My partner and I chatted about what the visual signs of gentrification are, we landed on 3. Take these with a grain of salt, and potentially regional relevance, as they come from big cities on the...
My partner and I chatted about what the visual signs of gentrification are, we landed on 3. Take these with a grain of salt, and potentially regional relevance, as they come from big cities on the West Coast of the US.
We decided the most obvious was murals. Oftentimes you'll see big murals pop up in neighborhoods where demographics are changing. We aren't sure if it's a sign of "this culture is still here" or as sometimes here in California the first gentrifying group tends to be young progressives and maybe some type of "appreciate the culture we're displacing". Not that the second would ever be said out loud but it feels like that's kind of what it is.
The second was hip fusion food surrounded by the ethnic food that has traditionally been there. Mission Chinese in the SF Mission district or Xolo Taqueria in Uptown Oakland. Both are still pretty affordable, but definitely a price point above the neighbors and attract the young, hip, progressive gentrifiers.
Last one is the one this articles called out. The 5 over 1s that end up replacing whatever small mom and pop that get turned over. I'm going to use Oakland or the Mission in SF again because it's what I'm familiar with, but those bad boys started popping up about 20 years ago and really ramped up 5-10 years ago.
I think the artsy/youthful route (indicated by things like murals) is definitely a common way that neighborhoods begin to gentrify. Young people without means (often students) will often spring...
I think the artsy/youthful route (indicated by things like murals) is definitely a common way that neighborhoods begin to gentrify. Young people without means (often students) will often spring for an inexpensive neighborhood, and then they eventually reach a critical mass where the neighborhood becomes desirable to others seeking out the youthful vibe. Also, the young people themselves will grow older and accumulate wealth.
My own childhood neighborhood gentrified exclusively through the ethnic/cultural route, not the artsy route, so we never had murals.
My parents were really struggling financially when they bought their house, and so they bought it in a neighborhood that had undergone so much population loss that it vaguely resembled a post-apocalypse movie: there were boarded-up buildings everywhere (including an entire mall), forests erupting out of parking lots, kudzu completely obscuring some roads, etc. It was honestly a pretty magical place to spend my early childhood: I was always outside exploring, and I could range through forests for hours and hours and hardly see another person — and all within sight of skyscrapers. But that did not last.
The first signs of gentrification came when very lots of desperately poor immigrants of uncertain visa status started renting (or possibly squatting in) previously abandoned homes in the area. They were followed by immigrant families, who bought up the houses to open up restaurants, nail salons, etc. Then they opened up the mall. Then they built expansions onto the mall and expansions onto the houses-turned-shops. Then they tore down houses-turned-shops to make purpose-built shops. Then they started having carnivals, concerts, firework shows, etc., and it became a pretty freaking rad place to be a teenager.
Around this point, white gay couples started moving in because it was such a fun, happening neighborhood. The house prices were still very low because the quality of the local schools was not up to middle class standards, which the gay couples didn't care because they didn't have kids. But once the number of white people reached a certain critical mass, white middle-class families started spilling into the neighborhood (they just used their No Child Left behind school vouchers to send their kids to other schools) and drove the house prices way, way up. At this point, immigrant families were suddenly getting economically displaced from the neighborhood, and gay couples followed because the neighborhood wasn't as fun anymore.
At this point, the community incorporated, and the brand new local government started investing heavily in the local schools (tearing them down and replacing them with new buildings, hiring a ton of staff, etc.). Parks were built, sidewalks and street lights were added to roads, public transportation was expanded, etc.
But this middle class heyday was short-lived, because then the speculative investors showed up, and they have exactly one goal in mind: selling to rich people. Shops and community centers are converted into industrial-modern-style apartments, apartment buildings are torn down and replaced with lower-density townhouses, small standalone houses are torn down and turned into 3-storey mcmansions, etc. Vast swathes of woodland are clear cut, even in places where it is not required for new buildings: mature oaks, beeches, rhododendrons, etc., that would look lovely amongst the mcmansions are, instead, chopped down and replaced with lawns or, even worse, fields of pavers.
As far as I can tell, no rich people have actually moved in; they just buy, build, clear cut, and sell. Some new houses are built over the foundations of previous houses that were, themselves, built just a few years ago over the foundations of the houses before them.
My parents still live there, and they have found the latest round of changes very sad; it was such a beautiful and interesting neighborhood throughout its various stages, but now it's being ransacked of its greenery and rendered into a cultural desert.
Developers knock on their door and drop letters in their mailbox, asking to buy their house, sight unseen, for far larger sums than they originally bought it. They have considered these offers from time to time, but they don't want to move too far away from their friends and the life they have built for themselves, and so they are stuck: any other house they might be able to afford is immediately snapped up by developers and torn down before they can even have a peek inside. Not only that, but their lot is one of the last remaining spaces with mature trees, and they hate the thought of them being bulldozed.
I moved overseas during the white-middle-class phase of gentrification, and I used to enjoy going back home to visit my family; the place wasn't as fun as it had been when I was a teenager or when I was a child, but it was still nice seeing the fancy new street lights and parks. But now I hate going back. It knots my stomach up. It feels like wanton destruction for no purpose. I have a hard time even looking at photos from my childhood, because I can see all the trees in the background that are no more, and because the amazing community that once thrived there has been dispersed to who knows where.
I think what I feel about it must be a very small taste of what it must be like to watch your nation colonized and your people dissolved into a far-flung diaspora, and to realize that essentially no one living there now understands or cares what has been lost.
My partner and I chatted about what the visual signs of gentrification are, we landed on 3. Take these with a grain of salt, and potentially regional relevance, as they come from big cities on the West Coast of the US.
We decided the most obvious was murals. Oftentimes you'll see big murals pop up in neighborhoods where demographics are changing. We aren't sure if it's a sign of "this culture is still here" or as sometimes here in California the first gentrifying group tends to be young progressives and maybe some type of "appreciate the culture we're displacing". Not that the second would ever be said out loud but it feels like that's kind of what it is.
The second was hip fusion food surrounded by the ethnic food that has traditionally been there. Mission Chinese in the SF Mission district or Xolo Taqueria in Uptown Oakland. Both are still pretty affordable, but definitely a price point above the neighbors and attract the young, hip, progressive gentrifiers.
Last one is the one this articles called out. The 5 over 1s that end up replacing whatever small mom and pop that get turned over. I'm going to use Oakland or the Mission in SF again because it's what I'm familiar with, but those bad boys started popping up about 20 years ago and really ramped up 5-10 years ago.
I think the artsy/youthful route (indicated by things like murals) is definitely a common way that neighborhoods begin to gentrify. Young people without means (often students) will often spring for an inexpensive neighborhood, and then they eventually reach a critical mass where the neighborhood becomes desirable to others seeking out the youthful vibe. Also, the young people themselves will grow older and accumulate wealth.
My own childhood neighborhood gentrified exclusively through the ethnic/cultural route, not the artsy route, so we never had murals.
My parents were really struggling financially when they bought their house, and so they bought it in a neighborhood that had undergone so much population loss that it vaguely resembled a post-apocalypse movie: there were boarded-up buildings everywhere (including an entire mall), forests erupting out of parking lots, kudzu completely obscuring some roads, etc. It was honestly a pretty magical place to spend my early childhood: I was always outside exploring, and I could range through forests for hours and hours and hardly see another person — and all within sight of skyscrapers. But that did not last.
The first signs of gentrification came when very lots of desperately poor immigrants of uncertain visa status started renting (or possibly squatting in) previously abandoned homes in the area. They were followed by immigrant families, who bought up the houses to open up restaurants, nail salons, etc. Then they opened up the mall. Then they built expansions onto the mall and expansions onto the houses-turned-shops. Then they tore down houses-turned-shops to make purpose-built shops. Then they started having carnivals, concerts, firework shows, etc., and it became a pretty freaking rad place to be a teenager.
Around this point, white gay couples started moving in because it was such a fun, happening neighborhood. The house prices were still very low because the quality of the local schools was not up to middle class standards, which the gay couples didn't care because they didn't have kids. But once the number of white people reached a certain critical mass, white middle-class families started spilling into the neighborhood (they just used their No Child Left behind school vouchers to send their kids to other schools) and drove the house prices way, way up. At this point, immigrant families were suddenly getting economically displaced from the neighborhood, and gay couples followed because the neighborhood wasn't as fun anymore.
At this point, the community incorporated, and the brand new local government started investing heavily in the local schools (tearing them down and replacing them with new buildings, hiring a ton of staff, etc.). Parks were built, sidewalks and street lights were added to roads, public transportation was expanded, etc.
But this middle class heyday was short-lived, because then the speculative investors showed up, and they have exactly one goal in mind: selling to rich people. Shops and community centers are converted into industrial-modern-style apartments, apartment buildings are torn down and replaced with lower-density townhouses, small standalone houses are torn down and turned into 3-storey mcmansions, etc. Vast swathes of woodland are clear cut, even in places where it is not required for new buildings: mature oaks, beeches, rhododendrons, etc., that would look lovely amongst the mcmansions are, instead, chopped down and replaced with lawns or, even worse, fields of pavers.
As far as I can tell, no rich people have actually moved in; they just buy, build, clear cut, and sell. Some new houses are built over the foundations of previous houses that were, themselves, built just a few years ago over the foundations of the houses before them.
My parents still live there, and they have found the latest round of changes very sad; it was such a beautiful and interesting neighborhood throughout its various stages, but now it's being ransacked of its greenery and rendered into a cultural desert.
Developers knock on their door and drop letters in their mailbox, asking to buy their house, sight unseen, for far larger sums than they originally bought it. They have considered these offers from time to time, but they don't want to move too far away from their friends and the life they have built for themselves, and so they are stuck: any other house they might be able to afford is immediately snapped up by developers and torn down before they can even have a peek inside. Not only that, but their lot is one of the last remaining spaces with mature trees, and they hate the thought of them being bulldozed.
I moved overseas during the white-middle-class phase of gentrification, and I used to enjoy going back home to visit my family; the place wasn't as fun as it had been when I was a teenager or when I was a child, but it was still nice seeing the fancy new street lights and parks. But now I hate going back. It knots my stomach up. It feels like wanton destruction for no purpose. I have a hard time even looking at photos from my childhood, because I can see all the trees in the background that are no more, and because the amazing community that once thrived there has been dispersed to who knows where.
I think what I feel about it must be a very small taste of what it must be like to watch your nation colonized and your people dissolved into a far-flung diaspora, and to realize that essentially no one living there now understands or cares what has been lost.