Eyes on the Street

A little while back, WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show did a story on a writer aghast because he was mugged outside his building in Park Slope in Brooklyn (called “Brute Market Force", the mp3 is here.) It’s interesting for a couple of reasons. The first is his opinion that Brooklyn is more dangerous than the classically “bad neighborhoods” of Manhattan because in Manhattan there is more pedestrian traffic on almost every street. A classic “eyes on the street” Jane Jacobs argument. The other, and in many ways diametrically opposed, point of interest is that if crime is unavoidable and ever-present in Brooklyn, why pay millions of dollars in a “market frenzy” to live in Park Slope when there are lots of other neighborhoods that are much cheaper? (One of his examples? Long Island City – shudder.)

Although kind of wandering, the basic point he was trying to make was the effects of the speed and contrast of gentrification. i.e. that income disparity per se was a fundamental social problem when two vastly different neighborhoods are placed next door to one another; sort of the resentment school of criminology. Of course, all of this ties in with Our discussion of Urban Safety, but even beyond that, it gets to the kind of ideas that drove both mid-century zoning ordinances and the phenomenon of white flight. Is harmony possible between the haves and the have-nots in the same place, and if so what are its ingredients?

I, for one, adore Park Slope.