Strategy of Research Methodology: a Qualitative, Case Study design

Keeping in mind the study’s goals, the research strategy needed to support both collection of empirical data and documentation of Super-gentrification evolution and the understanding of its evolution. This strategy also had to result in a data repository sufficient to answer the three main research questions posed before. Two aspects characterize the research strategy: a qualitative, case study design.

I concluded that a qualitative research approach would better oriented towards discovery, description, and understanding of a complex process and its meanings. Since that, this study is concerned with “what” and “how” questions, as we saw in the previous paragraph. In this light, the research design cannot be completely specified in advance of the fieldwork. Taking into account that this is an exploratory study, which requires flexibility and a constant process of inquiry, each data collection and analysis activity informs subsequent data collection and analysis activity. This is to say that I have constantly related back to the research design to assure knowledge synthesis in accordance to the research questions. Of course, a detailed description of the socioeconomic background, of the neighborhood context, of places, spaces, people and their interactions assist in understanding the Super-gentrification changing patterns evolution.

Moreover, the research involves fieldwork and uses the researcher as the primary instrument of data collection and analysis. Through the direct and personal contact with the people involved in the setting of the phenomenon under study, in fact, the researcher directly gathers the data. They were collected through archival researches and the examination of documents and photographic evidences, in-depth interviews with key informants, community stakeholders, store-owners, residents and neighborhood users, participant observations in specific settings and in public spaces, and by the taking of

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pictures, videos and hand-made sketches. More specifically, the research directed attention to how people make sense of their lives, how they interpret experiences, and which kind of perceptions, interpretations and values they have on the issue addressed.

Using an ethnographic approach to gather the people’s own words and perceptions of how they understand, account for and act within the gentrification process, necessitated a prolonged and intense contact with the neighborhood’s community in its everyday situations. Numerous claims are made against qualitative research and ethnography in particular. They refer to the researcher bias that would represent anecdotes or personal impressions, or about the lack of reproducibility and generalizability. I will address all these criticisms in the section on Data Collection at paragraph 2.4.

Finally, a qualitative approach is inductive “per se”. Through a variety of techniques it has not a set of testable hypotheses, but it identifies categories and patterns in the data. Indeed, this research makes no claims for generalizability about the process of Super-gentrification based on this investigation of a single case.

In addition, a case study approach is useful when the empirical inquiry investigates a contemporary phenomenon “in depth and with in its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context is not clearly evident.” (Yin 2009: 18). Moreover, a case study design enables the use of multiple methods for data collection and analysis. The primary sources in this study were documentary evidences, archival records, in-depth interviews, direct observations, participant observation, and physical artifacts (see Table 1 for a summary of the data sources and type of data collected). Yin (2009), argues that a single-case design is appropriated on the basis that the case is revelatory. A revelatory case is one for which there is a belief or assumption that the problems discovered in a particular case are common to

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other cases as well. Since Super-gentrification has been experimentally studied only in London’s Barnsbury and in New York City’s neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights (Butler and Lees 2006; Lees 2000, 2003; Slater 2003), then there is basis that this research might shed light on problems common to other cases.

It is, indeed, important to set what is to be considered part of the case study, as to say addressing a process of neighborhood change to specify the spatial, temporal, and logical bounding of the case. I chose to analyze the forty-years span of gentrification process in the neighborhood of Brooklyn’s Park Slope in New York City, United States. In the second Part of this work (Chapters 3, 4, and 5) I will provide a comprehensive explanation of what is considered both spatially and temporarily the neighborhood gentrification process that lasted forty years, and how I decided to collect data on that. Indeed, at this point, it is necessary to clarify the reasons that motivated me to choose Park Slope as a case study.

First, in this study it was decided to consider only one case study, which could be an ideal example of the complex reality of urban gentrified areas still in redevelopment. Choosing a neighborhood located in the city of New York derives not only from the knowledge of the historical significance and the fundamental role played by this metropolis in the elaboration and implementation of an urban discourse (and numerous empirical studies that have analyzed the phenomenon of gentrification in areas of Manhattan, with both quantitative and qualitative methodology), but also from the conviction that, even today, it is one of the cities that has the strongest contradictions, which allows the most interesting experiments, and offers the richest material for further theoretical and empirical contribution. New York has a role nationally and internationally, is a global and corporate city, is one of the main financial hubs in the world with a large population density. The third

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distinctive character of New York is its tremendous history of immigration, that contributes and is made up of many cultural varieties. "This variety of types, fields and backgrounds provides the fundamental reason of the city," says Cooper (1993:140). In addition to these important physical, economic and cultural features, the city of New York has begun to preserve its past, similar to European cities. In this process, the activism of a neighborhood community (which, for example, prefer to preserve the historic bricks buildings, called brownstones, as well as narrow streets and blocks) has become an integral part of the city. This process of abandonment, resettlement, and displacement that has been described in the literature as gentrification is likely to be the most powerful phenomenon in the city, making it, therefore, an exemplary case for the study of Super-Gentrification.

Second, as we discussed in the theoretical introduction in Chapter 1, Super- gentrification happens in a few select areas of global cities - like New York or London, for instance - that have become “the focus of intense investment and conspicuous consumption by a new generation of super-rich 'financiers' fed by fortunes from the global finance and corporate service industries.” (Lees 2003:2487). This process has contributed to the rise of Park Slope from one of the elite residential communities of Brooklyn to one of most desirable neighborhoods in the entire city, where gentrifiers today are significantly wealthier than gentrifiers in the past (Lees 2000, Slater 2003).  

Third, and to my mind most important, despite the process of gentrification in Park Slope as a well-known phenomenon, there is not an in-depth investigation on its evolution. At the beginning of the 1980s two doctoral students enrolled at the environmental psychology department of the City University of New York, Francin Justa (1984) and Timothy O’Hanlon (1982), analyzed the very preliminary process of neighborhood change in Park Slope. Only at the end of the 1990s/beginning of the 2000s, Loretta Lees (2000) and

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Tom Slater (2003) have analyzed the emergence of gentrification overflow in Park Slope, used especially as a comparative case study with London neighborhoods. However, at present time, there is not intensive field research on its overall process that spanned over forty years.

Fourth, I had my first interaction with Park Slope in 2009 when, deciding to experience New York for a month, I bumped into a room for rent on Seventh Avenue and Ninth Street: the core of the Park Slope gentrification. At that time I did not even enrolled in a doctoral program. Everything happened just by chance. However, having some experiential knowledge, contacts, and points of reference gave me not only the opportunity to specify the research design, but also to efficiently plan my field access.