Quote:
Originally Posted by Drybrain
Quote:
Originally Posted by essaysmith
I walked by the rectory a couple of days ago and noticed the upstairs ceiling is stripped to the beams with light bulbs hanging by wires. I was afraid it was in the process of being demolished, glad to hear it is being developed. On a side note, I noticed several instances of sidewalk chalk complaining about gentrification of the neighbourhood, but then I walked by some grand old mansions that were obviously there before the area changed. So basically complaining about returning the neighbourhood to it's roots?
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The question of who a neighbourhood "belongs" to is always interesting. Within the living memory of most people, Gottingen and Brunswick have been run-down streets in a run-down neighbourhood. If you look at the architectural legacy though (well, at least on Brunswick, Gottingen has been really physically altered) that wasn't always the case. Brunswick reminds me of Jarvis Street in Toronto--full of low-income housing and social services, and the most marginalized of the city's poor. But also pockmarked with grand old mansions, because it used to be the avenue of choice for the city's wealthiest citizens.
Parkdale in Toronto is the same, or many parts of, for example, Brooklyn, which were traditionally black for most of the 20th century, but not in the 19th.
I think gentrification can have many positives but it has to be handled sensitively, obviously. While it's false to say the North End has always been working-class or poor, uniformly, it certainly has been in recent decades.
I'll have to check out the rectory; I hadn't heard anything about it one way or the other. |
It's interesting when one views it from a historical perspective. The main complaints about gentrification are based in the here and now, that people of lower income will potentially lose their ability to live in "their" neighborhood - totally understandable and easy to empathize with.
But as mentioned the neighborhood wasn't always as such. It doesn't take much imagination to see that it was a very affluent area at one point in time, with the quality of the older buildings comprising the majority of the evidence. At the time these buildings were built, the less-affluent people lived in another neighborhood. Such as it goes with the passage of time - as newer neighborhoods came about, the affluent built more elaborate homes there, and eventually their previous neighborhood becomes less desirable to the highest income earners and more affordable to the middle income people. Decades pass, value decreases until finally it becomes a neighborhood affordable by earners on the lower end of the income scale. Really, other than when government intervened and created low-income neighborhoods (though still related), who lives where always been mostly about land value.
IMHO, gentrification is just a reflection of the reversal of the land value. The old neighborhood starts to become desirable again, old houses are renovated, new higher quality buildings are built, new businesses are drawn to the area and -bingo- gentrification has occurred. The plus side is, of course, that the neighborhood becomes nicer, buildings are preserved, and presumably the neighborhood becomes safer. The down side is people being pushed out of their neighborhood because they just can't afford it anymore.
Actually, I came back to this topic when I found
this on the archives site about Judge Jonathan McCully's House at 2507 Brunswick Street. From the archives site:
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Jonathan McCully was a lawyer, journalist, senator and judge. He was also a Father of Confederation. Judge McCully’s house on Brunswick Street was in the fashionable residential area of Halifax at the time of Confederation.
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Cripes, the house of a Father of Confederation of all things. From wikipedia, it appears that he died in that very house.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_McCully
When you look at the history of that area, it would almost seem a shame if it didn't get its chance to be rejuvenated.
Interesting stuff.
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