“There's absolutely nothing wrong with a development that primarily aims to bring new people into the neighborhood, including people who don’t have the same profile as the people who already live there,” [...]
Couldn’t the restaurant’s cheerleaders see how it was a little sad that in a place where mostly black students had once learned about carpentry and the culinary arts, mostly white people were now drinking rosé?
— phillymag.com
9 Comments
This is a well-written article, in that it allows for conflict between various groups.
They’ve started believing they can only change the small stuff — or, worse, they’ve started thinking that what’s most important is fixing what most bothers them.
With this sentence I finally understand some of the rumblings of criticism I've heard of the "broken windows theory" of urban improvement.
As prophesied by the sage of our age, Macklemore.
Since every sane urbanist is pro city, and things are trending urban, perhaps we should be building more housing to fit all of the displaced. This time, black peeps should design and build this housing so there will be a cultural ownership, since identity polarization seems to be another trend.
Broken Windows Urbanism, def describes 2015 media.... See: St Louis, Baltimore, etc. at least the modernists tried to go big on solving social problems, they would have had it if not for identity and race issues. Now it's just wack a mole
Nate, I think you and I are in agreement, but not sure? maybe I'm misinterpreting broken windows theory. I'm thinking of it as repairing one window so others don't follow, and that the "new gentrifiers" want to fix the windows because it seems manageable, rather than ask what the root causes are that lead a broken window to be neglected int eh first place. Are we on the same page?
I've never listened to Macklemore, to my knowledge.
In the article, they are referring to idealists who move to the city wanting to help turning into cynics who want to fix only what they use. Your "broken windows" seems to refer to fixing small things so that they don't turn into big ones--which i guess would be favorable to the gentrifiers. I was thinking of the media looking only at fixing small problems as they flare up, rather than looking at deeper issues that effects many--like how we can't build good large scale affordable housing anymore.
I get the feeling that "gentrification" is a good thing--if someone is fixing anything, that's good. This movement and the need for affordable housing are two separate issues.
I'm not sure that broken window strategies apply here- at least in the historic sense. Those were policies structured to transform neighborhoods using municipal power action versus the leveraging the benefits of private capital. One thing gentrification and broken window policies have in common is that both all too frequently identfy eliminating blight as a desired outcome. For bw's that was the entire goal.
The twist is that blight in itself is a problematic code word. Justin Garrett Moore recently wrote a piece on which does a good job at decribing the pitfalls behind these two modes of urbanism.
That's a really good article, Marc, thanks.
"Blight" is a relative term--usually a condescending attitute that wealthy use to describe poor or immigrant neighborhoods. I can see how it may be used to imply that these places need to be "fixed." But many times the people there don't want it to be "fixed" that would just raise their rents!
But the word probably isnt' going away anytime soon, as the author couldn't even think of a different word!
I would argue that blight as way of describing a place is more than just a descriptive term, as it sets the ground for so many activities related to "removing problems." So in finding a new term it would be important to understand the activities that it would engender. This suggests that it's not just fixing one word but examining how cities are "curated" (lack of a better word in my head now) systemically to identify an appropriate term. In short, just changing the word isn't going to fix it.
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