As we’re learning with the cowardly whitewashing of 5 Pointz in the middle of the night, nothing in New York is sacred if you don’t slap a landmark plaque on it. Progress marches on no matter what’s in its path, and fortunately (?) you can see it close to home at the Fulton Mall. The historically black shopping district and social space has gone through an upheaval thanks to a massive rezoning effort surrounding it. And now you can take a tour through it with social worker and Brooklyn resident Rahsun Houston in an interactive clip from My Brooklyn that offers pop-up resources giving context to the changes happening there.
In the clip, which you can find here, My Brooklyn director Kelly Anderson gets a tour of the Fulton Mall through the eyes of Houston, as he explains what used to be at the Fulton Mall and his doubts that it will still be welcoming to Brooklyn’s black and Caribbean community. Aside from the trip down memory lane from Houston though, you can also get links to a treasure trove of documents, clips and articles exploring gentrification, rezoning and how things like this happen.
After all, a little education never killed anybody, and it can be useful in case Bill de Blasio pulls off a rubber mask at his inauguration to reveal that he’s been Mike Bloomberg the whole time and redevelopment will continue at the same pace as before.
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“…and redevelopment will continue at the same pace as before.”
It needs to! Maybe at a faster pace even. Housing is not going to get cheaper if we don’t build more of it. It’s the policy around what kind of housing we are promoting that needs to be scrutinized here, not whether or not we should be building.
This is exactly wrong. There is PLENTY of housing in NYC. Real estate moguls, most of whom don’t even live here, have created a false supply so that there appears to be demand.
We have almost 6,000 empty buildings and lots. Enough to house over 200,000 people! There is absolutely zero shortage of housing.
Building more buildings doesn’t bring the rents down – people refusing to pay $2,000 for 200sq foot apts in Bushwick because they think that’s a normal price does. We have housing. Now the people need to let real estate know we’re aware of it.
Fulton Mall wasn’t always a crappy shopping district with cheap goods, a zillion sneaker stores, and crime blight, especially at night. It used to have premier department stores and high pedestrian traffic, decades ago. People have short-term memory — the city is contstantly changing in waves. That’s the nature of a city. Now there’s another wave of economic promise that is revitalizing a major area of Brooklyn. How is this a bad thing? This romanticizing of bad times, and the small-world view, is more of a danger. Instead, if the concern is about small business owners, how about focusing on programs that help these owners with relocation? Where are they going? What support do they have? Is Brooklyn doing anything for them? Let’s talk about that rather than just making films about random guys who are angry about the Sheraton and who are mourning the fact that the area is becoming safer and more of an attraction.