Neighborhood And Community Essay

1560 Words4 Pages

Kristin Basmagy
5/11/2014
Corc 3208
Section 45080

The difference between a neighborhood and a community is something I never gave much thought about until this assignment. We all live in on a continent, which can be broken down to a country, which is then broken down (in the US of course) to a state, which can further be broken down to a city. After having a city to live in, it is again broken down to what neighborhood you live in, and last but not least, which community you belong to. Now most people, non-religious or who do not have a cultural identity, from my experience and research, do not belong to a community, they just live in a certain neighborhood. In the end though, most people live in a certain neighborhood because of a cultural, religious or even race based reason. The neighborhoods I will be writing about are both located in Brooklyn, NY. My neighborhood/community is Gerritsen Beach. The other neighborhood is Bay Ridge.
Gerritsen Beach Brooklyn is a small neighborhood located between Sheepshead Bay and Marine Park. Gerritsen Beach is a small peninsula, most people who live in Brooklyn have never heard of the neighborhood, as a matter of a fact before I moved here I had never heard of it. There is only one way in to the neighborhood and one way out. Gerritsen Beach was named after Wolphert Gerritsen, a Dutch co-founder of the New Netherlands Colonies. (Lanier, 92) In 1920, Gerritsen beach was founded to become a beach resort for middle class families. All of the homes built in the neighborhood were tiny beach bungalows; it was strictly a neighborhood for summer homes. Eventually owners of these summer homes enjoyed the time spent here and they began to winterize their homes. During the late 19...

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...ht the food back to feed our own people. We had to begin our own fundraisers, and contact the media to get our stories out there. The community came together. We were all working on each others homes, helping one another clean up, and taking care of each other’s pets. No one else was helping us; we had to help each other. We couldn’t be the victims, we had to become heroes and come out of this disaster together. From this point on the neighborhood became a community. Groups were formed to unite the neighborhood. It was all donations from the people of the community, each who had lost something, we wanted to help others who lost more. Although I still feel like an outsider in the community as a whole, I know that if anything, god forbid were to happen like this again, or even to just my family or I, I know that the community would be there to support us.

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