Can Queens Be Gentrified?

Corona, Queens. Photo via nrvlowdown's flickr

This week amNewYork asked: Is Queens going Brooklyn? The borough, at 110 square miles, is huge—so there's certainly room for experimentation—but what about gentrification? The paper talks to Borough Historian Jack Eichenbaum, who says of its size: “Outsiders may perceive a complicated whole, but insiders mostly relate to their neighborhood rather than the borough as a whole.”

Eichenbaum added that it's not likely to become a gentrified borough of cool micro-nabes, however, saying: "Queens was built in more 'suburban style' for the lower middle and middle class," and the "simpler quality of original structures" may stave off over-gentrification (the Observer blames a lack of brownstones).

Can the Queens "vibe" the paper speaks of overcome this lack of brownstones? One local author and chef told them, "As innovative as Brooklyn is—and I wish we could have a little more of that here—we lack the striving self-consciousness of it." Plus, if it was good enough for Kerouac... they will come.

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By Jen Carlson in News on October 23, 2010 12:02 PM

Comments [rss]

glen glenn

Because Williamsburg and Bushwick are full of brownstones.

mopar

Williamsburg, Long Island City, and Bushwick have gentrified or are gentrifying because they are/were full of cheap lofts for artists, not brownstones.

ANGRYGOD11

Gentrification usually means displacing poorer minorities with wealthier, better educated whites. In Queens, that might not be possible as many are middle-class homeowners, not long-term renters. If a hipster couple buy a home from an older couple in Forest Hills, that isn't gentrification.

adeez

I give you credit for actually attempting to define that term before weighing-in.

"Gentrification," like, for example, "hipster" and "God," is a term that means something different to everyone.

So these discussions usually devolve into drivel b/c everyone's arguing whether something has taken place, yet no one agrees on what that something actually is.

ANGRYGOD11

Thank you for the credit.

However, on THIS blog, gentrification pretty much means the same thing to most of us.

Kelles

Queens going Brooklyn? No, please! Queens ppl need their elbow room

Kelles

Does Jack Eichenbaum even live in Queens? Cause he sounds like a ...

kcin122

most of brooklyn is far from gentrified so this discussion is retarded.

ktinnyc

Has the author of the article ever seen a subway map? Most of Queens is under served by subway service and that is almost always the impetus for the kind of people that gentrify neighborhoods to move to an area.

Stevennnn

Have to remember Queens has a suburban feel to it especially the most east you go.

longacre

And the further east you go, the less mass transit there is, the longer it takes to get to/from Manhattan and the less people want to commute.

longacre

Other than Astoria and LIC, no. The areas prime for gentrification in Queens have been taken over by central and South Americans and southeast Asians. Even parts of Astoria have been all but annexed by (mostly illegal) people from south of the border.