On Thursday, I got to meet one of the best intellectuals of urban sociology, Sharon Zukin. Ms. Zukin a Sociology Professor at CUNY Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center gave a lecture on her latest book Naked City at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY. She talked about how New York City specifically faced a social-economic evolution in the last 20 years, growing drastically in the last 5 years. Many of these neighborhoods that were once home to working class people and citizens are now are filled with young artistic crowd. Many who are in the media and white collar industry. This drastic change is known as “Gentrification,” a process that involves raising rents, foods and taxes in underclass working communities. While the working classes are being pushed out of a community they once called home, the wealthier classes are taken over. I am in the process of reading her book which has really gained my attention because many ignore the fact that while this may be a good side to this. But there’s also a bad side to it as well. Many people being forced out of their home neighborhoods because they can’t keep up with drastic social-economic change in their neighborhoods. This process is desperately being consumed all over the city, mostly in communities near and in the business/real estate capital of the world – Manhattan. This is a side source that I’m working on for my global politics term paper “The effects of Deindustrialization and Outsourcing.” I’m going to go in-depth with the modern social effects of societies that were swamped by the effects of wealthy class individuals. I’m very glad to be working on this issue because it’s a developing effect taken place rapidly here in NYC. And Professor Zukin goes beyond the picture in an in-depth first person analysis on this issue. She is also resides here in NYC. It was a great experience to meet her and to see her input on this relatively new developing global and local issue.
