the 51 coolest neighborhoods in the world

[padraig (u.s.)]

I'm sure people in Warhol circles thought people like me were clueless hayseeds and/or gentrifiers when we came to NYC. and jazz beatniks from the '30s/'40s felt the same way about the Warhol crowd when they came in the '50s/'60s. it's always been that way.

The difference is that none of those people were displacing large pre-existing communities of non-art types. They were just displacing each other in the niche of art types, if anything.

Again tho, it's a mistake to focus on the people seeking housing in cool neighborhoods. Early downtown NY types didn't have any more or less control than central casting arm sleeve tattoo cool dads or whatever do now.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I can't speak as well to cities in other countries tho my understanding is that in many places the inner suburbs were always the grim rundown etc (as they are have been becoming here for decades) i.e. the banlieues of Paris. There was less of a need for "revitalization" bc capital never abandoned the urban cores. There is significantly less suburban sprawl in most European cities I believe? London - infamous for gentrification - being an exception (again I believe, I may be wrong on some of this).

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Mike Davis feels very relevant here, as well as Joel Garreau's edge city concept

 

[IdleRich]

Think the only people who need to feel guilty about it are actual developers. Ive spent an average of probably 400 a month on rent my entire adult life and have gentrified every place Ive ever been

Can you expand on this for me I don't quite see what you're saying here. Just that gentrification is about more than wealth? Or are you just showing off tha you're some kind of champion gentrifier who travels round places gentrifying them just cos you can.

 

[IdleRich]

Here in Chicago you can often trace gentrification along El lines i.e. easy access to/from downtown. Logan Square is a prime example.

Topologically close I guess, makes sense.

 

[sus]

The difference is that none of those people were displacing large pre-existing communities of non-art types. They were just displacing each other in the niche of art types, if anything.

Again tho, it's a mistake to focus on the people seeking housing in cool neighborhoods. Early downtown NY types didn't have any more or less control than central casting arm sleeve tattoo cool dads or whatever do now.

To say the trite thing—Anybody who lives in New York is by definition displacing precarious pre-existing communities. You buy a place in the UES you price out someone who instead goes to LES who prices out someone who instead goes to Bushwick (pricing out someone who goes to East New York/Brownsville). It's just a big giant ripple and the same is true of Chicago. We're all guilty and it's very boring all the stone throwing that happens between glass apartments between left-leaning 20-/30-somethings. There just isn't enough housing; the end.

Edit: In case it sounds like I'm trying to pick a fight with you Padraig I'm really not, I just find the Brooklyn litkid/artkid/DSA discourse around this stuff exhausting and terrible.

 

[sus]

Looking upthread at yesterday's messages I'm not even sure there's disagreement here in this thread specifically, so I'm mainly addressing the gentrification discourse at large, that I live in/occupy.

I just really don't think it makes any sense to see the last ripple before it hits a Hispanic community to be "the blameworthy group." Those folks are the most proximate precisely because they are themselves often the most financially precarious. For every trust fund baby slumming it in a Bushwick loft, there are also weirdos camming to pay rent checks. I would fucking love to live on the Lower East Side lol. Instead I wound up with bullet holes through windows/facade of my bedroom.

But this is true in general. You can always look upstream and find a deeper root cause. You can always find an incentives matrix or social conditioning scheme that leads people to act how they do. At the end of the day it's probably best to give up scornful blame-assignation and try to just improve systems where you can; everything else is ego and scapegoating.

 

[linebaugh]

I don't think it was even an argument, no disagreement on my end.

I think how the process might expand globally is interesting. Think I said this before but when I was in mexico city I felt like that was the next frontier.

 

[sus]

The main libidinal/psychological force that drives anti-gentrification rhetoric from young hip artsy leftists (and I've sat through loads of righteous lectures from these types) is mixture of (1) self-loathing (2) a Bourdieusean/hipster taste politics of distinction masquerading as morality system/cat'o'nine'tails. Really ugly stuff, but also a product of the discursive pressures these types feel (and are unable to internally dispel in a more contained way—thus the spillover, passing the buck onto the nearest shmuck scapegoat to take the blame instead). A defensive strategy built on pre-emptive strike, i.e. the Bush doctrine.

 

[sus]

It's sad that people get displaced. That's a sad, hard thing. We can just say that, instead of getting mad and all coordinating around who to blame and scapegoat. It's tough to be financially precarious and it's tough living in a rapidly changing world that isn't particularly interested in your well-being.

 

[sus]

We could all opt out of the ripple, at high personal cost, but none of us have. Maybe we're slightly disappointed in ourselves, but why should we be the ones to make such sacrifices? Surely someone else could, or should, or will.

We could opt out all sorts of systems, and sacrifice all sorts of opportunities and well-being for the opportunities and well-beings of others. And we basically don't, and basically no one does. We try to minimize the harm we inflict, and to work an occupation that does more good than evil in the world, but also which we basically enjoy and find rewarding, because we want to get ours too, why shouldn't we, everyone else is.

 

[sus]

There's something very important and true about the Christian doctrine—rarely followed—that we are all sinners, that we all fall short of the moral good, that to scapegoat is to stray from the true path. You see versions pop up in many holy texts and creeds, but contemporary American culture is wholly uninterested in these sort of discursive meta-ethics, preferring to scrabble ever faster and faster around discovering new scapegoat equilibria

 

[sus]

More controversially, there's been a fair amount of research that shows displacement rates in gentrifying neighborhoods are much lower than we'd expect, and is in some cases practically non-existent.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1078087404273341

How low income neighborhoods change: Entry, exit, and enhancement

This paper examines whether the economic gains experienced by low-income neighborhoods in the 1990s followed patterns of classic gentrification (as fr…

www.sciencedirect.com

Obviously things may well have changed since the 1990s, when much of this work was done, and I'd be curious if people know specifically of rebuttals to this line of thinking. I don't have very informed opinions on the topic—I've just seen compelling stats posted by both sides, and don't know who to believe, and so therefore tend to assume gentrification effects are complicated and mixed, rather than unambiguously good or bad.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Obviously blaming individuals isn't really helpful in addressing systemic issues. I think I was already quite clear about that. The actual practices of developers are often corrupt and and disgusting - look up the scam that is Tax Increment Funding here in Chicago for but one example of deeply shady misuse of public funds by municipal politicians linked to developers - but that is very different from blaming them for housing demand. They are, as I said, responding to market pressure. They're not creating it out of nothing. And guilt, likewise, is an almost completely useless emotion when it comes to systemic issues. Most people looking for housing have limited control over their options for a number of reasons.

David Simon and his crew of artistic collaborators have essentially spent the last 20 years depicting precisely this: how systemic issues chew up and spit out individuals, as well as the limitations of individuals working within in systems, and how that manifests in the post-industrial American city. Their latest miniseries We Own This City is a cut below their best work I think but it is surprisingly moving as a coda to The Wire in re the eventual cost of failing to address systemic issues.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I do think all the Rene Girard scapegoat stuff is basically empreror's new clothes bullshit that its advocates treat as a holy grail for explaining basically anything and everything, but that's separate from addressing gentrification and displacement

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

And obviously it's a more complicated, less uniform process than a 1-for-1 more affluent person, less affluent person out. There are always winners and losers - or rather, a spectrum of outcomes - in any economic process. "I wish my neighborhood could be gentrified" is the kind of thing you hear or read sometimes - obviously everyone would prefer to live in a place with less violent crime, better access to goods and services, less pollution, better access to public transportation, and so on, all the factors that make up quality of life. The trick again, is to do it without displacing the residents to some shitty place that has all the same problems the pre-gentrification neighborhood did, but is now further away from the urban core and likely enough without the community fabric that offset to some degree the quality of life issues.

displacement is I'm sure as complicated as gentrification itself but it is certainly real

took me 2 minutes of googling "gentrification displacement statistics" to find plenty of studies, all from the last few years, not yunno the 1990s

Shifting Neighborhoods: Gentrification and Cultural Displacement in American Cities » NCRC

NCRC found that many major American cities showed signs of gentrification and some racialized displacement between 2000 and 2013.

ncrc.org

The Diversity of Gentrification: Multiple Forms of Gentrification in Minneapolis and St. Paul | CURA Twin Cities Gentrification Project

gentrification.umn.edu

https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/displacementreport.pdf

etc

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

What the "ripple" eventually results in is a thriving (i.e. heavily invested in) urban core connected to affluent outer ring suburbs (see: edge cities) by highways etc bypassing an inner ring of disinvested urban fringe and inner suburbs. All the problems of urban decline are simply pushed further away from urban cores, where there's even less incentives to address them. Again, a simplification of a complex and non-uniform process but an accurate one.

 

[sus]

I do think all the Rene Girard scapegoat stuff is basically empreror's new clothes bullshit that its advocates treat as a holy grail for explaining basically anything and everything, but that's separate from addressing gentrification and displacement

Well, I think advocates of any theory treat that theory as a holy grail for explaining anything and everything. I don't think Girardeans are special here, you see it in race discourse, class discourse, Georgist housing discourse, and Jesus freaks who see the devil at work.

 

[shakahislop]

ridgewood isn't very cool, it starts to feel like the suburbs. i don't think there's anything in particular there. and its fucking miles away.

 

[shakahislop]

i did fall off my bike there once, i was drunk and playing the national anthem off the speaker mounted on my bike

maybe that's why people think it's cool