By Brenna Darling
“One by one, many of the working class quarters have been invaded by the middle class – upper and lower … Once this process of ‘gentrification’ starts in a district it goes on rapidly until all or most of the working class occupiers are displaced and the whole social character of the district is changed.”[i]
Ruth Glass first defined gentrification according to what she saw in 1960s London, a discrete process in which middle class newcomers transformed a neighborhood until its previous residents could no longer afford to live there. This first generation of middle-class occupants did the gentrifying work themselves for the most part. For Glass, gentrifiers were professionals willing to put forth the effort to upgrade their living quarters. Today, “gentrification” has become a broader term, encompassing a variety of urban processes beyond Glass’ observations, coming to signify not just the product of the actions of middle-class individuals, but institutional processes that are encoded in policy.
While much of the theorization on gentrification has focused on the class struggle that ensues from displacing working-class residents, this dynamic can likewise complicate the lives of those intiating the process. I argue that the class-related issues that are part of the gentrification discussion go beyond the conflict between the gentrifiers and the displaced. Gentrification in its most recent forms can create conflicts and contradictions between actors from within the middle-class and elite groups who most directly benefit from it. I develop this argument by considering how these intra-class contradictions play out in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Defining Gentrification
As mentioned previously, gentrification is a process in which more affluent individuals move into a working-class or low-income urban neighborhood that often has a history of disinvestment and neglect by the city or state, triggering the displacement of current residents. By making physical improvements to the neighborhood such as renovations to the housing stock, the newcomers essentially raise the cost of housing until it becomes too expensive for previous inhabitants.
Phillip Clay has argued that gentrification in American cities has occurred by way of a four stage process. In the “Pioneer,” stage, a small number of “creative types” move into a working-class neighborhood, bringing with them some amount of financial and social capital.[ii] They renovate properties, which is made possible by private funding. Targeted properties are generally vacant, and thus, little displacement of existing residents occurs initially. The later steps expand on the first as the perception of risk in the neighborhood declines. The “Expanding Gentrification” stage occurs when the neighborhood is deemed livable by more middle class occupants. “Displacement” starts to intensify in the third stage, in which more “risk-averse” gentrifiers move in and rents increase. The neighborhood’s physical character continues to change as developers begin to invest in new commercial quarters and in the housing stock. Class tensions become even more pronounced as rents continue to rise. “Mature” gentrification arises when there is no longer any question as to the safety of investments in the neighborhood. In Stage 4, financial institutions and developers see the neighborhood as significant opportunity, and people of increasing wealth and means move in. At this point, many original residents will have been displaced along with some of the “pioneer” gentrifiers.
However, some scholars find the stage model unsatisfactory for its purely descriptive qualities and rather emphasize why gentrification occurs. In general, explanations of gentrification fall into one of two camps: the “demand-side” or “supply-side” camp. The first of these explains gentrification by appealing to changes in the lifestyle preferences of the middle class. Gregory Lipton, for instance, argues that in the mid-nineteenth century, the middle and upper classes began to prefer the urban to the suburban.[iii] Family dynamic shifts are a significant part of this explanation; these individuals began to delay marriage and children, often having fewer children, which in turn decreased the attractiveness of homeownership and the “calm” of suburbia. These often single or childless adults prefer the cosmopolitanism of urban life and are less concerned with private automobiles and public schools. These explanations posit that consumer preferences are the primary driver in gentrification.
On the other side of the debate, some scholars have argued for a production-based theory of gentrification, critiquing the consumer preference model as ignorant of the interests and roles of the real estate and financial sectors.[iv] Neil Smith emphasizes the importance of gentrifiers’ role as producers of their own profit; making a sound financial investment on their home is their most important consumer “preference.’ Within urban capitalism, gentrifiers produce value by making improvements to a gentrifying neighborhood, whether it be by their own “sweat equity” or by their mere presence in a neighborhood as a middle class or elite individual. Investing in early-gentrifying neighborhoods is profitable, due to the “rent gap,” or the difference between the price of property in a neighborhood, which is low due to previous disinvestment and under-maintenance, and the potential ground value of that property, which is higher due to proximity to central business districts and proximal development.[v] This gap creates an opportunity for those with enough initial capital to make improvements on a property, either traditional developers or occupier-developers like the “pioneer gentrifier.” Thus, the production-based explanation can be called the “economy” explanation for gentrification, grounded in the urban capitalist economic structure.
Gentrification and Class Struggle
Given that gentrification causes the socio-economic character of a neighborhood to shift, many analyses of the process focus on the resulting interclass conflicts that. An easy way to see how gentrification impacts residents along class lines is to consider the costs and benefits accrued in the gentrification process. The primary benefits of gentrification come in financial form, for those economic actors who have capital tied to property in gentrifying neighborhoods. Most clearly, the initial gentrifiers are able to take advantage of the rent gap created by disinvestment. Individuals who are able to profit from investment in improving property will almost always be of a higher class than previous occupants. This is because, due to disinvestment and decay, a pre-gentrification neighborhood will often be redlined, meaning residents would be unable to get loans in order to improve the housing stock themselves. Thus, anyone who is able to improve housing and eventually profit from this investment either already had private capital to make the improvements, or was able to receive grants to “revitalize” the housing stock, and recipients of these monies have generally been middle class.[vi] As professional developers become involved, the opportunity for accumulation intensifies, and large-scale developers with access to more significant amounts of capital are able to mobilize to construct luxurious housing or commercial spaces. At this point, rents for these spaces rapidly increase, and elite developers are able to collect high returns on their investment. In this way, gentrification as an investment opportunity has been de facto limited to middle-class and elite individuals, or businesses in the case of professional development. Financial institutions that earn interest on the mortgages of gentrifiers also stand to benefit from the process, as well as the state, which will collect on higher property tax assessments as properties in a neighborhood become more valuable.[vii]
The costs associated with gentrification fall on the working-class population who are displaced from gentrifying neighborhoods and the working-class population of the city as a whole who will have less housing options overall. As Smith and other scholars have prophesied, “the restructuring of urban space [due to gentrification] now taking place is likely to produce nothing short of a bourgeois playground” in many American cities.[viii] As gentrification progresses, housing for working-class families diminishes or shifts elsewhere, and the commercial amenities provided in many gentrifying neighborhoods no longer meet working-class needs.
Discussions of urban revitalization and economic development as policy also serve to illuminate class tensions in the gentrification process. For example, Richard Florida has argued that cities should go to significant lengths to attract the “creative class” to live and work there as a policy initiative. Florida defines the creative class as a group of individuals who are employed in various sectors where production of knowledge is part of a social process of entrepreneurship and generally value individuality, diversity and openness.[ix] Florida argues those who are often called “creative types” are critical to the economic vitality of an urban environment, as firms realize that creatives are their greatest asset. For firms to create growth and jobs for a city, they need to be located in an environment that is hospitable to the creative class, both inside the firm itself and in the locality in general.[x] He argues for “Three Ts” of economic development, Technology, Talent and Tolerance; the middle-class individuals that embody these notions are those that the city needs to attract.[xi] Thus, policy should be put in place to create a city that caters to the needs of the creative class, like edgy, upmarket housing and art-oriented or intellectually-based entertainment.
The characteristics that Florida ascribes to the creative class demonstrate that these individuals have the capacity and sensibilities that often prompt gentrification and displacement. By valuing “tolerance” or “diversity,” these individuals are likely to move into a neighborhood with residents from across the socio-economic spectrum. But, by moving there, whether or not they put significant effort into renovating their housing, the sense of creative hipness they bring to the neighborhood has potential to attract other middle-class and elite individuals and larger-scale developers who have the capacity to change the social character of the neighborhood, raise property values, and displace large segments of the preexisting population. In this way, policy aimed at attracting Florida’s “creatives” is a clear class project that can lead to displacement.
Perhaps more explicitly, Mayor Bloomberg’s policy to brand New York as a “luxury city” in order to attract corporate headquarters could be said to be part of a gentrification strategy with explicit class interests. President Andrew Alper of the New York City Development Corporation, working closely with Bloomberg, argued in a 2002 speech that New York would have to market itself to companies that could afford to do business here.[xii] Bloomberg and Alper’s logic was that New York is obviously very expensive, so the only way to bring in companies and foster growth was to market the city for its value, that certain qualities of New York can justify its high costs. Rather than putting policies in place to make New York more affordable for businesses, Bloomberg and Alper decided the strategic move would be to enhance New York’s “luxury brand,” and bring in only the businesses that could afford to pay for it, which had significant class-based implications.[xiii] First, the businesses who meet this definition are generally high-margin companies operating in the finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) sector, and the jobs they bring are often very high paying and provide opportunity for only the highly educated, managerial class. Thus, by bringing these companies to New York, Bloomberg prioritized job creation for the elite, but importantly also created a situation where more middle-class and elite individuals would likely be coming into New York for work. Creating a hospitable environment for these elite actors would mean creation of luxury housing and other amenities, likely expanding and hastening the gentrification process for the benefit of FIRE sector professionals. In this case, Smith’s “bourgeois playground” is inscribed in policy. By making gentrification, by way of economic development initiatives, part of city policy, officials prioritize the needs of elites under the guise of promoting growth that benefits all.
Gentrification and Elites
Although, rightly, much of the conversation about gentrification focuses on class conflict, as gentrification progresses and intensifies, it is possible that the ever-more-rapid pace of upmarket development could create problems for gentrifiers themselves. Most clearly, this is the case for the “pioneer” or “marginal” gentrifiers who spearheaded the process and could eventually lose out on some or most of its benefits. Loretta Lees describes how the “super-gentrification” that has and is currently taking place in Brooklyn Heights demonstrates this notion. Lees defines super-gentrification as the “transformation of already gentrified, prosperous and solidly upper-middle-class neighborhoods into much more exclusive and expensive enclaves” and she calls the new generation of gentrifiers “financifiers,” as their economic behavior is a direct result of the “fortunes from global finance and corporate service industries.”[xiv]
She tells the story of super-gentrification by way of a typical four-story brownstone in the neighborhood, which was purchased by a middle-class lawyer and his wife in 1962. The couple renovated the home themselves and then sold it to a wealthier women relocating from Cobble Hill in the late 1990s for several times the original price, following the typical stage pattern described previously.[xv] Although this particular couple was able to benefit directly from the investment they made in a gentrifying neighborhood, this phenomenon demonstrates how many pioneers, more solidly middle-class, could eventually be priced out of the neighborhood. This is especially the case for renter, but even for those who purchased property, increased tax assessments can prompt families to abandon the neighborhood and move to more affordable areas. Thus, gentrification can also cause middle-class displacement in addition to the working-class displacement previously discussed.
Lees’ interviews also illuminate how the new “third wave” gentrifiers moving into Brooklyn Heights changed not only the property values but the cultural character of the neighborhood as well, much to the dismay of the first generation of gentrifiers. As rents went up and up, the “quaint,” locally-owned businesses, which were part of what attracted the pioneers in the first place, were displaced by “corporate chains” such as The Gap, Banana Republic and Starbucks”.[xvi] Longtime residents came to view the new neighbors as “an assault on the small town ethos and community feel of the neighborhood,” and lamented the “Manhattanization” of Brooklyn Heights. Importantly, the interviewees in question were not the working-class population that inhabited the neighborhood before it became more fashionable in the 1960s and 1970s, but the very people who prompted this change.
Lees explains that in her interviews, many people emphasized that the “wives of the pioneer generation had created the sense of community in Brooklyn Heights” that made it an attractive place for the new wealthy families to live[xvii]. The neighborhood created by the pioneer gentrifiers seems to reflect Jane Jacobs-esque urbanism, with lots of street life, interaction between residents and the presence of small businesses.[xviii] Jacobs’ conception of a healthy and vital urban neighborhood has been touted as something of a bible or guide for urban thinkers since the 1960s, and she is well regarded by the urban middle-class intelligentsia in general. At the same time, her arguments for mixed-use blocks and 24-hour activity have been criticized for appealing exclusively to nostalgia and middle-class sensibilities to support her ideas. In her later years she distinguished between “good gentrification,” which is consistent with her notions of vital communities, and “bad gentrification,” in which neighborhoods turn into sterile and “homogenous commercial corridors”.[xix] However, some critics argue that her push for “good gentrification” has almost inevitably lead to “bad gentrification,” creating later-stage gentrified neighborhoods that Jacobs herself would have hated. In fact, Jacobs’ middle-class peers, the gentrifiers themselves, most likely do not want to live in a “homogenous corridor” either, but the gentrification process that they have taken part in has produced this environment. Jacobs herself seems to have already seen this contradiction in gentrification, saying “when a place gets boring, even the rich people leave” (Florida, “Getting Jane Jacobs Right). To what extent this is true has yet to be seen.
In the case of Brooklyn Heights, as the population shifted towards double-earning, high-level professional families, the Jacobsian sense of community and street life was apparently lost. According to Lees’ study, a “wealthy middle-aged doctor” who grew up in the neighborhood wrote that the “community [is] less close [because] more yuppies moved in,” demonstrating how even elite members of the community feel certain negative impacts of gentrification.[xx] The first generation used their “sweat equity” not only to increase their property values but also to create the marketable neighborhood that would be eventually attract the elite families who would displace them, even if those aspects of the neighborhood no longer exist in their original form. As gentrification progresses, the “Jane Jacobs neighborhood,” with a sense of community and regular interaction between residents, that Lees’ interviewees say Brooklyn Heights once was, has diminished.
While the neighborhood changes prompted by super-gentrification more clearly cause distress for pioneer gentrifiers, it also seems like these changes could be to the detriment of the new gentrifying class. Even for the ultra-elite “financifiers” that have moved into Brooklyn Heights, a sense of community is likely a major draw for any neighborhood, especially for families with children, which is still a large proportion of Brooklyn Heights residents. However, the presence of these “financifiers,” according to Lees’ study is a significant factor for the loss of this aspect of the neighborhood. Paradoxically, perhaps for some later-wave residents, part of the reason they moved to Brooklyn Heights has diminished because of their own presence in the neighborhood and lifestyle choices.
As previously discussed, once the later stages of gentrification are underway and the neighborhood has been deemed to be a “good investment,” a higher proportion of development is led by large-scale developers who want to build more explicitly “luxury” housing, namely higher-rise and ultra-modern condo buildings. This trend towards density and glass towers can be seen to be explicitly at odds with the existing “hipster” brand of urbanism that arises in many gentrified neighborhoods and serves to make them attractive to the middle class and elites. In this way, the gentrifiers themselves cannot “have it both ways,” as their presence in a certain neighborhood, which may have been prompted by an artistic or diverse environment, in shades of Florida’s thesis, will inevitably lead to the neighborhood losing these features in the long-run. Barbara Eldridge calls this tension “Brooklyn-the-brand versus Brooklyn-the-megacity,” bringing attention to the contractions that later-stage, developer-led gentrification can create even for the gentrifier population.[xxi] Naturally, for some earlier-stage gentrifiers, like the Brooklyn Heights brownstone couple cited earlier, this can lead to displacement. As the Center for an Urban Future reported in their Creative New York 2015 report, “Artists and other creative professionals have a long and fraught history with the real estate market. When creative people move into affordable, often industrial areas, they tend to drive up real estate values, ultimately pricing themselves out of the neighborhood.”[xxii] In this case, the contradiction creates population displacement, but even for other residents who can afford rent increases, many attractive aspects of the neighborhood are diminished. On another, if more abstract, level, if Florida is correct in positing that diversity and a sense of urbane progressivism attract the creative class, here considered as gentrifiers, these notions may be at odds with the overt emphasis on consumption the fuels large-scale luxury development of modern housing and amenities.
Efforts to preserve the historic architecture that often attracts gentrifiers, which often goes up against the agendas of developers is also a part of this conversation. In the West Village, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, made up of mostly middle-class and elite residents of the Village, have tried to push back against St. John’s Partners’ large-scale development slated for the Pier 40 site on the grounds that it is too big and would change the neighborhood’s character.[xxiii] As development in cities increases due to influx of capital and populations desiring luxury housing and amenities, elite developers are increasingly put into conflict with preservationist populations who are also often of elite or at least middle-class status.
A Case Study: Bushwick
In this final section, I will look at the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick to see how gentrification has impacted the preexisting population of the neighborhood as well as the gentrifiers, who apparently have much lamented the changes to the neighborhood which they themselves prompted. I chose to focus on Bushwick because of the mentioned vocalness of many of the residents as well as the barrage of interest in the neighborhood from the media as being one of New York’s “up-and-coming” trendy places to be.
Smith’s rent gap conception of gentrifications seems to be a particularly good fit to describe the history of the neighborhood, as disinvestment in Bushwick in the mid-20th century contributed to a rise in crime and drug traffic. In the post-war years, the previously German community had mostly moved out of the neighborhood as part of “white flight,” and Bushwick shifted to a predominantly low-income Puerto Rican and black neighborhood, causing rents to drop rapidly and general disinvestment to occur.[xxiv] After the Blackout of 1977 resulted in large-scale arson and looting of many Bushwick businesses particularly along main thoroughfare Knickerbocker Avenue, the area further deteriorated, leaving very low-rents, poor housing stock and street conditions, significant levels of crime, and overall disinvestment.
Artist communities that could be seen as first-stage gentrification have existed in Bushwick for a few decades, with many groups of artists and other creatives living together in large warehouse-style, live-work spaces. However, since a majority of these residents were low-income and many lived as squatters in abandoned buildings, this phenomenon did not cause significant displacement among the preexisting population. Intensified or later-stage gentrification in this Brooklyn neighborhood began roughly in the mid-2000s due to an outward push from Williamsburg, a later-stage gentrified neighborhood to the immediate North-West, and was aided by the Bushwick Initiative project managed by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council and Assemblyman Vito Lopez.[xxv] This project was important to making conditions in Bushwick suitable for gentrification to take place and included reducing crime, improving housing stock, and increasing general economic development in the approximately 20 blocks surrounding Maria Hernandez Park. To address these goals, the City invested $750,000 into improving the quality of housing in this area, utilized resources from the Department of Small Business Services (SBS) in order to aid local business, and undertook other projects to make the neighborhood more livable, such as providing pest-resistant garbage receptacles Low rents due to the rent gap created by previous disinvestment, efforts by the City to “clean up” the neighborhood, rapidly rising rents in many surrounding neighborhoods and the existing presence of “pioneering” artists and other creative types have all contributed to the heightened levels of gentrification in Bushwick today.
Rents have risen steadily in Bushwick since the mid-2000s, but in very recent years the process has seemed to intensify rapidly. According to a Brooklyn Rental Market Report, the average rent for a studio apartment in Bushwick as of November 2015 was $1826 per month.[xxvi] According to popular logic that a renter’s income should equal approximately 40 times their monthly rent, although I realize this is often not practiced in New York, someone who rents an average studio in this neighborhood should make $73,040 per year. Given the high but declining proportion of low-income residents in the neighborhood, many residents do not have near this income level, and thus significant displacement continues to take place in Bushwick. The class aspect of changes in Bushwick are particularly visible around the Morgan L-train stop, where tastes of the neighborhood’s creative middle-class take the form of cafes and other amenities that are likely to be out of the price range accessible to working-class residents. Long-time residents of the area who have not yet been displaced have expressed fear that they will soon “have to move out” or that they “have nowhere left to live” as gentrification continues.[xxvii]
However, the older residents of the neighborhood, along with those who have already been displaced are not the only ones lamenting Bushwick’s recent changes. In upcoming documentary, “The Bushwick Diaries,” filmmaker Kweighbaye Kotee interviewed residents of the Brooklyn neighborhood about the changes they have seen in the area over the last few years, and interestingly, she claims that generally those who were the most upset about the gentrification of Bushwick were residents who have lived there for less than ten years, putting them into a category of in movers who relocated to Bushwick while gentrification was already underway. “They were the angriest. They were the ones who were saying Bushwick is over,” she explained regarding these interviewees, who would likely be considered to be gentrifiers themselves.[xxviii] She contrasts this attitude with that of many older residents, who had seen multiple changes to Bushwick over the years, and thus seemed less alarmed by the changes. However, Kotee did not specify whether the older residents who were less concerned were also those likely to be displaced or if they would be able to afford to stay in the neighborhood. It might be argued that the newer, angrier residents in question may be more likely to believe that their feelings about gentrification could lead to actual resistance to the unwanted community changes taking place due to a their attained level of education or class privilege. This may contrast to older and less affluent residents who may not feel that articulating their anger would lead to any positive change.
For first-generation gentrifiers, who at the time were unlikely to cause much displacement of the working-class population, the concern over further gentrification is likely due to their own impending displacement. While many of the squatting artist communities have left, or were forced out of, the neighborhood, other slightly less marginal but still financially insecure young people and artists who allegedly made the neighborhood hip in the first place cannot afford to live there. Corcoran real estate group describes Bushwick as an “up-and-coming bohemian hangout” full of “live/work spaces as well as artist studios,” actively using the residence of artists to attract further gentrifiers to the neighborhood.[xxix] In this way the artistic community that draws the creative middle class is effectively pushed out by those very middle-class newcomers. This creates a somewhat contradictory situation for the middle-class and elite in-movers who desire to be near an artistic community but, by their very presence in an artistic neighborhood, contribute to the disappearance of that community. Perhaps this is what Kweighbaye Kotee’s interviewees mean when they say that Bushwick is “over,” that the “real” artists are going or gone.
The presence of working-class families has also been cited by some gentrifying residents as one of the factors that brought them to the neighborhood in the first place, although displacement caused by gentrification itself has diminished this demographic of Bushwick. In a 2006 New York Times interview with relatively new-to-the-neighborhood Bushwick local, Tom Le, the resident explained that “one of the most wonderful things about Bushwick is that it is a wonderful established family neighborhood. You can drive up and down the streets in Bushwick and you see families out there.”[xxx] However, as rents continue to rise, the family-community aspect of the area that attracted new middle-class residents in the first place is threatened by their moving in. At least in particularly hip and expensive parts of Bushwick, it is less likely today that Tom would be able to find the family-community he praised in 2006. In Bushwick, the neighborhood was primed for gentrification by disinvestment, the presence of artists, and City-backed revitalization efforts, and the displacement that has resulted has caused interclass resentment, as well as a contradictory situation for the gentrifiers themselves.
To conclude, gentrification is the movement of middle-class and elite residents into working-class neighborhoods, which raises housing costs. As rents rise, lower-income residents are displaced, causing significant class tensions and resentment from the residents who are priced out. At the same time, the process of gentrification involves contradictory forces that cause tensions between the interests of gentrifiers themselves. If consumer preference dictates some aspects of gentrification, then it seems that middle-class urban professionals are drawn to diverse and creative neighborhoods, but their presence in those neighborhoods diminishes those attractive neighborhood characteristics. Many of the “pioneer” gentrifiers who jump-started the process are displaced. As gentrification progresses, tension forms between preservationists, mostly middle-class and elite individuals who desire to maintain the architectural aspects of the neighborhood that brought them to it in the first place, and developers who hope to capitalize on high rents. In the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick, the presence of artist communities and other factors has led to gentrification and subsequent displacement, causing many of the aspects of the area that drew gentrifiers to the neighborhood in the first place to be increasingly hard to find.
Notes
[i]Ruth Glass, London: Aspects of Change (London: Macgibbon & Kee, 1964) p.xvii
[ii] Phillip L. Clay, Neighborhood Renewal: Middle-class Resettlement and Incumbent Upgrading in American Neighborhoods (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington, 1979.) 57-59.
[iii] S. Gregory Lipton, “Evidence of Central City Revival,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners, (1977): 146.
[iv] Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (London: Routledge, 1996) 54-55.
[v] Smith, [insert title], 64-64.
[vi]Neil Smith and Michelle LeFaivre, “A Class Analysis of Gentrification,” Gentrification, Displacement, and Neighborhood Revitalization (1984): 54.
[vii] Smith and LeFaivre, 55.
[viii] Smith and LeFaivre, 59.
[ix] Richard L. Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, (New York, NY: Basic, 2002), 48,73.
[x] Florida, 134.
[xi] Florida, 251.
[xii] Julian Brash, Bloomberg’s New York Class and Governance in the Luxury City, (Athens: U of Georgia, 201), 100.
[xiii] Brash, 111.
[xiv]Loretta Lees, “Super-gentrification: The Case Of Brooklyn Heights, New York City.” Urban Studies (2003): 2487.
[xv] Lees, 2488-2489
[xvi] Lees, 2496.
[xvii] Lees, 2507.
[xviii] Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York City: Vintage, 1961), 31-35.
[xix] Richard Florida, “Getting Jane Jacobs Right,” The Atlantic 2 April 2010.
[xx] Lees, 2503-2509.
[xxi]Barbara Eldridge, “Hipsters or Height? Brooklyn-the-Brand Versus Brooklyn-the-Megacity,” Brownstoner 17 Nov. 2015.
[xxii]“Creative New York 2015,” Center for an Urban Future, 2015.
[xxiii] “Architect and Developer Try to Build the Case for St. John’s Project,” The Villager [New York City] 19 Nov. 2015.
[xxiv] Robert Sullivan, “Psst… Have You Heard of Bushwick?” The New York Times 5 May 2006.
[xxv] City of New York, Department of Housing Preservation and Development, THE BUSHWICK INITIATIVE: YEAR ONE Progress Report 2006.
[xxvi] “MNS Real Impact Real Estate,” Brooklyn Rental Market Report, Nov. 2015.
[xxvii] Doyle Murphy, “Rents Too Damn High in Bushwick, Bed-Stuy,” NY Daily News, 6 Jan. 2014.
[xxviii] Savannah Cox, “‘Bushwick Is Over,’ Say People Living There Less than 10 Years: Film,” DNAinfo New York, 16 Dec. 2015.
[xxix] “Bushwick,” Corcoran.
[xxx] Sullivan.