As an incubator of culture and creativity, Brooklyn is celebrated and imitated across the world. The settings for much of its dynamic underground scene are the numerous industrial spaces that were vacated as manufacturing dwindled across the huge borough. Adapted, hacked, and reused, these spaces host an eclectic range of activities by and for Brooklyn’s unique creative class, from DIY music venues to skillsharing centers. These are spaces to make art together, throw parties and concerts, host classes and performances, grow vegetables, build innovative products, and, most importantly, to support and inspire one another while welcoming more and more collaborators into the fold. In Brooklyn Spaces: 50 Hubs of Culture and Creativity, Oriana Leckert introduces us to the creators driving Brooklyn’s cultural renaissance, and in their company takes us on a tour of these unique alternative spaces. Whether a graffiti art show in an abandoned power station, a circus school in a former ice house, or a shuffleboard club in a disused die-cutting factory, these spaces present a vibrant cross-section of life in the borough where trends in music, fashion, food, and lifestyle are set. A chronicle of a thriving and ever-renewing scene, this book will appeal to everyone who’s interested in the unique energy that makes Brooklyn Brooklyn.

What do the fashionable food hot spots of Cape Town, Mumbai, Copenhagen, Rio de Janeiro, and Tel Aviv have in common? Despite all their differences, consumers in each major city are drawn to a similar atmosphere: rough wooden tables in postindustrial interiors lit by edison bulbs. There, they enjoy single-origin coffee, kombucha, and artisanal bread. This is 'Global Brooklyn,' a new transnational aesthetic regime of urban consumption. It may look shabby and improvised, but it is all carefully designed. It may romance the analog, but is made to be Instagrammed. It often references the New York borough, but is shaped by many networked locations where consumers participate in the global circulation of styles, flavors, practices, and values. This book follows this phenomenon across different world cities, arguing for a stronger appreciation of design and materialities in understanding food cultures. Attentive to local contexts, struggles, and identities, contributors explore the global mobility of aesthetic, ethical, and entrepreneurial projects, and how they materialize in everyday practices on the ground. They describe new connections among eating, drinking, design, and communication in order to give a clearer sense of the contemporary transformations of food cultures around the world.

An original and captivating history of gentrification, this book challenges the conventional wisdom that New York City began a comeback in the 1990s, locating the roots of Brooklyn's revival in the social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. Osman examines the emergence of a progressive coalition as young, well-educated brownstoners joined with poorer residents to battle city planners and local machine politicians. Deftly mixing architectural, cultural, and political history, this book offers an eye-opening perspective on the post-industrial city.

Brooklyn has all the features of a "global borough": It is a base of immigrant labor and ethnically diverse communities, of social and cultural capital, of global transportation, cultural production, and policy innovation. At once a model of sustainable urbanization and overdevelopment, the question is now: What will become of Global Brooklyn? Tracing the emergence of Brooklyn from village outpost to global borough, Brooklyn Tides investigates the nature and consequences of global forces that have crossed the East River and identifies alternative models for urban development in global capitalism. Benjamin Shepard and Mark Noonan provide a unique ethnographic reading of the literature, social activism, and changing tides impacting this ever-transforming space. Cover and interior images of a rapidly transforming global borough by photographer Caroline Shepard.

From Paris to Rio, everyone’s curious about hot, new Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Experience, Ellen Freudenheim’s fourth comprehensive Brooklyn guidebook, offers a true insider’s guide, complete with photographs, itineraries, and insights into one of the most creative, dynamic cities in the modern world. Walk over the Brooklyn Bridge at dawn or sunset, discover thirty-eight unique Brooklyn neighborhoods, and experience the borough like a native. Find out where to go to the beach and to eat great pizza, what to do with the kids, how to enjoy free and cheap activities, and where to savor Brooklyn’s famous cuisines. Visit cool independent shops, greenmarkets, festivals, and delve into the vibrant new cultural scene at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Barclays Center, and the lively exploding neighborhoods of DUMBO, Williamsburg, and Bushwick. Included in the book are essays and the pithy, sometimes funny comments of sixty cultural, literary, and culinary movers and shakers, culled from exclusive interviews with experts from the James Beard Foundation to the cofounder of the famous Brooklyn Book Festival, as well as MacArthur “genius” award winners, to young entrepreneurs, hipsters, and activists, all of whom have something to say about Brooklyn’s stunning renaissance. Neighborhood profiles are rich in user-friendly information and details, including movies, celebrities, and novels associated with each neighborhood. There are also 800 listings of great restaurants, bars, shops, parks, cultural institutions, and historical sites, complete with contact information. Targeting the independent, curious traveler, The Brooklyn Experience includes a dozen “do-it-yourself” tours, including a visit to Woody Allen’s childhood neighborhood, and amazing Revolutionary and Civil War sites. Freudenheim draws clear—and sometimes surprising—connections between old and new Brooklyn. Written by an author with an astounding knowledge of all Brooklyn has to offer, The Brooklyn Experience will guide both first-time and repeat visitors, and will be a fun resource for Brooklynites who enjoy exploring their own hometown.

Written by local experts, Fodor's travel guides have been offering advice and professionally vetted recommendations for all tastes and budgets for 80 years. In less than a generation, Brooklyn has transformed itself into a global capital of culture and creativity. It buzzes with energy, excitement, and the inherent tension of coupling reinvention with a dedication to authenticity. Each of Brooklyn’s neighborhoods has its own allure, including the art and culinary scene in Williamsburg, the amazing views from Brooklyn Heights, and the architecture and greenery of Park Slope. It’s is a melting pot of makers and the food scene here is second to none, with locally minded, innovative chefs all over the borough. This travel guide includes: UP-TO-DATE COVERAGE: This new guide goes far beyond the Brooklyn coverage in Fodor's New York City. It includes 30 top neighborhoods and covers Brooklyn landmarks as well as exciting new restaurants, hotels, night spots, attractions, and events. SPECIAL FEATURES: Fodor's Brooklyn highlights the borough's top attractions, experiences, and festivals and events, and the best ways to see the borough in summer, in winter, and with kids. A special section is devoted to our Best Bet recommendations for everything from the best places to eat pizza to top art galleries, alfresco dining and drinking, shops, bars, and performance venues. Notable neighborhood residents are also interviewed. CHIC DESIGN: Illustrations and hand-drawn color maps by noteworthy local Brooklyn illustrator Claudia Pearson showcase the content. INDISPENSABLE TRIP-PLANNING TOOLS: An opening chapter about Brooklyn helps travelers decide what neighborhood to visit with Best Bets lists and features on where to go, what to do with kids, and top things to do in summer and winter. Other chapters focus on top things to do in specific neighborhoods. DISCERNING RECOMMENDATIONS: Fodor's Brooklyn offers savvy advice and recommendations from local writers to help travelers make the most of their visit. Fodor's Choice designates our best picks, from hotels to nightlife. COVERS: The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Flea, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick, East Williamsburg, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Prospect Heights, Park Slope, Prospect Park, Gowanus, Dumbo, Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Red Hook, Columbia Waterfront District, Windsor Terrace, Greenwood Heights, South Slope, Sunset Park, Bay Ridge, Brighton Beach, and Coney Island. Planning to visit New York? Check our Fodor's New York City guide.

This book shows how modern Brooklyn’s proud urban identity as an arts-friendly community originated in the mid nineteenth century. Before and after the Civil War, Brooklyn’s elite, many engaged in Atlantic trade, established more than a dozen cultural societies, including the Philharmonic Society, Academy of Music, and Art Association. The associative ethos behind Brooklyn’s fine arts flowering built upon commercial networks that joined commerce, culture, and community. This innovative, carefully researched and documented history employs the concept of parallel Renaissances. It shows influences from Renaissance Italy and Liverpool, then connected to New York through regular packet service like the Black Ball Line that ferried people, ideas, and cargo across the Atlantic. Civil War disrupted Brooklyn’s Renaissance. The city directed energies towards war relief efforts and the women’s Sanitary Fair. The Gilded Age saw Brooklyn’s Renaissance energies diluted by financial and political corruption, planning the Brooklyn Bridge and consolidation with New York City in 1898.

This book offers an extended case study of the urban community of Bushwick, located in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. The authors begin with a broad review of the history of Bushwick and Brooklyn, from before the earliest European settlements of the 1600s, through the 18th and 19th centuries and up the 1960s. Chapter Two begins by tracing the steep decline of the community, which culminated in catastrophic fires and looting in the wake of New York’s electrical blackout of 1977 and goes on to describe the beginnings of urban planning and renewal efforts which launched the recovery of Bushwick in the 1980s to early 2000s. Chapter Three steps back from the immediacy of the community to discuss urban change from a theoretical perspective. The authors outline advances in ‘sustainable urban planning’ and describe how these apply to Bushwick and the wider Brooklyn community. Chapter Four offers a detailed examination of the intent and function of New York’s community board planning system, known as the Charter 197-a program. In Chapter Five the authors examine the 197-a planning process and its application in the areas of Bushwick, Williamsburg and Greenpoint in Northeast Brooklyn; Brooklyn Downtown and in Southeast Brooklyn including Coney Island. The following chapter examines a number of innovative Bushwick high schools that offer practical experience in urban planning. Drawing the urban planning experiences together, the book concludes with a look at future directions in city renewal. Emphasis here is placed on ‘sustainable urban planning’ and the lessons to be learned from the experience of Bushwick and Brooklyn. The specifics of urban planning and renewal are illustrated with tables and figures. The details of planning are informed by an overarching sense of history, beginning with the dedication of the book to the memory of six Universalist writers associated with New York: Henry Thoreau, Helena Blavatsky, Henry George, Henry Miller, Arthur Miller and Walt Whitman. A rich trove of historical materials, ranging from family sketches to school rosters to rarely seen photographs, helps to keep the survey and analysis of urban planning grounded in the lives of Bushwick’s residents, past, present and future.

COVID-19 in Brooklyn: Everyday Life During a Pandemic looks closely at the ways that the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the lives of ordinary people living in the super-gentrified Brooklyn neighborhoods of Park Slope and Greenpoint/Williamsburg, where the authors hunkered down during the 2020 lockdown. Putting their private lives into broader scientific and public contexts, Krase and DeSena discuss a wide range of research methods and theories, as well as print and internet media sources about the pandemic. With words and images, the scholar-activist authors place their own personal experiences and those of their family and neighbors inside the broader context of global and national medical emergencies, as well as related economic, social, and political unrest, such as widespread unemployment, the Black Lives Matter Movement, and the contentious 2020 presidential election. Using a distributive social justice perspective and examining their own privileges, they discover and discuss the racial and economic inequities that affected the lives of other Brooklynites. These disparities included public health measures and lack of access to basic necessities of urban living. The book also addresses the cultural and economic shifts that took place at the start of the pandemic and contemplate how those forces will impact on future urban life, asking what the "new normal" of business, entertainment, education, housing, and work will look like locally and globally. This richly illustrated book offers an invaluable local study of the impact of the pandemic on ordinary people in Brooklyn. As such, it will be of great interest to students and researchers in the humanities and social sciences.