What are the pros and cons of gentrification as you see them?

This is becoming a hot button issue in many cities across the globe, including the one I live in.

Now yes, gentrification makes neighborhoods nicer and the immediate area safer.

But my argument is, gentrification merely displaces crime and criminals a few miles (if that) and causes a lot of bad blood between social classes. It causes tension between those being priced out, and the outsiders moving in.

Now, some of the people it displaces are good, the drug dealers. But there are even more honest, hard working people in the service industry or even teachers, who are also displace.

When people talk gentrification, I just see it as modern day segregation via class division. At least that is how I feel with staunch gentrification advocates. They seem to think their new little pricy neighborhood can do without anyone from the service industry, for instance, who generally can not afford to live in the new expensive flats...or teachers who really do not earn a heck of a lot.

Your opinions on gentrification? Pros vs. cons?

 

I'm all for making neighborhoods safer but I think city planners need to be careful of not misplacing the lower middle class and working poor. The best neighborhoods strike a nice balance with all income brackets being able to find affordable housing in the neighborhood.

 

it sounds more like segragation

 

it sounds awesome if you're on the right side of it

 

Drug dealers aren't hard working people?

 

The big problem is, how do you have affordable housing for the poor without high crime rates? Somebody has to find an answer. Low income neighborhoods can't simply be eliminated.

Probably the worst place for a high crime neighborhood is close to the center of a city, because that's where the great majority of out of town visitors are going to be. Every city needs to address that issue.

It's natural for neighborhoods to change over time. I think it's nice that the changes don't always have to be negative, as they were in the seventies. That's when everybody was moving to the suburbs, because they thought the inner cities were hopeless.

 

there is nothing wrong with fixing a place up and making it look nice, as long as it isn't done by robbing any person nor life form, of their habitat, nor means of existence.

the measure of the quality of anyone, is not however, the depth of their pockets, but their consideration, humility, and manor of behavior.

 

It seems to me that most of the time when they do things like this, they get rid of old people's homes and "buy them out" offer them some money to relocate and leave the next block over, the real crime areas as they are. So they kick out the people in the neighborhood who were good homeowners (and sometimes renters) in order to put in other (usually renters) in a higher income bracket.

 

Thanks for the input folks, agree with most if it so far!

 

None to the traditional suburb model. Particularly in place like Texas where school funding comes entirely from property taxes. It simply creates ghettos and suburbs.

More sensible approroaches to rebuilding neighboorhoods through mixed renewal projects are fine. My job is hyper trendy (I'm obviously not) and is set up in Deep Ellum which is a neighboorhood undergoing a seemingly good balanced reconstruction. At the same time they sure are paying a lot of money to live in a bad neighboorhood.

 

There’s no reason to displace the poor and downtrodden and Harbor Point in Boston is a perfect example. For many years the Columbia Point Housing Projects was a cesspool of drugs and violence. A new upscale neighborhood was proposed and the residents were temporarily housed until the project was completed. Today the neighborhood is virtually crime free and the upper-middle class live side-by-side with the low middle income poor.




Columbia Point Projects



Harbor Point Apartments



Hotwater