Lexington Books The Gentrification and Inequality in Brooklyn: New Kids on the Block

While most studies on gentrification focus almost exclusively on its causes and consequences through an examination of housing, class conflict, and the displacement of residents, this book analyzes the process of gentrification. Gentrification and Inequality in Brooklyn examines the ways in which the established working-class and lower-income residents of Greenpoint, Brooklyn remain socially segregated from the incoming gentrifiers, with both groups forming parallel cultures within the shared physical spaces of the community. Desena broadens the typical analyses of gentrification to include the grass roots dynamics which create social class relations that lead to residential segregation created by social class relations. Drawing upon areas traditionally under represented in urban sociology, including families, women, children, and local institutions other than housing, this study explores the ways in which working-class residents, in the course of their everyday lives, negotiate change in their neighborhood and dissimilarity with their new (gentry) neighbors. Gentrification and Inequality in Brooklyn touches on issues familiar to anyone who has lived in a multi-class or multi-ethnic community, while offering new perspectives on the ways that such communities develop and maintain the boundaries of social segregation. Review As an urban sociologist with young children, DeSena brings a fresh perspective to gentrification research. She identifies how schools and playgrounds - places at the heart of every neighborhood - become significant, on a daily basis, in reinforcing class inequalities. DeSena has brought families back into the study of the city, and we should thank her for doing so.--Daphne Spain, James M. Page Professor and Chair, Department of Urban and Environmental Planning, University of Virginia By shining a brilliant light on the mundane struggles between gentry and working class residents locally in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, DeSena reveals the class conflicts produced by capitalism globally. As in her previous works, she again demonstrates the value of theoretically informed urban ethnography in bringing to the foreground important, but often overlooked, aspects of urban social life.--Jerome Krase, Emeritus and Murray Koppelman Professor, Brooklyn College, The City University of New York About the Author Judith N. DeSena is professor of sociology at St. John's University.