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There Was Nothing There

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Sara Martucci draws on four decades of residents’ memories and experiences, providing insights into the tensions, contradictions, and inequalities brought about by gentrification.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 25, 2024

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This video video discusses the gentrification of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, detailing its evolution from a working-class immigrant neighborhood to a trendy area dominated by luxury developments. The speaker shares personal experiences from living in Williamsburg between 2008 and 2018 and highlights the dynamics of gentrification, including its impact on long-term residents and the cultural changes in the neighborhood.

The speaker identifies three types of resident attachment: **necessity attachment**, where residents moved in out of need; **identity attachment**, where residents feel a cultural connection to the neighborhood's artistic vibe; and **investment attachment**, where new residents seek trendy environments for their potential financial value.

The effects of gentrification include rising rents, cultural displacement, and altered social interactions, leading to some long-term residents feeling alienated. Research methods included interviews, archival research, and community observations to reveal these dynamics. The speaker emphasizes the need to understand neighborhood attachments to address the complex realities of gentrification, urging readers to consider their narratives about neighborhoods and recognize the diverse histories and memories they embody. The book ultimately aims to foster a deeper understanding of attachment and belonging within urban sociology.

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In some ways, Williamsburg is kind

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of the prototype of gentrification.

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It's certainly not the first case of gentrification.

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It's not even the first case of gentrification in Brooklyn.

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Um, but the story,

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it's a working class immigrant neighborhood.

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It's an industrial neighborhood,

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and it gets discovered by 20 somethings who are musicians,

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artists, bohemians,

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and then it gets turned into their playground

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for a few years because it's cheap and there's lots of space

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and it's gritty and aesthetic.

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Um, and then it gets too cool.

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And then Uhoh, the developers come

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and, they're ready to package up all

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that cultural cachet

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and sell it in the form of luxury development developments,

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luxury condos.

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And then in comes Sephora and Whole Foods.

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It's a very cliche story on the surface,

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but that's part of what makes it so good

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as a comparison case for gentrification.

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Um, I was living in Williamsburg at a time when the

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gentrification was really heating up.

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Um, I started living there in 2008,

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and I studied the neighborhood from then until 2018.

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There were already many rich historical

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and sociological accounts of Williamsburg,

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but the pace of gentrification there

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and the dynamics of gentrification there,

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I felt like necessitated a deeper dive into

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what was going on and updating

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of the existing accounts at the same time.

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Um, it's a great comparison case

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because it is so relevant around the world.

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I would travel and I would see,

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a thrift store named Williamsburg in Madrid,

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I would see somebody wearing a T-shirt

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that said Williamsburg in the Sahara Desert.

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I mean, the name Williamsburg was becoming something that

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was emulated around the world.

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At one point there was even an app called

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Where is Williamsburg?

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And you could download on your phone,

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you could look at any city you are in

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hundreds of cities around the world.

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What's the Williamsburg neighborhood of

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that city based on the boutiques and the bars

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and, coffee shops that were local to that area.

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So it just felt like it was, it was a larger than life

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reputation, but at the ground level,

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there was so much more to it.

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Um, the everyday dynamics of the people

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who lived in the neighborhood on a micro

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level, I was living there.

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I was walking that neighborhood every day.

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I saw how every new floor

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of construction in a luxury building, every business

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that disappeared from the local shopping street,

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how those mattered to the people who lived there,

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how the interactions started changing in the neighborhood,

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how places started being labeled sketchy or unwanted.

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Um, and so it made me wanna tell as full a story

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as possible about what was going on in that neighborhood

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because it was to some people, the epitome

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of cool to other people.

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A shining example of, how to develop a neighborhood

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for luxury and for wealth.

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Um, and if it was being copied in cities around the world,

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I wanted to make sure that we had a better idea of

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what was going on,

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and understanding how it was

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impacting the people that lived there.

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This was an ethnography that I began when I was 22.

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I was taking my first urban sociology class.

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I didn't really know what I was doing.

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I was walking around this neighborhood.

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I had just moved to, I was observing things,

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I was writing things down, I was taking pictures.

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Um, but obviously it evolved into something

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much larger than that.

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Um, it evolved into a multi methods project,

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that was very iterative.

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I interviewed 50 residents

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and 10 business owners in over the course of the project

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and another few people, in 2020

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because the pandemic hit New York City really hard.

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And Williamsburg, was certainly suffering from that.

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And so I was continuing to sort

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of pull at the different threads and,

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and themes going on in the neighborhood over time.

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I was also really conscious

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of triangulating the data, right?

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Neighborhoods, gentrification is such

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an emotional topic for us.

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Neighborhoods are so important to us,

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and the stories that we tell about them are bound up in

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nostalgia and identity and memories.

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And so people would say things in an interview like,

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I moved to the neighborhood in 1988,

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and it was a no man's land.

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There was nothing there where the title comes from, right?

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Um, there were no stores.

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There was nowhere to get a cup of coffee.

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And then I, that, that kind of comment would send me

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to the New York Public Library

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for weeks looking at archives of businesses.

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And I would find out, actually there were 80 businesses on

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that street within one mile in 1988.

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And they may not have been places for you to buy records

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or sit down and have a cup of coffee at a cafe,

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but they were businesses that were serving the needs

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of the local residents.

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And so the research process was really,

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about finding out what people's narratives were,

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but then looking at census data, doing a content analysis

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of news reports about the neighborhood,

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looking at archival data, observing community events

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to really try to triangulate all

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of the narratives that I was hearing.

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The effects of gentrification in Williamsburg have been

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massive, and it can't be overstated.

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Um, the waterfront is kind of the ground zero

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for gentrification in the neighborhood.

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It's kinda the most popular part of the neighborhood.

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And that area has been completely transformed to the extent

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that people who have lived there for 20, 30 years tell me

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that they get disoriented walking around.

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They don't have their normal, landscapes and,

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and areas that they would recognize.

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At the same time, when you move away from the waterfront,

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aside from a couple of main retail corridors,

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you can see that the development in the

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neighborhood has been very uneven.

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Um, there's still parts of the neighborhood

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where landlords are harassing rent stabilized tenants

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by not making the necessary repairs to buildings, parts

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of the neighborhood that still very much bear the scars

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of the city's disinvestment within from the

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1970s and the 1980s.

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Um, what was important to me was to consider

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how did the conditions of the neighborhood

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and the reasons that people moved to the neighborhood impact

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how they formed an attachment to the place.

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And that's really at the core of the book.

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How does that attachment map onto their experiences

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of Williamsburg, of gentrification, yes,

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but also of crime in the neighborhood of,

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retail changes in the neighborhood over time of

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how they engaged with the community through events,

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or through social movements within the neighborhood.

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By looking at attachment style, I was able

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to really pull out some nuances in

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how the changing neighborhood was

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perceived differently by people.

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So in sociology, when we're looking at gentrification,

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we're typically using race or ethnicity

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or socioeconomic status,

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as the main categories for people's identity.

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Um, and when we do that,

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those things are obviously very important

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for people's experiences of life, in urban places.

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But when we look to attachment style as an additional lens

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to view residents

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and to view their experiences, this reveals some important,

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things that I hadn't really seen in

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gentrification research before.

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So there's three different types of attachment

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that I've identified.

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Necessity attachment, which are residents who moved

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to Williamsburg out of necessity.

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Um, maybe they moved there through immigrant networks,

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maybe they moved there for jobs, in factories.

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They were living in this neighborhood.

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They could have moved to any other neighborhood

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where those things existed.

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And then the neighborhood got kind of weird in terms

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of the art and party scene

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that was going on there in the eighties and nineties.

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And then the neighborhood got fancy,

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and that's mostly all okay.

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Um, they just are kind of upset

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that they can no longer get the things

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that they need in the neighborhood

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that their children can't move within the neighborhood

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for the identity attached.

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That neighborhood is something

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that they discovered it was very important to who they are.

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The grittiness, the coolness, the danger

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or precarity that they felt in the neighborhood made it a

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place that bolstered their identities as bohemians,

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as avant gardes.

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And then there's the investment attached.

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So those are people mainly who were moving in, in the 2010s.

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To them, Williamsburg was too grungy.

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The grocery stores weren't up to their standards.

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There was graffiti,

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but it was a place that they could afford

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to buy luxury housing

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and that they were confident that

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that would increase in value, and it certainly did.

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So the book is called, there was Nothing There

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because everyone has said that at some point

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for the identity attached

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People, there was nothing there.

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When they got there, they discovered everything.

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They brought the cool to the neighborhood,

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they brought the culture to the neighborhood

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for the investment attached people.

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There was nothing in the neighborhood when,

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even when they were moving in, in the 2000, in the 2010s,

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which for a lot of people was kind of the decline already

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of the cool era of Williamsburg.

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But they saw nothing there until Whole Foods came,

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until Starbucks came.

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And now the necessity attached residents are the ones

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who are starting to say, there's nothing here for me.

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Because these businesses of necessity that they were used

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to, and the social groups that they had been part

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of are now starting to disappear from the neighborhood.

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So we have this assumption that the,

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those long-term residents in,

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in a classic gentrification work,

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the long-term residents are the ones

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who view gentrification the most negatively.

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But by looking at identity

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or by looking at attachment, what surprised me was

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that it wasn't those sort of old timers in the neighborhood.

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Um, the people who had moved there outta necessity.

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It wasn't them who were the most upset about gentrification.

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It was the identity attached residents, the ones

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who moved there to Williamsburg

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because of the artist's scene

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and what it meant to them and their identity.

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They were the ones who are the most bitter about

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gentrification, the necessity attached folks.

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Um, they've often lived there much longer.

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They see benefits of the changes.

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They see benefits of development,

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even though they're still largely critical of it.

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And they know people who have faced physical,

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displacement, from their homes.

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They still see more positive aspects

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of it than the identity attached.

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And so looking at these attachment styles kind of turns some

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of the narratives of gentrification.

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I won't say it turns it on its head,

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but it, it reveals some different patterns,

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that are worth examining more in other contexts.

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Cultural displacement is really at the core of this book.

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So the thing about gentrification in Williamsburg is

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that yes, the rents increased and people were pushed out.

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Um, but a huge proportion

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of the new residents are living in housing

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that just didn't exist 15 years ago.

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So the neighborhood had a huge population boom,

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but a lot of existing residents were also able to stay put.

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There's a lot of public housing in the neighborhood.

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There's a lot of rent control, home ownership.

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And so there's a lot of people who have been able

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to evade the physical displacement,

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but they've experienced cultural displacement.

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The stores are fancy and unaffordable.

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The public spaces have long lists of

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what behavior is and is not allowed.

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The area suddenly much more crowded.

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Store signage that used to be in Polish and Spanish

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and Italian has steadily decreased.

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And all of this adds up to a diminished sense

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of belonging in the neighborhood in the book.

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In terms of surveillance, I wasn't as much

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as much focused on policing,

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but rather informal surveillance by neighbors

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and how that sometimes did turn into policing,

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or state level surveillance comments about

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who should be at the public pool,

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an argument about the installation

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of barbecue pits in a public park

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investment attached residents were arguing

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that if they allowed barbecue pits

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to be installed in this public park, then the,

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existing residents, local families grilling in the park,

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were going to diminish their dogs experience

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of the park, right?

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That there would be less space for their dogs

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or that their dogs might eat trash

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that was left over from the barbecue, these narratives

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around who belongs in a space.

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Um, there was one example.

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There was one story of a young woman who had moved to the,

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to a neighborhood, part of the neighborhood,

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near a Puerto Rican music store

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that had been there for 40 years.

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And she lived there for a few months

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and she decided that the music was too loud,

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at the store.

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And so she called 3 1 1, which is, a non-emergency,

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hotline for New York City

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to make complaints about trash

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removal or something like that.

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And, she called this line

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and eventually these people, who owned the music store

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after being there for 40 years, they were ticketed.

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They were fined. So these ideas of

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the neighborhood culturally changing,

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and even when residents

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and businesses can stay,

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even when long-term establishments remain,

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how are the newer residents impacting their ability

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to feel like they belong in the neighborhood?

13:36.495 --> 13:38.515
Um, I recall another project I worked on,

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not in Williamsburg, but also in New York.

13:40.815 --> 13:44.195
Um, a business owner told me that she would inform,

13:44.195 --> 13:45.315
other shop owners

13:45.535 --> 13:48.555
or local security if she saw someone on the street

13:48.575 --> 13:50.235
who looked like they didn't belong there.

13:50.775 --> 13:53.315
So this was a totally subjective evaluation, right?

13:53.695 --> 13:56.275
So we make spaces where people feel like they don't belong,

13:56.495 --> 13:59.155
so they use them less, and then when they do show up,

13:59.155 --> 14:01.995
their presence is suspicious and worthy of surveillance.

14:03.245 --> 14:05.105
Um, and then that's viewed as a problem

14:05.205 --> 14:07.185
that's sometimes solved with law enforcement.

14:07.365 --> 14:10.705
So the cultural displacement, we can think

14:10.705 --> 14:14.825
of it just in terms of, of businesses, disappearing

14:15.085 --> 14:17.905
or, you know, something that was, a place

14:17.905 --> 14:19.345
where one group felt welcomed.

14:19.455 --> 14:20.545
They no longer feel welcomed,

14:20.605 --> 14:24.105
but it can actually, play out in the neighborhood

14:24.775 --> 14:28.825
into more severe contexts and, into surveillance and,

14:28.825 --> 14:31.825
and law enforcement for academic audiences.

14:31.885 --> 14:33.225
For the academic reader.

14:33.505 --> 14:36.585
I hope that they, read the methodology section,

14:36.725 --> 14:37.985
the appendix,

14:37.985 --> 14:39.305
because there were so much

14:40.015 --> 14:42.305
different methods going into this book,

14:42.325 --> 14:45.425
and I think it can really serve, as an example

14:45.645 --> 14:48.425
for people who are just starting out, doing this kind

14:48.425 --> 14:50.745
of big neighborhood case study. But

14:50.865 --> 14:52.565
I also really hope that this idea

14:52.665 --> 14:55.725
of neighborhood attachment, is something

14:55.725 --> 14:57.605
that gets picked up by other scholars

14:57.825 --> 14:59.925
and can be applied to other contexts.

15:00.175 --> 15:02.165
Maybe it's not necessity, identity

15:02.385 --> 15:04.565
and investment in another location,

15:04.905 --> 15:07.925
but the idea of how we form attachment to place

15:08.585 --> 15:11.045
and how that impacts our experiences

15:11.185 --> 15:15.205
and perceptions, our narratives about that space, I think

15:15.205 --> 15:16.405
that's something that,

15:16.405 --> 15:18.845
we don't see often enough within urban sociology.

15:19.065 --> 15:22.445
And so I, that is the, the concept from the book

15:22.465 --> 15:25.605
or the, the takeaway from the book that I hope to see,

15:26.235 --> 15:29.445
sort of passed down to other academics,

15:29.445 --> 15:30.765
that study gentrification.

15:31.865 --> 15:36.165
And I also feel like in general for anyone

15:36.165 --> 15:37.365
who reads the book, but especially

15:37.365 --> 15:39.885
for a more popular audience, I hope

15:39.885 --> 15:42.205
that people think about the narratives that they use

15:42.205 --> 15:44.845
to describe neighborhoods and their neighbors.

15:45.105 --> 15:47.405
Um, so for anyone who's living in a city

15:47.425 --> 15:50.845
or visiting a city, neighborhoods contain the histories,

15:51.025 --> 15:53.965
the memories, the opportunities, the disappointments

15:53.965 --> 15:55.325
of generations of people.

15:56.245 --> 15:57.465
And so coming in and saying

15:58.175 --> 16:01.105
that grocery store is disgusting, that music is too loud,

16:01.315 --> 16:04.945
these comments lead to the further cultural displacement

16:05.125 --> 16:07.625
of people, their alienation from space,

16:08.075 --> 16:09.385
their lack of belonging.

16:09.385 --> 16:10.825
And then as we've discussed,

16:11.375 --> 16:13.345
potentially increased surveillance.

16:13.725 --> 16:14.905
Um, and,

16:14.965 --> 16:16.465
and just the continued removal

16:17.165 --> 16:19.025
of certain people from public spaces,

16:19.635 --> 16:21.545
which everyone should have access to.

16:22.005 --> 16:25.185
And so I think there's a few different levels,

16:25.255 --> 16:27.065
that I hope that this book gets read at.

Gentrification: The Transformation of Williamsburg

00:00:00 - In some ways, Williamsburg is kind of the prototype of gentrification. It's certainly not the first case of gentrification. It's not even the first case of gentrification in Brooklyn. but the story, it's a working class immigrant neighborhood. It's an industrial neighborhood, and it gets discovered by 20 somethings who are musicians, artists, bohemians, and then it gets turned into their playground for a few years because it's cheap and there's lots of space and it's gritty and aesthetic.
00:00:33 - And then Uhoh, the developers come and, they're ready to package up all that cultural cachet and sell it in the form of luxury development developments, luxury condos. And then in comes Sephora and Whole Foods. It's a very cliche story on the surface, but that's part of what makes it so good as a comparison case for gentrification. I was living in Williamsburg at a time when the
00:01:04 - I started living there in 2008, and I studied the neighborhood from then until 2018. There were already many rich historical and sociological accounts of Williamsburg, but the pace of gentrification there and the dynamics of gentrification there, I felt like necessitated a deeper dive into what was going on and updating of the existing accounts at the same time. it's a great comparison case because it is so relevant around the world.
00:01:39 - a thrift store named Williamsburg in Madrid, I would see somebody wearing a T-shirt that said Williamsburg in the Sahara Desert. I mean, the name Williamsburg was becoming something that was emulated around the world. At one point there was even an app called Where is Williamsburg? And you could download on your phone, you could look at any city you are in hundreds of cities around the world. What's the Williamsburg neighborhood of that city based on the boutiques and the bars
00:02:13 - So it just felt like it was, it was a larger than life reputation, but at the ground level, there was so much more to it. the everyday dynamics of the people who lived in the neighborhood on a micro level, I was living there. I was walking that neighborhood every day. I saw how every new floor of construction in a luxury building, every business that disappeared from the local shopping street,
00:02:42 - how the interactions started changing in the neighborhood, how places started being labeled sketchy or unwanted. and so it made me wanna tell as full a story as possible about what was going on in that neighborhood because it was to some people, the epitome of cool to other people. A shining example of, how to develop a neighborhood for luxury and for wealth. and if it was being copied in cities around the world,

Ethnographic Insights on Williamsburg's Gentrification

00:03:13 - what was going on, and understanding how it was impacting the people that lived there. This was an ethnography that I began when I was 22. I was taking my first urban sociology class. I didn't really know what I was doing. I was walking around this neighborhood. I had just moved to, I was observing things, I was writing things down, I was taking pictures. but obviously it evolved into something much larger than that. it evolved into a multi methods project, that was very iterative.
00:03:43 - and 10 business owners in over the course of the project and another few people, in 2020 because the pandemic hit New York City really hard. And Williamsburg, was certainly suffering from that. And so I was continuing to sort of pull at the different threads and, and themes going on in the neighborhood over time. I was also really conscious of triangulating the data, right? Neighborhoods, gentrification is such an emotional topic for us. Neighborhoods are so important to us,
00:04:15 - nostalgia and identity and memories. And so people would say things in an interview like, I moved to the neighborhood in 1988, and it was a no man's land. There was nothing there where the title comes from, right? there were no stores. There was nowhere to get a cup of coffee. And then I, that, that kind of comment would send me to the New York Public Library for weeks looking at archives of businesses. And I would find out, actually there were 80 businesses on
00:04:48 - And they may not have been places for you to buy records or sit down and have a cup of coffee at a cafe, but they were businesses that were serving the needs of the local residents. And so the research process was really, about finding out what people's narratives were, but then looking at census data, doing a content analysis of news reports about the neighborhood, looking at archival data, observing community events
00:05:17 - of the narratives that I was hearing. The effects of gentrification in Williamsburg have been massive, and it can't be overstated. the waterfront is kind of the ground zero for gentrification in the neighborhood. It's kinda the most popular part of the neighborhood. And that area has been completely transformed to the extent that people who have lived there for 20, 30 years tell me that they get disoriented walking around. They don't have their normal, landscapes and, and areas that they would recognize.
00:05:49 - aside from a couple of main retail corridors, you can see that the development in the neighborhood has been very uneven. there's still parts of the neighborhood where landlords are harassing rent stabilized tenants by not making the necessary repairs to buildings, parts of the neighborhood that still very much bear the scars of the city's disinvestment within from the 1970s and the 1980s. what was important to me was to consider

Exploring Neighborhood Attachment in Gentrification

00:06:19 - and the reasons that people moved to the neighborhood impact how they formed an attachment to the place. And that's really at the core of the book. How does that attachment map onto their experiences of Williamsburg, of gentrification, yes, but also of crime in the neighborhood of, retail changes in the neighborhood over time of how they engaged with the community through events, or through social movements within the neighborhood. By looking at attachment style, I was able
00:06:50 - how the changing neighborhood was perceived differently by people. So in sociology, when we're looking at gentrification, we're typically using race or ethnicity or socioeconomic status, as the main categories for people's identity. and when we do that, those things are obviously very important for people's experiences of life, in urban places. But when we look to attachment style as an additional lens to view residents and to view their experiences, this reveals some important,
00:07:22 - gentrification research before. So there's three different types of attachment that I've identified. Necessity attachment, which are residents who moved to Williamsburg out of necessity. maybe they moved there through immigrant networks, maybe they moved there for jobs, in factories. They were living in this neighborhood. They could have moved to any other neighborhood where those things existed. And then the neighborhood got kind of weird in terms
00:07:53 - that was going on there in the eighties and nineties. And then the neighborhood got fancy, and that's mostly all okay. they just are kind of upset that they can no longer get the things that they need in the neighborhood that their children can't move within the neighborhood for the identity attached. That neighborhood is something that they discovered it was very important to who they are. The grittiness, the coolness, the danger or precarity that they felt in the neighborhood made it a
00:08:24 - as avant gardes. And then there's the investment attached. So those are people mainly who were moving in, in the 2010s. To them, Williamsburg was too grungy. The grocery stores weren't up to their standards. There was graffiti, but it was a place that they could afford to buy luxury housing and that they were confident that that would increase in value, and it certainly did. So the book is called, there was Nothing There because everyone has said that at some point
00:08:55 - People, there was nothing there. When they got there, they discovered everything. They brought the cool to the neighborhood, they brought the culture to the neighborhood for the investment attached people. There was nothing in the neighborhood when, even when they were moving in, in the 2000, in the 2010s, which for a lot of people was kind of the decline already of the cool era of Williamsburg. But they saw nothing there until Whole Foods came, until Starbucks came. And now the necessity attached residents are the ones

Reevaluating Gentrification: Attachment and Displacement Effects

00:09:27 - Because these businesses of necessity that they were used to, and the social groups that they had been part of are now starting to disappear from the neighborhood. So we have this assumption that the, those long-term residents in, in a classic gentrification work, the long-term residents are the ones who view gentrification the most negatively. But by looking at identity or by looking at attachment, what surprised me was that it wasn't those sort of old timers in the neighborhood.
00:09:56 - It wasn't them who were the most upset about gentrification. It was the identity attached residents, the ones who moved there to Williamsburg because of the artist's scene and what it meant to them and their identity. They were the ones who are the most bitter about gentrification, the necessity attached folks. they've often lived there much longer. They see benefits of the changes. They see benefits of development, even though they're still largely critical of it. And they know people who have faced physical,
00:10:30 - They still see more positive aspects of it than the identity attached. And so looking at these attachment styles kind of turns some of the narratives of gentrification. I won't say it turns it on its head, but it, it reveals some different patterns, that are worth examining more in other contexts. Cultural displacement is really at the core of this book. So the thing about gentrification in Williamsburg is
00:11:00 - but a huge proportion of the new residents are living in housing that just didn't exist 15 years ago. So the neighborhood had a huge population boom, but a lot of existing residents were also able to stay put. There's a lot of public housing in the neighborhood. There's a lot of rent control, home ownership. And so there's a lot of people who have been able to evade the physical displacement, but they've experienced cultural displacement. The stores are fancy and unaffordable.
00:11:30 - what behavior is and is not allowed. The area suddenly much more crowded. Store signage that used to be in Polish and Spanish and Italian has steadily decreased. And all of this adds up to a diminished sense of belonging in the neighborhood in the book. In terms of surveillance, I wasn't as much as much focused on policing, but rather informal surveillance by neighbors and how that sometimes did turn into policing,
00:12:02 - who should be at the public pool, an argument about the installation of barbecue pits in a public park investment attached residents were arguing that if they allowed barbecue pits to be installed in this public park, then the, existing residents, local families grilling in the park, were going to diminish their dogs experience of the park, right? That there would be less space for their dogs

Belonging and Displacement in Changing Neighborhoods

00:12:32 - that was left over from the barbecue, these narratives around who belongs in a space. there was one example. There was one story of a young woman who had moved to the, to a neighborhood, part of the neighborhood, near a Puerto Rican music store that had been there for 40 years. And she lived there for a few months and she decided that the music was too loud, at the store. And so she called 3 1 1, which is, a non-emergency,
00:13:02 - to make complaints about trash removal or something like that. And, she called this line and eventually these people, who owned the music store after being there for 40 years, they were ticketed. They were fined. So these ideas of the neighborhood culturally changing, and even when residents and businesses can stay, even when long-term establishments remain, how are the newer residents impacting their ability
00:13:36 - I recall another project I worked on, not in Williamsburg, but also in New York. a business owner told me that she would inform, other shop owners or local security if she saw someone on the street who looked like they didn't belong there. So this was a totally subjective evaluation, right? So we make spaces where people feel like they don't belong, so they use them less, and then when they do show up, their presence is suspicious and worthy of surveillance.
00:14:05 - that's sometimes solved with law enforcement. So the cultural displacement, we can think of it just in terms of, of businesses, disappearing or, you know, something that was, a place where one group felt welcomed. They no longer feel welcomed, but it can actually, play out in the neighborhood into more severe contexts and, into surveillance and, and law enforcement for academic audiences. For the academic reader.
00:14:36 - the appendix, because there were so much different methods going into this book, and I think it can really serve, as an example for people who are just starting out, doing this kind of big neighborhood case study. But I also really hope that this idea of neighborhood attachment, is something that gets picked up by other scholars and can be applied to other contexts. Maybe it's not necessity, identity and investment in another location,
00:15:08 - and how that impacts our experiences and perceptions, our narratives about that space, I think that's something that, we don't see often enough within urban sociology. And so I, that is the, the concept from the book or the, the takeaway from the book that I hope to see, sort of passed down to other academics, that study gentrification. And I also feel like in general for anyone

Understanding Neighborhood Narratives and Displacement

00:15:37 - for a more popular audience, I hope that people think about the narratives that they use to describe neighborhoods and their neighbors. so for anyone who's living in a city or visiting a city, neighborhoods contain the histories, the memories, the opportunities, the disappointments of generations of people. And so coming in and saying that grocery store is disgusting, that music is too loud, these comments lead to the further cultural displacement of people, their alienation from space,
00:16:25 - And then as we've discussed, potentially increased surveillance. and, and just the continued removal of certain people from public spaces, which everyone should have access to. And so I think there's a few different levels, that I hope that this book gets read at.

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