Princeton University Press
Upscaling Downtown: From Bowery Saloons to Cocktail Bars in New York City
Key Metrics
- Richard E Ocejo
- Princeton University Press
- Paperback
- 9780691176314
- 9.21 X 6.14 X 0.61 inches
- 0.93 pounds
- Social Science > Sociology - Urban
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Once known for slum-like conditions in its immigrant and working-class neighborhoods, New York City's downtown now features luxury housing, chic boutiques and hotels, and, most notably, a vibrant nightlife culture. While a burgeoning bar scene can be viewed as a positive sign of urban transformation, tensions lurk beneath, reflecting the social conflicts within postindustrial cities. Upscaling Downtown examines the perspectives and actions of disparate social groups who have been affected by or played a role in the nightlife of the Lower East Side, East Village, and Bowery. Using the social world of bars as windows into understanding urban development, Richard Ocejo argues that the gentrifying neighborhoods of postindustrial cities are increasingly influenced by upscale commercial projects, causing significant conflicts for the people involved.
Ocejo explores what community institutions, such as neighborhood bars, gain or lose amid gentrification. He considers why residents continue unsuccessfully to protest the arrival of new bars, how new bar owners produce a nightlife culture that attracts visitors rather than locals, and how government actors, including elected officials and the police, regulate and encourage nightlife culture. By focusing on commercial newcomers and the residents who protest local changes, Ocejo illustrates the contested and dynamic process of neighborhood growth.
Delving into the social ecosystem of one emblematic section of Manhattan, Upscaling Downtown sheds fresh light on the tensions and consequences of urban progress.
Author Bio
I am professor of sociology at John Jay College and the CUNY Graduate Center, where I also direct the MA program in International Migration Studies. I have been the Editor-in-Chief of City & Community, an official journal of the American Sociological Association, since 2021. My most recent book, Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy (Princeton University Press; 2017), is about the transformation of low-status occupations into "cool," cultural taste-making jobs (cocktail bartenders, craft distillers, upscale men's barbers, and whole animal butchers).
And my first book, Upscaling Downtown: From Bowery Saloons to Cocktail Bars in New York City, about nightlife and conflict in gentrified neighborhoods, was also published by Princeton University Press in 2014. My work has appeared in such journals as Social Problems, Sociological Perspectives, the Journal of Urban Affairs, Urban Affairs Review, City & Community, Poetics, and Ethnography. I am also the editor of Research in Urban Sociology, Volume 16: Urban Ethnography: Legacies and Challenges (Emerald, 2019) and Ethnography and the City: Readings on Doing Urban Fieldwork (Routledge; 2012), and serve on the editorical boards of the journals Work and Occupations, Metropolitics, and the Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography.
My current research and forthcoming book examine economic growth, gentrification, and race, focusing on a small city. My overall research and teaching interests include urban and cultural sociology, community studies, work and occupations, and research methods (especially qualitative methods). Finally, I am a podcast host of the Sociology channel on the New Books Network.
Source: John Jay College of Criminal Justice
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