Chris lee, Your a doof if you really believe that gribble ! I would prefer developers inhere to local building requirements and build affordable housing that benefits "ALL" and not some ! Gentrification is the new dirty word of our time . If you don't believe so ask someone for whom was a victim of it . Take a walk through Fort Greene,Clinton Hill, and vast majorities of Bed Stuy . You will see some of the ugliest shit-bag condo's crammed into some of the smallest spaces on that block ! LOL I saw a group of them along Broadway by Dekalb Av . Three story condo's about twenty feet from the J train . I bet them clowns are paying over $2,000 in rent for the Privilige of calling it a "Condo" ! What a joke . Buy a house and save your money already .

I would prefer an "ugly" condo, to an "ugly" abandoned tenement.

The only thing I think that can really ruin a neighborhood is a) tearing down vacant houses and/or b)building ugly new condos. The former is a result of poor economic conditions while the latter is the result of prosperous economic conditions. Both circumstances have their negatives which is why a diversity of both high and low income is often a good idea.

If you want things to remain the same than you are in the wrong country. Things change fast here. Nobody owns a neighborhood and nobody ever will. Go ahead and try to fight change. Fight the weather while your at it.

"Nobody owns a neighborhood'? You come to Bensonhurst and I'll show use who owns what.

People who are against gentrification are obviously racist. And for the record, Harlem used to be a white enclave before blacks moved in at the turn of the century and then it underwent a renaissance. The fact is, the blacks gentrified Harlem and now it's coming full circle. Just as nature intended it to be.

Blacks did not gentrify Harlem....Poor blacks moved in when the housing market collapsed, along with the economy at the turn on the 20th century and tenants could no longer pay their rents and moved further north in the city, where it was cheaper to live. Landlords, in an effort not to let their properties vacant, started to rent to lower income blacks, who found the area attractive and then moved in droves. As they were moving in, the city's economy was collapsing, and along with that, many areas of the city, not just Harlem, started to decay and see an increase in crime.

The economy rebounded a few years later and with it a large number of the neighborhoods that had decayed during the collapse of the housing market of that era. Harlem was not one of those neighborhoods unfortunately, and the reason has been the topic of several books, some of which posit that the recovery did not lift blacks out of the recession as it did whites for reasons of discrimination, etc...

I guarantee a white hipster put these stickers up.

The only people I hear complaining about gentrification are the previous round of gentrifiers. ie hipsters complaining about yuppies. You don't hear complaints from people whose property value went up or crime went down or their kids schools got more funding. Just complaints about the faux dive bar turning into a sports bar.

A couple of things about gentrification: Gentrification does not start when people with money begin to move into a neighborhood, it starts decades earlier when a building's life-cycle peaks and bankers begin to refuse loans to the building's owners, resulting in a decline in the quality of the building/neighborhood, resulting in the previous tenants moving out and poorer tenants moving in -- this process is not reversed until the building reaches the point, compared to the value of the land it sits on, that any money invested in it will begin to reap a higher return again. It follows that gentrification is a class issue more than a racial issue, but class issues in the U.S. oftentimes play out as racial issues. So while Morningside Heights is looking more white, central Harlem is still black, even though it too is being gentrified (albeit at a slower pace).

Neil Smith, a professor at CUNY Graduate Center, wrote a book called The New Urban Frontier that is a very good primer on gentrification.

Dear gentrifiers and associated yuppie scum: there are no income taxes in Dubai. You're welcome.

Ah gothamist commenters. Here I was wondering, "where have all the genius sociological experts gone?" And "What of the great economic minds of my generation?" So glad to have found you all here, sharing your empirical wisdom again. Please continue to enlighten us, for alas, we are but laymen.

If housing isn't "affordable" shouldn't it be empty?

it annoys me how the new people moving in have this view that all was shat before they arrived. its something new people never understand. it was a better city to live in before you arrived. I dont have time to explain it to you, you just have to take my word for it.

maybe it's time for you to leave, then.

This is not a clear-cut white vs. non-white issue. If a neighborhood can flourish because people with productive and lucrative livelihoods (REGARDLESS OF RACE) can make it happen, it should.

Maybe more socially responsible and productive citizens in a neighborhood (making less room for machete-wielding, wife-beating, drug-selling citizens) isn't so bad.

MY COMMENTS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RACE AND ARE NOT MOTIVATED IN ANYWAY BAY RACE OR CULTURE. I'm coming from a socioeconomic place here.

If you can't afford this neighborhood and you want to stay, stop spending so many hours on a street corner with your buddies, and work.

I can't tell you how many people in my neighborhood ride up to the bodega on a bike drunk at noon to buy food with food stamps. If you can ride a bike around all day, you can work. People want a lot with a little effort.

racist.

Please let me know how I'm being racist. Please re-read my post. I mentioned no particular race or culture. I'm talking about people in my neighborhood...not people of a race.

I'm talking about unmotiviated white people too, asshole.

"If a neighborhood can flourish because people with productive and lucrative livelihoods (REGARDLESS OF RACE) can make it happen, it should."

Christ I'd live in that fuckin' neighborhood if it ever existed.

Throw a dart at the Bronx

That is the best borough to live in

Some neighborhoods have more going on than others

But most sum up your neighborhood you said you would live in