Is Gentrification a Bad Thing?

Strewth wrote:

I think I may have misunderstood what gentrification actually is. I thought it was a repurposing of buildings for new uses, like turning Victorian homes into quaint shops and lawyer's offices or warehouses into loft apartments.

Am I wrong? Is there a greater subtext to it?

It's shorthand now for a huge social phenomenon for the relatively well-off "reclaiming" lower-income areas that then become more economically active, but often at the cost of driving out the previous residents of the neighborhood due to cost of living increases.

Example: Pioneer Square here in Seattle was considered vibrant and desirable because of the large concentration of artists and galleries. People and hip young businesses moved in to live amongst the artists and to, I guess soak up the artist vibe, and in the process have driven up rents on lofts and living and working spaces to the point where only the smallest fraction of full-time artists could afford to live there now.

San Francisco is a good example of the endgame for this process. Seattle proper is following close behind.

The subtext is that gentrification frequently happens when people with economic and social advantage decide that an area populated by people with economic and social disadvantage is attractive--generally because it is "authentic" or "real" or something like that. Because they are looking for something "edgy". As an added bonus, hey, the food is cheap! Hey, the rent is cheap! So they start moving in, driving up demand and willing to pay higher prices, and unsurprisingly the very people who made the area "authentic" are driven out.

It's an especially upsetting form of cultural appropriation.

The upset that the current or former residents have for this process is a combination of being forced from their community by economics, and the fact that the people doing it are doing it because they "appreciate the culture" of the people who were there... the combination of which implies strongly that the people coming in appreciate the cultural flavor of the locals far more than they appreciate that the locals are people with actual lives that they are interfering with.

I'll give an example from a different area: There's a local gay bar I've been to a few times, which has a regular drag show (weekly, every two weeks, I'm not sure). Over time, this event has become very popular locally among non-queer people, who pack the place on these nights. On the one hand, this is a boon for the bar, which sees a ton of business from these visitors. On the other hand, it complicates things for people who might like to visit the bar and have it be a "safe space". I went there with a group of trans women one night when this event was occurring--we knew things would get loud and crazy later, but we were planning on leaving before the event got started. Still, well before it began the place was packed from corner to corner with cishet folks in groups and couples, and a couple of us had been recipients of several drunken hugs and "We love you people!"s.

So... that became a night to never ever go there again, and the group mostly stopped going there at all, because it just didn't feel safe any more. We were not there to be groped by people. We were not drag performers. We were not there to provide "flavor" for the cishet customers.

Gentrification is the same sort of process, where things that people cling to as part of their cultural and community identity are embraced by people from outside that identity who don't really understand it. It's true that some may spend enough time to learn more about the community and the real issues that community faces--but the damage is still done by the mass of outsiders as the people who created and maintained those communities and those cultural touchstones are pushed to the margins.

It's frustrating to be held as a group on the margins of society. It is even more frustrating to be pushed to the margins of things that your group built, whether those things are cultural or more concrete. And it's especially hard when it's your home that you are being pushed out of.

And the irony, of course, is that this process destroys the things that made whatever is being appropriated special in the first place. If you're lucky, you get another bland bougie area. If you're not, you end up with the new residents moving on to the next big thing and leaving a kind of upper-middle-class version of urban blight in their wake.

Hypatian did you seriously just write a post about how much it sucks to be warmly accepted by drunk, hetero, non-trans* people? Because wow.

Seth wrote:

Hypatian did you seriously just write a post about how much it sucks to be warmly accepted by drunk, hetero, non-trans* people? Because wow.

So you're just going to ignore all context and simplify that post down to that?

SixteenBlue wrote:
Seth wrote:

Hypatian did you seriously just write a post about how much it sucks to be warmly accepted by drunk, hetero, non-trans* people? Because wow.

So you're just going to ignore all context and simplify that post down to that?

For now, yeah. My feelings on "gentrification" can't really be summed up with an anecdote of having my bar taken over by people I don't like, but OG's thoughts have been close enough to mine that more posts from me wouldn't forward the conversation.

Isn't this just a subset of Supply and Demand?

Something that was previously undesirable and therefore cheap passes through some sort of tipping point that has demand increase and prices rise to match it.

Why does anyone deserve to pay less for something because the used to get it for that price?

Gentrification is a symptom of a deeper problem; inequality. The differences between the wealthy and the poor are so enormous that centralized areas become super-stratified, concentrating the wealthy in desirable areas, and chasing the poor out.

If we weren't bleeding away generations of wealth with our profound economic stupidity, even relatively poor people would be able to afford rents in decent places. The economy's supposedly been growing for thirty plus years, but for most people, it's been bleeding away their wealth, a few percent a year.

If we don't fix the root issues, this is just one of a panoply of things that will go badly wrong.

I'm not sure I would blame this on the finance industry, Malor. It's really expensive to build housing in urban areas; rent amounts that seem extreme to the poor, trendy crowd are barely breaking even from a developer's perspective. There's really no "bad guys" when it comes to this issue; as much as we'd all like to blame entitled children of affluent parents, their money is what drives a substantial portion of the economy. Also, if we're being honest, a pretty alarming portion of those kids aren't children of affluent parents; they're financially ignorant people living on college loans.

The "we were here first and we made it cool" mentality is what I take issue with on this topic. I get that it's a natural feeling, but it ignores the cyclical nature of urban changes, and creates an us vs them mentality that doesn't really solve anything.

Seth wrote:

I'm not sure I would blame this on the finance industry, Malor. It's really expensive to build housing in urban areas; rent amounts that seem extreme to the poor, trendy crowd are barely breaking even from a developer's perspective. There's really no "bad guys" when it comes to this issue; as much as we'd all like to blame entitled children of affluent parents, their money is what drives a substantial portion of the economy. Also, if we're being honest, a pretty alarming portion of those kids aren't children of affluent parents; they're financially ignorant people living on college loans.

The "we were here first and we made it cool" mentality is what I take issue with on this topic. I get that it's a natural feeling, but it ignores the cyclical nature of urban changes, and creates an us vs them mentality that doesn't really solve anything.

There can be a bad guy in a sense. In planned urban renewal it's possible to give current owners/renters space and funding in your plans, as opposed to allocating all of your funding to benefit the affluent. If the government is going to step in, the former is much more socially just than the latter. That doesn't mean the market will not push some people out, but it can help to mitigate the overall impact.

As a business owner in a rough section of Baltimore, I actually look forward to economic development (planned or otherwise) that will transform my neighborhood from a great place to get stabbed to one where folks enjoy shopping without legitimate fear of deadly violence. If that means that fewer chickenfeces gang "taggers" get to express their "culture", well, that is a price I am willing to pay.

IMAGE(http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/dean-what-gif.gif)

EDIT: Dean says it better than I do.

It can mitigate it to some extent, but that's a really fine line. Having rent controlled or other types of low income housing tend to distort the market, and they risk attracting the types of unsavory behavior you want to avoid when you're investing hundreds of millions in real estate projects. I don't like rent controlled options, to be honest. Id much rather see market priced housing where the demand and supply balance to affordable levels for the original occupiers of a neighborhood, with the caveat that those occupiers will probably need to take advantage of the new and more lucrative employment that such a renewal promises.

Yes, that's a nice way of saying the original tenants will lose their jobs. But a main point of urban revitalization is to push out sh*tty poverty level jobs and replace them with better ones.

Rather than rent controlled options, I'm a fan of offering above market values for houses that should probably be condemned anyway, then (assuming you get critical mass using that), bullying the die hards with threats of eminent domain.

I've seen developers bend over backwards for neighborhood organizations and still be accused of gentrification and suffer some incidents of domestic terrorism, so I may be more jaded than most. Urban renewal can be a huge success on a neighborhood or even a city level while still failing to find new positions and housing for every individual it displaced.

Demosthenes wrote:
Spike Lee wrote:

And then there was the one that literally hit home. Lee said his father, "a great jazz musician," bought a brownstone 46 years ago.

"And the mother******' people moved in last year and called the cops on my father. He's not — he doesn't even play electric bass. It's acoustic. We bought the mother******' house in 1968, and now you call the cops? In 2013?"

Dude, I don't care when my neighbors moved in, if they're playing bass really late at night or stupidly early in the morning on a weekend, and its noise is carrying and keeping me awake, I'm going to call about that, but I'm going to do so after a discussion of, hey, we're neighbors, can we work something out here, as I need to be able to sleep during these hours.

Except that Spike's neighborhood was a bastion of artists and musicians for generations. It's like moving into an apartment over a bar, and calling the cops because people are outside having a cigarette. When one moves into a neighborhood that has a rich history of a particular type of resident, and then you make an effort to try and stamp out that history, people will get their feathers ruffled.

Fort Greene is also home to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Music School, The Paul Robeson Theater, The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, BRIC Arts|Media|Bklyn, UrbanGlass, 651 Arts performing center for African-American presenters, The Irondale Center for Theater, Education, and Outreach, the Mark Morris Dance Center and Lafayette Church. It is home also to Brooklyn Technical High School, one of New York City's most competitive public schools.[citation needed] Pratt Institute, in neighboring Clinton Hill, is one of the leading art schools in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Gr...

nel e nel wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:
Spike Lee wrote:

And then there was the one that literally hit home. Lee said his father, "a great jazz musician," bought a brownstone 46 years ago.

"And the mother******' people moved in last year and called the cops on my father. He's not — he doesn't even play electric bass. It's acoustic. We bought the mother******' house in 1968, and now you call the cops? In 2013?"

Dude, I don't care when my neighbors moved in, if they're playing bass really late at night or stupidly early in the morning on a weekend, and its noise is carrying and keeping me awake, I'm going to call about that, but I'm going to do so after a discussion of, hey, we're neighbors, can we work something out here, as I need to be able to sleep during these hours.

Except that Spike's neighborhood was a bastion of artists and musicians for generations. It's like moving into an apartment over a bar, and calling the cops because people are outside having a cigarette. When one moves into a neighborhood that has a rich history of a particular type of resident, and then you make an effort to try and stamp out that history, people will get their feathers ruffled.

Fort Greene is also home to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Music School, The Paul Robeson Theater, The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, BRIC Arts|Media|Bklyn, UrbanGlass, 651 Arts performing center for African-American presenters, The Irondale Center for Theater, Education, and Outreach, the Mark Morris Dance Center and Lafayette Church. It is home also to Brooklyn Technical High School, one of New York City's most competitive public schools.[citation needed] Pratt Institute, in neighboring Clinton Hill, is one of the leading art schools in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Gr...

There are still noise ordinances though. Just because a neighborhood is known for being filled with weed users doesn't mean I can't call the cops when all I can smell is weed smoke coming in through an open window. And note, I'm talking about an extreme circumstance of "I can't sleep", not "I hate all music, play your stuff elsewhere".

Seth wrote:

Hypatian did you seriously just write a post about how much it sucks to be warmly accepted by drunk, hetero, non-trans* people? Because wow.

Being treated like a novelty sideshow is hardly being 'warmly accepted'.

I understand you're taking a strict economic view of the situation, OG. The problem with this is that in order for a neighborhood to change there are decisions which are made without any feedback from the current residency. Zoning decisions, selling of city land, eminent domain, and closed door conversations with developers. If all land is designated for a purpose and that purpose changes physically or socially, there is some sort of political mechanism which has deemed that change acceptable and those decisions are made without any concern for the current residency. Most often the people making these decisions are white folks with connections and/or politicians (see people like Sharpe James) with their own wallets in mind. Regardless of the demographics of the people making the decision, I think we can all agree that the decisions are NOT being made by the people who actually live in these places and therein lies the dilemma.

Harlem has one of NYC's lowest ownership rates; around 10% of Harlem residents own their homes. So despite the suggestion that some home-owning minorities in Harlem would benefit, which they would, it's a percent of a percent. It's using the exception as the rule. NYC had to step in and take ownership of Harlem real estate in the 1970's (ultimately owning around 70% of Harlem real estate) and through experimental programs (some good, most bad) over 95% of the Harlem real estate that was city owned has been returned to the private sector. And if around 10% of Harlemites own their own homes and the vast majority of Harlemites are minorities (almost 80% of which are black), well it's pretty easy to understand who all that real estate was being sold to. And let's be real here, the land wasn't being sold off through Century 21 on a first come, first served basis. It was back room deals with political connections. An inevitable aspect of gentrification that the book definition doesn't deal with.

The problem with the economic and capitalist perception of gentrification is that it holds true to the book definition and makes sense on paper but in effect it is a miscarriage of social justice. Wealthy white investors/land owners are patted on the back and congratulated for "improving" a neighborhood by displacing lower income, usually minority, residents with ever-increasing rents. A perfect example is of a guy named Jonathan Butler. Butler is a white dude who created a Brooklyn based blog: Brownstoner and is a co-founder of Brooklyn Flea. Through his personal connections on Wall Street, he raised capital from Goldman Sachs to fund a large scale development project in Crown Heights which would be sort of an expansion of Brooklyn Flea. Getting the funding from his connections allowed him to circumvent lots of bureaucracy and red tape which stall projects like Mart 125, an urban revitalization project initiated in 1986 which included a cultural and commercial complex across the street from the Apollo housed in a 67,000 sq.ft. space. Mart 125 met with setbacks and delays for over 20 years until the Bloomberg Administration issued a Request for Proposal in 2008. Tenant preference was to be given to arts organizations that met a threshold of financial stability and community involvement. Unfortunately, the financial crisis hit in 2008 and Mart 125 came to a standstill. 20+ years of bureaucracy and red tape when you don't know the right people. What will give tenant preference in Jonathan Butler's Crown Heights project? They will be hand picked by Butler and his Goldman Sachs partners. Also worrying is that in their survey of potential tenants, noticeably absent are questions about race or income levels which would reveal the social and economic issues the project would affect.

If examples like Mart 125 aren't on your radar for comparison purposes, take for example the group of artists in Crown Heights that are trying to purchase a building for similar purposes as Jonathan Butler and his Goldman Sachs partners but are facing delays and bureaucracy that Butler and his Wall Street cronies aren't. That's what's called a perversion of capitalism and a perfect example of the non-economic aspects of gentrification of which I speak. It's a completely unequal playing field and exasperates inequality.

This is the problem when discussing gentrification solely within the confines of a book definition. It ignores real world implications. Real people and real lives. The human component. If I want to go to a Barnes & Noble or Starbucks I can go to any of a countless number of towns in the USA. However if I want my kids to explore their Acadian ancestry, where is the best place to do that other than New Orleans? Or when we inevitably want to teach them about their African-American heritage and the struggles their ancestors faced in addition to exploring the history of Jazz, I can't think of a better place close to us to do that than Harlem.

I guess, in a way, I'm arguing for some kind of protection for these places. Areas which have a certain authenticity which makes them unique that you can't find anywhere else in the world.Where do you go to experience Mardi Gras (F*ck off if you say Razoo's or Fat Tuesday's )? Harlem has a specific authenticity in regards to black arts (no, not necromancy or Voodoo -see New Orleans), civil rights, jazz, and the black power movement tied to it that cannot be found anywhere else. So if we can preserve a house in the middle of a city because a former President was birthed there (see Philadelphia, Boston, Dallas, etc.) and protect various buildings around the country due to their historical and/or cultural value, why can't we protect an entire neighborhood that is a cultural oasis in a desert of starkly uncultured corporate Stepford-villes?

As a Harlem resident named Vance Rawles said (in an article about gentrification in Harlem that, of all the links I've provided, I would suggest is the one must-read), “it’s nice to see a Starbucks in Harlem so we feel like we’re not behind the rest of the world, but bringing business to Harlem is not the same as turning it into the new Wall Street or Soho. It’s nice to have bigger apartments and fancier stores, but the heart of the matter is that what makes Harlem valuable can’t be quantified in that way.” Rawles further articulates his frustrations saying, “it doesn’t feel like we’re in control of our own destiny. These aren’t changes that we are enacting—and by we I mean the people. These things didn’t come out of a community outcry.” Neil Shoemaker attests that “without culture there is no Harlem. Our cultural capital needs to be preserved and people in the community didn’t have a seat at the table when decisions were being made in the back room.”

NYC had to step in and take ownership of Harlem real estate in the 1970's (ultimately owning around 70% of Harlem real estate) and through experimental programs (some good, most bad) over 95% of the Harlem real estate that was city owned has been returned to the private sector.

Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems then to be as much a problem with big government overreach as it is with unfair market forces. The ways that some local governments aid and abet unscrupulous developers through tax hikes and even using eminent domain to build new shopping centers is something that hasn't been explored enough in this thread IMHO.

Also, my understanding from my friends in NYC is the city has very strict rent control/stabilization laws. Is that no longer the case or is Harlem a special zone? (Not trying to be confrontational with that question but honestly curious).

LouZiffer wrote:

There can be a bad guy in a sense. In planned urban renewal it's possible to give current owners/renters space and funding in your plans, as opposed to allocating all of your funding to benefit the affluent. If the government is going to step in, the former is much more socially just than the latter. That doesn't mean the market will not push some people out, but it can help to mitigate the overall impact.

It's possible to give *some* current owners/renters space.

I lived in Chicago when the city decided to redevelop the Cabrini Green housing project. (Technically, it was a group of developers who used some well publicized murders and problems at the Chicago Housing Authority to get HUD to tear down the complex because real estate in the Near North Side had become *really* valuable.) Cabrini Green was Chicago's most notorious housing projects and pretty much represented all that was wrong about the 1950s/1960s strategy of cramming lots of poor minorities in high rises.

The city negotiated a deal whereby 50% of the new housing units would be market priced, 20% would be "affordable housing" subsidized by Low Income Housing Tax Credits, and 30% would be Section 8 housing reserved for former Cabrini Green residents. This plan predictably spawned some pretty heated debates that basically boiled down to the developers and people who wanted a posh new condo not really wanting to live next to someone who either wasn't as wealthy as they were or, worse, from the projects. They feared their property would be worth less over time.

But even the 50-20-30 plan barely put a dent in the number of people displaced. The new development had about 700 units allocated to Cabrini Green residents (which only happened after a nasty lawsuit), but there were some 3600+ housing units in the old housing development. That means easily 10,000 people had to relocate, which they did, moving to more affordable Chicago suburbs or other cities.

FSeven I'm curious to hear your opinion on gentrification when it involves rich white folks pushing out poor white folks. Austin and Portland would be good examples.

We can also talk about hypotheticals - in two decades, Detroit will be overrun by idealistic white hipsters, who will then be displaced by rich white yuppies. Motown will probably be forgotten or re branded as Urban FarmVille and City of Authors.. The point is that while gentrification can be said to be about race, that's really only true inasmuch as the overlap of the socioeconomically disadvantaged and race makes it a fair shortcut. These things remain cyclical.

And I'm not entirely sure we can use NYC as a paradigm for how urban revitalization happens in other parts of the country. I have actually experienced the feeling of being squeezed out by a developer with deeper pockets, but it was completely public. There were no secret back room deals, just richer people with more money.

Your examples are not wrong, of course. I just hesitate to call them the standard.

Demosthenes wrote:
nel e nel wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:
Spike Lee wrote:

And then there was the one that literally hit home. Lee said his father, "a great jazz musician," bought a brownstone 46 years ago.

"And the mother******' people moved in last year and called the cops on my father. He's not — he doesn't even play electric bass. It's acoustic. We bought the mother******' house in 1968, and now you call the cops? In 2013?"

Dude, I don't care when my neighbors moved in, if they're playing bass really late at night or stupidly early in the morning on a weekend, and its noise is carrying and keeping me awake, I'm going to call about that, but I'm going to do so after a discussion of, hey, we're neighbors, can we work something out here, as I need to be able to sleep during these hours.

Except that Spike's neighborhood was a bastion of artists and musicians for generations. It's like moving into an apartment over a bar, and calling the cops because people are outside having a cigarette. When one moves into a neighborhood that has a rich history of a particular type of resident, and then you make an effort to try and stamp out that history, people will get their feathers ruffled.

Fort Greene is also home to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Music School, The Paul Robeson Theater, The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, BRIC Arts|Media|Bklyn, UrbanGlass, 651 Arts performing center for African-American presenters, The Irondale Center for Theater, Education, and Outreach, the Mark Morris Dance Center and Lafayette Church. It is home also to Brooklyn Technical High School, one of New York City's most competitive public schools.[citation needed] Pratt Institute, in neighboring Clinton Hill, is one of the leading art schools in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Gr...

There are still noise ordinances though. Just because a neighborhood is known for being filled with weed users doesn't mean I can't call the cops when all I can smell is weed smoke coming in through an open window. And note, I'm talking about an extreme circumstance of "I can't sleep", not "I hate all music, play your stuff elsewhere".

I think the point was that if an acoustic bass is too loud for you then you're in the wrong neighborhood. I think that's a reasonable stance. Just like you're not talking about an extreme circumstance, neither was the original anecdote.

jdzappa wrote:

Also, my understanding from my friends in NYC is the city has very strict rent control/stabilization laws. Is that no longer the case or is Harlem a special zone? (Not trying to be confrontational with that question but honestly curious).

Yes they do. I looked into this a while back, and one of the requirements is that a building has to have over a certain number of units (it was 8 at the time I was researching this). Landlords are bound by law to only increase the rent a certain percentage per year per tenant, but they can jack the price up almost as much as they want if the tenant leaves and a new one moves in. So if there is a lot of turnover in a neighborhood, the rents can raise a lot faster.

So one thing I witnessed personally, was I was living in an 8 unit building, and the landlord gave us all notice to move out as he was going to remodel it into a 4 unit condo building. He had the one-two punch of the number of units below the threshold AND remodeling before new tenants took over to raise the rents a considerable amount. This was in the Crown Heights neighborhood as well, about 6 years ago.

SixteenBlue wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:
nel e nel wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:
Spike Lee wrote:

And then there was the one that literally hit home. Lee said his father, "a great jazz musician," bought a brownstone 46 years ago.

"And the mother******' people moved in last year and called the cops on my father. He's not — he doesn't even play electric bass. It's acoustic. We bought the mother******' house in 1968, and now you call the cops? In 2013?"

Dude, I don't care when my neighbors moved in, if they're playing bass really late at night or stupidly early in the morning on a weekend, and its noise is carrying and keeping me awake, I'm going to call about that, but I'm going to do so after a discussion of, hey, we're neighbors, can we work something out here, as I need to be able to sleep during these hours.

Except that Spike's neighborhood was a bastion of artists and musicians for generations. It's like moving into an apartment over a bar, and calling the cops because people are outside having a cigarette. When one moves into a neighborhood that has a rich history of a particular type of resident, and then you make an effort to try and stamp out that history, people will get their feathers ruffled.

Fort Greene is also home to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Music School, The Paul Robeson Theater, The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, BRIC Arts|Media|Bklyn, UrbanGlass, 651 Arts performing center for African-American presenters, The Irondale Center for Theater, Education, and Outreach, the Mark Morris Dance Center and Lafayette Church. It is home also to Brooklyn Technical High School, one of New York City's most competitive public schools.[citation needed] Pratt Institute, in neighboring Clinton Hill, is one of the leading art schools in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Gr...

There are still noise ordinances though. Just because a neighborhood is known for being filled with weed users doesn't mean I can't call the cops when all I can smell is weed smoke coming in through an open window. And note, I'm talking about an extreme circumstance of "I can't sleep", not "I hate all music, play your stuff elsewhere".

I think the point was that if an acoustic bass is too loud for you then you're in the wrong neighborhood. I think that's a reasonable stance. Just like you're not talking about an extreme circumstance, neither was the original anecdote.

Pretty much. But to continue with the example given: if weed smoke offends you - regardless of the legality of it - why would you knowingly move into a weed smoking neighborhood? That's what this Spike Lee rant thing is all about. People moving into a neighborhood because it's supposed to be hip and cool, and then calling the cops on the hip and cool aspects of it. Also pointing out that when it was primarily a black neighborhood, it didn't get the same access to city resources as it does now that wealthy white folks are moving in.

New York implemented crazy 'quality of life' laws during the end of the Giuliani/beginning of Bloomberg period too. I mean, areas that were centers of nightlife suddenly were getting shut down or hamstrung because some newcomer wanted all the benefits of a hip neighborhood but none of the 'inconveniences' that came with it. They would literally stand outside a bar/club with sound meters measuring decibels. Watched it happen to my friend's band in real time where they had to turn the volume down between each song in the set.

nel e nel wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:
nel e nel wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:
Spike Lee wrote:

And then there was the one that literally hit home. Lee said his father, "a great jazz musician," bought a brownstone 46 years ago.

"And the mother******' people moved in last year and called the cops on my father. He's not — he doesn't even play electric bass. It's acoustic. We bought the mother******' house in 1968, and now you call the cops? In 2013?"

Dude, I don't care when my neighbors moved in, if they're playing bass really late at night or stupidly early in the morning on a weekend, and its noise is carrying and keeping me awake, I'm going to call about that, but I'm going to do so after a discussion of, hey, we're neighbors, can we work something out here, as I need to be able to sleep during these hours.

Except that Spike's neighborhood was a bastion of artists and musicians for generations. It's like moving into an apartment over a bar, and calling the cops because people are outside having a cigarette. When one moves into a neighborhood that has a rich history of a particular type of resident, and then you make an effort to try and stamp out that history, people will get their feathers ruffled.

Fort Greene is also home to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Music School, The Paul Robeson Theater, The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, BRIC Arts|Media|Bklyn, UrbanGlass, 651 Arts performing center for African-American presenters, The Irondale Center for Theater, Education, and Outreach, the Mark Morris Dance Center and Lafayette Church. It is home also to Brooklyn Technical High School, one of New York City's most competitive public schools.[citation needed] Pratt Institute, in neighboring Clinton Hill, is one of the leading art schools in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Gr...

There are still noise ordinances though. Just because a neighborhood is known for being filled with weed users doesn't mean I can't call the cops when all I can smell is weed smoke coming in through an open window. And note, I'm talking about an extreme circumstance of "I can't sleep", not "I hate all music, play your stuff elsewhere".

I think the point was that if an acoustic bass is too loud for you then you're in the wrong neighborhood. I think that's a reasonable stance. Just like you're not talking about an extreme circumstance, neither was the original anecdote.

Pretty much. But to continue with the example given: if weed smoke offends you - regardless of the legality of it - why would you knowingly move into a weed smoking neighborhood? That's what this Spike Lee rant thing is all about. People moving into a neighborhood because it's supposed to be hip and cool, and then calling the cops on the hip and cool aspects of it. Also pointing out that when it was primarily a black neighborhood, it didn't get the same access to city resources as it does now that wealthy white folks are moving in.

New York implemented crazy 'quality of life' laws during the end of the Giuliani/beginning of Bloomberg period too. I mean, areas that were centers of nightlife suddenly were getting shut down or hamstrung because some newcomer wanted all the benefits of a hip neighborhood but none of the 'inconveniences' that came with it. They would literally stand outside a bar/club with sound meters measuring decibels. Watched it happen to my friend's band in real time where they had to turn the volume down between each song in the set.

I think it is entirely possible that folks move to neighborhoods because of a combination of economic opportunity and other well-meaning motivations including sincerely wanting to improve a neighborhood. And the fact that some folks wish to demonize that as "gentrification" is, frankly, a little baffling to me.

I bought a gas station in a bad neighborhood because I saw it as an economic opportunity in a neighborhood that was part of an overall revitalization plan. I hired local residents. I cleaned up the property and added value to the neighborhood. And I looked forward to the opening of the Lowe's and retail shopping complex that was part of the redevelopment plan.

Unfortunately, hipsters from freaking Federal Hill (literally miles away and nowhere near where I have my business) complained about how a big box store would "kill the character" of a neighborhood they would never go to anyway. So now, the spot where the Lowes was supposed to go is still an abandoned used car lot where folks conduct heroin deals.

Congratulations and thanks for nothing.

Lowe's doesn't sell Natty Boh, thus the Fed Hill residents saw no incentive for it to exist.

Seth wrote:

Lowe's doesn't sell Natty Boh, thus the Fed Hill residents saw no incentive for it to exist.

I think the only reason they tolerate my gas station is because I sell American Spirits.

SocialChameleon wrote:
Seth wrote:

Hypatian did you seriously just write a post about how much it sucks to be warmly accepted by drunk, hetero, non-trans* people? Because wow.

Being treated like a novelty sideshow is hardly being 'warmly accepted'.

This. We certainly did not feel warmly accepted in any way, what we felt was really f*cking creeped out. Hence, moving on to other places that didn't have this problem.

If you want to be warmly accepting of people you treat them as people, not as curiosities. We were there to hang out with friends and have a few drinks in a place where people wouldn't make a big deal out of a bunch of trans people getting together. That's why we were at a gay bar and not any old bar. Having people basically coming up to us and saying "I see that you are different from other people" is exactly what we were trying to avoid.

Paleocon wrote:

I think it is entirely possible that folks move to neighborhoods because of a combination of economic opportunity and other well-meaning motivations including sincerely wanting to improve a neighborhood. And the fact that some folks wish to demonize that as "gentrification" is, frankly, a little baffling to me.

I bought a gas station in a bad neighborhood because I saw it as an economic opportunity in a neighborhood that was part of an overall revitalization plan. I hired local residents. I cleaned up the property and added value to the neighborhood. And I looked forward to the opening of the Lowe's and retail shopping complex that was part of the redevelopment plan.

Unfortunately, hipsters from freaking Federal Hill (literally miles away and nowhere near where I have my business) complained about how a big box store would "kill the character" of a neighborhood they would never go to anyway. So now, the spot where the Lowes was supposed to go is still an abandoned used car lot where folks conduct heroin deals.

Congratulations and thanks for nothing.

Those hipsters would be an expression of gentrification more than an attempt to prevent gentrification. People who live in a community want jobs. They want convenient access to affordable food and housing. They want their lives, and the lives of people around them, to get better.

Imagine that the neighborhood improves slowly over time, and you in your way are contributing to that, hiring local residents, cleaning things up, participating in local community projects to further improve things. Maybe you move closer to the business because the area is starting to look up, and you feel pride in having been a part of that.

And then those hipsters from Federal Hill start moving into the area, since it's still "edgy" but not so edgy that it isn't safe. On the one hand, business improves. On the other, as the locals get pushed out, you stop being able to hire locals, because they don't live there any more. Your property taxes go up. And up. And that community you had a hand in improving isn't there any more. You start getting the side-eye from the locals because you don't fit in with their crowd.

That's gentrification.

There's another form of interference, which is in *some* ways more like the Lowe's thing, and which people have talked about above. When "urban redevelopment" projects are done in ways that line the pocketbooks of outsiders in ways that don't improve the situation of the local population. Under the aegis of reducing urban blight, the city decides to build a major new hockey aren in a historically poor black part of town. This doesn't support that community, it just sits in a corner of that area. Eminent domain is used to clear the space. Businesses are brought in that are seasonal to begin with and won't employ the locals on top of that. And the locals are still sitting there looking for funds for a community center, or a park, or for old dilapidated tenement blocks to be replaced with something people can live in or work in.

I wouldn't call that form gentrification, but it's another form of "urban redevelopment" that marginalized communities are understandably wary of. (And the scenario I describe above, yeah, that's here in Pittsburgh. And yeah, there was a lot of noise from community leaders in that part of town asking why no money was being spent on things that would benefit the people who lived there in any way, while ridiculous amounts of money were being provided by the city to support the Penguins' new arena.)

Paleocon wrote:

I think it is entirely possible that folks move to neighborhoods because of a combination of economic opportunity and other well-meaning motivations including sincerely wanting to improve a neighborhood. And the fact that some folks wish to demonize that as "gentrification" is, frankly, a little baffling to me.

I bought a gas station in a bad neighborhood because I saw it as an economic opportunity in a neighborhood that was part of an overall revitalization plan. I hired local residents. I cleaned up the property and added value to the neighborhood. And I looked forward to the opening of the Lowe's and retail shopping complex that was part of the redevelopment plan.

Unfortunately, hipsters from freaking Federal Hill (literally miles away and nowhere near where I have my business) complained about how a big box store would "kill the character" of a neighborhood they would never go to anyway. So now, the spot where the Lowes was supposed to go is still an abandoned used car lot where folks conduct heroin deals.

Congratulations and thanks for nothing.

Except Spike Lee's dad isn't some hipster who lives miles away. He's been living in that neighborhood for 40-odd years. If one wants a nice quite neighborhood to just sleep and eat in, then don't move to a cultural center of art and music.

EDIT: to add to Hyp's example, we had a similar experience with Barclay's Center here in downtown Brooklyn.

Hypatian wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

I think it is entirely possible that folks move to neighborhoods because of a combination of economic opportunity and other well-meaning motivations including sincerely wanting to improve a neighborhood. And the fact that some folks wish to demonize that as "gentrification" is, frankly, a little baffling to me.

I bought a gas station in a bad neighborhood because I saw it as an economic opportunity in a neighborhood that was part of an overall revitalization plan. I hired local residents. I cleaned up the property and added value to the neighborhood. And I looked forward to the opening of the Lowe's and retail shopping complex that was part of the redevelopment plan.

Unfortunately, hipsters from freaking Federal Hill (literally miles away and nowhere near where I have my business) complained about how a big box store would "kill the character" of a neighborhood they would never go to anyway. So now, the spot where the Lowes was supposed to go is still an abandoned used car lot where folks conduct heroin deals.

Congratulations and thanks for nothing.

Those hipsters would be an expression of gentrification more than an attempt to prevent gentrification. People who live in a community want jobs. They want convenient access to affordable food and housing. They want their lives, and the lives of people around them, to get better.

Imagine that the neighborhood improves slowly over time, and you in your way are contributing to that, hiring local residents, cleaning things up, participating in local community projects to further improve things. Maybe you move closer to the business because the area is starting to look up, and you feel pride in having been a part of that.

And then those hipsters from Federal Hill start moving into the area, since it's still "edgy" but not so edgy that it isn't safe. On the one hand, business improves. On the other, as the locals get pushed out, you stop being able to hire locals, because they don't live there any more. Your property taxes go up. And up. And that community you had a hand in improving isn't there any more. You start getting the side-eye from the locals because you don't fit in with their crowd.

That's gentrification.

There's another form of interference, which is in *some* ways more like the Lowe's thing, and which people have talked about above. When "urban redevelopment" projects are done in ways that line the pocketbooks of outsiders in ways that don't improve the situation of the local population. Under the aegis of reducing urban blight, the city decides to build a major new hockey aren in a historically poor black part of town. This doesn't support that community, it just sits in a corner of that area. Eminent domain is used to clear the space. Businesses are brought in that are seasonal to begin with and won't employ the locals on top of that. And the locals are still sitting there looking for funds for a community center, or a park, or for old dilapidated tenement blocks to be replaced with something people can live in or work in.

I wouldn't call that form gentrification, but it's another form of "urban redevelopment" that marginalized communities are understandably wary of. (And the scenario I describe above, yeah, that's here in Pittsburgh. And yeah, there was a lot of noise from community leaders in that part of town asking why no money was being spent on things that would benefit the people who lived there in any way, while ridiculous amounts of money were being provided by the city to support the Penguins' new arena.)

My point is that the term "gentrification" is a pretty blunt object that just boils down to a pejorative applied to economic development that makes the accuser butt hurt.

Check cashing places in Baltimore objected to Bank of America coming into the Charles Village area and called it "gentrification". The overpriced hardware store in Hampden did the same for Lowes. It is funny how folks with a vested interest in blight tend to overuse that term.