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What’s In A Name? Integrity Says Councilman Jeffries


by on May 13th, 2011

Today, the Brooklyn Paper carried an editorial by City Councilman Hakeem Jeffries. Jeffries is sick of real estate agents re-branding neighborhoods, including some in his district, in order to make them appear more trendy and inflate real estate prices. He is planning to introduce a bill he calls the Neighborhood Integrity Act. According to the councilman it would “require the city to develop a community-oriented process before brokers can rebrand a neighborhood or redefine its boundaries simply for commercial purposes.”

Bensonhurst does get a mention along with some other traditional names of Brooklyn neighborhoods that begin with the letter “b”:

…neighborhood identity is important whether one lives in Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, Boerum Hill, Bedford-Stuyvesant or Brownsville. These neighborhoods and many others throughout the borough are all unique and are an important part of our history, culture and tradition.

I’m curious as to whether anyone except for a local history junkie like myself realizes that the name Bensonhurst is derived from the name ‘Bensonhurst-By-The-Sea’, a name created by real estate developers!

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  • http://www.sheepsheadbites.com Ned Berke | Sheepshead Bites

    I’m split on this. On the one hand, I hate the shit coming out of real estate offices these days, like BoCoCa and SoBro and all that nonsense. It’s true that so many neighborhoods are named after real estate developments (Homecrest, Ditmas Park, etc), though, to be fair, there was very little in those areas before they were developed by real estate interests. So it was more of a first naming than a renaming.

    However, by giving neighborhoods with stigmas new names, they’re attracting a new breed of people. It’s both good and bad. Of course, it’s also gentrification, and that, sir, is not a debate I’m about to step foot into…

  • Anonymous

    I sure would like the outright lying to go away. Kinda the way that, according to apartment listings, the boundary of Park Slope and Bay Ridge met somewhere in the 40s before someone realized it was OK to rent homes in a place called “Sunset Park.”