Where the Gentrification Frontier Extends: Displacement, Disinvestment, and Deindustrialization in Brooklyn.

This paper follows the route gentrification took in New York City from 1990-2000. It focuses on the key neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Gentrification is a process of urban renewal based on the middle- and upper-middle classes settling in working-class or poorer urban neighborhoods. My argument has four parts, (1) gentrification is still marked by demographic changes and displacements along racial lines, (2) real estate disinvestment precedes gentrification, (3) the state stimulates reinvestment through property tax enforcement policies, and (4) deindustrialization still occurs prior to and during the gentrification process. My argument responds to recent work by Neil Smith and Jason Hackworth. Methodologically, I employ a combination of variables to trace gentrification. To determine the timing of disinvestment and reinvestment I track real estate tax delinquency patterns. These patterns are linked to alterations in city property tax enforcement policies. I chart out neighborhood property sales to identify renewed capital interest. To show residential displacement I employ Census data showing citywide changes in neighborhood racial composition. I employ local electric company records to provide year-to-year changes in the neighborhood?s population. Finally, I use Standard Industrial Classification data to capture local industrial change. Smith and Hackworth privilege real estate capitalists in the expansion of gentrification. The timing of investment, demographic, and industrial changes I present challenges their argument. A more complex image of early population shifts, accompanied by legislative innovations and the decline of manufacturing, precedes extensive reinvestment by real estate capitalists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]