Race, Class, and Gentrification in Brooklyn

Krase and DeSena are seasoned researchers whose lives and work intersect with the spaces they interrogate and illuminate in this intensely detailed study. Greenpoint-Williamsburg, Crown Heights/Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, and the communities that live in these iconic neighborhoods are contested ground, where municipal policies, global economic and cultural forces, historical and systemic racism, and attachment to place ignite passions and spur community action against the forces that result in change, including gentrification. The benefit of the long view provided by both authors is a deep sense of context for contemporary battles to preserve affordable housing and self-determination. [The] theoretical framework and a clear politics provide structure to the study.... Summing Up: Recommended. All academic levels/libraries. * CHOICE *
These two books [this book and Brian Goldstein's The Roots of Urban Renaissance: Gentrification and the Struggle over Harlem], independently, but more effectively together, perform an important service for scholars of neighborhood change. They enhance our understanding of a complex urban dynamic. * Journal of Planning History *
This comprehensive study of two key Brooklyn neighbourhoods eminently contributes to a better understanding of the appeal of Brooklyn and its increasingly attractive world-wide image. DeSena and Krase have produced a fine-tuned examination of significant social and economic changes that spans almost half a century. This well-sourced, well-written book is a robust endorsement of the high value of ethnographically-based analysis that will be of interest to specialists and to undergraduate and graduate students in urban anthropology, sociology, history, politics and urban studies. -- Italo Pardo, University of Kent
Krase and DeSena are two of the most important contemporary sociologists of everyday urban life. This book is a wonderful retrospective of their work on urban change in Brooklyn. It is a rare opportunity to have an insider perspective from researchers of neighborhood change spanning forty years, but this book provides us with this exceptional insight. Brooklyn has made a remarkable transformation in this time, but more importantly, in this work we get reflections on urban transformation from two experts that surely reveal lessons about urban life and culture more broadly. Sociological views of everyday life are attracting more interest across the social sciences, and this book will have a prominent place in that literature. It will be of great interest for scholars and teachers of urban communities. -- Timothy Shortell, Brooklyn College, City University of New York