HomeDiagramsDatabaseMapsForum About
     

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Discussion Forums > City Discussions


Reply

 
Thread Tools Display Modes
     
     
  #41  
Old Posted Sep 24, 2021, 11:57 AM
Yuri's Avatar
Yuri Yuri is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
Posts: 4,448
Quote:
Originally Posted by hauntedheadnc View Post
It's also not always applicable even if you were to consider the poor, minorities, or especially poor minorities to be a problem. There's the idea that gentrification is always the process of taking a poor area and turning it into a rich one. Sometimes, gentrification is simply the process of taking a stable, safe area, and making it unaffordable for all but the richest. I've seen it in Asheville: Asheville isn't a city where house-flippers have a lot to do because there aren't many houses left that need a rehab. In-town neighborhoods have never been more popular, and Asheville has never had a larger population. However, what's happening -- it was in process for a while, and the pandemic sent it into hyperdrive -- is that people from outside, who don't have to work in Asheville for crappy $10/hour Asheville wages, come in, bring their money, and think nothing of dropping half a million on a small, crummy bungalow. They're pouring in, driving up housing prices, which drives up property taxes, and either the current residents get to where they can't afford the taxes or can't afford a new house if they've outgrown the old one. They leave, and someone else moves in from Seattle, DC, or New York, and goes wild over the bargain they've found for a mere $600,000, for nearly a thousand square feet! Never mind that same house would have cost $450,000 five years ago, and would have come in at less than $200,000 ten years ago.

Asheville wasn't poor when all of this started. Most of the poor people who weren't in the public housing had already been pushed out. What's going on there is that gentrification is occurring by inflating the property values, and it's pushing out the middle class. And considering that most of Asheville's minorities had already been pushed out by the constant influx of rich old white people, gentrification in Asheville -- much to the confusion of folks like jtown and jmeck, I would imagine -- is largely affecting... white... people.
Indeed. That's what happen in Manhattan, London, San Francisco for the past 20 years and it seems even in your small Asheville.

I remember to read articles about officials from those cities worried about regular people such as police officers, teachers, nurses not being able to live in or remotely near the places they serve.

-----------------------------------------------

I joined both SSC and SSP in 2008 and I confess that for the most this period I found criticism towards gentrification nonsense. It's only when you move the focus from the city made of bricks to the city made of people you understand that "improving the neighbourhood" is a very relative concept.
__________________
London - São Paulo - Rio de Janeiro - Londrina - Frankfurt
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #42  
Old Posted Sep 24, 2021, 2:17 PM
eschaton eschaton is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2013
Posts: 5,181
Generally speaking, gentrification is not a problem if it happens on a neighborhood level. However, it's a big problem if it happens on a metro-wide level, as working-class people need somewhere to live.

I've actually seen analyses that building affordable housing units in historically poor urban neighborhoods is more expensive than building them in suburbs. Meaning preserving existing poor neighborhoods in that state isn't even the most utilitarian thing to do.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #43  
Old Posted Sep 24, 2021, 2:26 PM
Crawford Crawford is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Brooklyn, NYC/Polanco, DF
Posts: 30,497
There's plenty of scholarship suggesting that gentrification lessens displacement.

In a declining neighborhood, people are fighting to leave. In an improving neighborhood, people are fighting to stay. And most poor renters in high cost markets live in non-market housing. This is why there are plenty of poor residents in rich Manhattan neighborhoods, even as housing costs have exploded.

Opposition to gentrification is more of a cultural wedge, sometimes a progressive or urban populist version of the rural/exurban cultural alienation we see in Trumpism.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #44  
Old Posted Sep 24, 2021, 2:32 PM
Segun's Avatar
Segun Segun is offline
<-- Chicago's roots.
 
Join Date: Aug 2001
Posts: 5,928
Quote:
Originally Posted by sopas ej View Post
Yeah because, you know, the victims of racism and classism never call the racists and classists out... (WTH?).
Someone should do an experiment where a majority White jurisdiction is taken over by Black management, with the management hiring nobody but Black people, leading to an all-Black City Council, Police force, Fire Department, etc.....but never ever explicitly mention race. See what happens.
__________________
Songs of the minute - Flavour - Ijele (Feat. Zoro)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjEFGpnkL38

Common - Resurrection (Video Mix)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmOd0GKuztE
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #45  
Old Posted Sep 24, 2021, 2:38 PM
jmecklenborg jmecklenborg is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 3,117
Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
I've actually seen analyses that building affordable housing units in historically poor urban neighborhoods is more expensive than building them in suburbs. Meaning preserving existing poor neighborhoods in that state isn't even the most utilitarian thing to do.
The problem with poor people living on the outskirts of town is that they are the ones who really need public transportation and sufficient public transportation is exponentially more expensive in the suburbs as opposed to the city.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #46  
Old Posted Sep 24, 2021, 2:41 PM
hauntedheadnc's Avatar
hauntedheadnc hauntedheadnc is offline
A gruff individual.
 
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Greenville, SC - "Birthplace of the light switch rave"
Posts: 13,284
Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
Generally speaking, gentrification is not a problem if it happens on a neighborhood level. However, it's a big problem if it happens on a metro-wide level, as working-class people need somewhere to live.
This. That's what pushed us out. My husband's and my income combined are six figures, but the amount we were approved for to buy a home would have bought nothing at all inside the city limits of Asheville, and nothing but a few doublewide trailers on the fringes of Buncombe County. So, we considered our options, which were to stay near Asheville but move far enough out to negate any benefit to being near it, or to do what an increasing number of Ashevillians are doing and move to the next nearest place that purports to be a city. That means north to Johnson City-Kingsport-Bristol, Tennessee or south to the Greenville-Spartanburg area. We chose Greenville, where that same money that wouldn't have bought us anything in Asheville bought a two-story, four-bedroom house on a quarter of an acre, fifteen minutes from downtown Greenville. Meanwhile, up in Asheville, with so many people, including artists, performers, and the people who fuel the service industry moving away because they can't afford to buy and are tired of sharing a rental with four or five roommates, the city gets whiter, richer, and more boring by the day. Asheville used to be vibrant, exciting, even a little mysterious... and now's it's mainly just a clot of rich old white people being dull together.
__________________
"To sustain the life of a large, modern city in this cloying, clinging heat is an amazing achievement. It is no wonder that the white men and women in Greenville walk with a slow, dragging pride, as if they had taken up a challenge and intended to defy it without end." -- Rebecca West for The New Yorker, 1947
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #47  
Old Posted Sep 24, 2021, 3:13 PM
eschaton eschaton is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2013
Posts: 5,181
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
Opposition to gentrification is more of a cultural wedge, sometimes a progressive or urban populist version of the rural/exurban cultural alienation we see in Trumpism.
Some of the tactics used in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles to keep "artists" out of the neighborhood are very similar to historic tactics used in white neighborhoods to keep black people out, just with the names changed.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jmecklenborg View Post
The problem with poor people living on the outskirts of town is that they are the ones who really need public transportation and sufficient public transportation is exponentially more expensive in the suburbs as opposed to the city.
But you could house more poor people for the same cost. So is it better to provide maximum convenience to a smaller number of people, or a lesser level of convenience (but similar affordability) to a larger group of people?
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #48  
Old Posted Sep 24, 2021, 3:36 PM
Yuri's Avatar
Yuri Yuri is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
Posts: 4,448
Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
Generally speaking, gentrification is not a problem if it happens on a neighborhood level. However, it's a big problem if it happens on a metro-wide level, as working-class people need somewhere to live.

I've actually seen analyses that building affordable housing units in historically poor urban neighborhoods is more expensive than building them in suburbs. Meaning preserving existing poor neighborhoods in that state isn't even the most utilitarian thing to do.
I'd argue with the whole metro area gentrified, maybe that's a sign the whole society became wealthier, so I don't see it as a problem.

When limited to some neighbourhoods, however, social issues are still there and you're only removing poor people to a worse location.
__________________
London - São Paulo - Rio de Janeiro - Londrina - Frankfurt
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #49  
Old Posted Sep 24, 2021, 5:49 PM
jmecklenborg jmecklenborg is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 3,117
Quote:
Originally Posted by yuriandrade View Post
I'd argue with the whole metro area gentrified, maybe that's a sign the whole society became wealthier, so I don't see it as a problem.
Today the S&P 500 is 10X what it was when the Soviet Union fell. The United States was the richest country in the world, by far, back then. Now it's so much richer that nobody really realizes how much more money there is. Despite the heaps and heaps of money, a bunch of people manage to avoid acquiring any of it.

Last edited by jmecklenborg; Sep 24, 2021 at 6:15 PM.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #50  
Old Posted Sep 24, 2021, 6:14 PM
jmecklenborg jmecklenborg is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 3,117
Quote:
Originally Posted by hauntedheadnc View Post
Meanwhile, up in Asheville, with so many people, including artists, performers, and the people who fuel the service industry moving away because they can't afford to buy and are tired of sharing a rental with four or five roommates, the city gets whiter, richer, and more boring by the day. Asheville used to be vibrant, exciting, even a little mysterious... and now's it's mainly just a clot of rich old white people being dull together.
Austin, Nashville, Portland, and to some extent Ashville are places where semi-idle people moved to hang out in their 20s. The recent history of these places is that those artists/musicians who moved there in the late 90s or 2000s ether a) bought a house back when things were cheap or b) didn't and can't afford to live there anymore. It's simply a fact that there is a certain segment of wealthy Americans who will move not just to a neighborhood made trendy by artists/musicians, as was the case 1950-2000, but basically anywhere in a city made famous by them.

People living in public housing or renting via Section 8 vouchers get to stay put as the whole world changes around them. Witness the public housing near downtown Nashville - the same people are living there today who lived there 20 years ago. Meanwhile everything around them has gotten preposterously expensive.

In another ten years, there won't be any artist/musician neighborhoods left anywhere in the United States. Maybe these people will form encampments out in the desert or something.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #51  
Old Posted Sep 24, 2021, 9:26 PM
SFBruin SFBruin is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2015
Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 1,189
I guess I was being a little bit dramatic earlier.

I think that, if the existing residents are the problem, then that's fine. But, you have to be really confident that that's what is happening to justify gentrification.
__________________
Pretend Seattleite.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #52  
Old Posted Sep 24, 2021, 11:19 PM
Pedestrian's Avatar
Pedestrian Pedestrian is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2016
Location: San Francisco
Posts: 24,177
Quote:
Originally Posted by jmecklenborg View Post
In another ten years, there won't be any artist/musician neighborhoods left anywhere in the United States. Maybe these people will form encampments out in the desert or something.
They'll move back to San Francisco which will build them cheap/free housing (cheap to them) for a building cost of $1500/sq ft. The alternative Disney Land for adults needs them.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #53  
Old Posted Sep 25, 2021, 4:46 PM
iheartthed iheartthed is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: New York
Posts: 9,742
Quote:
Originally Posted by jmecklenborg View Post
Austin, Nashville, Portland, and to some extent Ashville are places where semi-idle people moved to hang out in their 20s. The recent history of these places is that those artists/musicians who moved there in the late 90s or 2000s ether a) bought a house back when things were cheap or b) didn't and can't afford to live there anymore. It's simply a fact that there is a certain segment of wealthy Americans who will move not just to a neighborhood made trendy by artists/musicians, as was the case 1950-2000, but basically anywhere in a city made famous by them.

People living in public housing or renting via Section 8 vouchers get to stay put as the whole world changes around them. Witness the public housing near downtown Nashville - the same people are living there today who lived there 20 years ago. Meanwhile everything around them has gotten preposterously expensive.

In another ten years, there won't be any artist/musician neighborhoods left anywhere in the United States. Maybe these people will form encampments out in the desert or something.
The big industrial cities in the Midwest aren't going to price out artists anytime soon.
Reply With Quote
     
     
End
 
 
Reply

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Discussion Forums > City Discussions
Forum Jump


Thread Tools
Display Modes

Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 9:19 AM.

     
SkyscraperPage.com - Archive - Privacy Statement - Top

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.