Department of Urban Planning Presents My Brooklyn Documentary

The Department of Urban and Regional Planning, in cooperation with many community partners, is presenting two free screenings of My Brooklyn: Demystifying Gentrification, a documentary about director Kelly Anderson’s personal journey as a Brooklyn “gentrifier” to understand the forces reshaping her neighborhood along lines of race and class.

Show times are: 

• Wednesday, Feb. 17, at 6 p.m. at the Champaign Public Library; followed by a community panel to discuss recent development trends in CU, and


• Thursday, Feb. 18, at 7:30 p.m. in Plym Auditorium, Temple Buell Hall; followed by Q & A with the film’s director.

For more information CONTACT: Stacy Harwood at sharwood@illinois.edu; Denise Czuprynski at 217.300.4687

The presentations are sponsored by the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, along with the Center for Advanced Study, 5th & Hill Neighborhood Rights Campaign, Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center, Champaign County Habitat for Humanity, Champaign County Health Care Consumers, Champaign County Regional Planning Commission, Champaign Urbana Citizens for Peace and Justice, Channing Murray Foundation, City of Urbana, College of Fine and Applied Arts, College of Education, College of Law Community Preservation Clinic, Departments of Anthropology, History, Latina/Latino Studies, and Theatre, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Planners Network, Social Action Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Urbana-Champaign, Student Planning Organization, and the School of Art and Design.

ABOUT THE FILM My Brooklyn begins with Anderson’s move to Brooklyn in 1988, lured by cheap rents and bohemian culture. By Michael Bloomberg’s election as mayor in 2001, a massive speculative real estate boom is rapidly altering the neighborhoods she has come to call home. She watches as an explosion of luxury housing and chain store development spurs bitter conflict over who has a right to live in the city and to determine its future. While some people view these development patterns as ultimately revitalizing the city, to others, they are erasing the eclectic urban fabric, economic and racial diversity, creative alternative culture, and unique local economies that drew them to Brooklyn in the first place. It seems that no less than the city’s soul is at stake.

Meanwhile, development officials announce a controversial plan to tear down and remake the Fulton Mall, a popular and bustling African-American and Caribbean commercial district just blocks from Anderson’s apartment. She discovers that the mall, despite its run-down image, is the third most profitable shopping area in New York City and has a rich social and cultural history. As the local debate over the mall’s future intensifies, deep racial divides in the way people view neighborhood change become apparent. All of this pushes Anderson to confront her own role in the process of gentrification and to investigate the forces behind it more deeply.

She meets with government officials, urban planners, developers, advocates, academics, and others who both champion and criticize the plans for Fulton Mall. Only when Anderson meets Brooklyn-born and raised scholar Craig Wilder, who explains his family’s experiences of neighborhood change over generations, does Anderson come to understand that what is happening in her neighborhood today is actually a new chapter in an old American story. The film’s ultimate questions are how to heal the deep racial wounds embedded in our urban development patterns and how citizens can become active in fixing a broken planning process.

For more information about the film, see http://www.mybrooklynmovie.com/.