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I agree; gentrification does wash over a certain personality, often times for a less genuine type of imitated-eccentricity. However that said, the root of the problem is a lot more complex/bigger than that and ultimately it's not worth it to irrationally get mad at gentrifiers more so than you would any other sort of parasitic entity (of course not all gentrifiers are parasitic, but the OP was clearly referring to a certain stereotype/image).
The saddest thing I find is the driving out of local and small businesses.
Is the future of America the elites and upper class in cities and everyone else spread around the outskirts/suburbs? Sounds a little unsettling. Takes this issue to one of capitalism, the contemporary American economic climate, where we're headed for, etc.
For NYC, unsure about Boston, violent crime fell drastically in neighborhoods that saw little demographic change. In fact, some poor neighborhoods that saw few yuppies (including parts of the South Bronx) had among the steepest violent crime drops). Washington Heights in Manhattan saw its murder rate drop from 50 per 100k to somewhere between 2-4 per 100k. It had a middle-class section back then that has expanded somewhat but the bulk of the population was and is working-class hispanic. Dismantling of open-air drug markets is a much bigger factor. It still may be the cocaine distribution center of the Northeast, but the dealers are more discrete.
I think maybe you're confusing the point I was trying to make with something else.
I didn't say that Yuppies moving in to a neighborhood made it safer. Nor was I saying that just because a neighborhood became safer that Yuppies moved there. I was saying that Yuppies were moving to some neighborhoods because those places were becoming safer.
Quote:
NYC gets more press attention, but it seems that its violent crime rate wasn't that out of line with other big American cities — Chicago, Los Angeles, DC, Philadlephia, etc.
Crime all over the US was pretty awful in the 80s and into the 90s, so yeah, no doubt. But I didn't live all over the US in the 80s. I lived in New York.
ETA: I'm a little skeptical of the leaded gas correlation. No doubt it's bad for you but it was phased out rather slowly. I still remember seeing lead/no lead signs at gas stations when I first started driving in the early 90s. And you'd have to imagine that it's gonna take around 15 years (until kids are old enough to start getting into a lot of trouble) for the elimination of lead to really make a difference. But crime started dropping dramatically while leaded fuel was still at the pump.
Philly does free lead tests in your home if you have kids. They found lead dust on pretty much every windowsill in our house. I'm sure most of our neighbors (and most houses in the city) have a similar problem.
Last edited by drive carephilly; 07-10-2014 at 08:19 AM..
It can also make other districts rundown, and demolish historic buildings that otherwise would be occupied through speculation. It's not a 100% positive or negative thing, people just try to make it into an all-or-nothing issue.
Specialized farming had already happened. Agribusiness is something different.
Crime in 1980s NYC was pretty obscene in the context of the last 100 years.
I lived in "Big Ag" country in the 1970s, almost the entire 1970s. It was already agribusiness. My first father-in-law was an agribusinessman for most of his career, starting after WW II. He always said someone had to market the crops.
Last edited by Katarina Witt; 07-12-2014 at 04:28 PM..
Gentrification is but a tool of the elite meant for social euthanasia.
What happens to an area 10 years after gentrification? Do they come around again and regentrify?
It's a nasty subject. It is akin to running the poor out of a neighborhood and setting it all afire while they are gone. Nothing is ever really gained but the money the developer raked in. The neighborhood will become urban again soon enough; later gentrifiers.
To summarize, Im not sure if thats the purpose, but gentrification ends up erasing most, if not everything that made the city a fun and interesting place to go in the firstplace. It just becomes a playground for the 1% crowd. so goes life i suppose....
That gentrification leads to affordability problems is only to say that we don't have enough of those kinds of places and, as a result, there aren't other places which are as attractive (attractiveness of a neighborhood being a matter of context) which remain affordable. Gentrification isn't bad or good, it is only a descriptor of a change over time.
So, if you're really angry about the beige-washing of "cool" neighborhoods, the only solution is to get involved and push for more flexible, consistent, and transparent zoning, development, and permitting rules, procedures, and fees. that way neighborhoods--urban and suburban--can change over time to fit the economic demands of the people who live there.
What I find odd is that, even as gentrification has pushed people out of unique neighborhoods in cities, that suburban neighborhoods have remained surprisingly--though not entirely--uniform and static. Where have the artists and bohemians gone?
Gentrification is but a tool of the elite meant for social euthanasia.
What happens to an area 10 years after gentrification? Do they come around again and regentrify?
After gentrification comes aristocratization, when only the glitterati can afford the area. Then you get regification, when only foreign royalty can afford the place; they don't actually live there, they just hold the real estate.
I lived in "Big Ag" country in the 1970s, almost the entire 1970s. It was already agribusiness. My first father-in-law was an agribusinessman for most of his career, starting after WW II. He always said someone had to market the crops.
the quote we were talking about is from a fictional character who would've been speaking around 1914 or something like that.
What I find odd is that, even as gentrification has pushed people out of unique neighborhoods in cities, that suburban neighborhoods have remained surprisingly--though not entirely--uniform and static. Where have the artists and bohemians gone?
Suburban neighborhoods have absolutely not remained uniform or static. They've changed quite a bit demographically over the last 40 years especially when it comes to the share of regional poverty.
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