(De)Constructing Brooklyn
By Michele Valdez
8 February 2008
I live in Williamsburg, a Brooklyn, NY neighborhood that is at the forefront of the wave of gentrification that has been sweeping across cities and neighborhoods around the country. For the past year and a half, I've been wandering around the area with my camera, photographing its transformation, in an attempt to document the rapid changes happening in the neighborhood as it is overtaken by construction sites and coffee houses.
The neighborhood, like most of New York City, has been seen a lot of changes throughout the years, and has been through some tough times in the past. The first time I visited here, back in the late 90s, I saw a prostitute standing on a streetcorner hustling at two in the afternoon. Nine years later, Williamsburg has become the east coast breeding ground for all things hip, filled with boutique clothing stores and bars patronized by fashionably rumpled 20 and 30-somethings, with the inevitable condo developers following close on their heels. There is a blink and you'll miss it feel to this formerly industrial waterfront neighborhood. Gigantic warehouses, which take up entire city blocks, are reduced to rubble over the course of a few days. The skyscrapers being erected in their place rise 40 stories high, towering over the rowhomes that once housed the factory workers of generations past. The area was rezoned in June of 2006 to allow the construction of the high rises along the neighborhood's waterfront and since that time, the construction and destruction has been non-stop.
Williamsburg is being sold as a less expensive, roomier alternative to Manhattan. Yet the intense real estate development is in effect destroying many of the characteristics of the area which made it so attractive to newcomers in the first place. The advertisements plastered at the high rise building's construction sites, tout Williamsburg as a "real neighborhood", using the neighborhood's gritty appeal and small-town like charms as a selling point. Simultaneously, the increased rents that come with the rapid influx of these high-rise developments are driving many of this "real neighborhood's" small businesses and residents out of the area. It's unclear how much of the area's older architecture and its residents will remain as the new wave moves in, but it's certain that Williamsburg's "real neighborhood" character will soon be a thing of the past
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