ABSTRACT
This chapter compares the gentrification processes in the Polish American neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn and in Krakow, Poland. It also looks at the transnational ethnic connections and visual indications of the process in these two different venues, at different times. The chapter shows the processes of migration and immigration how Polish ethnicity is expressed in the urban vernacular landscapes in both the home country and abroad. In Brooklyn, New York the fight against gentrification began in the late 1970s as some popular media, especially in the black community, presented the brownstone and back-to-city activities as a case of racist "whites taking back Black neighborhood". The threat of increasing gentrification and consequent displacement is still an issue that is found in the Polish-language newspaper Nowy Dziennik. The international cognitive geography of many travelers often relates to newly "respectable" central city neighborhoods wherein the surprise of civilized spaces can now be experienced.
