I started reading the New York Magazine piece on Red Hook’s supposed degentrification expecting to roll my eyes all the way through it and then smugly declare the author to be a moron for sounding the death knell of gentrification itself, for heralding the beginning of the end of New York as bobo paradise, like the Big Bang snapping back in on itself once the universe stops expanding. I am confused to report that someone at NY Mag knows something about economics. The article, while there was a page there where I thought the snark would just choke me to death, is more or less solid. It’s not the ridiculous piece it’s been introduced as on various blogs. It’s a sane analysis of an interesting blip in the supposedly standard formula by which gentrification advances. That blip is Red Hook.
I have never been to Red Hook. But I did look at it on Google satellite view once, and went “projects, docks, lots more projects, 3 blocks of probably cute crumbly old houses, more docks, a warehouse, projects.” But if there was all this buzz, it had to be something, I figured. I must not be looking at the right area or maybe, just maybe, glancing at an overhead view of a neighborhood isn’t enough to judge its merits. And then something else clicked into place, recently. I wanted to go to a nursery so I could find some bougainvillea to grow outside in the summer to remind me of home. They’re all in Red Hook. There’s no subway to Red Hook. What the fuck is this neighborhood!? Apparently, it’s not much. Hence, its so-called deadification (though many commenters on various sites have noted that a few businesses closing in a neighborhood that was never exactly a retail haven isn’t any kind of alarming trend).
NY Mag mentioned all this and more: developers and landlords getting ahead of the market, and that Red Hook may be a neighborhood with too much gap between what the “sowers” of gentrification seek in a neighborhood and what the “reapers” are looking for in a finished product. more »
