Signs of change: community, collective action, and gentrification in Brooklyn, New York

Abstract

This photo-documentary project captures unofficial signs posted on the streets of central Brooklyn, New York to explore how community members engage with each other during a recent period of intensifying gentrification. The posters promote neighbourhood quality of life improvement campaigns, civic engagement, middle-class amenities, eclectic consumption experiences, private child development services, and social responsibility for supporting populations vulnerable to displacement. These flyers reflect the efforts of local people, organisations, and businesses to forge neighbourhood ties, foster collective action, and include incumbents in the changing community, while maintaining the area’s upscaling trajectory. The photographs show not only that gentrification is occurring, but also how people interact, build community, transform their neighbourhood, and respond to change through place-based, mediated communicative engagement during gentrification and super-gentrification.