions. When buildings are sold, buyers often evict the existing tenants to move in themselves, combine several units, or bring in new tenants at a higher rate. When residents own their homes, they are less vulnerable, and may opt to "cash them in" and move elsewhere. Their options may be limited if there is a regional housing shortage, however, and cash does not always compensate for less tangible losses.

The economic effects of gentrification vary widely, but the arrival of new investment, new spending power, and a new tax base usually result in significant increased economic activity. Rehabilitation, housing development, new shops and restaurants, and new, higher-wage jobs are often part of the picture. Previous residents may benefit from some of this development, particularly in the form of service sector and construction jobs, but much of it may be out of reach to all but the well-educated newcomers. Some local economic activity may also be forced out — either by rising rents or shifting sensibilities. Industrial activities that employ local workers may be viewed as a nuisance or environmental hazard by new arrivals. Local shops may lose their leases under pressure from posh boutiques and restaurants.

Physical changes also accompany gentrification. Older buildings are rehabilitated and new construction occurs. Public improvements — to streets, parks, and infrastructure — may accompany government revitalization efforts or occur as new residents organize to demand public services. New arrivals often push hard to improve the district aesthetically, and may codify new standards through design guidelines, historic preservation legislation, and the use of blight and nuisance laws.

The social, economic, and physical impacts of gentrification often result in serious political conflict, exacerbated by differences in race, class, and culture. Earlier residents may feel embattled, ignored, and excluded from their own communities. New arrivals are often mystified by accusations that their efforts to improve local conditions are perceived as hostile or even racist.

Change — in fortunes, in populations, in the physical fabric of communities — is an abiding feature of urban life. But change nearly always involves winners and losers, and low-income people are rarely the winners. The effects of gentrification vary widely with the particular local circumstances. Residents, community development corporations, and city governments across the country are struggling to manage these inevitable changes to create a win-win situation for everyone involved.

Benjamin Grant is an urban designer, city planner and writer in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Evils of Gentrification Exposed

So the cat is out of the bag; gentrification, a curse word in many circles, does not displace current residents with higher rents and taxes. Two studies released in the last five years show that residents in non-gentrifying neighborhoods are more likely to move, or be ‘displaced,’ than those in gentrifying neighborhoods; these studies were conducted by economists from Duke University (Vigdor) and Columbia University (Freeman).

The negativity related to middle class families moving back to the city has always confounded me. In the 1960s and 1970s citizens, politicians, and community leaders complained that the middle class was abandoning the city and moving to the suburbs. Then in the 1980s when this same group of people started to move back into the cities, the same group of people started to complain. Seem ridiculous? I thought so too.

In blighted neighborhoods there are often many vacant buildings and lots. These areas are the main focus of gentrification efforts, the unused portions of neighborhoods. While certainly some people do move out, they are usually rewarded with a significantly higher compensation for their house than they would have received previously. Also as gentrification occurs the tax base of an area rises and the quality of its public services as well.

Safer, better lit streets provide incentives for many current residents to stay, and they do. Vigdor found that poor and less educated residents of gentrifying neighborhoods in New York City were 20% less likely to move than their counterparts in similarly blighted neighborhoods. Also landlords have an incentive to improve their own property as those around them do so.

Many concerned with gentrification assume that all of those who move from an area do so because of the effects of gentrification. This is a false belief; it is a fact that poor neighborhoods have high turnover rates. The only difference in a gentrifying neighborhood is that someone from the middle class often fills the vacancy instead of it remaining vacant or being occupied by another poor resident; this gives some the impression that those residents were ‘forced out’ by the middle class. Obviously the less fortunate have no control over their actions and only respond to the actions of the upper and middle class, or at least so the thinking goes for those that believe all poor residents that move out of a gentrifying area do so because of the changes that occur.

Gentrification seems to solve many problems that scholars and city leaders alike complain about. It reduces racial and economic segregation which has greatly increased since World War II. It expands the tax base of cities, which has been shrinking since 1945 as well. Middle and upper class residents contribute more to the tax base and are less likely to use some government services like education and social services than lower class residents. All of this should seem like a win-win situation for urban politicians and residents – higher tax base, rising population, better services, and better housing; only time will tell if people want to reading the writing on the wall and embrace gentrification. Either way those who oppose gentrification watch out because this trend shows no signs of slowing down and its effects are coming to a neighborhood near you.

Robert Fulford's column about "gentrification"
(The National Post, January 10, 2004)
In urban politics, "gentrification" has for many years been a curse, a one-word bundle of anger and resentment. In 1999 a candidate for mayor of San Francisco solemnly pledged that if elected he would make "war on any and all gentrification." In 2000 a Toronto weekly paper, eye, discussed "Toronto's silent war over gentrification."

Those wars were of course purely metaphorical. On Monday in Montreal, members of an organization called the Anti-Gentrification Committee, springing from God knows what political swamp, made the metaphor dangerously literal by committing war-like acts. They terrified residents of the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district by leaving six suspicious-looking packages at condominium construction sites and sales offices. The police bomb squad found the packages harmless, but a communique from the Anti-Gentrification Committee threatened more vicious action in future.

Whoever they are, the Montreal radicals express an extreme version of a widely held opinion. Urban activists and scholars on several continents have convinced themselves that there's something fundamentally wrong and selfish about improving a neighbourhood. That seems to me precisely the reverse of the truth. In fact, the gentrification movement has helped solve, through the spontaneous decisions of millions of citizens, what once seemed a grave and intractable problem.

Forty years ago, the same sort of people who are now averse to gentrification were worrying that "white flight" was destroying the inner cities. Across the U.S., white middle-class families were moving to the suburbs because downtown neighbourhoods were increasingly populated by blacks. By leaving, the middle classes shrank the tax base of the cities, eroding schools and other services. Everyone claimed that downtowns were dying, even where race was not a major factor.

But the 1960s and 1970s brought a big change for the better -- or so it seemed. Middle-class families began taking over cheap, decrepit housing and improving it. Districts that were called "slums" only a few years earlier sprang back to life. In the early stages this was called "neighbourhood revitalization."

In 1964, however, it acquired a new and sinister name and ceased to be an obviously benign process. Ruth Glass, a British sociologist, invented the word "gentrification" as a reaction against the transformation of London neighbourhoods. She decided that the new movement was eliminating cheap rental housing and driving out the poor.

Glass took the extremely conservative view that districts should remain the way they were when she first glimpsed them. She didn't know or care that at some level all neighbourhoods are in transition all the time. She believed that time should be stopped in its path.

As a package for her misgivings, "gentrification" was a clever choice. It had a sophisticated sound, as well as ironic echoes of the rural gentry depicted in the novels of Jane Austen. It carried overtones of snobbery and class superiority -- even if many gentrifiers had been among the urban poor only a generation or a decade earlier. Glass also imported into town planning another word, "invaded," which is what the middle classes supposedly did to the districts of the poor. She used another term, still uglier: "colonising."

By 1973 Glass was treating the improvement of every London slum as a tragedy: "There is very little left of the poorer enclaves of Hampstead and Chelsea: In these boroughs, the upper-middle-class takeover was consolidated some time ago. The invasion has since spread to Islington, Paddington, North Kensington."

As a term of abuse, "gentrification" proved such a huge success that it went into some dictionaries with Glass's own social interpretation attached; Merriam-Webster says it's "the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces earlier, usually poorer residents." Recently in The New York Times, A.O. Scott depicted gentrification (he was discussing a former slum in Brooklyn) as a transformation that's "full of aspiration and oppression, progress and callousness."

Seldom has a single word done so much to distort perception. In a sense it resembles "elitist." Both words demonize creative impulses that are common to much of humanity by depicting ambition and the search for personal betterment as a form of evil.

Much of the world now agrees with Glass that gentrification cheats the poor, though the evidence has never been strong. Recent economic studies in Boston and New York have suggested that the opposite is the case. They claim that gentrification can benefit the poor by increasing the tax base, bringing middle-class energy to the job of improving the schools, and introducing economic variety. Many older residents, they discovered, are not pushed out. What disappears instead is the "monoculture of poverty." It's replaced by the kind of economic mix that's essential to social health. Reuben Greenberg, the police chief of Charleston, S.C., claims that "Urban problems are caused not by poverty, but by the concentration of poverty."

No one will claim, though, that benefits can be shown in each case of gentrification. Every renovated district has its own qualities and its own economic results. But certainly no serious research supports the belief that gentrification consistently hurts the poor. This widespread foolishness demonstrates how thinking can be imprisoned by language, even by just one well-chosen word.

Guvna wrote:
Why are all the restaurants French? Lou Lou's is nice, Oscar okay, Lolas is nice. Did I miss any? Thai, Cuban, Senegalese, Jamaican, American, Mexican are some of the other foods I've found in the area. I like the culinary diversity. Cant eat burgers and fries, or chinese food all the time. It'll kill ya.

annoyed wrote: [quote=Guvna]
Why are all the restaurants French? Lou Lou's is nice, Oscar okay, Lolas is nice. Did I miss any? Thai, Cuban, Senegalese, Jamaican, American, Mexican are some of the other foods I've found in the area. I like the culinary diversity. Cant eat burgers and fries, or chinese food all the time. It'll kill ya.