"Despite Mayor Bloomberg's celebration of "the luxury city," there's still a middle class in New York, although not in the zip codes close to hizzoner's townhouse. In many cases, they live in Bay Ridge, Bayside, Brighton or Bensonhurst, in the vast sprawl that is Brooklyn and Queens. Some of the emerging middle class also cluster in places like Ditmas Park, a reviving part of Flatbush. The new population here is made up largely of information age "artisans"--musicians, writers, designers and business consultants who cluster in New York. They may have migrated there for the culture, but they stay because they find these neighborhoods congenial and family-friendly. "It's easy to name the things that attracted us--the neighbors, the moderate density," explains Nelson Ryland, a film editor with two children who works part-time at his sprawling turn-of-the-century Flatbush house. "More than anything, it's the sense of the community. That's the great thing that keeps people like us here." — Forbes
