As formerly boho environs of Brooklyn become unattainable due to creeping Manhattanization and seven-figure real estate prices, creative professionals of child-rearing age — the type of alt-culture-allegiant urbanites who once considered themselves too cool to ever leave the city — are starting to ponder the unthinkable: a move to the suburbs. — New York Times
12 Comments
how does one get a job as a "futurism consultant?"
You need to know the sales outlook of the next trend in the near future. The article mentions nothing of the people who has been living there.
I was laughed at in school for thinking that one day the suburbs would become the only affordable places to live. I never bought into the whole density pro urbanization argument, because without industry cities always become gentrified. cities were once places of necessity and are now just novelty filled playgrounds for the rich. It will be like the Hunger Games by 2100!
"Brooklyn is turning out to be the last three days of Burning Man.”
The only shocking aspect of this is that anyone thought it wouldn't happen. This is what happens over and over, in every aspect of every cultural movement of every kind. Everything you are excited about right now, that feels fresh, undiscovered, and important: wait a decade and it will have become the last 3 days of Burning Man.
Which is not cynical of me. It's just how things move, and the desire to keep the quality aspects of any movement while turning down the hipper-than-thou aspects of it is called progress, right?
re: the proclamation that moving out of Brooklyn isn't "giving up": It must be difficult for those people who have made this move to finally get their chance at an article in the Times and have it be about renouncing the very thing that previously gave them a sense of importance. But again, this is how the world moves. If it gets us closer to Jefferson's view of our country as an agrarian culture based around small communities/villages, I'm all for it. I'm a committed Communitarian myself. And constantly maturing and growing and criticizing one's decisions is, again, progress.
Part of the long history of suburbanization is the creation of more affordable working-class places at the urban edge. It's never been just about elite enclaves.
@donna:
my take from this article is that your priorities change when you have kids.
"Brooklyn is turning out to be the last three days of Burning Man.”
same with Oakland
That's certainly part of it, toasteroven.
brooklyn is huge - it's 70 square miles and the expensive "hip" neighborhoods are only really on the north west side and just south of prospect park. the rest of brooklyn is still pretty old school and a little sketchy.
plus they're all moving to westchester? yeah - they've got money...
bah - this article is all sorts of stupid - you can find vegan gluten-free locally-and-sustainably-sourced dog food bakeries frequented by dutch-bike-riding bearded lesbian lumberjacks just about anywhere in the entire northeast (at the very least half of massachusetts). plus brooklyn didn't export this shit anywhere - it came to them.
oh - you have yoga and farm-to-table? there are moms with tattoos? it's a little slice of williamsburgh! give me a f-ing break.
"...you can find vegan gluten-free locally-and-sustainably-sourced dog food bakeries frequented by dutch-bike-riding bearded lesbian lumberjacks just about anywhere..."
That's Winston Churchill good.
Thanks for making my morning Toasteroven.
If it gets us closer to Jefferson's view of our country as an agrarian culture based around small communities/villages, I'm all for it. I'm a committed Communitarian myself.
Yeah I agree. What is really interesting to me about the whole hipster fad despite the skinny jeans and the annoying complicated coffee drinks, is that there is sort of movement toward community. It is probably a good thing that some tattooed lesbians are moving into the suburbs. Maybe they will offset the me me me culture and the overly manicured lifestlye of suburbia moving it in the direction of Broad acre city (without all the crazy rules and flying cars) and away from the sara palin model...
Agree with toasteroven, Brooklyn is huge and has a ton of yummy traditional neighborhoods filled with faux old architecture. The other aspect that the article fails to dril down on is many of these ex-brooklynites are still looking for what they had in Brooklyn, and that's urbanism and it's sense of cummunity, again, within a faux old context. They move into victorian houses with nice mainstreets...sounds a lot like brooklyn.
The other great point (that jla-x made) is that these people are looking for community, the same community that people accross the specttrum are looking for. There's something a bit unfulfuilling about all this social media stuff. In the broad acre suburbs, new urbanists have been cattering to this growing market for a while. Humans haven't changed much since we left the savanah thousands of years ago, as much as apple, GM, facebook, and just about any corporation would have you believe. People like eachother, generally.
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