This is part 1 of a 7-part series about how so much of this country has come to look and feel identical, and what that standardization means to our communities, our well-being, and our ability to generate a dynamic, living culture.
1. Thanks for the neighborhood
In 2005, I moved to a historically Polish neighborhood in north Brooklyn called Greenpoint, where I lived on the third floor of a pre-war walk-up with views of the Manhattan skyline across the East River. Having spent most of my life in a suburb of Dayton, Ohio, I was instantly taken with the place. My landlord, a charming Polish émigré in his 60’s who lived with his family on the two floors below mine, was an elevator repairman nearing retirement. As I spoke no Polish and he spoke little English, our conversations typically involved hand gestures and sweeping affirmations about the weather.
I took great joy in lounging in a nearby park, making good use of a family-owned donut shop down the street, and taking long neighborhood walks listening to languages I couldn’t understand or even name. The only real downside for me was the neighborhood’s dependence on the G train, which didn’t travel directly into Manhattan and at the time ran infrequently, especially at night.
The massive upside, however, was that the rent was relatively affordable—or at least it was for me. One couldn’t say the same for the long-time Polish residents who were at that point actively fleeing the area on account of the rent spike triggered by the flood of outsiders.
In other words, the neighborhood served me very well, but the real question here is whether the opposite was true. Sure, my rent was undoubtedly a welcome addition to my landlord’s income. But what else did I bring to the table? And whatever upside that amounted to, did it counteract the rather stark, negative effects of gentrification?
For my part, I took the rather ironic stance of opposing gentrification in the abstract—heaping scorn on new buildings going up and fresh “outsiders” moving into “my” neighborhood—while being an active agent of gentrification in practice. And not just in Greenpoint. I repeatedly moved to “up and coming” neighborhoods throughout north Brooklyn to take advantage of lower rents in distressed areas. Unsurprisingly, this behavior of active gentrification paired with intellectual opposition to abstract gentrification was a common refrain amongst the gentrifiers at the time, who were hard at work remaking North Brooklyn in their own image.
In all honesty, though, I hate to use the term gentrification here—not because it’s inaccurate but simply because it’s weighted, and weighted terms carry with them intense emotional attachments, making them nearly impossible to truly discuss or understand.
Plus, what I’ve been thinking about does relate to gentrification, but is perhaps more concentrated, more contemporary, and in many ways points to an even more disturbing trend—that of the disposable neighborhood, and its corollaries: the obliteration of community, the loss of place, and the end of culture.