Who decides what a neighborhood is called?

Holding the line: Brian Benjamin sees the nickname SoHa as an attack on Harlem’s history. [Photo: Buck Ennis]

Arguments over what New York’s neighborhoods are called, where they start and end, and who has the right to say so are as old as the city itself. But the battles lately have become much more sophisticated. In this article in Crain’s, writer Joe Anuta reports on the conflict over what to call a section of Harlem, a delicate balancing act between the desires of developers and the need to respect the history of Harlem. This situation is also representative of naming issue in New York City in miniature.