Good afternoon, hip, urban Williamsburg residents. Apparently moving to New York isn't just a drunken adventure before you head back to the suburbs. Hell no, you're here to stay! Or at least that's what an interesting article in the latest New Republic says.
"We are not witnessing the abandonment of the suburbs or a movement of
millions of people back to the city all at once. But we are living at a
moment in which the massive outward migration of the affluent that
characterized the second half of the twentieth century is coming to an
end."
The writer, Alan Ehrenhalt, believes there is a major demographic inversion happening throughout American cities, and it's not just a temporary phenomenon. It certainly does seem like every city I've visited in the past five years is going through the same thing that New York is going through--namely rapid gentrification and radical demographic changes in many of its neighborhoods. Five-dollar gas and bad traffic has something to do with it, but its also because we grew up watching Joey and Chandler's wacky antics on the TV.
"This is the generation that grew up watching "Seinfeld," "Friends," and
"Sex and the City," mostly from the comfort of suburban sofas. We have
gone from a sitcom world defined by "Leave It to Beaver" and "Father
Knows Best" to one that offers a whole range of urban experiences and
enticements. I do not claim that a handful of TV shows has somehow
produced a new urbanist generation, but it is striking how pervasive
the pro-city sensibility is within this generation."
Basically, the children of white flight realized that suburbs are boring, lonely places, and spent their adolescence fantasizing about a place where they could get lunch from Soup Nazis and have wacky friends who sing about smelly cats.
When street violence fell dramatically across the country, all the pieces were set for young suburbanites to return to the cities their parents fled from. This, of course, means big changes for the people (many of them recent immigrants) who once made up those gentrifying neighborhoods. All of sudden they are forced to move to the city's outskirts and exurbs, which might be bad because once poor people are out of sight of the richies, the richies tend not to give a shit about them. Ehrenhalt presents some dramatic dystopian examples like Vienna in the 1890s where merchants and noblemen pranced around the city's center going to operas while poor Slovaks rode horse carts from their cramped hovels on the city's outskirts.
Despite such pessimistic musings, he is generally supportive of the changes. Jane Jacobs' urban ideals may not be completely realized, but things are headed in that direction, and that's a good thing. More community interaction, cultural stimulation, public transportation--these are all things we should look forward to in our new urban future.
Brooklyn Based just profiled my favoritest indie comics shop Desert Island. What makes Desert Island so great is that they stock local, lesser-known artists next to big names like Optic Nerve (which I love). The staff is always super-friendly and they regularly hold signings. Check out the full article here. 
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