Is the “New” Brooklyn Economy For Real?
Dennis Farr
Community Activist
All economy is “creative” insofar capitalism is systematic appropriation of imagination, so “creative economy” euphemizes Williamsburg’s gentrification. The monopoly on perspectives of “creative economy” and “its value” by agents of gentrification perverts sense.
Hands down, Real Estate is the most “creative” of economies in Williamsburg since 1979. Its artifice is not easily measured. Real estate holdings, not any particular or general production, valuate Williamsburg’s “self-employed.” Gentrification apologists improperly ignore the distinction. The Internet and mobile connectivity have altered if negated producers and managers inhabiting the same physical space in “creative economy.” Thus, labor erodes from social production centers into belts of professional and semi-professional satellites—not factoring that labor’s transaction further removes from Williamsburg. Apologists likewise improperly conflate design conceptualization set outside Williamsburg with design labor in her new satellite belts. Whereas no significant agencies house facilities here, it is ludicrously believed “Design” as a whole orbits Williamsburg. All in all, manufacturing and jobs decline while financial values rise. “Creative economy” is lost on three decades of Real Estate’s hyper-valuation and hypertrophy.
The nitty-gritty is that gentrification’s disposable income generated in the “creative economy” outside of Williamsburg circulates, and only in part, through her “tavern economy.” It does not circulate through significant large-scale cultural and public institutions, unlike brownstone Brooklyn with her Brooklyn Museum, Pratt Institute, and Prospect Park, among many others. Other than “tavern economy,” income disposes outside of Williamsburg and poses no meaningful employment, production or education for community residents, especially Williamsburg youth.
Serious steps toward genuine creative economy can be taken if recent and multiple calls for a technology valley in Williamsburg unite with previous proposals for a civic engineering and environmental science university atop the Domino Sugar site.