New Retail Capital and Neighborhood Change: Boutiques and Gentrification in New York City

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Zukin ◽  
Valerie Trujillo ◽  
Peter Frase ◽  
Danielle Jackson ◽  
Tim Recuber ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Community Identity ◽  
Chain Stores ◽  
Corporate Capital ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
Racial Solidarity ◽  
The Media

Since the 1970s, certain types of upscale restaurants, cafés, and stores have emerged as highly visible signs of gentrification in cities all over the world. Taking Harlem and Williamsburg as field sites, we explore the role of these new stores and services (“boutiques”) as agents of change in New York City through data on changing composition of retail and services, interviews with new store owners, and discursive analysis of print media. Since the 1990s, the share of boutiques, including those owned by small local chains, has dramatically increased, while the share of corporate capital (large chain stores) has increased somewhat, and the share of traditional local stores and services has greatly declined. the media, state, and quasi–public organizations all value boutiques, which they see as symbols and agents of revitalization. Meanwhile, new retail investors—many, in Harlem, from the new black middle class—are actively changing the social class and ethnic character of the neighborhoods. Despite owners’ responsiveness to community identity and racial solidarity, “boutiquing” calls attention to displacement of local retail stores and services on which long–term, lower class residents rely and to the state's failure to take responsibility for their retention, especially in a time of economic crisis.

Revisiting The Bonfire of the Vanities

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arne De Boever
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Major Theme ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Media

Following other critics of the so-called “finance fiction” or “fi-fi” genre, the chapter begins by observing that finance doesn’t play a major role in Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities: It is limited to the pages about a gold-backed bond and the neoliberalization of black power, an issue that Wolfe had already addressed in his earlier “Radical Chic.” Instead, the chapter identifies “psychosis” as a major theme in this contemporary finance fiction. While many critics have focused on racism in the novel, and in some cases on what they perceive to be the racism of the novel (which, in its avowedly all-inclusive representation of New York City privileges the upper-class white perspective), its revisionist reading lays bare what I consider to be the novel’s central drama: how both its white, upper-class protagonist Sherman McCoy and its black, lower-class protagonist Henry Lamb are caught up in psychotic situations created by money, politics, and the media—situations over which they have no control. The chapter ultimately turns to Cristina Alger’s The Darlings as an example of how this is borne out in post-2008 financial fiction.

“Holding the Line”: Investigating How Urban School Leaders’ Respond to Gentrification in New York City Schools

2020 ◽  
pp. 004208592095913
Author(s):  
Allison Roda
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
School Leaders ◽  
Urban School ◽  
Cultural Workers ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
New York City Schools ◽  
City Schools

This case study investigated how three New York City schools responded to gentrification’s effects as student demographics shifted. I used the conceptual framework of urban school leaders as cultural workers to examine the tensions, successes, and challenges inherent in the school gentrification and integration process. I found that each school leader defied the school gentrification narrative by “holding the line” in terms of preserving diversity, cultivating integration, and counterbalancing the opportunity hoarding behaviors of White, advantaged parents. The results have implications for urban school leaders who want to be agents of change by leveraging gentrification’s effects into positive results.

“I'll Show You the Bowery from Chatham Square to the Cooper Institute”: The Entertainment and Ethics of Slumming in the Theatre

2015 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-212
Author(s):  
J. Chris Westgate
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
Box Office ◽  
East River ◽  
Brooklyn Bridge

In 1894, Robert Neilson Stephens's playOn the Bowerydebuted at Haverly's Fourteenth Street Theatre in New York City, with Steve Brodie, who had won fame for purportedly jumping from the Brooklyn Bridge years earlier, playing himself. Although Brodie's entrance is delayed until the second act, he rather quickly commandeers the plot and leads the rest of the characters through the Bowery and across the Brooklyn Bridge (where he reenacts his jump to enthusiastic audiences) to an East River pier, where he leaps into a burning building to rescue one of those perpetually distressed damsels from the 1890s. Naturally, mainstream newspapers were rather critical ofOn the Bowery’s literary merits. TheNew York Heraldclaimed that the play made “no dramatic pretensions,” and thePhiladelphia Inquireremphasized that it left the critic not “overly impressed with the play as a play.” TheNew York Timestook an especially harsh line. Lamenting the play's “threadbare plot” and “no originality,” and overreliance on Brodie's celebrity, its critic used the production as an opportunity to advance rigid delineations of highbrow and lowbrow, upper class and lower class, and literature and leisure. For what this reviewer described as the “Brodie audience,” the working-class spectators who crowded the gallery and boisterously cheered Brodie's every feat,On the Bowerygratified a yearning for escapism and entertainment.On the Bowerywas not, according to theTimes, geared to what the reviewer described as the “Booth audience,” the middle- and upper-class spectators who normally prized Edwin Booth's Shakespearean performances: “even the management does not take [Brodie] seriously.” If box office success is any measure, however, many from both the Booth and Brodie audiences did takeOn the Boweryseriously. Productions of the play toured for nearly three years, and a number of plays emulatedOn the Boweryduring the next five years. If Bruce McConachie is right that what is relevant is not “whether . . . melodramas were any good” but what audiences were watching and what meanings they were constructing from these plays, then theatre history should takeOn the Boweryseriously too.

Leveraging Youth: Overcoming Intergenerational Tensions in Creative Production

2019 ◽  
Vol 82 (4) ◽  
pp. 386-406
Author(s):  
Alexandre Frenette
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
York City ◽  
Knowledge Extraction ◽  
Art World ◽  
Recording Industry ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Sociological Literature ◽  
Agents Of Change

The sociological literature on creativity would suggest that collaboration between newcomers and more experienced members of an art world results in the fruitful combination of novelty and usefulness, though not without some conflict. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with workers from the popular recording industry (rock/pop) in New York City, this article extends the literature on creativity as collective action by showing how three types of intergenerational tensions (aesthetic, technological, and career) are embedded in the ways newcomers and experienced workers see themselves and each other as agents of change and stasis. I propose a new variable—leveraging age—a mechanism intergenerational collaborators use to resolve or override these tensions to ultimately maximize creativity in group contexts. Leveraging age, as a form of knowledge extraction, occurs in creative bureaucratic organizations and describes how newcomers and experienced workers dualistically draw on each other’s respective strengths (novelty and tradition). I primarily examine the bottom-up part of this process—how experienced workers draw on the insights of newcomers—by analyzing five leveraging-youth practices, which vary by level of formality and intentionality, but mostly limit the interactional challenges between the two groups.

Unilever's Mission for Vitality

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
David Austen-Smith ◽  
Adam Galinsky ◽  
Katherine H. Chung ◽  
Christy LaVanway
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Mission Statement ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Consumer Awareness ◽  
Portfolio Company ◽  
The Media ◽  
A Company ◽  
Conflicting Messages

Dove and Axe were two highly successful brands owned by Unilever, a portfolio company. Dove was a female-oriented beauty product brand that exhorted “real beauty” and not the unachievable standards that the media portrayed. In contrast, Axe was a brand that purportedly “gives men the edge in the mating game.”□ Their risqué commercials always portrayed the supermodel-type beauty ideal that Dove was trying to change. Unilever had always been a company of brands where the consumer knew the brands but not the company, but recently there had been the idea to unify the company with an umbrella mission for all of its brands. This would turn Unilever into a company with brands, potentially increasing consumer awareness and encourage cross-purchases between the different brands. However, this raised questions about the conflicting messages between the brands' marketing campaigns, most notably between Unilever's two powerhouse brands, Dove and Axe. The case begins with COO Alan Jope anticipating an upcoming press meeting in New York City to discuss Unilever's current (i.e., 2005) performance and announce Unilever's decision to create an umbrella mission statement for the company. This case focuses on the central question of whether or not consistency between brand messages is necessary or inherently problematic.The Unilever's Mission for Vitality case was created to help students and managers develop an appreciation for how the values underlying a marketing campaign can affect and alter an organization's culture. The case focuses on how two products and marketing campaigns that express conflicting underlying values (as reflected in the Dove Real Beauty and the Axe Effect campaigns) within the same corporation can give rise to a number of unintended organizational and marketing complications.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Food Recalls in Retail Establishments in New York City

2011 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
HEATHER HANSON ◽  
VASUDHA REDDY ◽  
MELISSA BAUER ◽  
STEPHEN STICH ◽  
LARA KIDOGUCHI ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Drug Administration ◽  
York City ◽  
Electronic Communication ◽  
Infectious Agent ◽  
Chain Store ◽  
Chain Stores ◽  
Food Recalls ◽  
E Mail

Information on how promptly food recalls of U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)–regulated products are disseminated to retailers is not well documented. Store managers were surveyed after recalls were declared to estimate the proportion aware of a recall, to describe the methods by which they learned of the recall, and to ascertain how they would prefer to be notified of recalls in the future. From 1 January 2008 to 31 December 2009, we identified FDA Class I products recalled because of potential contamination with an infectious agent such as Salmonella, which were sold in New York City. After each recall, a sample of retailers who carried the products was contacted, a standardized questionnaire was administered to store managers, and a sample of stores was inspected to determine if the product had been removed. Among nine recalls evaluated, 85% (range, 12 to 100%) of managers were aware of the recall affecting a product at their store. Chain store managers were more aware of recalls than were independent store managers (93 versus 78%, P < 0.0001). More chain store managers first heard about the recall via e-mail as compared with independent store managers (35 versus 4%, P < 0.0001). E-mail notification was preferred by large chain store managers (38 versus 8%, P < 0.0001); on inspection, chain stores were more likely to have removed the item than were independent stores (85 versus 56%, P = 0.0071). Although recall information reaches many stores, faster electronic notifications are not effective at reaching small, independent stores, which may lack computers or fax machines. Alternate means to disseminate recall notifications rapidly are needed for stores without electronic communication capabilities.

JACOB A. RIIS ON CHILDREN LIVING IN TENEMENTS (1892)

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-200
Author(s):  
T. E. C.
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Reformer ◽  
The Poor

Jacob A. Riis (1849-1914), a Danish-American journalist and social reformer, shocked the American conscience in his book How the Other Half Lives (1890), by his exposé of the horrors of New York City slums and the abuses of lower-class urban life. The following quotation from his book, The Children of the Poor (1892) unfortunately is still applicable today-82 years later! The tenement and the saloon, with the street that does not always divide them, form the environment that is to make or unmake the child. The influence of each of the three is bad. Together they have power to overcome the strongest resistance. But the child born under their evil spell has none such to offer. The testimony of all to whom has fallen the task of undoing as much of the harm done by them as may be, from the priest of the parish school to the chaplain of the penitentiary, agrees upon this point, that even the tough, with all his desperation, is weak rather than vicious. He promises well, he even means well; he is as downright sincere in his repentance as he was in his wrongdoing; but it doesn't prevent him from doing the very same evil deed over again the minute he is rid of restraint. He would rather be a saint than a sinner; but somehow he doesn't keep in the rôole of saint, while the police help perpetuate the memory of his wickedness. After all, he is not so very different from the rest of us.

Selling Pre-K: Media, Politics, and Policy in the Case of Universal Prekindergarten in New York City

2018 ◽  
Vol 120 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine K. Delaney ◽  
Susan B. Neuman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Educational Policy ◽  
York City ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Publicly Funded ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
State Budget ◽  
The Media

Background/Context Educational policy is informed by multiple stakeholders and actors. Research has focused on understanding how policy decisions are informed and made, as well as how teachers and school leaders take up these policies in their practice. However, few researchers have examined how educational policy is framed for the larger public and voting electorate through media coverage and how the use of rhetorical devices can shape the public's understandings of policies, practices, and promised outcomes. Publicly funded prekindergarten is an emerging movement in many states. Purpose/Objective This research examined how local and national media framed the scale-up of publicly funded, Universal Pre-Kindergarten (UPK) in the largest school district in the country: New York City. Across two years, including a mayoral primary, mayoral election, and high-profile state budget negotiations, we examine how six media outlets used rhetoric to create specific narratives about the goals, outcomes, and possibilities of UPK that resonated with voters. Research Design Qualitative methods were used to examine the content of six national and local media sources. Over 640 sources were analyzed to address the questions central to this study. Utilizing our theoretical framework of rhetorical policy analysis, as well as emergent coding, we cross-analyzed multiple themes, working to identify consistent and dominant narratives across the media coverage. Findings Findings reveal that four main narratives dominated the media coverage of the scale-up of pre-K in New York City. These narratives used emotional rhetoric to frame UPK in ways that detracted from meaningful, research-informed information about how to successfully support the care and learning of young children. Conclusions/Recommendations The role of media in framing educational policy and practice for the public is growing. Researchers and policy makers must be mindful of how the rhetorical approaches utilized by the media can and will inform the public's understanding of public education policy.

Attitudes toward the Homeless in two New York City Metropolitan Samples

1988 ◽  
Vol 17 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 90-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annette Benedict ◽  
Jeffrey S. Shaw ◽  
Leanne G. Rivlin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Homeless Persons ◽  
Demographic Differences ◽  
Two Samples ◽  
Attitude Measures ◽  
The Media ◽  
Composite Variables

Attitude questionnaires were administered to a sample of New York City residents and a suburban sample who worked in New York City (n = 112 for each). While overall attitudes toward the homeless were sympathetic, feelings about a shelter for the homeless in one's neighborhood were not favorable. Feelings toward a shelter were unfavorable regardless of whether the shelter was to serve “over 20” or “up to 10” homeless persons. Despite demographic differences on income, age, time living in the New York City area and education, the two samples differed significantly on only two responses related to attitudes or to experiences with the homeless. New York City residents rated their attitudes toward the elderly as more sympathetic than did suburban residents (p .05), though both samples reported very favorable attitudes. Also, a greater proportion of the New York City residents, 76.7%, as opposed to 52.8% for suburban residents, stated that the situation of the homeless had gotten worse in the past few years (p .001). To examine the relationships between attitude responses and other variables, factor analyses were carried out for each sample on those variables that correlated significantly with the attitude measures. Composite variables based on these factors revealed that, for both New York City and suburban residents, significantly more favorable attitudes were obtained for those respondents who had given money to the homeless and who had used the media and their own reading in forming an opinion about the homeless.

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