Consuming neighborhoods: Aesthetics, reputation, socio-spatial change and belonging on local shopping streets

New York City, like many large American and some global cities, has experienced rapid socio-spatial change between the 1980s and today.  Widespread market-led re-development and re-investment in the central areas of the city, combined with demographic changes through processes of both immigration and gentrification, have dramatically changed how the public spaces of the city look and feel.  In turn, the aesthetic characteristics of urban space are central to how cities and neighborhoods are understood and inhabited by old, new, and potential future residents, and to a significant extent to residents’ sense of belonging or exclusion.

These processes can be clearly observed – by residents, visitors, and sociologists - on local shopping streets.  Storefront businesses (including retail stores and other public businesses such as restaurants and service establishments) are a highly visible spaces of public life in of many urban neighborhoods.  Compared to residential or office spaces, storefronts are typically located in high-traffic areas at street level, and are designed to draw the attention of passersby.  Moreover, changes in storefront aesthetics are highly legible to residents as weathervanes of broader trends of socio-spatial change, either in the present or the near future.  As such, although their primary goal may be to advance their business interests and attract customers, local businesses and their owners play a central role in producing and disseminating markers of neighborhood character and neighborhood change.  

This paper explores the relationship between street aesthetics, symbolic meanings, understandings of neighborhood character, and patterns of sociospatial change, belonging and exclusion in three New York City neighborhoods.   Visual data on the exterior and interior aesthetic characteristics of stores is considered, as well as observation and interviews with proprietors, shoppers and local residents.  This information is supplemented with quantitative historical data on changes in local businesses in each area from 1980-present.