Roberta’s: Delicious gentrification. (flickr/Paulie Gee)

BusinessWeek has an article on up-and-coming (or if you’re an ignorant real estate agent, “upcoming”) neighborhoods around the country, and Bushwick is featured prominently. Pointedly bursting the bubble of those who gloat that gentrification is over due to the subprime mess, the magazine notes that on the contrary, fringe neighborhoods are even juicier for investors and “pioneers” now that it’s a buyer’s market.

It’s always interesting how when you live in or are very familiar with a place it’s so easy to pick out all the wrong things reporters write about it. Some bones of contention: in Bushwick, more artists are buying to keep themselves from being washed away by the yuppies. We may be 40 minutes from Midtown, but we’re 15-20 minutes from Union Square or the Lower East Side. There’s a feature with photos and blurbs about 15 of the United States’ “next” neighborhoods, and the one about Wynwood in Miami (also historically Puerto Rican) mentions it’s “majority Latino” — as if all of Miami, including the wealthiest areas, were not also majority Latino.

Inevitably, those who think that if only the media would shut up about gentrification, it would end, will add this to their list of previous “gentro-bombs” like “Psst, Have You Heard About Bushwick?” and “Neighborhood on the Verge?” Unfortunately for them, economic trends are too big to be fomented by a few articles — the articles are written to document the trends.

Related Posts