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A couple of years ago, the Times did a piece on Big Apple. The article includes
a wonderful slideshow of photos, featuring the sort of person who shops at Big
Apple, the sort of person that is also vanishing from New York, replaced by the
svelte and distracted, the hollow men and women, tapping away at iPhones in
sterilized Whole Foods aisles.
Yet this if you can make it here you can make it anywhere pull is arguably not
whats driving the generalization of gentrification. Rather, it is the idea of big
city suburbanization, or more exactly: the hybridization of city vitality with
the comforts of suburbanization, creating for a kind of third place called suburbanity.
In many respects, this is not surprising, as the most recent return-to-city
movement is largely fueled by younger suburbanites who are tired of missing
out on big city action. Not the action per se of Charles Bukowskis L.A. or Patti
Smiths New York, but the action of, well, Chandler, Kramer, and
Carrie. Said Alan Ehrenhalt, author of The Great Inversion and the Future of
American Cities:
This is the generation, dont forget, that watched Seinfeld and Sex and the City
and Friends usually from sofas safe in the confines of the suburbs. I think they
find suburban life less exciting than urban life. While they are in a single or
childless situation, theyre particularly eager to try it.
And try it they should: varied experiences make varied lives make more richly
contextualized societies. But the rub here is that the mentality sewn from the
confines of the suburbs is not being sacrificed for the beautifully unnerving
experience that is the real of city life, but rather that creative class enclaves
are increasingly being appropriated into the domesticated lifestyle embodied
by traditional suburbia.
Of course John Lennons Greenwich Village this is not. And this bodes ill for
alpha dog cities in that vanilla-ing a people and a place is a death knell to
collective urgency, if only because comfort puts to sleep the burn that has
traditionally sparked the next generation of ideas. Writes Sarah Schulman,
author of The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination:
Gentrification is a replacement process. So it is where diversity is replaced by
homogeneity, and this, I believe, undermines urbanity and changes the way we
think because we have much less access to a wide variety of points of view. We
are diminished by it. So literally, the range of our minds reach is much more
limited because of gentrification.
But again: lest we think this is all a mistake, or simply the byproducts of
shifting demographics or economic and cultural change. Rather, it is the point.
It is todays path toward urban renaissance. And its a path creating for a suburbanity that is emerging when the generalization of gentrification meets the
gentrification of the mind.
So, what does this mean for the future of urban development? My guess is that
there will be a growing unhappiness with sub-urbanity thats going to create for
a lot of people left wanting, be they young suburbanites longing for urban
authenticity or indigenous urbanites who are tired of the schtick. As such, cities
would do well to prepare for the return-of-the-city movement, which
means prioritizing urban integrity and community capital against the
temptations of the gentrifying machine.
Richey Piiparinen is a writer and policy researcher based in Cleveland. He is coeditor of Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology. Read more from him at his
blog and at Rust Belt Chic.
Lead photo by Liz Ferla, flickr user lism.
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Subjects:
Urban Issues
Demographics
Housing
Suburbs
Policy
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Gentrification? Or just plain old ethnic cleansing?
Submitted by Martinzehr on Tue, 12/31/2013 - 11:24.
Have been seeing this in the Bay Area for some time. This is just the forced
relocation of some minorities in favor of others. On the outs right now?
Surprisingly African-Americans have less influence in California than ever
before. San Francisco is ordering Chinese to go. And Column B does not include
Black people. Other cities in the NorthWest promote their radicalism but are
simple templates for "gentrification with a human face". Cops patrol Oakland
like a war zone, San Francisco prices for rent push out "those" people and the
elites get to sanctimoniously cast their bread upon the Bay waters. And Antioch
gets the spillover.
It is an End Game.
Submitted by MarketAndChurch on Fri, 02/01/2013 - 04:06.
I think Anthony Bourdain sort of touches upon
this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42Sx5rvxAgQ
Those busyheads at city-hall are so entrenched in value-creation over jobcreation, much of their audacity is reserved for the art of attracting venture
capital, from public and private sources alike. It isn't their job to create
jobs(rather to promote in full force the best environment that allows for private
sector job creation), but they are very often using such guise to give handouts
to the intellectual class who give them validity.
Many often enter the city as a serf, and only leave when they no longer choose
to remain one. And of course, a large sum live off of their parents, which was
especially the case when I lived off of Market And Church in SF and now here in
the Portland area where a high number of youth are living a fantasy. And I
more and more max lines. People are as dependent on their cars as they ever
were, and the transit market has remained largely the same for the last
decade. So, Vancouver is in a position to change, and that change is not limited
by its share of the car-driving public; Sherwood, Hillsboro, Wilsonville, are
exception to your point. And if Oregon continues on too progressive a route and
causes Nike and other businesses to leave, then you will see a shift to
Vancouver. Smart growth has its limitations, there are downsides to it, and
Vancouver is in a position to capitalize on this.
Strictly numbers
Submitted by Exile on Tue, 02/05/2013 - 19:10.
The cost of transport/house price determining model is flat. It fails to address
what is driving re-occupation of urban areas, and the failings of suburban life.
Even if I save $X.XX by increasing my per-foot purchasing power by relocating
an hour outside of town, what's my compensation for the two hours a day that
I'm trapped in my car? What about amenities, such as public markets, shopping
districts, a farmers market, etc? those are now an hour away as well. The
comparison doesn't fall down to dollars and cents. There are more than
monetary reasons for such a massive demographic change. Many people are
quite happy with half the house, if they can lose the commute. This is
especially the case, for empty-nest folks, retirees, and people that do not, as
yet have children.
Yes, the urban growth boundary increases pricing on property. It does
something else as well. It makes it so that someone residing in the city, has
ready access to the countryside. It preserves farmland, and preserves family
farms. It allows farmers themselves ready access to amenities inside of cities
as well. It makes for a more efficient transit system, higher levels of mobility for
all users, and more resilience against fuel shocks. You may try to point to
places like Portland as a problem, but you clearly haven't spent much time
there.
The "planning" advocates who love London and NYC and Vancouver and
Portland, are guilty of the "physical determinism" fallacy. They assume that the
density and mass transit are what makes those cities what they are. This is like
assuming anyone can be George Clooney or Claudia Schiffer if they use the
same make-up, clothes and diet. It is similar in its ignorance, to the "cargo cult"
New Guinean jungle tribes who saw amazing white men build an airstrip in the
jungle, following which some magic flying monsters descended and unloaded
cargoes of useful goodies. So the tribesmen proceeded to build facsimiles of
airstrips in the jungle, because obviously that is what the "gods" saw, and
hopefully would send more of the magic flying monsters down.
A transit system is a MEANS, not an end in itself. Making it an end in itself when
it is long since obsolete as a means, has in most cities now worsened the
outcomes in the TRUE "ends" rather than improved them. Transit energy
efficiency is LOWER than the AVERAGE for cars in many cities, and MANY TIMES
LOWER than the energy efficiency of the most efficient cars, or of cars with 2 or
more people on board. Virtually every "van" service in existence today is orders
of magnitude more efficient than mass transit.
households, they are "priced out" of efficient locations anyway, and suffer
LONG travel distances in dire congestion....!
Their houses are far smaller on average and far older on average. The lot size
is exponentially smaller.
Because all the attributes of housing are rationed by price, the end result in the
UK is that only the top 5% of the population actually get to enjoy the sort of
conditions that as much as 90% of people in an affordable US city takes for
granted. Only among the top 5%, is there a genuine choice between a nice
"walkable", transit friendly urban area close to the CBD; or a decent suburban
family home with views of the Green Belt. Everyone else gets the worst of all
worlds: less space, lower quality housing, greater distance from jobs, greater
distance from green space and public amenities.
Europeanification
Submitted by Racaille on Thu, 01/31/2013 - 09:13.
It's not just gentrification, but the "europeanification" of Northeastern and
Great Lakes cities. Where the urban core becomes the most desirable place to
live while the suburbs/exurbs stagnate.
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