What's Wrong With Gentrification? (The Displacement Myth)

[Gordo]

Originally Posted by Policy Wonk

You can't support a grocery store selling only Wonder Bread and Cheerios and dealing with food stamps in their various electronic forms is a pain in the ass.

I don't doubt that this is true, but it's amazing how many tiny corner stores now advertise that they accept EBT cards.

[Raining Inside]

Originally Posted by 10023

Existing businesses like pawn shops, liquor stores and check cashing places? I don't think that's a different thing at all - displacing these in favor of a real grocery store and a nice bistro or two is exactly the kind of positive change I'm talking about. Oftentimes these new businesses are much needed and appreciated by the current residents, there just needed to be some gentrification to get the neighborhood over the hump of becoming economically compelling for such businesses to set up shop.

You forgot to mention bail bonds. There is a small area in Dallas just south of downtown that has a higher concentration of bail bond and liquor stores than I have ever seen any where. This would be a good area for gentrification because it is blighted and close to downtown.

[arbeiter]

I don't buy and never have bought that gentrification displaces local businesses. I know the article is about residents, but the argument is made that both happen.

In New York, bodegas are effectively a racket, there are no SPAR's or Tesco Metros to compete. There are so many empty storefronts in pre-gentrification neighborhoods that it's not like they're fighting for space. In Greenpoint, the Burger King became the Starbucks. Hardly something to cry over.

[Qubert]

I'd take the OP's assertion one step further and add that there are also two primary benefical side effects from gentrification for the poor:

1) Rich people are the ones holding up the massive system of entitlements NYS has created since WWII. When the city was on the brink during the 1970s, most of the "Working Class" had long since began fleeing for greener pastures. It was the rich/wall st that stuck around and helped NY get it turned around by the 1980s. Rich people support the generous benefits and services NYC offers and from which the poor most benefit.

2) Rich people create more retail and service oppertunites which are a market built for the poor/immigrant class. There is a reason NY and London are Global immigration capitals, and it's becuase the financial/corporate power concentrated in these cities helps to create an entire economy of resturants, entrepenures, dry cleaners, stores, maids, craftsmen, etc.

[alex1]

regarding the premise of the article, I'd agree with Crawford that the rules that apply here in nYc do not apply in my former hometown of Chicago. To be more precise, the speed of turnover doesn't happen as quickly in nYc as it does in Chicago because of things associated with rent control, density and a successful public housing program.

Gentrification is inevitable. I would imagine we all want healthy cities, but displacement isn't a byproduct of a healthy city. It's a a byproduct of an unhealthy structure.

I believe that the overall structure you see in nYc is unique and has helped the city become one of the safer American cities.

[alex1]

.

[alex1]

Originally Posted by Qubert

I'd take the OP's assertion one step further and add that there are also two primary benefical side effects from gentrification for the poor:

1) Rich people are the ones holding up the massive system of entitlements NYS has created since WWII. When the city was on the brink during the 1970s, most of the "Working Class" had long since began fleeing for greener pastures. It was the rich/wall st that stuck around and helped NY get it turned around by the 1980s. Rich people support the generous benefits and services NYC offers and from which the poor most benefit.

2) Rich people create more retail and service oppertunites which are a market built for the poor/immigrant class. There is a reason NY and London are Global immigration capitals, and it's becuase the financial/corporate power concentrated in these cities helps to create an entire economy of resturants, entrepenures, dry cleaners, stores, maids, craftsmen, etc.

oh my. Trickle down, trickle down.

Obviously Wall St. created a lot of wealth which helped spur gentrification in Manhattan but let's not be too simplistic about it. Healthy cities are more then just wealth. Great neighborhoods the world over are teaming with immigrants irregardless of corporate power. Those neighborhoods create a symbiotic relationship with the rest of the city in different ways which are not predicated on corporate wealth or Wall St. Sometimes these neighborhoods become islands within the city at large. Or micro economic systems that exist on their own. At best, this is a model that creates wealth and distributes it within the community at large. Obviously, some groups are better at the distribution aspect of things compared to others. It's not a topic that can be debated well in written form.

at the macro level, New York City was always going to be fine due to it's higher education institutions that brought in the brightest and best. It's renowned art culture also attracted an insatiable amount of actors, artists and other creatives from all over the world to help power the largest ad agencies and help produce Broadway plays and art galleries which in turn brought in the tourists in throngs.

“New York has always been going to hell but somehow it never gets there” - Rober Persig quote.

[BTinSF]

The key is in the last paragraph: "Gentrification—especially when coupled with intelligent urban policy . . . ."

You have to have the intelligent urban policy along with the influx of hipsters. It's one thing if individuals move in and start fixing things up. It's another if developers move in and start buying up buildings, evicting long-time residents and either raising them for new construction or gut-renovating them for high priced lofts.

And the city itself can do damage. I argue San Francisco has determinidly put the Tenderloin off-limits to the middle class by concentrating every drug rehab program and homeless shelter there as well as most of the city's parolees and registered sex offenders.

[McBane]

all cities should strive to make their neighborhoods as nice as possible. the push to make gentrification something sinister is just an excuse i think; people think they are entitled to live in their neighborhoods for life and that their neighborhoods should revolve around their demographic (i.e race, religion, economic status) forever; when in reality, history shows that external factors constantly change a neighborhoods character, and subsequently those who live in these neighborhoods are forced to leave.

Let's not forgot that many poor neighborhoods - gentrifying or otherwise - were not always poor neighborhoods. black neighborhoods were not always black neighborhoods, hispanic, jewish, chinese, irish, etc. etc. anyone here remember white flight? anyone remember riots that destroyed neighborhoods?

do you think harlem, for example, was built specifically for poor blacks? it was a wealthy, rural waspy area that urbanized and gave way to irish, jews, italians, and eventually blacks and hispanics. if harlem gentrifies and poor blacks are priced out then so what? it would be just another chapter in harlem's history. and it wouldn't be the first time that a popular nyc ethnic enclave has become history (see little italy).

people want an end to all the things that make their neighborhoods crap - like drug dealing and crime, abandoned homes, empty, trash- and weed-strewn lots, crumbling homes, and a lack of retail - but still want to maintain the low property values that are a direct result of the crime and blight. sorry, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

i hate to be a dick about things, but shouldn't we be more concerned about nice neighborhoods going down the drain than blighted areas becoming revitalized?

[llamaorama]

I agree with you 100% of course. But I do believe that change is only bad when it happens too fast and people get stuck in limbo.

[BTinSF]

Originally Posted by arbeiter

I don't buy and never have bought that gentrification displaces local businesses. I know the article is about residents, but the argument is made that both happen.

In New York, bodegas are effectively a racket, there are no SPAR's or Tesco Metros to compete. There are so many empty storefronts in pre-gentrification neighborhoods that it's not like they're fighting for space. In Greenpoint, the Burger King became the Starbucks. Hardly something to cry over.

I can't speak for NY, but in San Francisco that issue is complicated. What the bodegas compete for is customers, not space. If chains like Tesco or even Seven-Eleven move in, they often have better quality at lower prices and win most of the business. Not that's necessarily bad, but if you want to keep the bodegas alive, it's bad.

Many people do want to keep the bodegas alive here so we have severe limits on "formula retail" (defined, as I recall, as any retail business with more than 12 locations) in "neighborhood shopping districts".

Here in SF, your Starbucks and BK are likely to trade places because the number of locations where chain fast food is an allowable use is limited. I, myself, am proud to say I helped stop another storefront from going that route on my street because we already had a Taco Bell, Burger King, Quiznos, McDonald's and Round Table Pizza. We also had lots of trash blowing down the street. So we filed a protest with the Planning Commission and won. Now a new chain fast food place can open only at an existing fast food location. Quiznos recently closed (isn't there one on every block?) so there's an opening.

[10023]

Originally Posted by KB0679

Many of these neighborhoods can already support a basic, low-cost grocer with fresh produce but they are simply underserved.

Says who?

If they could support one, there would be one. Grocery chains don't intentionally give up opportunities to earn profits.

Originally Posted by Policy Wonk

The economics of grocery stores are pretty harsh - and highly, highly, dependent on high margin sales to cross-subsidize low-cost staples.

You can't support a grocery store selling only Wonder Bread and Cheerios and dealing with food stamps in their various electronic forms is a pain in the ass.

^ This.

[urbanactivist]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Gentrification leads to Chipotle, Jimmy John's, Godiva, Starbucks, Jamba Juice, and Barnes & Noble on every friggin corner, and it's starting to get kind of lame.

If gentrification didn't come with the chain mentality, I wouldn't mind. If gentrification, for example, meant rich people wearing tophats & monocles and driving Rolls Royces while saying things like "Egad, what foolhardy people are these!" while looking at the scum around them then that would be kind of cool. But instead, gentrification consists of people wearing gym pants while eating burritos at Chipotle after an evening sitting and staring at their laptops on a couch at Barnes & Noble.

Yeah, but that's in no way the fault of the gentrifiers... that's the fault of citizens continuing to want and choose generic chain stores instead of investing their money in mom and pop businesses. Although chain stores don't thrill me, I support gentrification because it's much better to have a real neighborhood than a collection of crackhouses and liquormarts. So if you want gentrification to happen without the "chain mentality" you have to convince more people to avoid chain stores.

[fflint]

Far too many high-quality rowhouses, corner stores and walkable, transit-ready neighborhoods and business districts in US central cities have been destroyed over the last few decades, in an unconscionable and massive waste of our nation's treasure. Whether by outrageously short-sighted and destructive 'urban redevelopment' schemes, or just the malignance and neglect of past and existing residents, far too much of the investment our forefathers made in our cityscapes has disappeared.

When neighborhoods and districts and urban cores are leveled or allowed to disintegrate and disappear, there are no more returns on the private and civic investment that went into those places, that went into the long-term health of the city. Fallow land, unsalvageable, abandoned and crumbling structures and streets and parks--what the fuck kind of long-term survival strategy is that, America? Every generation is stuck spending its money rebuilding what has been allowed to collapse, while other soceities in other lands get to spend that money on other vital interests?

If gentrification will preserve a city's urban fabric for the long term then I'm all for it. Cities must conserve past civic and private investment and focus on how to add value, not allow value to implode and disappear. Existing users' specific, short term social, racial and economic reasons for opposing long-term conservation of the urban fabric must be balanced with the long-term survival of the city itself.

[Scottolini]

Originally Posted by fflint

Far too many high-quality rowhouses, corner stores and walkable, transit-ready neighborhoods and business districts in US central cities have been destroyed over the last few decades, in an unconscionable and massive waste of our nation's treasure. Whether by outrageously short-sighted and destructive 'urban redevelopment' schemes, or just the malignance and neglect of past and existing residents, far too much of the investment our forefathers made in our cityscapes has disappeared.

When neighborhoods and districts and urban cores are leveled or allowed to disintegrate and disappear, there are no more returns on the private and civic investment that went into those places, that went into the long-term health of the city. Fallow land, unsalvageable, abandoned and crumbling structures and streets and parks--what the fuck kind of long-term survival strategy is that, America? Every generation is stuck spending its money rebuilding what has been allowed to collapse, while other soceities in other lands get to spend that money on other vital interests?

If gentrification will preserve a city's urban fabric for the long term then I'm all for it. Cities must conserve past civic and private investment and focus on how to add value, not allow value to implode and disappear. Existing users' specific, short term social, racial and economic reasons for opposing long-term conservation of the urban fabric must be balanced with the long-term survival of the city itself.

Nice post.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by fflint

Far too many high-quality rowhouses, corner stores and walkable, transit-ready neighborhoods and business districts in US central cities have been destroyed over the last few decades, in an unconscionable and massive waste of our nation's treasure. Whether by outrageously short-sighted and destructive 'urban redevelopment' schemes, or just the malignance and neglect of past and existing residents, far too much of the investment our forefathers made in our cityscapes has disappeared.

When neighborhoods and districts and urban cores are leveled or allowed to disintegrate and disappear, there are no more returns on the private and civic investment that went into those places, that went into the long-term health of the city. Fallow land, unsalvageable, abandoned and crumbling structures and streets and parks--what the fuck kind of long-term survival strategy is that, America? Every generation is stuck spending its money rebuilding what has been allowed to collapse, while other soceities in other lands get to spend that money on other vital interests?

If gentrification will preserve a city's urban fabric for the long term then I'm all for it. Cities must conserve past civic and private investment and focus on how to add value, not allow value to implode and disappear. Existing users' specific, short term social, racial and economic reasons for opposing long-term conservation of the urban fabric must be balanced with the long-term survival of the city itself.

^ Agreed. Well said

[tallboy66]

Originally Posted by 10023

Existing businesses like pawn shops, liquor stores and check cashing places? I don't think that's a different thing at all - displacing these in favor of a real grocery store and a nice bistro or two is exactly the kind of positive change I'm talking about. Oftentimes these new businesses are much needed and appreciated by the current residents, there just needed to be some gentrification to get the neighborhood over the hump of becoming economically compelling for such businesses to set up shop.

What the Urban politician said.

[Policy Wonk]

Originally Posted by alex1

Great neighborhoods the world over are teaming with immigrants irregardless of corporate power. Those neighborhoods create a symbiotic relationship with the rest of the city in different ways which are not predicated on corporate wealth or Wall St.

"Great Neighborhoods" don't have single digit employment rates, rampant gang activity and third world poverty rates.

The cold politically incorrect truth of gentrification is what is lost was rarely of much value to begin with. Unless your a first-wave hipster raging against your Long Island suburban upbringing/

[Okstate]

I like Chipotle

Here in Portland "chains" have no correlation with gentrification what so ever. Most of our recent gentrified neighborhoods have the lowest chain per capita ratios in the city as far as retail strips go.

Examples being: Alberta, Mississippi, Hawthorne, Burnside, Division...

[vid]

Originally Posted by Policy Wonk

The cold politically incorrect truth of gentrification is what is lost was rarely of much value to begin with.

The people who lived there might disagree. (The cold politically incorrect truth of that being people like you don't give a shit about them.)