NYC boroughs getting better and deteriorating

Peter asked the question:

We always hear about NYC neighborhoods that have gotten better in recent years. Williamsburg, Bushwick, parts of Harlem ... but what are the 'hoods that are deteriorating? Surely there must be some. The only one that comes to mind is Canarsie, and that's due to horror stories I heard from a former co-worker.

Under the theory that “getting better” means that there are more whites, and “deteriorating” means fewer whites, then these are to boroughs getting better:

Manhattan (now 48% white, probably majority white by the next Census)
Brooklyn (36% white and climbing)

And the following boroughs are getting worse

Staten Island (whitest borough at 65%, but declining, NAMs increasing)
Queens (28% white and declining, but 23% Asian and increasing)
The Bronx (only 11% white and still dropping)

As far as I can tell, not a single neighborhood in Manhattan is deteriorating.

Brooklyn is more mixed. Neighborhoods getting whiter include:

Greenpoint
Williamsburg
Bushwick (getting whiter but still crappy)
Bedford Stuyvesant (getting whiter but still crappy)
Crown Heights
Vinegar Hill
DoBro
Fort Greene
Clinton Hill
Tompkins
Caroll Gardens
Red Hook
Park Slope (started out pretty white and still getting even whiter)
Greenwood

But the parts of Brooklyn that are further away from Manhattan continue to deteriorate, for example:

Bensonhurst
Bay Ridge
Gravesend
Sheepshead Bay
Mill Basin
Canarsie

In Queens, the neighborhood getting whiter is Long Island City (which is the part of Queens closest to Manhattan). Astoria, the second-closest neighborhood to Manhattan, is getting a little more white, and I think that the mix of whites is improving, with ethnic blue-collar whites like Archie Bunker being replaced with SWPL whites. All of the rest of Queens is getting less white. Queens loses out to Brooklyn on account of it not being as close to midtown Manhattan.

The part of the Bronx closest to midtown Manhattan, Mott Haven and Port Morris, is getting better, but I would still stay away. There's also talk about the Grand Concourse getting better, but that's hard to say. There are very few whites there.

Riverdale, which is the best part of the Bronx, appears to be declining.

In Staten Island there is serious deterioration throughout the North Shore. Even though it’s the part of Staten Island closes to Manhattan; even the part of Staten Island closes to Manhattan is pretty far from Manhattan. Staten Island is the only borough not separated from Manhattan by a river or an estuary, and it’s taking a heavy beating because of that. Maybe by the next Census, Manhattan will supplant Staten Island as the whitest borough?

AND HERE’S A MAP

Here’s a map which shows how the parts of Brooklyn and Queens bordering Manhattan have gotten substantially whiter during the last decade.

You can also see how Belt Parkway Brooklyn is getting less white.

Comments

[Jack]

I hope Staten Island can somewhat preserve its status as a family-oriented place for Irish and Italian middle class. I do know crime has somewhat increased lately. Though you'd think that with only a 30 min ferry ride between SI and lower manhattan, the north shore would gentrify a bit. Hasn't happened yet.

[Peter]

The stories I heard from my former co-worker, about living in Canarsie, were horrifying. In the last ten years or so, before he finally moved out, he was attacked on several occasions for being of the wrong race. Including being slashed in the arm with a box cutter and having a gun fired in his direction.

[Bernie]

"ethnic blue-collar whites like Archie Bunker."

Actually, Archie Bunker was supposed to be a WASP on the show. This was the 1970s and by then working class WASPs were generations - almost a hundred years - removed from NYC. So why did the creators have a WASP inveighing against Irish, "Polacks" and Eye-talians?

[APH]

If you take the SI ferry on the weekends (esp at night), you'll see a lot of NAMs. Very different mix than the typical weekend commuter mix.

[Blograju]

I've only been to Brooklyn once. My friend lived somewhere close to Pratt University (College?). This was many years ago. I liked that part of Brooklyn.

I saw a movie set in 1980s Park Slope. I would like to visit that area on my next trip to NYC.

[Peter]

From what I've seen of NE Queens it's quite nice. It also is a very low-crime area. It differs from areas like Park Slope or Brooklyn Heights in that most of the residents are Asian rather than white.

[Joe Walker]

The problem is that blacks and Hispanics seem to be attracted to white areas. Therefore as a neighborhood becomes more white, it also becomes more attractive to NAMs who will try to move there. I think this explains the problem that Staten Island is going through as NAMs move in and whites move out to New Jersey.

[Vic]

A few words of caution here. That little dark blue area in the middle of the Bx. might be Arabs or Albanians. The brown areas in Riverdale are quite possibly because of an Asian influx. Riverdale is still a great area. One of the best neighborhoods in NYC in my opinion.

[JayMan]

I knew a girl, White, apparently of Italian extraction, that lived in the Eastern Bronx (Throggs Neck area). She told me that her friends (presumably other White SWPLs from other parts of the City) were constantly teasing her about living there. And she no longer does.

I can attest to the few Whites noted as moving in to the South Bronx. The Great Recession has forced many to look for cheap housing somewhere, and you'll see a few Whites and even a few Asians sprinkled about the area.

[Just speculating]

"The problem is that blacks and Hispanics seem to be attracted to white areas. Therefore as a neighborhood becomes more white, it also becomes more attractive to NAMs who will try to move there".

This is not the case in Manhattan, NYC. These two groups have been priced out and many have relocated as White professionals are moving in and paying 10 times or more the amount for a place to live.

The neighborhoods Washington Heights and Inwood of upper Manhattan are still dirt cheap for NAMs and Latinos, but will be unaffordable as I predict by 2020 when these neighborhoods will see a White majority.

Hispanics/Latinos in Manhattan are defined as Puerto Rican and Dominican, who tend to be less socially upward mobile than their Mexican, Central and South American counterparts who live in Queens, and share a similar lowly status with a lot of NAMs.

[Joe Walker]

Quote: "I think that the mix of whites is improving, with ethnic blue-collar whites like Archie Bunker being replaced with SWPL whites"

Actually, blacks tend to be more afraid of the Archie Bunker-types than they are of the SWPL types. Therefore, it can be better to live nearer to the Archie Bunkers since blacks will be more likely to avoid those areas for fear of violent attacks.

[Doug1111]

I've been a NYer since law school, but there are many parts of the outer boroughs that I've never been to at all. Have been to the nicer parts of Brooklyn and some of Queens a tad. Well Astoria for Greek food, driven through Forest Hills a few times out of curiosity and well going to the US Open Tennis tournament.

Anyway I've gotten the impression that East NY in far Eastern central Brooklyn is about the worst. Well maybe tied with parts of the south Bronx, not sure. Black in the first case, Puerto Rican and other Hispanic with some black as well in the second, or used to be.

[Just speculating]

Queens is also a pseudo suburb (almost an extension of Long Island) that doesn't attract the hardcore city types found in Manhattan and Brooklyn. There are large pockets of forest greenery that makes it difficult for gentrification to take hold. It's the only borough where Asians and the tamer Latinos can reside in peace. Mexicans, Central and South Americans are a lot better in disposition than their hostile lib loving Puerto Rican and Dominican cohorts of Manhattan who are now slowly being forced out along with the Blacks to make room for the arrogant Anglo types who are turning their slums into high maintenance "playborhoods". I welcome the second group anytime of the day over those miscreants that the liberals love to sympathize at a distance.

[CripLite]

It's certainly true that Brooklyn is getting worse along the Belt Parkway. It used to be Irish-Italian, now Bensonhurst is heavily Asian and Bay Ridge basically Arab and Hispanic with the Jersey Shore crowd taking over on weekends. The only middle-class white people basically left there are Eastern European immigrants, and their children who are mostly younger than 30 are going to move out as soon as they have a family. Nobody wants their kids to attend Lincoln, Madison or Sheepshead Bay HS.

If I had the money, I would buy real estate right now in the gentrifying sections of Brooklyn. Interest rates are at historic lows, and real assets guard against inflation.

[Just speculating]

"The only middle-class white people basically left there are Eastern European immigrants, and their children who are mostly younger than 30 are going to move out as soon as they have a family".

Whites of the ethnic variety who are usually working class and tend to be suburbanites will no longer be of any relevance to big city politics where Waspy Whites, Jews and Asians form an elite class and the NAMs form a disenfranchised group. But it seems like the NAMs are losing their turf as money dictates who has power.