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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Mnuchin has backed out of the Saudi Arabian conference next week.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/18/politics/mnuchin-decision-saudi-conference/index.html
Is gentrification generally seen as a good or bad thing?
Oh, bother.
Generally a bad thing unless you are rich and can afford to regularly shop at an overpriced organic food store.
Disgusted, but not surprised
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Then what's the answer? The areas that are most susceptible to Gentrification tend to be older, often historic, neighborhoods, that used to be well off, but due to changing economies and loss of industries, became victims to entrenched poverty.
Residents usually have very little opportunity in the first place, and desperately need new economic drivers, but because of the nature of pervasive poverty, have a hard time creating it themselves.
Edited by megaeliz on Oct 18th 2018 at 1:47:34 PM
I've heard conflicting things about the benefits to downside.
Like, the number of people are who actually priced out of areas might be exaggerated, and people who leave might be doing so for other reasons. And also the people who stay do, generally, end up becoming somewhat better off economically.
- Why Gentrificiation Sucks Balls*
Note: Rural gentrification is even worse than city gentrification but gets less attention.
Gentrification is outright evil if you're aware of its historic consequences. Effectively, it's an unsustainable marketing gimmick as well as a social phenomenon. Rich white people move into areas after banks do their best to drive out the minorities in property and "flip" the area with expensive developments.
Like the Hill Valley suburban homes Marty saw when he went back to the past (and which ended like a lot of the communities are—depressed in the long run).
The poor are then forced to move, which is HUGE EXPENSIVE on people who already can't afford shit. If you're lucky, you won't be made homeless and if you are lucky, you'll be saddled with huge amounts of debt or move to a newer, probably even more depressed community.
It gets worse because flipping neighborhoods from poor minority (or white) to rich middle class depends on an area actually being financially solvent. The "dead mall" phenomenon and the fact huge developments based on expected growth is a sign of what happens when all of the poor working class and laborers get shoveled out of a region to have middle class people without any workers around them or stable job situations....who eventually leave their homes for better ones.
Drive though any rural community and you'll see hundreds of attempts to flip poor regions that are mostly abandoned and out of business, particularly in Kentucky. People can't afford any of the buildings and the fundamental economic depression emains—exaggerated by the corrupt real estate market.
Banks depend on gentrification as a way to make huge amounts of money on the cheap and this results in them becoming dependent on it. Quite a few of them made it worse by offering loans to people who couldn't afford it in hopes of squeezing them hard for as long as possible then re-selling the houses after foreclosure. The shuffle game of housing ownership and property also resulted in literally a trillion or so dollars flying around as real estate is the market where wealth is primarily concentrated.
This is what caused the 2008 financial crisis.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 18th 2018 at 9:38:08 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Like everything, you need to find a balance. My own city is in a pretty unique situation in that it genuinely doesn't have any room to expand in any direction. It can only stick to the space it already has, but removing all trees aso isn't a solution either. They are needed, if for no other reason than to ensure that we won't get cooked during summer time. Hence there is a genuine need to redo old areas eventually into something which is more, well, modern and usable. But the approach there is to create a "mixed neighbourhood". Meaning some houses for families, some apartments, some social housing, all mixed together with community areas added to it (and naturally build in a way that wind can still find its way into the inner city).
Basically what I am saying is that the idea of creating a neighbourhood only for one group of people is so..well, yesterday. And I guess American.
Edited by Swanpride on Oct 18th 2018 at 10:04:14 AM
Would that it were so simple.
Well, affordable housing is a necessary antidote for real estate price increases due to gentrification, but I reject the notion that gentrification doesn't have benefits. Communities that are gentrified have better schools, higher earnings — statistically true even for prior residents who managed to stay — and deeper private investment, plus it attracts an educated labor force from elsewhere. The economic recovery isn't coming from within — the communities that are gentrified don't have the capacity for it due to broad socioeconomic factors — heavy crime, poor schools, low paying jobs, and insufficient tax revenue. Concentrated poverty is a self reinforcing phenomenon. You don't attract research and tech jobs if the neighborhood in question is a gang-infested hellscape, you don't attract business if the local labor force doesn't have the kind of knowledge base growing companies and industries are looking for, and you don't build that knowledge base with poorly educated people, and you can't get a better school system if you don't have more local tax money flowing in. If you just raise taxes, a Republican takes over in a reactionary impulse, and you lose more — benefits are cut, public schooling is gutted, businesses get even more extensive tax breaks, and public housing is drastically reduced. Gentrification isn't just dead malls, and the notion that it is is just "mom and pop" romanticism. Gentrification also brings in research, technology, and an educated labor force that's so crucial for the economy. But rent control is still a necessary stop-gap for runaway real estate speculation. Apartments and housing units dispersed across the neighborhood, owned or administrated by the municipal government, could at least make the transition gentler, and help some of the previous residents take advantage of the better infrastructure and economy. The only stipulation is that public housing is dispersed — so that ghettos separated from the rest of the neighborhood aren't formed.
Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Oct 18th 2018 at 1:35:49 PM
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
The problem with that is a sound economic structure for a community is not caused or aided by gentrification. Poor people moving to richer neighborhoods benefits them but rich people moving to poorer ones rarely benefits them.
A lot of the benefits you ascribe are better achieved by increasingly education, job opportunities, and working with the people there.
New York is a perfect example as they kicked out all of the poor people from Manhattan and made it "pretty" but didn't benefit the people who lived there, just the rich people who wanted it to be their own little paradise...and we're seing the results of the economic depression that results.
Plus the spike in homelessness elsewhere.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 18th 2018 at 11:02:27 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
She/Her Pronouns
Are we on this topic, again?
I think I'm going to repeat myself. Gentrification serves mainly to kick those who can not afford to live in a place anymore, and replace them with more well off people. While this may seem like a good thing from the perspective of someone who is concerned about the municipality AS AN ENTITY, as it brings in more revenue. However, on a human level, this is NOT a good thing, as it just shunts the problems of poverty over to the next area over (or worse, drives people onto the streets). Remember: gentrification brings in tech jobs and growth, but those things will then primarily cater to the new, richer denizens as opposed to actually helping a lot of the people there before. It doesn't actually, say, help a lot of the poorer children there get better education, as it necessitated kicking many of them out first to make it a "nicer" local. And those people who now cannot afford the new prices have to go somewhere. They won't see the benefits of gentrification, because the benefits weren't for them. The benefits were for the highly educated workers and the rich who moved in afterwords. Ie. The people who didn't really need the help in the first place.
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer
Would that it were so simple.
Then build affordable housing — something that can be court-mandated, rather than legislated, as an overall increase in taxation must be. Gentrification disperses poverty — the issue at hand isn't its presence, but its concentration. You can't spur economic recovery in an area where growing industries have no interest, where most of the residents are poor and steeped in crime. It's like trying to drive a car on an empty tank. There's nothing remotely sacred about the original residents of an urban neighborhood, especially for a city chronically short on cash with a withering private sector catered to the economy of twenty to forty years ago. \
Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Oct 18th 2018 at 2:31:20 PM
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
Exactly.
As I said, the areas that are most susceptible to Gentrification tend to be historic, formally middle to working class neighborhoods, that fell into decline when industry left, and the ensuing economic collapse.
Without outside investment and new economic drivers, that type of poverty and economic stagnation tends to self perpetuate.
Edited by megaeliz on Oct 18th 2018 at 2:35:35 PM
I feel like one of is speaking French and the other Italian. Both romance languages, both some common words but the worldviews are completely different.
One view has the idea it cures poverty and rebuilds neighborhood.
The other is that it destroys homes, dramatically increases poverty (as well as destroys lives), and ultimately leaves devastated empty unaffordable neighborhoods.
It's two very very different views that are irreconcilable.
https://www.debate.org/opinions/is-gentrification-bad
It's interesting the debate is pretty even but completely unchanging.
Here's basically my argument spoken better, though.
https://medium.com/dose/why-is-gentrification-bad-6a896d99254e
San Fransisco is a good example of the destruction of locals for the creation of a new white city of tech people that have forced out any tech-pro minorities by importing new citizens.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 18th 2018 at 11:35:40 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Nobody’s said that gentrification “cures” poverty. Like Zephyr is saying above, it disperses it.
It’s just that it doesn’t destroy neighborhoods either. Characterizing all gentrification as dead malls out in the suburbs is a little reductive.
They should have sent a poet.
She/Her Pronouns
I agree that more affordable housing should be built. However, I find it concerning that my concerns of what happens to the people who were there first was addressed with:
Do you...not actually care what happens to them? Like, you're talking as if they're numbers that need to be reduced to add more numbers to another pile, but those are human lives we're talking about. And that's my point. By doing these actions, you could be ruining lives, especially since the USA simply does not have the safety net that other countries (like the Nordics) have. I've asked you repeatedly and have not gotten an answer. Where. Do. The. People. GO?
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer
I don't think they are irreconcilable.
It just needs nuance. Gentrification, if combined with good city planning and directed not just towards rich newcomers can be beneficial, and create new opportunities in communities that don't have a lot of it.
The problem is when poor city planning, and putting greed above the common good, just push the lower income folks out.
Edited by megaeliz on Oct 18th 2018 at 2:55:58 PM
Would that it were so simple.
A portion stay and others leave.
The alternative is letting a district, a borough, an entire city wallow in poverty and crime with no way out. You're right, the social safety nets in the US are underfunded or in many capacities nonexistent — I'm not disputing that or arguing that they shouldn't be more robust. But large scale expansions in welfare will never be forthcoming while the overall taxation culture of this country is unchanged, and keeping a city economically downtrodden so that it can remain demographically static is doing harm to the people there. But it's the kind of harm that can't be encapsulated in a single news article — a consistent, unending stream of violence, poverty, and neglect, going on for so long that the people there are inured to it, even as the city around them falls apart. A city is so much more than an incubator for human misery. It's a nerve center for human intellect and ingenuity.
I've already outlined my case. There is a human cost, but there's an immense human cost to obstructing it as well.
Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Oct 18th 2018 at 2:57:01 PM
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
Which, in my understanding, is usually what happens.
Edited by PhysicalStamina on Oct 18th 2018 at 2:59:51 PM
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
Well these communities are damaged in such a way that it's impossible for them to ever solve the problem without extensive outside intervention and due to low tax revenue direct government investment is going to be a difficult way to try and help.
So what are our options then?
Oh really when?
Exactly. The self feedback loop between lack of economic opportunity and entrenched poverty is well documented.
If you live in an area with no opportunities for advancement or higher paying jobs, you have even less chance of escaping it.
Edited by megaeliz on Oct 18th 2018 at 3:16:16 PM
This is a national not neighborhood problem.
Better education, promoting government-assisted jobs, safety nets, and more. Lift people out of poverty and fix the country.
And the argument I'm making is gentrification doesn't actually fix the problem as gentrified neighborhoods very often FAIL in the long term. Because the wealth that needs to come in is wealth GENERATORS not holders.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
Due to the way taxes and city planning works it is a local problem.
The federal government can't come in and start planning neighborhoods on that kind of scale.
Oh really when?
She/Her Pronouns
Dear lord this thread is moving fast.
Le Garcon, I think Charles just proposed a New Deal-type plan, not Nationally controlled city planning.
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
Well the problem is though that if you wanna save a specific neighborhood you gotta micromanage that specific neighborhood.
A New Deal type plan along with a much more robust safety net is sorely needed but simply do to the way these problems arise there would be a lot of places that would fall through the gaps.
It has to be a long term and persistent and locally based solution. We can't just send everyone to go repair roads and lay ethernet cables for five years. That's a band aid, not a cure.
Mind you though, a band aid is a hell of a lot better than nothing.
Edited by LeGarcon on Oct 18th 2018 at 3:22:55 PM
Oh really when?
Except I didn't say red areas don't exist, I said the red areas aren't the ones being gentrified.
Anecdotes like "the district next to me voted for Trump" or "my neighbors are alt-righters" don't change that.
It's not particularly surprising that in a city of over 8 million people, yeah, a lot of them would have some pretty bad views. But it's just a fact that Democrats dominate New York City.
Speaking of facts, your characterization of Brooklyn and Queens as "50/50" just seems wildly inaccurate from everything I've heard and read. As is your claim that the Bronx and Manhattan account for 1/3rd of the entire state's population, and also you calling Stanten Island "more red than the bible belt".
Edited by LSBK on Oct 18th 2018 at 10:48:20 AM