Quote:
Originally Posted by JManc
That was no perception, it was reality. Yes, NYC/ Manhattan always had extravagant wealth (personified by Trump among others) but step outside of that bubble and things were pretty rough..up until about 20-25 years ago where there become a renewed interest in urban living. I remember NY back then. Stripped down cars and bombed out buildings all over the place. I went back to some of these areas decades later and you would have to make millions to live there.
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But the point Crawford is making (I think) is it's a difference of degree, not kind.
The first inklings of gentrification occurred way back in the 1960s with the boomers - hell, arguably the Beat Generation. I'm talking about areas like Soho and Greenwich Village in NYC, Haight-Ashbury and The Castro in San Francisco, etc. The grouping was pretty small in the 1960s, not enough to halt decline in any city, but it stabilized individual neighborhoods.
By the 1980s, things had begun to change already, NYC, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, and Portland had all begun growing again. New immigrants were partially responsible, as was the annexation of some land in the Pacific Northwest, but these were also the traditional cities that began the turnaround from the "urban crisis" the fastest.
Every decade since then, another few major cities - like Denver, DC, and Philly - get added to the list. But fundamentally what we've seen is just the dynamic which was initially confined to a handful of neighborhoods, and then a handful of cities, spread across the country.