Can Design Defeat Gentrification?

An article by Justin Davidson begins by asking a question: "Can an architect design a kinder, gentler gentrification?"

According to the article, the neighborhood of Bushwick in Brooklyn will provide a case study for that question. There, the architecture firm ODA has chosen the former site of the Rheingold Brewery for a project that sets an ambitious goal for "nearly 1,000 apartments and a million square feet that would slip affably into a neighborhood that, despite its real-estate hotness and brand-name cool, remains tenaciously poor."

"Longtime residents and their new neighbors would mingle in the woodworking shop and photo lab and hang their creations side by side in the community art gallery," adds Davidson. "A microbrewery would open up onsite, making reference to the past while providing local jobs and drinks."

The pressure hanging over these visions are familiar: "every long-fallow acre in the city is a battleground," writes Davidson. And "even if not a single stoop gets demolished and not a single resident displaced, an affluent influx will rattle longtime residents."

The goals of the architects also have to compete with the marketing efforts and influence of the developers, zoning changes dependent on local political leadership, and the difficulties of producing an authentic urban environment that doesn't resemble something more like Disneyland.