Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
^Gentrification like suburbia? I strongly disagree.
The East Village was GHETTO prior to gentrification. Extremely so.
Williamsburg was DEAD. Industrial and Bedford Ave crack heads.
Greenpoint was BORING.
LIC was EMPTY. Still kinda is but changing.
Harlem and Bed-stuy were DANGEROUS. Same as above.
Williamsburg is a tight neighborhood now. Who the hell would go to Williamsburg prior to it's heavy gentrification. Well unless you were trying to inject Heroin along the dilapidated waterfront.
These neighborhoods are 100x more interesting nowadays.
Hodon I'ma let all y'all finish but lemme just say something to my youth here. My youth, it wasnt gentrification that calmed crime in Bed-Stuy and certain other parts of the city. That started to happen in the mid-90s with Guiliani flooding the streets with police. Just wanna throw that out there so you don't have my longtime Bed Stuy/Bushwick and some of my Harlem people looking crazy on the internet like the transplant invasion saved the hood from crime.
Hodon I'ma let all y'all finish but lemme just say something to my youth here. My youth, it wasnt gentrification that calmed crime in Bed-Stuy and certain other parts of the city. That started to happen in the mid-90s with Guiliani flooding the streets with police. Just wanna throw that out there so you don't have my longtime Bed Stuy/Bushwick and some of my Harlem people looking crazy on the internet like the transplant invasion saved the hood from crime.
There is a lot of truth to this.
And it is not quite true that the East Village was ghetto prior to gentrification. Did it have ghetto areas ? Absolutely. But it had also begun to improve quite a bit even before the Tompkins Sq. Park evening.
Too far back I would not know firsthand.
as far as Greenpoint being boring, so what, not every neighborhood has to be "rip roaring" exciting and "hip and trendy" to be considered nice.
My neighborhood in Bath Beach is about as boring as they come, but it is quiet and very affordable so hopefully it will never gentrify, which it won't because it is too far away from Manhattan.
But as far as Greenpoint, if it becomes gentrified then the prices sky rocket and the neighborhood is changed for ever.
Holy crap!!! A couple just bought a condo (not a brownstone) a 2 bed/2 bath CONDO in Bed Stuy for $1 million! Now, this condo is solidly in the full on gentrifying area of the neighborhood (eg literally on the border of Clinton Hill and down the street from where many new restaurants, bars, and such are in Bed Stuy) and the condo is very, very nice, but holy F*** a million dollars!!!
I wonder how anomalous this will be or if agents are going to use this as comp to price other new constructions. There are several going up...
So apparently, they lived in the LES back when the LES was a gritty bohemian mecca and missed that type of neighborhood. So in a twist of irony, they payed $1 million, to move into gritty bohemian Bed Stuy- which of course is a price that will continue to drive up real estate prices making the area no longer "gritty and bohemian"...
In a fitting side note, I type this response from a coffee shop in Bed Stuy where every single patron in here is typing on a Mac, covered in tattoos, or has some other marker that would peg them as a bohemian/hipster (even the only other black person in here).
Doesn't gentrification involve turning a bad neighborhood into a better one?
If that's the case, places like Greenpoint or Astoria don't need to be gentrified as they were never bad neighborhoods to begin with.[/quote]
actually, I believe you are correct.
Technically gentrification just means turning a working class (or poorer) neighborhood into a wealthier one. Greenpoint was a working class Polish neighborhood. It can also mean turning a ghetto into a working class area. I don't think Greenpoint was ever considered high crime- at least not in the way Bed Stuy or the LES was. But it was more of a poor and working- class- immigrant neighborhood. The people moving in now are college educated and "white collar". They might look like your "hipster living off mom and dad because they don't have a real job" but I can assure you all of them have degrees and probably work in creative or tech fields. I work with several derelict looking guys, they are all programmers.
Technically gentrification just means turning a working class (or poorer) neighborhood into a wealthier one. Greenpoint was a working class Polish neighborhood. It can also mean turning a ghetto into a working class area. I don't think Greenpoint was ever considered high crime- at least not in the way Bed Stuy or the LES was. But it was more of a poor and working- class- immigrant neighborhood. The people moving in now are college educated and "white collar". They might look like your "hipster living off mom and dad because they don't have a real job" but I can assure you all of them have degrees and probably work in creative or tech fields. I work with several derelict looking guys, they are all programmers.
ALL OF THEM
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
