Waves of immigrants from Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America, Asia and Africa have shaped Brooklyn, as has the story of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who left for Los Angeles after the 1957 season. Since the 1990s the borough has attracted new investment and new residents, with benefits and strains that Brooklynites continue to debate.
The twentieth century brought both growth and hardship. The subway extended Brooklyn’s reach, Coney Island became a global amusement capital, and the Dodgers at Ebbets Field gave the borough a shared identity, symbolised by Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s colour line there in 1947. Later decades saw industrial decline, disinvestment and neighbourhood tension, followed by revival in the 1990s and 2000s.
Since 2000 the borough has been transformed by waterfront redevelopment, new residential towers, tech and creative employers and a new generation of residents, while long-standing communities have worked to stay. How to keep Brooklyn affordable, diverse and recognisably itself is the question that runs through most local debates today.