Fort Greene makes big time

James Traub of the New York Times, in his column, The Way We Live Now, takes on the concept of bohemia in NYC. And where does he go? To Fort Greene. But, wait, he claims that Fort Greene isn't bohemia, but more like 'an elite urban enclave' filled with 'knowledge workers' that are the heartbeat of the NYC economy.

Interesting, no?

Take a walk in Fort Greene, an ethnically and economically mixed neighborhood with tree-lined blocks of fine brick homes. A block away from 80 Arts, beyond the town house that the painter David Salle has lavishly rehabilitated, lies the lime-green Habana Outpost, an eco-friendly cafe where mothers push downtown babies on swings amid racks of folkloric skirts, priced to sell. And then, moving up Fulton Street, once a commercial swamp, there’s the wine store and the soul-food restaurant and the beloved Cake Man Raven. A few blocks away stands the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which has been irreproachably avant-garde since long before there was any money in it. Fort Greene feels less like Bohemia than what the scholar Joel Kotkin calls an “elite urban enclave” — a place suited to the sophisticated tastes of the “knowledge workers” who now propel New York’s economy.

NB Joel Kotkin, urban scholar: read more here.