Change
Summary
Most time lines concentrate on major political, economic, and social milestones. But since Park Slope is an emblematic case of decades-long gentrification, this time line reflects that difference. What I will present here is the socio-spatial background of the research site accordingly to the whole gentrification process of change.
In this work, I understand the changing patterns of gentrification in Park Slope are by-product of the interaction between the unique physical and social characteristics of the community and the structural changes within New York City. They are, indeed, constituted by the historically situated lives, actions and experiences of persons and groups spread around its territory. Here interaction poses emphasis on relationality, as “the reciprocal relations between different groups, objects, sentiments, and ideas, as central to urban theory” (Savage 2013:517) and makes Bourdieu’s field analysis (1993) so influential. Using a metaphor, as Deleuze and Guattari explain,
in a geological stratum, for example, the first articulation is the process of “sedimentation,” which deposits units of cyclic sediment according to a statistical order: flysch, with its succession of sandstone and schist. The second articulation is the “folding” that sets up a stable functional structure and effects the passage from sediment to sedimentary rock. It is clear that the distinction between the two articulation is not between substances and forms. Substances are nothing other than formed matters. Forms imply a code, modes of coding and decoding. Substances as formed matters refer to territorialities and degree of territorialization and deterritorialization. But each articulation has a code and a territoriality; therefore each possesses both form and substance (1987:41)
For now, all I can say is that like a sedimentary rock, over time layer after layer of little pieces of “eroded earth” has been “deposited” on Park Slope
Manzo 2014 The University of Trento
though the process of neighborhood change. I would then try to “expose to the surface” each rock layer, to provide evidence of the code and the territoriality of this evolution through time.
I will address: a) the geography of places (the physical description of neighborhood’s borders and streetscapes, its architectural significance, and the analysis of its housing stock and some discourses about Brooklyn “brownstoning”); b) the geography of people (a primary description of people who live and use the neighborhood, in terms of race, provenience, class, level of education- partly considering also their gender/sexual orientation); c) the geography of local institutions (by presenting the most significant community institutions, non-profit organizations, and local associations); d) the geography of policies (and the aggregate effect of City/Region policies and local policies on renting and housing in the neighborhood), together with some visual evidences (photographs) in historical perspective.
The reason to give the introductory presentation of the research field trough a time framework lies in the spatio-temporal configuration of the forty year span process of gentrification in the urban space of Brooklyn’s Park Slope (1970s-2010s). The purpose of this part, in fact, is twofold. First, it is an attempt to place local processes of neighborhood change within a broader context that includes: 1) the changing role of post-industrial cities within the American economy; 2) processes of government/local institution interventions in the neighborhood housing market; and 3) practices of housing renovation and co-op/apartment conversions. Second, it is an attempt to understand structural and dynamic relationships between the process of gentrification and both, social groups and community institutions that mediate those changes over time. The task was, then, divided in three sections. In Chapter 3, I have elaborated the background history and the urban form context within which both the neighborhood’s population and their community institutions would emerge later on. In Chapter 4, I described the emergence and the evolution of groups and organizations attempting to relate the upper-incomeresettlement to the broader context of a decades’ long process of gentrification. In so doing, I have traced the historical development of Park Slope and described the great contrasts in income, occupational status, minority concentration, and housing which little by little emerged over time between the wealthier, white, incoming professionals whom previously lived in the northeast section of the neighborhood and the poorer, minority, blue- collar workers of the southwest part. In Chapter 5 I will, then, report a forty year span of demographic and housing-market shifts with the aim to analyze and discuss ethno/racial, income, occupational, and housing-cost differences. Interestingly, as the geographical boundaries within which gentrification was taking place expanded and groups representing different interests emerged. As I will explain in the following paragraphs, four waves of gentrification
PART TWO GIVE ME A BREAK! I’M FROM BROOKLYN, WE’RE NOT FANCY
showed up across the time and tended to concentrate in four different neighborhood areas. In fact, as the process of gentrification expanded, the incoming groups formed parallel boundary shifts in the area of expansion. The evolution of community organizations proved to be a complex process, which on one hand emphasized communal values, on the other it strained clashes between groups. Above all, the evolution of groups over time was affected in various ways by abandonment, resettlement, and displacement as a result of accelerating process of gentrification. Indeed, by identifying four different waves of gentrification in Park Slope – which occurred into four different geographical areas – and comparing socio-demographic and housing characteristics of residents, overtime I have found the evolution of the expansion of professional classes from the northeast housing market to bordering areas or southwest.