My issue is not with areas being improved, it is how gentrification is about one demographic of our society changing an area for themselves and not for the benefit of everyone. — the guardian
Portland, US: ‘We are currently building our way to hell’
“I am a 70 year old carpenter and I have seen more decay in the quality of life in the last three years in Portland, Oregon – pearl of culture in the Great Northwest – with the one-term mayor ‘Chainsaw Charlie Hales’ who was previously a lobbyist for the the ‘home builders’ – read developers. Towers built into the sky on alluvial soil – the stuff that turns to pudding in an earthquake. Hundred-year-old classic neighbourhoods injected with ‘cereal box’ buildings invalidating residents’ privacy and daylight.
From my perspective, I would call this a travesty: ‘Bankers gone wild’. A spreadsheet vision of creating investments that spread the risk, with total disregard for community culture which, prior to this, was well protected by zoning. The people here have a campaign called Stop demolishing Portland. Such beauty is being replaced by such tastelessness, as though the reason the people want to live here is to be housed like gerbils. The cult of efficiency, unchecked and ungrounded is the universal salve that greases the way to community destruction and dislocation. We are currently building our way to hell.” (David Chinook Bean)
14 Comments
gentrification is a fancy latinate word for change, which everyone can agree is terrible and shouldn't be allowed in a fair society.
i was born and raised in one of those leftover places that experienced its gentrification maybe 150 years ago when the small-hold farmers were displaced by shoe factories and the capitalists who built huge fancy mansard-roofed monstrosities on every hilltop.
then all the shoe factories closed and everyone resourceful left. eventually immigrants came, and no one cared because no one much remained except some old white people who were actually some kind of immigrants anyway.
the implicit critique of gentrification implies there is or were desirable and static communities of Ordinary people who are unjustly induced to leave by people who have no right to enter.
at it's root, it's a foul, xenophobic impulse. which is why it requires a dignified latinate word and vague notions of benevolence to dress it up as an acceptable principle.
good article sympathetic to those of us who actually favor gentrification on principle alone:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/01/the_gentrification_myth_it_s_rare_and_not_as_bad_for_the_poor_as_people.html
the problem of housing cost is not issue of gentrification, and the solution is very simple: build more housing. but then, that's change, which is unacceptable to anyone who doesn't desperately need it.
reminded me of this article...
http://www.theonion.com/article/shitty-neighborhood-rallies-against-asshole-develo-2229
Gentrification is not the same as change. Gentrification is the upscaling of a neighborhood. Its a particular type of change.
Ignore how rising costs crush lower income people would be consistent with how we ignore the needs of working class and low income people in nearly every way.
The problem is choice.
In a free society, you can't inhibit movement. The problem seems to be lack of new affordable housing, to house those pushed out of desirable communities. Gentrification is good to a degree, if only the government and economy were able to meet demand for rising population.
The problem is that wealthy people get whatever they want because they are politically saavy and litigious. They also have enormous influence as consumers. So business and government cater heavily to that class of people. Poor and working class neighborhoods have languished for decades and the only "change" was decay, but now planners and developers are telling those people that they need to embrace a type of change that is a threat to their existence. Architects can design walking cities, and floating pools, and parks in the sky, but we can't be bothered to propose a political or economic mechanism that keeps vulnerable people in the homes they have lived in for decades,
Sounds great davvid. whats your proposal?
- Increasing the stock of affordable housing.
- Mixed income public housing developments.
- property tax caps for private houses with longtime owners with limited means.
- rent control for longtime residents.
- More inclusive planning processes.
- Stop looking at investment in infrastructure as a way of upscaling wealth and increasing a tax base, instead, realize that it's an investment in a sustainable and livable community, a basic and fundamental right of all citizens; poor and working class
So the problems seem to be two fold. 1 many people racial and ethnic minorities have been kept out of the benefits of home and to a much greater extent business ownership which can be essential in mitigating the displacement of people and institutions in such a way as to effectively erase a community. It is this loss of a place consisting of buildings people and things that is so disturbing.
2 Development restrictions are exasperating market forces driving rents and values up. The profit motive is not to blame as much as the Nimby people who don't want to see changes to their community. We have to decide if we will respect the "property rights" of people who already live someplace or do we impose rules regulations and forced sales for redevelopment in the name of "human rights"?
Livable communities are limited by size, resources and their location and or distance from jobs. Not every community can be made into a livable community it is not possible to forcibly distribute an industry and force people to commingle in the privacy of their circle of friends and to some extent their business relationships and creative as well as political allies.
We can force specific prescribed solutions such as public housing or parks or mass transit but the political power to overcome the resistance to change and the forced disruption of the social strata is weaker than it has ever been. Until the tech bros and the investment bakers grow tired of being surrounded by their own kind they will continue to build their own communities often at the expense of others. Only when economic professional ethnic and racial diversity is seen as a value and not a liability will gentrification become something other than a process of dislodging people from livable and or potentially livable communities.
Over and OUT
Peter N
David... many communities are already doing what you propose. The simple answer is to eliminate property taxes, period. Then government has no hand in it. Increases in property values equal increases in taxes and that cost is typically what drives lower income residents out of gentrifying neighborhoods. Even if you own your home free n clear. Try not paying your property taxes for three years and see who owns it. Not the big bad gentrifying developer.
Property rights are the basis of human rights. Once property rights erode the govt can simply impose itself in virtually every aspect of life. It's private ownership that needs to expand into underprivileged demographics not govt regs. We need to expand the ownership class in regards to business and homes by making ownership accessible and properly scaled. The only way to solve any of the problems associated with gentrification is to decentralize the ownership class through a complete demolition of the protection structures of society that keep monies, infrastructure, and land in centralized hands...Without zoning regulations and without property taxes as wurden stated above, the wealthy wouldn't have the advantage of state protections that extend past their lot lines in the first place. State income tax and a higher sales tax, coupled with a complete trimming down of beurocracy and govt bloat would erase the inequity that manifests into spatial stratification as all revenue could be more equally applied. The absence of zoning regulations would leave open the possibility for Mr.X to split a one acre lot into small high density housing smack next to a one acre single family McMansion. The Stratification would overtime dissolve, and the land costs would even out a bit, possibly being more heavily dictated by environmental features like waterfront access, proximity to parks, etc over neighborhood exclusiveness and better amenities...The govt is the cause of the gentrification problems.
Who pays for the sewer line, running down your street, the water service, the carbon fiber, the electrical service?
Wait, who pays for the street, the curb cut? The sidewalk?
IMHO the causes for this are threefold:
1) Wealthy Chinese citizens are seeking to move capital out of China, and RE is an excellent avenue to accomplish that.
2) Large hedge funds like Blackstone are moving major percentages of portfolio into physical assets like commercial/residential rental properties.
3) Millennials and Boomers want amenity rich neighborhoods in urban contexts. It's the greatest RE convergence in the history of the USA.
B3, taxes pay for it...taxes applied evenly across the city. Not property taxes though
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