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By ANNE BARNARD
To entice buyers to spend $1 million for one-bedroom apartments on the less glossy eastern edge of the Upper East Side, the builders of a shimmering glass tower going up at 91st Street and First Avenue advertise customized stone countertops, a private fitness center, "expansive sunrise and sunset views" - and the Second Avenue subway.
Now that construction crews have started work on the Second Avenue line after decades of delays, bullish real estate brokers and nervous neighborhood tenants alike expect New York's first new subway in 50 years to join the market forces that are driving Park Avenue-style prices farther east and replacing quirky Hungarian shops with high-end chain stores.
Ending commuters' long walk west to the Lexington Avenue subway will bring new cachet to addresses on Second Avenue and eastward - or at least that's what developers and real estate brokers are betting. Among them are the builders at 91st and First, who point to the subway's expected opening in 2014 and boldly declare that their tower, christened the Azure, stands at "the heart of the Upper East Side."
We are working from the following mission statement with the hope that community residents will give us additional feedback about how students can best support the needs and concerns of people who would be affected by the proposed West Harlem expansion:
University expansion and gentrification are processes that affect everyone in our community. As students we recognize our unique position in relationship to the university and community at large, and simultaneously, the necessity of our action in support of an equitable and just conclusion. To this end, we are unified in our commitment to continue to work and stand in solidarity with those most affected by the process of gentrification, and in our commitment to educate and mobilize the student body towards a goal of greater university accountability.
DOI: 10.1177/1078087406295828
© 2007 SAGE Publications
Notes
Reassessing Gentrification
Measuring Residents' Opinions Using Survey Data
Daniel Monroe Sullivan
Portland State University, Oregon
Qualitative studies have focused on the proponents and the opponents to gentrification but have not provided a clear picture of the opinions of a truly representative sample of residents. This article uses probability sampling and a large sample size to examine residents in two gentrifying neighborhoods in Portland, Oregon. The results suggest that the majority of residents-including owners and renters, Whites and minorities, newcomers and longtime residents, those college educated and not-like how their neighborhood has changed and think it will improve even more in the future. However, regression analysis reveals that renters and longtime Black residents are less likely to view these changes positively.
Key Words: gentrification • survey methods • race • social class • homeownership