![]() In fact, many reviewers were concerned that gentrification was threatening the historic culture of the neighborhood-what the authors term “cultural preservation.” One Yelp reviewer referred to the neighborhood as “an excellent example of the olish community’s enduring presence in Brooklyn,” while another described Greenpoint as “a pleasant and ethnically sound (predominantly of olish descent) neighborhood.” Reviews praised Greenpoint for being “cozy” and “European,” with “‘authentic’ Polish cuisine.” “It’s like walking into a legitimate European bakery in the middle of Greenpoint,” one reviewer put it. Reviews of Greenpoint portrayed the neighborhood as a mainstay for authentic ethnic culture. ![]() The reviews also framed the two neighborhoods in very different ways. ![]() The reviews cast both neighborhoods as “up-and-coming.” But the study did uncover differences in how Yelp reviewers tended to characterize restaurants in the two neighborhoods: Reviews of Bed-Stuy restaurants were twice as likely to mention the surrounding neighborhood and three times more likely to mention it among reviews of trendy restaurants, compared to Greenpoint. The authors then scrutinized the ways in which these Yelp reviews framed perceptions of the two different neighborhoods. Because most reviews, however, do not mention the neighborhood-and those that did were much more likely to mention Bed-Stuy-the authors focused on a more targeted sample of 1,056 reviews that explicitly mention one of the two Brooklyn neighborhoods (of which there were 720 for Bed-Stuy and 336 for Greenpoint). Ultimately, the study included more than 7,000 reviews. The study focuses on two categories of reviews-the top 10 “most reviewed” restaurants, largely consisting of “trendy” restaurants that opened since 2005, and the top 10 “traditional” restaurants, focused on ethnic foods related to that neighborhood (in this case, Polish restaurants in Greenpoint and African-American soul food and Caribbean food in Bed-Stuy). Bed-Stuy is a historically black neighborhood (it’s now 59 percent black), but it has seen a 700 percent increase in its white population between 20. Greenpoint is a historically Polish neighborhood: It’s 57 percent white and just 3 percent black, with a declining Hispanic population. The study examines this nexus by using Yelp reviews of restaurants in two rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhoods with very different populations: Greenpoint and Bedford-Stuyvesant, or Bed-Stuy. A new study by the sociologist Sharon Zukin-known for her earlier work on lofts, artists, and gentrification-along with Scarlett Lindeman and Laurie Hurson of the City University of New York, sheds new light on the connection between gentrification, restaurants, and race. ![]()
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