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What Yelp Reviews Show Us about Gentrification

By Nicole Levy | November 13, 2015 12:33pm | Updated on November 15, 2015 8:02pm
 A new study suggests Yelp users are more likely to support and contribute to gentrification in historically black New York City neighborhoods.
A new study suggests Yelp users are more likely to support and contribute to gentrification in historically black New York City neighborhoods.
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Yelp users are more likely to support and contribute to gentrification in historically black New York City neighborhoods than white ones, suggests a new study of the language in Yelp reviews of Bedford-Stuyvesant and Greenpoint restaurants.

Authors Sharon Zukin, Scarlett Lindeman and Laurie Hurson, whose work at CUNY was published in the Journal of Consumer Culture last month, examined more than 7,000 restaurant reviews in two rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods, Bed-Stuy and Greenpoint, but focused on the 1,056 reviews explicity mentioning those areas by name. 

They found that Yelp users were twice as likely to mention the surrounding neighborhood in reviews of Bed-Stuy restaurants than those of Greenpoint eateries.

Bed-Stuy's population is 59 percent black, and its traditional ethnic restaurants serve American soul and Caribbean food; Greenpoint, its population 57 percent white, is a historically Polish neighborhood, according to the report.

"Far more reviewers draw attention to the urban locale when the majority of residents are black," the paper's authors concluded in their abstract.

While some reviewers praised Greenpoint for being "cozy" and "European," others characterized Bed-Stuy as "sketchy," "gritty" and "ghetto." Diners expressed concern that the influx of new, trendy restaurants were threatening Greenpoint's ethnic culture, but they were much more likely to see that development in Bed-Stuy as a positive thing.

And the reviews do more than reflect the opinions of diners — they have an impact on the transformation of those neighborhoods, the study says.

“Intentionally or not, Yelp restaurant reviewers may encourage, confirm, or even accelerate processes of gentrification by signaling that a locality is good for people who share their tastes.”

Everywhere they dine, Yelp reviewers share a distaste for "hipsters." One user referred to a Bed-Stuy restaurant as "a bastion of hipsters in a sea of poverty," and another predicted that a Greenpoint restaurant would become a "douche-bag hipster lounge.’’