Bed Stuy: Do or Gentrify

Bed Stuy: Do or Gentrify​ is a journalistic project that investigates the experiences of residents currently living in the Brooklyn Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood, as gentrification takes place. Gentrification can be defined as the “conversion of socially marginal and working-class areas of the central city to middle [and elite] residential use”(DeSena, 2009, p. 11). Upon thorough research, I recognized that there was a large existence of statistical and quantitative data that documented the social and economic changes in Bed-Stuy’s gentrified neighborhoods.

However, I also perceived a informational gap in the qualitative research within gentrification’s impact of residents. Who are the individuals being specifically affected by this phenomenon? What do they look like? What are their names? What are they feeling in regards to these changes? This project seeks to answer these questions and bridge this gap of qualitative research through a humanistic, personal approach. The final product of this project will manifest itself in a gallery of printed photographs and audio interviews hosted on a portfolio site.