Gentrification

Now we are ready to learn more about gentrification. As we have already done some research on Downtown Brooklyn, you should have some knowledge on gentrification. We will focus on scholarly understandings of gentrification, including theories, and apply theories to real world experiences.

Gentrification- Overview

• Watch:
  • This Neighborhood Has Changed | Going In with Brian Vines

• • Read:
    • “Overview: The Gentrification Debates   ” “PART I: What is gentrification?: Definitions and key concepts” and “PART II: How, where and when does gentrification occur?” in The Gentrification Debates by Japonica Brown-Saracino (pages 1-8, 11-18, and 63-70)
    • “Gentrification: Timeline”  in Next City
    • Gentrification in National Geographic

Theories

• Read class work in gentrification studies; learn topics in gentrification studies; and understand how gentrification debates have developed since the 1960s.
  • “Super-gentrification: The Case of Brooklyn Heights, New York City,” in The Gentrification Debates: 45-50
  • “Toward a theory of gentrification: a back to the city movement by capital, not people,” by Neil Smith, in The Gentrification Debates: p71-85

Gentrification in New York City

Commercial gentrification in New York City

While reading several articles and book chapters in gentrification studies, you have learned that there are mainly two categories in gentrification: residential gentrification and commercial gentrification. Today, we will focus on “commercial” aspects of gentrification.

• Watch two videos
  • SNL: Bushwick, Brooklyn 2015

• • Is it local?: Portlandia

•  Read
  • “Gentrification as Market and Place,” by Sharon Zukin, in The Gentrification Debates:37-44
  • Sharon Zukin. 2010. “How Brooklyn Became Cool” and “Why Harlem is Not a Ghetto.” Naked city: The death and life of authentic urban places: Pp35-62 and 64-94
    • This book is required to purchase, but also reserved for the course at the library.
  • “When ‘Gentrification’ Isn’t About Housing” in The New York Times

Creative class and new economy

The creative class is a term, coined by Richard Florida, that refers to people “in science and engineering, architecture and design, education, arts, music and entertainment whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology, and new creative content.” Sounds very familiar, right?

We will learn how Richard Florida discusses the rise of the creative class, and critique on this term by many other scholars by connecting it with topics in gentrification.

• Read
  • “Building the Creative Community” in The Gentrification Reader: p345-354
  • “The Rise of the Creative Class,” Revisited in City Lab
  • “Creative Class” in Sociology of Work: An Encyclopedia
  • “‘Everything is gentrification now’: but Richard Florida isn’t sorry” in The Guardian
  • “The Curse of the Creative Class” by Steven Malanga in City Journal