#bocaca

Osman, author of "Inventing Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity", penned an op-ed in the Daily News about Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries's (D-Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, ProCro) bill to stop arbitrary name changes for neighborhoods:

A good deal of the names used today are an outgrowth of the neighborhood organizing movement of the 1960s and '70s. In struggling areas throughout the city, grassroots activists coined new names or drew on forgotten ones with the hope that a strong identity would help deter flight to the suburbs, increase citizen participation in improvement projects, preserve architectural treasures and foster a stronger sense of community. At the same time, the city granted more political power to neighborhoods. Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, for example, was coined by an interracial group of homeowners in the late '60s to protest red-lining and to lobby for better municipal services. The Stuyvesant Heights historic district was lobbied for by a group of middle-class black homeowners in part to counter the stigma of the name Bedford-Stuyvesant. A young funeral home owner came up with Carroll Gardens in 1964 to try to stem the flight of his fellow Italian-Americans to the suburbs of Long Island. ... Regardless of the ultimate fate of Jeffries's proposal, we should all continually question each neighborhood name: Who coined it, and why? Who is included within its borders? Who is left out?

It's an interesting read in full.