Anthony West wrote:
Some UC-list people have written it would be very bad for any prosperous
people to move into West Philadelphia ever, because their mere presence
constitutes a permanent, terrible wound to poor people. Supposedly the
poor suffer agonies because of a change in local housing prices if, over
a 15-year period, they wind up shifting from 36th & Chestnut to 36th &
Haverford, less than a mile away.
As I see it, this is no big deal. The Black Bottom may or may not have
been justly handled, but it was a far cry from Darfur.
We can't take any of these
UC-list gentrification ruminations seriously until the ruminators get a
perspective on urban life ... which is always about change. Then the
community at large, including all of us, can have a real, useful
discussion about class and education and neighborhood and how it all
works out Until then.....
sad how you're still freaked out by having had so many
options while shopping for your son's high school, but none
of them penn-assisted!
meanwhile, now that our neighbors' kids are graduating from
the penn-assisted elementary school, isn't it time we asked
them to move out of the catchment area? to make room for
others who want to send their children to that school? or is
campus apartments converting catchment-area apartment
buildings into condos fast enough? is penn's guaranteed
mortgage program for penn folks keeping pace, will our
gentrification ever look like manhattan-style gentrification?
so many questions!
and then, to complicate matters even more, there's this:
Report: Nation's Gentrified Neighborhoods Threatened By
Aristocratization
March 31, 2008
> WASHINGTON--According to a report released Tuesday by the
> Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, the
> recent influx of exceedingly affluent powder-wigged
> aristocrats into the nation's gentrified urban areas is
> pushing out young white professionals, some of whom have
> lived in these neighborhoods for as many as seven years.
>
> Maureen Kennedy, a housing policy expert and lead author
> of the report, said that the enormous treasure-based
> wealth of the aristocracy makes it impossible for those
> living on modest trust funds to hold onto their co-ops
> and converted factory loft spaces.
>
> "When you have a bejeweled, buckle-shoed duke willing to
> pay 11 or 12 times the asking price for a block of
> renovated brownstones--and usually up front with satchels
> of solid gold guineas--hardworking white-collar people who
> only make a few hundred thousand dollars a year simply
> cannot compete," Kennedy said. "If this trend continues,
> these exclusive, vibrant communities with their sidewalk
> cafes and faux dive bars will soon be a thing of the
> past."
>
> According to Kennedy, one of the most pressing concerns
> associated with rapid aristocratization is the drastic
> transformation of the metropolitan landscape in a way
> that fails to maximize livable space.
>
> "A three-block section of [Chicago neighborhood] Wicker
> Park that once accommodated eight families, two vintage
> clothing stores, a French cleaners, and a gourmet bakery
> has been completely razed to make way for a private
> livery stable and carriage house," Kennedy said. "The
> space is now entirely unusable for affordable
> upper-income condominium housing. No one can live there
> except for the odd stable boy or footman who gets
> permission to sleep in the hayloft."
>
> Many of those affected by the ostentatious reshaping of
> their once purely upmarket neighborhoods said that they
> often wish for a return back to the privileged
> communities they helped to overdevelop just a few years
> ago. Among the first to feel the effects of the
> encroaching aristocracy have been local business owners
> like Fort Greene, Brooklyn resident Neil Getz.
>
> "Around here, you used to be able to get a Fair-Trade
> latte and a chocolate-chip croissant for only eight
> bucks," said Getz, who is planning to move back in with
> his parents after being forced out of the lease on his
> organic grocery store by a harpsichord purveyor. "Now
> it's all tearooms and private salon gatherings catered
> with champagne and suckling pig. Who can afford that?"
>
> [photo: Incoming aristocrats are easily spotted by their
> distinctive dress and taste for chamber music.]
>
> "It's just a terrible shame," Getz continued. "There was
> this great little shop right across the street from my
> duplex apartment where I bought my baby daughter a
> Ramones onesie a couple of years ago, just after she was
> born. That whole block is an opera house now."
>
> The aristocracy has adamantly dismissed claims that the
> sweeping changes are detrimental to the merely wealthy
> who have been displaced, and many persons of noble blood
> have pointed to aristocratization's benefits. These
> include lower crime rates attributed to new punishments,
> such as public floggings and the pillory, which are
> primarily meted out for maintaining direct eye contact
> with members of the highest class.
>
> "These accusations are pure, slanderous rubbish," said
> Lord Nathan Dunkirk III, the owner of a prodigious manor
> house that, along with its steeplechase course and
> topiary garden, sits on what was once the Haight-Ashbury
> district of San Francisco. "If anything, the layabouts
> and wastrels have been afforded a veritable glut of new
> and felicitous opportunities as bootblacks and scullery
> maids."
>
> Other aristocrats have echoed Dunkirk and have
> additionally deflected blame onto regification, a process
> by which they say they were priced out of their vast
> rural holdings by kings who wished to consolidate
> property and develop monumental palatial estates.
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/report_nations_gentrified
:-)
..................
UNIVERSITY*CITOYEN
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