Some thoughts on Williamsburg

Like the New York Times in 2010, Anthony, Sofia and I bravely ventured into Brooklyn yesterday. Though I had never spent much time in Williamsburg before, it felt strangely familiar. The neighborhood seemed eager to prove the typical narrative written about it to be true. Young cyclists honked their bike horns at Hasidic Jews and grumpily reminded them that they were standing in a bike lane, lest anyone forget about the much-written-about feud over bike lanes in Brooklyn. The old boarded up sugar refinery stared sulkily at new clubs and lofts. The whole area seemed to be begging for someone to slap the words “case study” on it.

courtesy of www.knittaplease.com

In the midst of all this typical-ness, there was something rather homey and surprising underneath the Williamsburg Bridge—an art installation by Magda Sayeg made up of knitted sleeves that covered iron rods and created the words “Plan Ahead,” the last couple letters squeezed awkwardly into a space too small for them. This colorful mandate reminded me of a discussion we had in my gentrification class last week, the summary of which is that drastic changes in neighborhood composition are rarely simply the work of natural forces, but rather require calculated decisions on someone’s part.

One of those calculated decisions in Williamsburg’s evolution was the 2005 rezoning of the waterfront area for residential construction. The city’s inclusionary zoning policy attempted to incentivize the building of affordable housing, but has not been terribly successful and, some have argued, even contributed to the real estate bust in Williamsburg. (The best laid plans, you know.) So while it’s fair to talk about artists and coffee shops and the role they have to play in all this, developers and city planners are probably much more to blame (or thank, depending on who you are) for the neighborhood’s recent trajectory. Just walking around yesterday it seemed like there was something for everyone in Williamsburg—basketball courts where pickup games were being played, independent bookstores, yeshivas, quaint brick apartment buildings, modern lofts with rooftop gardens—but as any case study about New York City neighborhoods will tell you, something is bound to get squeezed out, like the “a” and “d” in Sayeg's “Plan Ahead.”