Emergent City

Kelly Anderson and Jay Arthur Sterrenberg started documenting the Sunset Park community’s response to Jamestown Properties’ redevelopment of Industry City (IC) in 2017. Kelly had moved to the neighborhood in 2009 after completing her previous documentary My Brooklyn, about the ways policy and real estate interests drive neighborhood change. Jay’s worker-owned cooperative, Meerkat Media, had its offices just a stone’s throw from Industry City. As relative newcomers, both were trying to figure out how to support local efforts to protect the neighborhood, especially since Industry City was targeting a “creative class,” including indie filmmakers, in their efforts to reactivate their property.

Producer Brenda Avila Hanna joined Emergent City in 2021. Her childhood in Mexico City’s public government housing was shaped by environmental neglect and unregulated development. Since moving to the US, she has co-organized with fellow immigrants within structures where civic engagement becomes the privilege of a few.

Ultimately, what began as a film about gentrification - and could have been a more typical “developer vs. community” story - became something much more. Over time, we learned about a community plan crafted by Sunset Park’s residents in the 1990s, which called for keeping the waterfront industrial to retain working class jobs, and about efforts to turn Sunset Park into a model for “green re- industrialization.” We spent time with Industry City’s developers to understand their plans and visions. We followed the local council member as he navigated competing agendas and priorities, even at the cost of his own political fortune.

Emergent City is about how cities evolve, who gets to shape the future of the built environment, how people work within - and outside of - existing systems to try to strengthen and protect their neighborhoods. It’s an investigation of what we mean when we say “the community.” It is a film about people doing the hard work of democracy with a small “d” - showing up, night after night after a long day’s work, to try and hear one another, hash through differences, and have a voice even when it seems outcomes are decided beyond their reach. It is about how people who agree on outcomes may clash mightily over tactics, about when to compromise, about when to stand firm. It’s about the difficult conversations that need to be had as we confront the intertwining and daunting challenges of gentrification, economic development and climate catastrophe.