Rather than watching passively as non-local or private developers consume neighborhood public spaces, we can use Placemaking to enable citizens to create their own public spaces, to highlight the unique strengths of their neighborhoods, and to address its specific challenges. While gentrification can divide communities and build upon exclusivity, Placemaking is about inclusion and shared community ownership. It is about increasing “quality of life,” not removing public life. — pps.org
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Placemaking is usually about turning cities into playgrounds that support a conspicuous kind of leisure. Its obvious that wealthy people, trust-funders and developers will be the largest beneficiaries of a new urban leisure landscape being promoted by placemaking orgs like PPS.
I like how every urban renewal essay article or proposal now has to contain a disclaimer that it is not gentrification. Especially if such a claim is dubious.
We should keep cities as they where in the 1970's. Gentrification is a conspiracy.
When cities were struggling, it made sense to have efforts that broadly promoted an urban lifestyle. Now that cities are growing and gentrifying, academics and activists need to examine their goals and their tactics. They are no longer "fighting the good fight" by providing bistro chairs for people to sit on the High Line after purchasing their $4 pour over from Blue Bottle.
It seems like there's a goldilocks zone for cities where there's just enough grunge and not too much latte. That's the zone which tends to attract the big bad developers though. Rather than wishing we could freeze neighborhoods into the perfect moment, we ought to incentivize other areas to replicate what makes those neighborhoods so desirable in the first place. But you can't fault people moving to those wonderful older neighborhoods.
Here's an article that relates to why some of those neighborhoods struggled in the first place.
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/28732/look-how-real-estate-professionals-in-1948-perpetuated-segregation-in-dc/
I Agree with Davvid. weird...
Unfortunately, the Economic engine for cities has shifted from industry to lifestyle...
Why does everybody keep talking about gentrification as if it was a bad thing? It's bizarre.
This is a kick ass article (written by my friend Seah Starowitz, BTW) about the relationship between capital and placemaking, or as he says, place-taking. Or possibly place-marketing, though I really like place-taking as an accurate portmanteau.
So, creating value and making places attractive and pleasant is now a bad thing? Huh.
^ no, so long as "value" and "attractive" doesn't price out the people who live there . Unfortunatly "value" is usually synonymous with wealth, and "attractive" with sterility.
It doesn't have to be a zero sum game, gwharton. If creating value for some people can only happen by taking it away from others that's not sustainable. Eventually you have a lot of people with nothing.
attractive, typically does not include the gritty things that cities were/are fueled by like street commerce, density, income diversity, cultural diversity, industry, etc...In other words the type of urbanism being packaged and sold is really an idealized form of urbanism in the same way 1940s suburbanism was an idealized "sterile" version of the country...the farm without the smell of the cows...
The city is really starting to look like the architecture renderings...young hip white 20 somethings lying around in the park and strolling past over priced yuppy shops...Life imitates art...
I'm hoping that planners and activists shift their focus toward stability and sustainability instead of what we have now which is a campaign of hype, risk, speculation, flipping, "pioneering". We've started to get used to the idea that American cities and suburbs go through cycles of boom and bust.
a few weeks ago was to busy checking emails on phone after getting off at Malcom X and 125th (NYC) I think and went in the wrong direction, which from what i can tell just means I went in the wrong direction vs say the wrong neighborhood even just 10-15 years ago.....and man do I wish i had bothered taking a photo of what appeared to be a slightly radical churches announcement to all passerbys....something to the effect (anti-gentrification if you want to call it that) - sodomites and some other ites (forgot, like yuppies?) you think you can change the world....something something...payback is a bitch......i kind of read that as gentrifiers will burn in hell.......kill whitey.
Why not focus on creating places that they young are gentrifying? It would entail engaging with developers and what people actually desire, but surely it will do more good than this sanctimonious chest thumping. We could stare with identifying their salient features:
1 - A descent fabric of traditional buildings built from materials that age nicely.
2 - Traditional urbanism with buildings engaging the street.
3 - Good location, near transit and walkable to some other amenities.
Sounds like New Urbanism might be very helpful to say nothing of studying the historic buildings that make these areas so full of character. To do that many architects would have to abandon their prejudice against employing traditional architecture and urbanism. They would have to think about engaging in the political process and advocate for transit and other policies that encourage pedestrian movement. And finally, they'd have to engage the development community to see how they work.
Unfortunately most architects receive absolutely no training in any of the things that might help increase the supply of something that's clearly become the trend, finally, and for good reason. Should we keep celebrating the latest forms from starchitects or indulge in the latest theoretical spoutings, or will we finally engage in the facts that might actually affect the lives of the people we are supposed to be building for?
Thayer_D The Secret Sauce in gentrification is the " Authentic Experience" which may take the form of cultural appropriation but often involves people consuming art, and or history and creating a "crafted" Imaged of what people want. It is easier to claim a history than build your own, and everything from a Banksy street art to a run down apartment building has a price and people are apparently willing to pay. we have folks in their late 20s who can afford 3k a month in rent and still have money to spend on dinning out and living very comfortably (until the church around the corner get's too noisy and challenges the image of their appropriated history and neighborhood)
http://postnewsgroup.com/blog/2015/10/09/churches-respond-noise-complaints-filed-west-oakland-church/
The notion that traditional architecture is marginalized is true when we look at the celebrated architecture in magazines and on blogs, but when developer clients decide to react to market forces and the desire for classical architecture they find someone who can still do the columns and Victorian stuff but because this is consumer / developer and not an academic driven design movement, the historic vernacular is sometimes altered to suit the budget and the skills of the craftspeople available to build the project. If classical and historical architecture were truly out of favor we would not see as large of an effort to preserve historic building and or to reuse structures for new uses.
Image and branding need some preexisting culture to cling to otherwise it is a Disney endevor.
'Cultural appropriation', 'consuming art', or 'creating a "crafted" image of what people want'? Cultural appropriation is a freedom of our modern condition, there's nothing we can do about it and in fact is responsible for some of the greatest contributions to our shared culture. People have always consumed art...remember the antique dealers of the Renaissance or even turn of the last century robber barons? As for crafting an image of what people want...guilty as charged. Do you think these things are really new to today's gentrification?
As for traditional architecture, we agree on their marginalization in the magazines and blogs, but what about where it really matters, architecture schools? It's a language of design like the many dialects of modernism, and when we don't teach them in school you get a purely consumer/developer market with no academic point of reference simply because it's not addressed outside of history and theory classes. If you don't want a "Disney" endeavor, push for schools to open themselves up to the multitude of other aesthetic languages other than modernist ones, but people will always want some sort of language that speaks to them and the market for minimalist modernism is only so large. Nostalgia and naivete. They aren't crimes, but they run rampant in your criticism.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/shorter-commutes-gentrification/416646/
Placemaking is usually about turning cities into playgrounds that support a conspicuous kind of leisure.
"Placemaking" (an oxymoronic term at best) is about commerce, not leisure. As such 'a conspicuous kind of consumption' would be more accurate.
Why does everybody keep talking about gentrification as if it was a bad thing?
Because it is based on the displacement of lower-income people for the benefit of higher-income people. When you can no longer get to your Range Rover without tripping over the homeless you can buy an apartment with a personal car elevator.
This is gentrification:
"commerce, not leisure"
Commerce and leisure.
Having been a housing for the poor advocate and organizer, it was not the parks and public spaces, that defined gentrification, it was the lack of safe street lighting and the use of these places as shooting and drug galleries. It was the lack of community organizations, sponsoring events to use these spaces for, festivals, coming together, and even healthy food market events. These parks also had nothing for people to connect to, associate with except they were located somewhere and offered some public space, playgrounds, but essentially they had no meaning, to the people around them, just asphalt and concrete. People wanted a positive image park that related to them and the ethnic diversity, not just a playground, they wanted family space, safe space. All these needs and a lack of identity, were the perfect storm for "gentrification" troops to move in, without identity, there is little to fight for , because thier is "no future to have or attain for long term residents in a community". So it becomes easier for gentrifiers to demoralize a large group of people more rapidly, and replace their living space with a "brand new" planned gentrified identity, with a future. A future sadly that excludes those without a place, identity and soon to have no homes, driven out. One can see this with the Google take over of poor neighborhoods in San Francisco, they get these new identities, names, amenities, parks etc. Even street signs, better lighting and more rapidly become available to the new more expensive world being "sold" at higher prices. Displacement is what gentrification is all about, displacement for profit, not people. Until the questions of community stability, housing that is priced for poor, middle income long term, and the city governments willing to work with these people on safety, clean water, policing issues, fire safety even, etc. then they will remain targets of opportunity not developing and balanced cities. The arts and artists, as well as designers, and the world of ideas brought to better communities are all nice, but in reality a safe affordable home comes first and a identity for those who live there across all economic ranges and ages as well. I found organizing community centers, and even ones at police stations, or fie houses were actually more effective in building community "morale" and engagement, then adding where possible more trees to parks. What holds together long term communities, with historical cultural and racial diversity is "morale", the will to stand up, for the place one lives and has lived in long term, then a place not of pretty things but of valued things, valued or "Wise" space wise place making which endowes the meaning of long term family growth and diversity. I have seen little of this discussed but the places architects and planners bring must be bigger than just pretty landscaping they must have wisdom and meaning which people can embrace and find purpsoe in, pride in. An example is: http://peacewalkway.org a start.
^ Bullshit. Economics is the basis of gentrification, on more levels than you are aware exist.
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