On a bright, cold March afternoon, the sidewalks of East New York are bustling with mothers leading their children home from school. A pair of New York City beat cops stand outside a dingy pizzeria, giving them a view of the public housing projects across Sutter Avenue. In the distance, a silver train catches the brilliant sunshine as it hurtles away on elevated tracks, bound for Manhattan, 15 stops away.

The sense of orderly urban bustle is reassuring to the first-time visitor to this Brooklyn neighbourhood with an enduring reputation as one of New York's toughest. Poverty here is deep and difficult to escape. A handful of people, such as Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, have managed to leave its housing projects behind - but many more cannot. The past decade's dizzying gentrification of many of New York City's once-rough neighbourhoods - from 125th Street in Harlem to the old piers of Brooklyn's Red Hook - has passed E.N.Y. by.