In the 1980s, crime in Bedford-Stuyvesant was so prevalent that a local police precinct spray-painted “the Alamo” on the station wall – a slogan for a neighborhood under siege with gangs, drugs, and violence.

That image of urban decay is distant from the Bed-Stuy of today, where on Sunday church bells echo through the quiet, tree-lined streets, and where many residents sit out on their front steps, talking with neighbors.

In the last four or five years, advocates and real estate experts say that market forces and a lower crime rate has sparked a renaissance driven by real estate and increased private investment. With buyers being priced out of Manhattan and even out of Brooklyn’s more tony neighborhoods, Bed-Stuy’s stock of more than 4,000 brownstone buildings are in increasing demand, and prices have been rising steadily.

A community leader, Colvin Grannum, who heads the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Project, said, “We haven’t seen this level of private sector investment probably 70 years.”

Much of that improvement, Mr. Grannum said, is from a precipitous decline in crime. Statistics from the two police precincts that cover the neighborhood show a drop in crime by about 70% since 1990, a percentage that is in line with a citywide crime reduction over that time period.

In 1990, there were 2,442 robberies reported to Bed-Stuy’s 79th precinct. Last year, there were 584. Murders reported to the 81st precinct have dropped to 12 last year from 49 in 1990. Through May 21st of this year, three murders have been reported.

“People don’t feel quite as safe as the police reports, but they feel a lot safer than five, ten or fifteen years ago,” Mr. Grannum said.

The president of Brooklyn, Marty Markowitz, a Democrat, said the drop in crime is partly due to the neighborhood’s aging population and a better policing strategy, instituted by Mayor Giuliani and continued in the Bloomberg administration.

According to data provided by the real estate brokerage, Halstead, the average price of a Bedford-Stuyvesant townhouse has grown from about $318,000 in 2003 to more than $600,000 so far in 2006, an increase of about 88% and one of the steepest increases of any Brooklyn neighborhood. The brownstones can be about a third of the cost of similar homes in other Brooklyn areas.

A broker for Halstead, William Ross, said that demand has moved west across Brooklyn, zeroing in on Bed-Stuy after sweeping through Fort Greene and Clinton Hill.

“The prices of brownstones in other neighborhoods were soaring out of proportion to what their size was,” Mr. Ross said.

The area’s unique housing stock, much of it built in the late 19th century, was exceptionally well preserved, Mr. Ross said, because of the urban decay that crippled the area for decades.

“The unfortunate circumstances of 30, 40, 50 years ago led to the fortunate circumstances of today,” he said. “Now you have brownstones for more than 1 million in Bed-Stuy.”

One 5,000 square foot, four floor, two-family limestone brownstone recently went into contract for $1.2 million, in line with prices for the top tier of homes, according to brokers.

Rents are on the rise, but still affordable compared to most other city neighborhoods. According to a broker for the Corcoran Group, Anthony Morris, one bedrooms in the area rent for between $1,050 and $1,200 a month, and a recently rented 3-bedroom duplex rents for $2,200 a month.

Mr. Morris said that the newcomers are similar to those that moved into Williamsburg a few years ago, a “young, socially-conscious, and progressive crowd,” and desirous, he said, to live in the area because of its history as a black cultural capital.

He moved to the neighborhood himself in 2002, buying a house where he lives with his wife, a writer. “I bought there at the time because it reminded me of the Fillmore in San Francisco,” Mr. Morris said.

Still, Bed-Stuy’s retail strips tend to be dominated by an unusually high proportion of nail and beauty salons, and residents have long had to travel to find high quality goods and services. There are signs, however, that rising prices and increased attention by investors are helping to improve the area’s retail outlets.

Last year, a Home Depot opened on DeKalb Avenue. On the east side of the neighborhood on Lewis Avenue, Brownstone Books and a bakery called Bread-Stuy make up a trendy strip of new stores. Seven months ago, a Bed-Stuy native, Nelson Jemmott, opened Bushbaby, a cafe on Fulton Street selling international coffee beans, homemade southern-style iced tea, along with salmon croquettes and a vegan French toast.

Mr. Jemmott said the neighborhood had never had a quality cafe that was open to patrons during the daytime. But he said it would be foolish only to market a business to the area’s new residents.

“The existing community is the majority. In a matter of weeks, they can make or break a business,” he said.

The influx of newcomers and a sharp increase in prices have been seen by some as a challenge.

A member of the Brownstoners, a neighborhood homeowners group, Mildred Vann, said that just a few years ago a Bed-Stuy townhouse cost $150,000. Ms. Vann is the wife of local city council member Albert Vann.

“For years, no one wanted to live here. They left us alone,” Ms. Vann said. “Then they filled in Fort Greene.”

The associate director of the Pratt Institute Center for Community Development, which is located near Bed-Stuy, Rudolph Bryant, said that the community is reacting to the change with a mix of fear and optimism.

“There are people that are thoroughly concerned about being pushed out of the neighborhood because of the economics, and about the community being lost as an ethnic or racial enclave,” Mr. Bryant said.

But Mr. Bryant said that residents are finally seeing the quality services they have long desired, and the existing homeowners stand to make a lot of money.

“Folks in the neighborhood have a much higher valued asset that could contribute to household income,” Mr. Bryant said.

Mr. Grannum, the community leader, said that the majority of new residents were African American, Latino, and even Asian, not whites.

“Perhaps the Caucasian new residents stand out more, but they are certainly not the predominant number,” he said.

And some problems still linger from the last era. Even the neighborhood’s biggest boosters concede that the area’s schools need a major improvement.

A spokesman for the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Neill Coleman, said that Bed-Stuy is one the city’s neighborhoods most threatened with the displacement of existing residents. He noted that between 1987 and 2005 the city has invested about $300 million in housing in the area, funding nearly 9,500 units of affordable housing. For many of the units, preference is given to current residents of the community to try to halt displacement.

Some observers, including Mr. Ross of Halstead, think that condo development could be on the way.

The city’s department of planning is working with local leaders on a plan that would seek to preserve the brownstone scale of the neighborhood, while trying to create incentives for affordable housing construction along Fulton Street, the neighborhood’s major road – an area that could accommodate higher densities. The city’s Landmark and Preservation Commission is also said to be considering additional historic designation in the area.