gentrificación del barrio
Gentrification is the process whereby the character of a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people moving in, improving housing, and attracting new businesses, typically displacing current inhabitants in the process. The area of 167 has gone through many changes throughout the years and many of these have not been for the better. The process of gentrification has become a widespread problem for these low income communities in the Bronx and everyone in the neighborhood is feeling the impact of such changes.
During such instances we see teens in the Bronx feeling out of place in their own neighborhoods even if they’d lived their whole lives. We see this in the article radio rookie by Christina Adja who is a guest speaker on the show provides her experiences with living in a neighborhood that has gone through changes due to gentrification. She states “shiny apartment buildings going up” and “How do changing neighborhoods affect teenagers’ sense of stability and belonging” this is not just affecting the adults who see it first hand but also the kids who are affected by it. Their favorite family restaurants getting replaced by a fast food chain and playgrounds getting torn down to put up new high rise buildings. The old Bronx has changed and not always for the better.
Gentrification doest always affect the outside of the neighborhood but also what we eat, drink and how we spend our money. Everyone knows the supermarkets have recently been increasing prices on certain items. In The link between gentrification, children’s egocentric food environment, and obesity it tells us how children’s obesity also relates to the change in foods available to the family in this article it says “We find that children in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods see increased access to fast food and wait-service restaurants and reduced access to corner stores and supermarkets compared to those in non-gentrifying areas” this is just one of the many reasons that gentrification affects these low income neighborhoods by making these places inaccessible to healthy foods due to their high prices which leads to families having no choice then to go for the cheaper option with fast foods leading to further health implications in the future. This is another Phenomena called a food desert.
Now time to explain some of my own personal experiences in the very controversial topic that is gentrification. I’ve seen it myself from bodegas getting turned into juice bars to family restaurants getting turned into fast food chains. These are just some of the things I see happening to my neighborhood. Let’s get into my neighborhood. I live in the southeast Bronx close to Yankee Stadium, a place full of tourists during the games but not busy during any other time of the year. Originally my neighborhood was just where normal people lived, no real entertainment or places to visit to make it interesting, just a humble neighborhood. Some of the biggest changes I can think of is the appearance of a new school called Dream that is right by the four train. Construction of the school started in around 2016 when I was around nine years old and me and my siblings were all saying how cool it was until we realized that that wasn’t the only thing changing. I asked my mom and dad who have lived in this same neighborhood for twenty-four years and asked them how gentrification has changed our neighborhood and the answers shocked me.
The Andrew Freeman home, a giant mansion in an old timey building that is right next to where I live used to be a senior citizens center where they had graduations of the local middle schools and was open to the public during community events. I remember seeing it on my way to pick up my mom from work everyday admiring the graffiti placed on it, seeing them as murals that embodied what it meant to be from the bronx.
The next few years making the same walk I would always make made me see how much it changed from being a senior center to an escape room to a reception hall as well as a place where fashion shoes would be held broke my heart. This place I would walk by used to help out the community bringing kids and adults alike to its doors to mingle with one and other turned into someone’s next instagram post.
These are all things that can happen to anyone’s neighborhood some people may see them as a good thing while others like myself just want the old peaceful vibrant, and colorful neighborhoods were used to, to stay the same. We don’t need a big realtor to go and change something that isn’t broken and when they do change things do it for the betterment of the neighborhood not to bring in more of the same rich people that want to feel like they’ve changed it for the better.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10229138
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