Neighborhoods, Niches, and Networks: The Religious Ecology of Gentrification

Abstract

This article examines the interaction between congregations and the process of gentrification in the sections of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY. Gentrification has been thought to encourage secularization, but the various waves of newcomers that have arrived in Williamsburg-Greenpoint and the subsequent relocation of the area's long-time residents has not dissipated religious life as much as segmented it as congregations seek to fill and exploit various niches to meet religious needs and reaffirm their identities. I create a typology based on a study of 30 congregations that delineates the characteristics of three major niches: lifestyle enclaves, neighborhood-social center congregations, and ethnic and religious enclaves. While most congregations seek both to adapt to and exert agency during gentrification, their different repertoires of theology, organizational history, and access to networks and resources suggest they can only fill specific niches.While there has been a good deal of research on the structural and economic impact of gentrification, there has been less attention given to the way this process of neighborhood change affects moral-religious communities. In much of the literature on gentrification, religious institutions and how they respond to neighborhood change is viewed as being largely marginal to larger social and economic changes; in some cases, such forces are portrayed as encouraging secularization of the area (Lees, Slater, and Wyly, 2008).Congregations play vital social roles in cities, including building bridges between residents, providing community services, and injecting a moral tone in their neighborhoods, both on the level of discourse, including advocating for marginalized residents, and on the level of behavior, such as increasing safety and encouraging community standards (Sampson, 1999;Putnam and Campbell, 2010). The presence of congregations is reported to have at least modest effects on neighborhood stability (Kinney and Winter, 2006). The weak congregational ties of newcomers to gentrified neighborhoods-young, single, and highly educated-have been amply documented (Wuthnow, 2007). This pattern of disaffiliation suggests that congregations in such urban zones may have shrinking constituencies and thus limited resources to expend in their neighborhoods. Yet my research in the Williamsburg and Greenpoint sections of Brooklyn suggests that religious revitalization can also result from gentrification, although it is expressed in congregations

Knowledge Production and Emancipatory Social Movements from the Heart of Globalised Hipsterdom, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

“…For the priests in the area who were also responsible for managing churches, it was in their self-interest to maintain their laity, whose numbers were dwindling. Cimino (2011) discusses the relationship between religion in North Brooklyn, gentrification and sustaining of a religious commons. One of the signs of this demographic shift was the closing of parochial schools and Church consolidations and closings.…”

Approches spatiales des faits religieux

“…Le renouvellement historiographique du fait religieux en ville (McLeod, 1995(McLeod, et 2000McLeod et Ustorf, 2003) a permis de considérablement nuancer cette hypothèse et a montré comment les villes européennes et nord-américaines constituaient des espaces de prédilection pour l'innovation religieuse. Si la ville industrielle a été indubitablement une scène de crise de la pratique religieuse, elle a également été un formidable terrain pour le renouvellement missionnaire (Encrevé, 1993 ;Winston, 1999) (Ammerman, 1997 ;Cimino, 2011 ;Eiesland, 2000 ;Form et Dubrow, 2005). Les mutations des paysages religieux constituent le coeur des travaux qui se concentrent plus spécifiquement sur les villes du Sud.…”

The Growth of Ethnic Organizations in the Context of Neighborhood Change: Organizational Ecology in Postwar San Francisco

“…I pay special attention to the role of economic decline, immigration, and homeownership since previous research suggests that these conditions should foster or curb ethnic organizational growth. As such, this paper is distinct from recent studies that employ the organizational ecology framework to explore the interplay between gentrification and congregations (Cimino ) and restaurant organizational forms in communities (Carroll and Torfason ). Whereas this article is focused on organizational growth, those studies explore organizational niches and thus, seek to explain how organizations in geographically dispersed markets attempt to capture the center of a market (Carroll ).…”