Gentrification

[Rand /pol/]

Google defines gentrification as

the process of renovating and improving a house or district so that it conforms to middle-class taste.

There are many benefits and negatives to gentrification, like if you're a home/property owner in an area getting gentrified, but many people see it as destroying the local culture. What do you think?

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

Are you seriously trusting Google on this?

 

[Rand /pol/]

Are you seriously trusting Google on this?

Seems like a good definition to me

 

[Khayyam]

I have to say no. Lots of short term benefits, far outweighed by long term ones.

What tends to happen when an area is gentrified is that it makes an area a more appealing place to live, but the price of living there then skyrockets. It could make the people who were there to start with wealthier when it comes to sell their homes (though not always, more often compulsory purchase befoe any price hikes is what happens) but it puts the area far beyond what the working and/or underclass who previously lived there can afford.

Which leads to the population emmigrating outwards, making another area more shitty and drawing the workforce away from the newly gentrified hub. Look at major capital cities like London where despite "waiting" payments that put wages several thousand pounds/euros above the national average, most people just simply can't afford to live there and there's a lot of mid-tier jobs like Nurses, Teachers, Civil Servants etc with a shortage of prospective employees (before anyone says commute bear in mind the average commute to a capital city in Europe is about two and a half hours one way, and some like London, Dublin and Berlin are several hours longer still).

The place I grew up was gentrified, and now it's full of wealthy foreign doctors and lawyers. The native population have quite literally have had to emmigrate elsewhere in the country since our town was turned into a swankhy commuter suburb.

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

Gentrification is inevitable where there's potential money to be made. I'm sure plenty of rustbelt towns would love to have money pumped into their decaying town so they could get regular jobs with benefits instead of selling t-shirts roadside and collecting rusty aluminum cans.

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

Whenever I hear the word "gentrification" it makes me think of a place with people dressed in old-timey clothing with hats and fancy mustaches.

I dunno, I feel like there's a happy medium between gentrification and leaving shitty ghetto areas the way they are.

 

[AnOminous]

It's good if you're young, you have an income, and you have equity in wherever you're living. If you can't afford to live there, pull up stakes, sell for a huge windfall, and move somewhere else.

It's less good if you don't have equity. In that case, you still have to move, or step up your game and start making more money. Still, it's at worst an inconvenience.

The people who are genuinely fucked are elderly and/or disabled renters on fixed incomes. Now their rent is going up. They can no longer afford to live where they were expecting to die, and being on a fixed income, they also can't afford to move.

In general, though, is it good that a place full of crackhouses, liquor stores, pawn shops, and abandoned firetraps turns into a place full of actual value? Of course. It's just not good for everyone and should be done more fairly.

 

[ColtWalker1847]

I'm sure plenty of rustbelt towns would love to have money pumped into their decaying town so they could get regular jobs with benefits instead of selling t-shirts roadside and collecting rusty aluminum cans.

Ask the old timers that live in the charming western mountain lake/river towns that had their mills close in the 80's and are now being overrun with California refugees.

Imagine a land of overpriced coffee places, art studios, and "quirky" bistros with fake logging equipment bolted to the walls. Where a crappy slapped-together townhouse with no yard costs half a mil. That is what these towns look like in the aftermath.

Cookie-cutter generic garbage trying to pass itself off as authentic. So, yeah, California.

P.S. The locals only saw a tiny fraction of the money from any of that development. It was all big real estate and development companies that did it and their big city construction contractors. I suppose some of the locals sold them some t-shirts and collected their cans before they got bought out. But permanent jobs. Nope.

 

[Rand /pol/]

Ask the old timers that live in the charming western mountain lake/river towns that had their mills close in the 80's and are now being overrun with California refugees.

Imagine a land of overpriced coffee places, art studios, and "quirky" bistros with fake logging equipment bolted to the walls. Where a crappy slapped-together townhouse with no yard costs half a mil. That is what these towns look like in the aftermath.

Cookie-cutter generic garbage trying to pass itself off as authentic. So, yeah, California.

P.S. The locals only saw a tiny fraction of the money from any of that development. It was all big real estate and development companies that did it and their big city construction contractors. I suppose some of the locals sold them some t-shirts and collected their cans before they got bought out. But permanent jobs. Nope.

This is seemingly what happened to about a dozen Colorado towns last time I was there. Small towns across America have their own culture, they don't need more restraunts to revive economically.

 

[ColtWalker1847]

This is seemingly what happened to about a dozen Colorado towns last time I was there. Small towns across America have their own culture, they don't need more restraunts to revive economically.

They shouldn't have had to close the mills to begin with. That whole Spotted Owl anti-logging shit from the 70s/80s was a huge mistake in hindsight.

And now we are on fire constantly because the businesses that removed the excess fuel from the forests are long gone. Done in by political activist eco-nazi retards being given leadership positions in the USFS/BLM/Etc for decades.

Good work dipshits. Ya ruined the environment. But at least you got a 1500 square foot lakefront condo in Strabucksville out of the deal.

 

[Clones of Alex Jones]

I got four words for you.

1776 will commence again! Fuck those Hypocritical Hipster California Bastards spreading their failed state across "FREEDOM-LAND!!!"

Free guns and crack for everybody!

 

[dopy]

i realize renovation is far more expensive than knocking down/rebuilding, but i'd rather spend an extra buck on an old brick than have some soyboard soywall and soysheetrock plastic soyville soytown soyshit fake soy stupid fuck soy bitch fuck shit fake shit replace it ,
to be honest.

tl;dr: there's nothing "old" about "old town" in chicago anymore, and This Makes Me Frustrated, Alot.

 

[An Ghost]

(((JEWgle)))

Here’s a short clip from a movie that is in the congressional library for historical and cultural significance.

If you can’t/won’t watch it, the gist is step zero in gentrification is to make property in neighborhoods cheap to buy up before flipping everything. Lower property values by increasing crime before kicking everybody left out. Always the case or even true? No but damn do I love this movie.

 

[dunbrine47]

Gentrification is good for producing some tasty salt.
Example: Watching older people sperg in comments on how Times Square was great back in the day before it got turned into "LITERALLY DISNEYLAND REEEEE"

 

[Black Waltz]

I don't like it because it means more starbucks guzzling homos will move into my neighborhood

 

[Toucan]

we should be building death camps for hipsters, not neighbourhoods.

 

[Joan Nyan]

Gentrification's great, you get overpriced coffee, soy-based ethnic food, high paying tech jobs, a majority White population, and a feeling of smug superiority to the rest of the country. A little bit of something for everyone. Gotta watch out for the human shit and HIV needles littering the streets but overall I give it an 8.8/10.

 

[GloryHole Stalker]

I used to live in Philly, and a nearby neighborhood was being gentrified. One day I read in a local paper that in a section of this newly gentrified neighborhood, someone had been stabbed to death on the front steps of one of these hipster faggots homes... oh the wailing... "I can't believe something like this would ever happen here"... fuckin re-tards.

 

[Piss Clam]

Ask the old timers that live in the charming western mountain lake/river towns that had their mills close in the 80's and are now being overrun with California refugees.

Imagine a land of overpriced coffee places, art studios, and "quirky" bistros with fake logging equipment bolted to the walls. Where a crappy slapped-together townhouse with no yard costs half a mil. That is what these towns look like in the aftermath.

Cookie-cutter generic garbage trying to pass itself off as authentic. So, yeah, California.

P.S. The locals only saw a tiny fraction of the money from any of that development. It was all big real estate and development companies that did it and their big city construction contractors. I suppose some of the locals sold them some t-shirts and collected their cans before they got bought out. But permanent jobs. Nope.

I lived in Montana for a few years and oh boy did the native Montana people hate the California people moving in and driving up house prices.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

In my city, places regarded as scary ghettos you stay the fuck out of are now places you probably want to visit. Some of the same businesses (including black owned businesses) are still there and are doing well, since the gentrifiers liked that part of the neighborhood, and those businesses didn't care their clientele changed. Although the local hipsters are often obnoxious, they are far more preferable compared to the Crips and Vice Lords who used to rule those streets. Those hoodlums got pushed out further to neighborhoods which are right now gentrifying too.

My problem with gentrification is that local governments still won't spend money to fix the local problems (the schools are still bad/corrupt, etc.). Especially in neighborhoods which aren't gentrifying fast, which in my city is where the Hispanics live. I have nothing against them, there's lots of hard-working people who live there and are affected by the local gangs and people who exploit the system, but that part of the city is just as "real" as the overpriced apartments and restaurants where 20 years ago you wouldn't ever want to visit after sunset (just like how you don't want to go to said Hispanic ghetto after sundown, outside of the main streets where the police are always there).

The problem is the city has gotten very, very expensive in the past decade, which has caused very bad traffic, which has caused stupid "solutions" from the local government to solve it. I hear it's pushed crime to the suburbs/exurbs too, looking at the increase in gangs in nearby areas in this time (gangs like the Vice Lords and Sur-13 are moving to these counties because suburban counties don't have shit compared to the city for anti-gang resources).

I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who's lived in rural areas for a very long time. I'd never move to these gentrified areas since the taxes are pretty retarded compared to local taxes and I know my rural area will be taken over by suburban sprawl soon enough (it's already begun).