Exploring the Architecture of Gentrification

[M II A II R II K]

Exploring the Architecture of Gentrification


March 5, 2020

By Allyn West

Read More: https://www.texasobserver.org/gentri...-architecture/

.....

The rules and systems that have produced this standardized architecture financial ones, largely determined by banks and property appraisers, as well as political ones create a kind of socioeconomic standardization, determining who can afford to live in the neighborhoods experiencing rapid gentrification. That, too, is a complicated word. Cities can’t be expected to preserve older neighborhoods forever unchanged. But they seem baffled about how and even whether to balance the encouragement of new development with the engagement and enrichment of the longtime residents of those neighborhoods.

- Though the size of the average American house has doubled since the 1960s, surging toward 2,600 square feet, the size of these neighborhoods just minutes from everywhere, as real estate agents and commercial builders like to say, close to jobs and downtowns has not. — That space comes at a premium, and people for whom “affordable housing” is something other people worry about are willing and able to pay it. They want to be able to walk to the coffee shop even if the baristas who pull their shots of espresso can’t. — Ignored for years, redlined by the federal government, and systematically denied the loans that would have allowed the families who lived there to build generational wealth, these “hot,” “new” neighborhoods are being “discovered.”

- For someone to move in, someone else has to move out. So, in East Austin, in Houston’s Freedmen’s Town and Third Ward and Montrose, in Dallas’ Bishop Arts and Oak Cliff, among other gentrifying and -fied neighborhoods, the architectural language (what architects call “vernacular”) has become inseparable from the vocabulary of policy, where other complicated words, like “displacement,” “segregation,” “inequity,” and “NIMBYism,” are warring furiously. — Maybe the saddest part is how few new Texas houses have porches, one of the features of older residential architecture that served as a gesture of welcome. — Should the market make all the decisions? Is there value in promoting diversity, rather than actively subsidizing homogeneity?”

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Is this Houston? Dallas? Austin? San Antonio? That it is impossible to tell is telling. (Second Ward, Houston)






You might have trouble telling which one of these is yours after a few cocktails at the hip new bar down the street. (Midtown, Houston)






Hollywood/Santa Monica, Dallas






Cars first (East Austin)






Second Ward, Houston






Practical, but ugly (Second Ward, Houston)






Midtown, Houston

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

Practical, but ugly (Second Ward, Houston)

This looks like a Public Storage facility with shrubs.

[mhays]

Wierd seeing two-car garages on townhouses.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

You might have trouble telling which one of these is yours after a few cocktails at the hip new bar down the street. (Midtown, Houston)

that's not exactly a new thing. you'll find that phenomenon in any city that has ever experienced a period of very fast growth.



the homes below all look roughly the same too, but they sure as shit weren't built for "dirty, evil gentrifiers".

although, now over a century later, some of these units may in fact house those types of wicked, awful people.


source: https://www.atproperties.com/1031606...nois-60640-nei

[bossabreezes]

Not to be rude but damn, Texas cities look pretty soulless. Even Austin.

[M II A II R II K]

But they’re only residential street shots.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by mhays

Wierd seeing two-car garages on townhouses.

Is that in any way revealing of how car-centered many new developments are in Houston specifically (or in the Sunbelt)?

Or is that common in other regions/cities?

Seems less familiar in some regions of North America.

[JManc]

We are currently house hunting and looking at the kind of (Houston) townhouses shown above. Two car garage with a driveway is a must have. you have to sift through a lot shitty builders and some of the designs are bland but we've come across some incredible homes.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

This looks like a Public Storage facility with shrubs.

Yup. Looks a bit like this town house complex near Los Angeles, without the extra parking.

https://www.newhomesource.com/commun...unities/124842

[mhays]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

Is that in any way revealing of how car-centered many new developments are in Houston specifically (or in the Sunbelt)?

Or is that common in other regions/cities?

Seems less familiar in some regions of North America.

Yes, in most of the sunbelt.

In my city (not sunbelt), a townhouse will typically have one parking space. Condos might average 0.8, and apartments 0.5 or 0.6 with many having zero.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Houses from certain time periods always tend to look alike.

There are heaps of 1930's houses here in KC that are indistinguishable from ones in Seattle and Charlotte and Chicago and ...

[xzmattzx]

Those houses all look the same after some time at the new hipster bar because there hasn't been much time to put personality and character into them. A hundred years ago, people used to say the same things about the rowhouses in the Northeast US. It was one after another after another after another after another, and they all looked the same.

[Encolpius]

To me, the most striking characteristic of this architecture and the most telling is not its boxy homogeneity but the absence of front porches, the tall, opaque fences, in some cases even the lack of evidence of a doorbell or apparent means of ingress other than the garage door. What a contrast to the older houses around them!

You wouldn't knock on the front door to welcome the new inhabitants of most of these houses to the neighborhood -- because there isn't one! These are not houses built for people who sit on their porches while their kids play in the front yard or in the street with the neighbors' kids. They're not houses for folks who enjoy chatting with the neighbors on the block. Why not?

[strongbad635]

They don't all look like soulless shipping containers. These are less than 10 years old, in the Houston Heights.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=...AAAAAdAAAAABAF

[bossabreezes]

^^That is actually nice. Reminds me of New Orleans.

Actually, I looked through that neighborhood (Houston Heights) on Streetview and while it is still far from perfect, much better than the majority of neighborhoods in Houston.

[JManc]

Everyone here lives in cities with houses that look exactly alike and not built for sitting on your porch and getting to know your neighbors. Houston is no different.

Rush made a song about MARK's city...

[Encolpius]

You mean gentrification's not unique to Houston?

[Buckeye Native 001]

Originally Posted by jmanc

everyone here lives in cities with houses that look exactly alike and not built for sitting on your porch and getting to know your neighbors. Houston is no different.

Rush made a song about mark's city...

2112?

[dc_denizen]

Originally Posted by Encolpius

To me, the most striking characteristic of this architecture and the most telling is not its boxy homogeneity but the absence of front porches, the tall, opaque fences, in some cases even the lack of evidence of a doorbell or apparent means of ingress other than the garage door. What a contrast to the older houses around them!

You wouldn't knock on the front door to welcome the new inhabitants of most of these houses to the neighborhood -- because there isn't one! These are not houses built for people who sit on their porches while their kids play in the front yard or in the street with the neighbors' kids. They're not houses for folks who enjoy chatting with the neighbors on the block. Why not?

I assume the answer must be america? or capitalism? or because these areas were industrial wastelands with unsavory activities going on 20 years ago?

[Crawford]

I don't think the new buildings look that bad. I actually like the Dallas and East Austin SFH. Yeah, they're autocentric, but the cities are autocentric.

Look at the old buildings, and the infrastructure. That's what always blows me away about American Sunbelt cities. You have tumbledown shotgun homes, no sidewalks, drainage ditches, all blocks from the core. Looks like the Wild West.