Gentrification: We are currently building our way to hell

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

the bigger question is why are these zoning variances allowed in the first place

money talks.

we might wish that it didn't talk as loud as it does, but it does.

and always has.

[Via Chicago]

does this sort of phenomenon happen in NY? i realize plenty of crazy things are happening with luxury skyscrapers. but i get the impression that buildings like brownstones are respected, and even revered...people will pay a premium to be in them. why is there not the same respect for vintage housing here among the wealthy? (although I do realize theres been controversy over Bukharian mansions, which pretty closely resemble the gaudy "new money" kind of teardown architecture we're seeing in Chicago)

[pdxtex]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

^^^ I remember going to the Owl when it was literally the only "hipster" thing near the square in like 2010 and my friends being like "wtf, I had to wait an hour for a cab and only found one after walking one mile south to Revolution". The pace of change in central Chicago right now is utterly astounding. I imagine this is the closest to how it was when this city was first slapped up from nothing. What used to be fields is now a city after a few years. What used to be a dingy, partially vacant, forgotten corner of town is suddenly the hottest shit ever in like 3 years. Go look at what is happening at Milwaukee and Diversey right now. They've totally cleared out ALL of the retail that used to be there two years ago and replaced all of it with hipster shit overnight. Like I'm talking maybe two straight blocks worth of storefronts, wholesale gentrification.



That's where your lack of on the ground experience is glaring. 18th street is not what it was even two years ago anymore. There are bars, resturaunts, music venues, vinatge furniature shops, etc opening up almost weekly. There are new construction homes going up on vacant lots all over the area. You can easily get $2000 for a two bedroom apartment in East Pilsen at this point. I know someone getting $1400 a month for studios. Low rents by NYC standards, but awfully high for a "non-gentrified" area of Chicago. I'm getting $1400 for renovated 2 BDs in the "Marshall Square" section of Little Village already, that's more than a mile west of 18th and Ashland.

which also brings up a good point. don't you guys suppose commerce in general has changed and this surely this would affect the built environment too? portland too has seen seemingly overnight development along some corridors. entire "retail" district popping up within the span of a year, except actual retail is missing. its just storefront after storefront with some kind of trendy restaurant or bar. millenials and younger gen x folks just order stuff online and ship it to their house. I think were seeing that trend play out all over the country. less actual retail, and more venues catering towards experiences...music venue, restaurants and bars, gyms.. things that are experienced, not purchased. retail in a brick and mortar store is going to become redundant at some point...

[Via Chicago]

food and drink in particular seems to be the catalyst to development today. its usually a restaurant or a bar that opens the floodgates. there have been plenty of thought pieces of "foodie" culture, but its completely reshaped urban landscapes and signals a certain kind of cultural capital. as soon as a place opens that fits this mold in a "frontier" neighborhood, then it acts as a signal. "ok, you can come in here now. we've made this place safe for you". and thats a very specific kind of "you."

with logan square, the big change to me seemed to be when the Burlington opened in 2007. it was in no mans man by most standards at the time, but it was clearly aiming at a certain demographic. and shortly thereafter the Whistler, and after that it pretty much has been ceasless. at the same time, there has to be a breaking point, and cocktail culture is a trend which too will die. honestly ive been shocked at the longevity of people wiling to pay $12 a pop for mostly syrup.

restaurants have had some golden years recently, but when the next downturn hits, and it will, dining out is always the immediate thing first thing people cut.

[pdxtex]

the catalyst is that initial demographic change, what ever urban migrant group that moves in and decides to fix things up first. the services that follow are the result. but yeah, I see your point, they are a kind of economic beacon of things to come. in contemporary times, more often then not its been white or asian entrepreneurs, people who have more money or are more organized than the neighbors I guess. but tastes have definitely changed, food is the new conspicuous consumer good. is your meal rare enough, or compassionate enough.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

the bigger question is why are these zoning variances allowed in the first place

Actually, most of Lincoln Park is fairly permissive zoning, either RT-4 or RM4.5. You can absolutely build new multifamily there, up to and including 3-flats.

[Gantz]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

does this sort of phenomenon happen in NY? i realize plenty of crazy things are happening with luxury skyscrapers. but i get the impression that buildings like brownstones are respected, and even revered...people will pay a premium to be in them. why is there not the same respect for vintage housing here among the wealthy? (although I do realize theres been controversy over Bukharian mansions, which pretty closely resemble the gaudy "new money" kind of teardown architecture we're seeing in Chicago)

It is simply cost prohibitive to build low rise in NYC. You can simply gut renovate a brownstone and sell it for $2+ million as is. The lowrises that are built in NYC are build on much cheaper land (Chicago priced land?) that is obviously not anywhere near brownstone or other older neighborhoods. If some of the brownstones do get demolished, its usually for some mega-project/skyscraper. The math simply doesn't pencil out to build anything less. Not to mention that a lot of brownstone neighborhoods are landmarked by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.

[JDRCRASH]

Originally Posted by Gantz

If some of the brownstones do get demolished, its usually for some mega-project/skyscraper. The math simply doesn't pencil out to build anything less.

Isn't this what happened with what used to be where One Vanderbilt is going up?

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

Which culture am I dismissing? That of people who teardown lovingly preserved Victorian era homes and build 3 million dollar spec mansions? I suppose youre right, I have little in common with these people and I dont understand them.

As far as the conflicts that arise when new residents move into areas populated by ethnic groups, Im simply pointing out why existing residents feel threatened by the changes. Theres an expectation that they need to change to fit the new mold, rather than the other way around.

But if someone pointed out that whites want to preserve our judeo christian European culture to limit immigration you would call them a bigot?

[dc_denizen]

agree with mhays - this stuff about "culture" disappearing and being replaced is, IMO, insulting and generalizing to me as an American WASP male. I have just as much culture as any mexican or african american.

four generations ago my great-grandparents lived in the swedish ghetto of chicago, which long ago turned over to be black and hispanic.

if I want to move there and pay up to re-introduce that nordic culture, that's my right. If I complain about noise, that's also my right as a homeowner.

if you don't have enough money to stay in the neighborhood (due to your neighbors selling voluntarily), there are about 25 square miles of chicago with cheaper housing costs. investment in a city with so much vacant and destroyed space, with 1 MM people fewer than at its all-time peak, is ALWAYS to be welcomed with open arms, noise complaints or no. sorry.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

does this sort of phenomenon happen in NY? i realize plenty of crazy things are happening with luxury skyscrapers. but i get the impression that buildings like brownstones are respected, and even revered...people will pay a premium to be in them. why is there not the same respect for vintage housing here among the wealthy? (although I do realize theres been controversy over Bukharian mansions, which pretty closely resemble the gaudy "new money" kind of teardown architecture we're seeing in Chicago)

There are lots of gaudy, tacky mansions in NYC too, not unlike those you see in Lincoln Park off Halstead too. But, yeah, they're in certain outer neighborhoods, and are usually Orthodox Jewish enclaves. And, like in Lincoln Park, they're actually usually very high quality construction, with super-premium materials, but just very nouveau riche.

This NY Times article is more than 10 years old, but has some details about Gravesend, a little-known Syrian Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn that has some under-the-radar billionaires. $11 million for a vacant urban SFH lot is serious money, especially for back in 2006.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/realestate/25cov.html

Other neighborhoods where you see this phenomenon- Midwood (Orthodox Jews), Manhattan Beach (Russian), Mill Basin (Russian and Orthodox Jews), Dyker Heights (Italian) and sections of Forest Hills and Rego Park Queens (Bukharan Jews) and Kew Garden Hills Queens (Israeli Jews).

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by JDRCRASH

Isn't this what happened with what used to be where One Vanderbilt is going up?

No. The block where One Vanderbilt is going up consisted of highrise prewar office buildings.

There are no brownstones around Grand Central; the last probably disappeared in the 1960's construction boom (if they even lasted till then). The 1920's boom probably eliminated the vast majority in that part of Manhattan.

[Qubert]

Let's cut to the chase here: Are we basically at the point where we want all the middle/upper class folks to just stay out of the city and leave whole areas dumping grounds for the poor and only the poor? Let's run down the list:

-If people of means displace people of lesser means, they're evil

-If people of means move next to (without displacing) people of lesser means, they're increasing inequality and thus evil

-If people of means move into a neighborhood, they're eroding the "diversity" (which has devolved into a code word) of the area and are thus evil.

I'm not trying to be deliberately rude, but at some point what needs to be said needs to be said. In the past this was called segregation. Now it's being championed as compassionate policy.

I believe in things like the 80/20 program and taxing luxury properties to create low-income properties within the same area. I also however am unapologetically of the belief that more rich people in inner cities is a good thing. This goes beyond just income and "affordability" and to the deeper issues of social, cultural and economic integration and understanding. Placing lower-income individuals in areas exclusivley comprised of other low-income individuals is a proven social policy failure everywhere it's been tried. It's a failure in the South African townships, it's a failure in Rio's favelas, it was a faliure in Chicago's housing projects, It's a failure in Paris's banlieues and so on and so on....

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Gantz

It is simply cost prohibitive to build low rise in NYC. You can simply gut renovate a brownstone and sell it for $2+ million as is.

The vast majority of brownstone neighborhoods are landmarked, so you can't alter the buildings.

And, even if you could tear them down, you couldn't build a Gravesend- or Lincoln Park-style mansion. For one, no curb cuts are allowed. For another, no parking allowed. There are also setback rules that would probably prevent anything from being built that isn't directly fronting the street. And the zoning won't allow a bigger building, so what's the point?

And the type of person who prefers brownstone Brooklyn wouldn't go for one of those newer mansions anyways. It's a different market.

Here's typical Gravesend:
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6035...7i13312!8i6656

Here's typical Park Slope:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pa...!4d-73.9805817

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

agree with mhays - this stuff about "culture" disappearing and being replaced is, IMO, insulting and generalizing to me as an American WASP male. I have just as much culture as any mexican or african american.

As an American WASP male you're part of the majority - you have just about the entirety of the rest of the country that caters to your demographic. It's important for minority groups to be able to have an area that acts as a cultural hub for their community, and one where they can have some sense of ownership over - just one little area where that majority demographic doesn't call all the shots.

Note that I don't agree that these neighbourhoods should necessarily be impervious to change or that they "belong" to specific ethnic groups, just pointing out why these people feel what they do and that it's a valid feeling to have - and not one that you can share as an "American WASP male".

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

Its a fine line. The dynamic in SF is completely different than the one in Chicago and I dont think its a useful comparison. SF is geographically small to begin with, and people generally like the city for what it is today. Its always been a semi-desirable place, but not to the absurd degree it is today thanks to tech salaries. Do you demolish the charm of SF to accommodate everyone who wants to live there? What if, lets just say for a thought experiment, the number of people that would want to live there is 3 million. Can the city ever support every person who wants to be in such a tiny space? Would they even still want to once it resembles a district in Hong Kong? I think thats pretty debatable.

The other issue is the general decline in quality of architecture for residential structures over the past century. They may be structurally better, but from an aesthetic standpoint, they are pretty awful. Of course this is a broad brush, but with new code regulations, parking requirements, and cheaper building materials, it basically guarantees it will be uglier and less human scaled. And the odds it will have flourishes that buildings from the 20s had, I think is now something reserved for luxury properties of today (real brick exterior, hardwood, terra cotta, built ins, etc). These things are what recently have given our cities their competitive advantage: their uniqueness to the bland, characterless tract home suburbs. We squander that at our peril.

I remember what fascinated me about old northern cities at first, and it was first and foremost their age. The Sunbelt was new and sterile. Walking among homes and trees that were still standing after 100 years, the vegetation and the architecture almost melding into one. It was, and still is a thrill. Maybe there was a faded painted advertisement on the side of a building for a newspaper that went out of business 50 years ago...it tied you to history. Every corner was a new discovery. I worry when we lose that. It cant be faked. And i see it as a competitve advantage to be cherished, again, esp when there are parts of the city that need the rebirth so much more.

Great post.

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

As an American WASP male you're part of the majority - you have just about the entirety of the rest of the country that caters to your demographic. It's important for minority groups to be able to have an area that acts as a cultural hub for their community, and one where they can have some sense of ownership over - just one little area where that majority demographic doesn't call all the shots.

Note that I don't agree that these neighbourhoods should necessarily be impervious to change or that they "belong" to specific ethnic groups, just pointing out why these people feel what they do and that it's a valid feeling to have - and not one that you can share as an "American WASP male".

oh god

[pdxtex]

Originally Posted by Qubert

Let's cut to the chase here: Are we basically at the point where we want all the middle/upper class folks to just stay out of the city and leave whole areas dumping grounds for the poor and only the poor? Let's run down the list:

-If people of means displace people of lesser means, they're evil

-If people of means move next to (without displacing) people of lesser means, they're increasing inequality and thus evil

-If people of means move into a neighborhood, they're eroding the "diversity" (which has devolved into a code word) of the area and are thus evil.

I'm not trying to be deliberately rude, but at some point what needs to be said needs to be said. In the past this was called segregation. Now it's being championed as compassionate policy.

I believe in things like the 80/20 program and taxing luxury properties to create low-income properties within the same area. I also however am unapologetically of the belief that more rich people in inner cities is a good thing. This goes beyond just income and "affordability" and to the deeper issues of social, cultural and economic integration and understanding. Placing lower-income individuals in areas exclusivley comprised of other low-income individuals is a proven social policy failure everywhere it's been tried. It's a failure in the South African townships, it's a failure in Rio's favelas, it was a faliure in Chicago's housing projects, It's a failure in Paris's banlieues and so on and so on....

in liberal circles, its all white peoples' fault. their parents fault for leaving the city, and their childrens' fault for returning to the city and displacing lower income people. we know better than this but that the popular narrative for alot of people. cities change, people move around, buildings fall down, new ones go up. its not that complex.

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

But if someone pointed out that whites want to preserve our judeo christian European culture to limit immigration you would call them a bigot?

I don't know what "Judeo Christian European Culture" you are talking about, but as an American male of mainly European Catholic descent, I'm not sure I want to be a part of "preserving" whatever that is. The one thing that pisses me off though is being lumped in with other "white males" when I come from a relatively working class family and have roots on this continent as deep as French fur traders shacking up with Native American girls and as shallow as Polish jews fleeing the World Wars for safety.

The sad thing from my perspective is that I, just like an African American or Mexican American, am immediately judged just based on the color of my skin when really I have a much more diverse background than that. However, I'm also aware that I am not judged in a lot of situations simply because of the color of my skin (I drive 20,000 miles+ a year on Chicago city streets in the worst areas and have never once been pulled over by cops or threatened by gang bangers). So I get it, I understand that "white privilege" is a thing and it is a silent thing that you don't notice unless you really put your ear to the floor or are shoved right up against it every day.

Originally Posted by Qubert

me point what needs to be said needs to be said. In the past this was called segregation. Now it's being championed as compassionate policy.

I don't know about the tone of your post, but this is truth. I've also noticed that the majority of the loudest voices on gentrification are actually white students and recent grads who, for whatever reason, believe that perpetuating the horribly rotten status quo of American urban cores will somehow help anyone. The only way to actually deal with the problems we are seeing between police and African Americans and poor education is to eliminate the root cause which is institutionalized poverty traps encompassing vast swaths of our cities. When all you know is gang violence, failing schools, welfare as your main income, all males being arrested for petty drug crimes, etc. how does anyone expect you to "figure it out" and change your life to become a part of mainstream society?

Now take half that population out of the ghetto and spread them among wealthy suburbs and take half the population of those suburbs and mix them into the ghetto and suddenly impoverished minority children are exposed to the way "white America" works and actually stand a chance of "figuring it out". If you start seeing your kindergarten pal little Johnny Whitebread dropped off every day by his parents in their fancy Audi, you might start to make the association that there are other routes to that kind of a life than the constant "deal drugs and gang bang = Bentley" message the media loves to promote.

The single biggest unconstitutional policy right now is that municipalities are allowed to bar Section 8 vouchers from their community. Section 8 should be mandatory under the 14th amendment for ALL cities in the United States. That means Barrington, Lake Forest, etc all need to suck it up and start carrying their fair share of the weight when it comes to the very social problems that were caused by the very existence of their own communities. It's absolutely pathetic that wealthy communities are allowed to cloister themselves on the outskirts of our cities where "the poors can't get us" and then not participate in a system designed to break up such concentrations of poverty. If Barrington, a town of 12,000 with some of the best schools in the state, took in even 100 residents from Austin, Englewood, etc with children, there would be no tangible effect on the current residents beyond having to see a black person once in a while.

For the relocated section 8 residents, the effect on their lives would be astounding. They would no longer live in fear of violence, no longer be surrounded by constant poverty, they'd have access to better food, their children would get the attention they need at a top school system. Their family's life courses would be altered for generations and they would be almost undoubtably lifted out of poverty. But continue to disallow section 8 in a place like Barrington and you may as well just be continuing the practice of deed restrictions against African Americans.

[Via Chicago]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

in liberal circles, its all white peoples' fault. their parents fault for leaving the city, and their childrens' fault for returning to the city and displacing lower income people. we know better than this but that the popular narrative for alot of people. cities change, people move around, buildings fall down, new ones go up. its not that complex.

well, when they are the group with the enormous power and privilege in America, leave the city under racist pretenses and actively work to segregate minority groups through institutional policies, yes it is their fault.


Of course, all of this is nothing new, over 30,000 working people had to be shot in order for the renovation of Second Empire Paris to take place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune