Written for a college blog. Link to that article can be found here.
Bushwick, a neighbourhood in Brooklyn, New York, was a manifestation of every cliché surrounding late 20th century Black America. Being a hotbed of the megapolis’ crack epidemic does not begin to scrape the surface – Bushwick being the site of rabid fires that raged for weeks on end, Even in the aftermath of these events, Bushwick was known as a site for regular mugging, rape and murder (Craine, 2016).
Fast forward a couple of decades, Bushwick is now the cultural heartland of millennial America – sourdough pizza, street art for days, and thriving electronic music found on every block. The neighbourhood is unrecognisable from it’s previous character. It now prides itself on diversity, and a romantic sense of uniqueness(Odyssey, 2017).
However, it is not. It simply resembles adjacent Williamsburg in every aspect but the flavour of artisan gelato. Williamsburg, in turn represents parts of SoHo or the meat-packing district in adjacent Manhattan. There is a prevailing urban homogeneity that has been created – not just in terms of physical structures such as overpriced coffee shops and craft beer breweries but in the composition of the population that resides in said areas. What was once an agglomeration of immigrants – Poles, Israelis, Armenians living alongside African Americans, Italians and Pakistanis has been populated solely by white tenants – whose wealth has applied upward pressure on rents in these areas. (Odyssey, 2017). This forces the ethnic residents out of said areas, as they are unable to cope with higher rents and cost of living. This process of replacement of poor tenants by rich ones and transformation within a particular urban space is labelled gentrification.
Gentrification has a visible class dynamic to it – with the economically bereft being forced out of neighbourhoods they traditionally resided in, by the economically well endowed – usually white sections of the population. Typically, gentrification is claimed to have an upward effect on the standard of living within the area. Standard of living, in this context, usually refers to safety, concentration of urban facilities such as grocery stores and restaurants, To satisfy this demand for urban culturedness, the existence of art is required – be it in museums, on the street, in bars, music through festivals and clubs, and other happenings – flea and farmers markets, yoga studios and silent discos.
It is the allure of living in spaces, as necessitated by that attracts these ‘yuppies’. A yuppie is a ‘young, upwardly mobile professional’, typically employed in the new age service space – graphic designers, digital marketers and content writers all fall under this bracket. They are paid high salaries and intend on pursuing a multi-faceted life away from mundanity and monotony that has plagued prior generations. They are inevitably drawn to places populated by artists – which are, more often than not, ethnic neighbourhoods like Bushwick. The population of these spaces by artists takes place due to their low rent and large available spaces, pre-requisites for any artist. Once artists move into this area, they bring with them not just their art but also their alternative way of life. It is this way of life – apparently full of adventure, non-conformity and uniqueness that attracts yuppies and other
To elucidate this allure, applying – a Marxist-influenced movement that existed through the 1960s, is a great point of reference. The Situationist movement was led by a group named Situationist International, which was profusely influenced by anti-authoriatiran Marxism and Dadaist art. It was quite short lived (15 years) and had fewer than a hundred members across its tenure.
Situationism provides an insight into urbanity, banality and art – and its existence within capitalism. Situationist theory discusses ideas like recuperation, which refers to the channelling of social revolt in a manner that perpetuates or extends capitalism. This can be directly linked with gentrification – where alternative styles of living (very much a deviant activity) is co-opted by capitalism and its forces, thus leading to said alternative lifestyles being manipulated by corporations for profit.
This process is better elucidated through the example of graffiti. A typically illicit and anti-establishment activity, graffiti is prominently associated with genres of music such as punk and hip-hop, that emerged in response to mainstream music of their time and frequently discuss themes of political bellicose. It was used as a medium of expression, more often than not angst and utter dissatisfaction with the status-quo – political, economic and cultural. It was also associated with criminal sub-cultures, such as gangs and drug dealers. Graffiti and its artists were heavily policed across the Western world, with their art being painted over or plastered.
There is no marked threshold as to when this transformation took place. It is abundantly clear that this transformation has taken place and that graffiti has gone from the doldrums of impoverished society to a millennial status marker. Bushwick, the neighbourhood that saw a complete revamp as describe earlier in this article, has blocks on end plastered with ‘street art’, the official culture term for apolitical graffiti. This street art scene was once thriving – with artists from all over the world congregating and expressing themselves in a legitimately cosmopolitan, Bohemian and co-existential environment (Odyssey, 2017). As this took place, the massive real-estate value of Bushwick came under the scanner, coupled with millennials’ growing affinity toward experiential living over commodified living. With its thriving art scene and its fantastic location, the market forces began exploiting its nodality in search for profit. This is not just in the form of actual real-estate development, but also through ‘street art tours’, akin to Favela or slum tourism, as seen in Dharavi(Glazma, 2017). These tours were neither sanctioned nor hosted by any residents or artists of Bushwick. Those taking the tours too are clad in typical mass fast fashion and usually wield DSLRs – searching for the perfect piece of art that will provide their Instagram followers the impression that said individual is ‘woke’, culturally forward and anti-establishment for endorsing street art (Glazma, 2017).
A concept borne out of rage against the system has been co-opted by opportunistic and vile real estate developers. Bushwick now sees most of its street art as paid promotions for companies and products, rather than the previous notions of street art and graffiti. Thus, a subversive idea has been well-integrated into the capitalist mode of production, using the legal yet deviant nature of street art in order to attract wealthy tenants. These tenants, as explained previously, raise the rent of the neighbourhood, forcing former ethnic and artistic tenants out and into other neighbourhoods.
This link between the allure of alternative styles of living and gentrification is evident across neighbourhoods in the Western world. The control that the mass-media wields over the free market and its operation is vast, and the manner in which they portray happenings is detrimental to the character and nature of neighbourhoods. As gentrification becomes more rampant and seep its way to the developing world, it is inevitable that the immense social cost of displacement and homogenisation will increase. This creates an urban development conundrum – it is essential that planners and administrators weigh the cost of gentrification against its apparent benefits.
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