History of Gentrification in NY
According to a 1976 study by the Urban Land Institute, nearly half of the 260 cities with a population of more than 50,000 had undergone gentrification, defined as a significant increase in middle-income housing in the form of rehabilitated single-family dwellings, mostly in historic districts, initiated by affluent, educated young professionals with "an increasing desire for the kind of cultural and intellectual pursuits which are generally found only in the central cities—performing arts, performing arts, performing arts, performing arts According to the research, the flood of gentrifiers is "creating a new investment climate." The findings highlight the racial demographics of gentrification by focusing on "the possibilities for middle-income housing for white" people.
https://ny.curbed.com/2014/11/5/10026804/tracing-the-history-of-an-idea-as-gentrification-turns-50
https://www.urbandisplacement.org/maps/new-york-gentrification-and-displacement/
UC-Berkeley evaluated regional data on housing, income, and other demographics with the aid of students from NYU's Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) to better understand and anticipate where gentrification and displacement are occurring and will likely occur in the future. The Local Initiatives Support Corporation New York City (LISC NYC) and nine different community and civic groups helped validate the findings. By visualizing these nine categories of neighborhood change, communities would be able to better understand their trajectories and stabilize their resident population.
- In 2016, over one-third of low-income households lived in low-income neighborhoods at risk of or already experiencing displacement and gentrification pressures, comprising 24% of the New York metro area’s census tracts.
- There are 314 super-gentrified or exclusive neighborhoods in the metro region, forming a ring of very high-income suburban and exurban communities around New York City, in addition to creating islands of exclusion in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. Most of these have long been exclusive, but some 71 of these neighborhoods transitioned between 1990 and 2016 from low-income areas to areas where the median household income, at $140,000, was greater than 200% of the regional median in 2016.
NEW YORK CITY: Give me your tired, not your poor
In a study of Brooklyn Heights, Loretta Lees coins the term “super-gentrification,” defining it as "intensified regentrification in a few select areas of global cities like London and New York that have become the focus of intense investment and conspicuous consumption by a new generation of super-rich 'financiers.'"
Over the next decade, city planners in New York City rezone vast sections of the city, increasing density in primarily working-class areas of color while restricting density in many of the city's already rich white communities. As a result, there is a pattern of tenant harassment and relocation in working-class neighborhoods of color in order to make room for large-scale luxury construction.