Gentrification & Urban Redevelopment

[Riverdale Rink Rat]

I repeat...

shoo.

 

[toraerach]

I am influenced to some degree by the processes going on here. Chicago is actually the playground, the backyard where so many of these processes occurred. Now look, while America is not Canada nor England, the fact remains that Gentrification emerged in the Big Anglophone cities. Toronto was one of the early ones actually. Now hey, classical gentrification has mutated in certain places, as there is for example... oh... tourism gentrification - french quarter of New Orleans. We are not dealing with these detailed things here. We are dealing with the general process which seems to be going on in most major cities.
This is not american cultural baggage that I bring. These are serious issues that happen not just in the US. It is, I would say, I common process that evolved from the Anglo-phone world, a process in which Toronto was at the forefront.

You're neglecting the vast differences between jurisdictions and neighbourhoods that change the ways gentrification works. Gentrification is a very broad term, and there will be substantial differences in how it plays out for anyone of probably hundreds of reasons. You do project American assumptions about gentrification on to Toronto. For example, here:

Hold it. Stop right there. Most people who are getting displaced are renters, not owners.

In a gentrifying neighbourhood where home ownership is low and a substantial amount of people rent this would be true, but gentrification does not mean renter displacement and does not require it. Areas with a high rates of home ownership can and do gentrify, and it usually works out pretty well financially for the displaced.

There are legal differences between jurisdictions as well. Tenant protection laws, zoning laws, etc. all can affect gentrification making the process easier or harder on the displaced population, perhaps even limiting how many are displaced or how quickly the process happens.

There are also huge cultural differences between cities that affect how gentrification plays out. The blacks vs. gays baggage simply does not exist in Toronto the way it does in various American cities. Race doesn't play the same role here at all.

And consider that Canadian cities and American cities developed (sometimes very) differently. Maybe it's the post-war slab that makes gentrification in Toronto different from that in Chicago. Here, there are quite a few neighbourhoods made up of post-war high rises that dot the city. Some of these neighbourhoods have become notorious for their levels of poverty, etc. Let me be clear here: I'm not talking about government housing, but privately owned rentals. For some reason these neighbourhoods are pretty resistant to gentrification, and I think that removes some of the confrontation from gentrification here. If these people lived in structures and neighbourhoods more conducive to gentrification (i.e. more attractive to gentrifiers), the displacement of the poor argument might hold more water here, but for now these neighbourhoods remain too old to be new and too new to be old. Just a theory.

 

[Hipster Duck]

I am influenced to some degree by the processes going on here. Chicago is actually the playground, the backyard where so many of these processes occurred. Now look, while America is not Canada nor England, the fact remains that Gentrification emerged in the Big Anglophone cities. Toronto was one of the early ones actually. Now hey, classical gentrification has mutated in certain places, as there is for example... oh... tourism gentrification - french quarter of New Orleans. We are not dealing with these detailed things here. We are dealing with the general process which seems to be going on in most major cities.
This is not american cultural baggage that I bring. These are serious issues that happen not just in the US. It is, I would say, I common process that evolved from the Anglo-phone world, a process in which Toronto was at the forefront.

Gentrification was not invented in the neoliberal (post-1980) Anglosphere as people often believe. Gentrification can take many forms, often directly state-sponsored and it can have as much or more of a devastating effect on the city's social fabric than the neoliberal market-fueled gentrification that contemporary planners abhor. It's also very old: state-supported slum clearance was an aspect of planning in Ancient Rome; Haussmann cleared vast swaths of working class Paris to construct bourgeois enclaves, communist and socialist leaders fulfilled the same premise in their capitals during the cold war, most notably Caucescu's rebuild of Bucharest.

The phenomenon of gentrification in the Anglosphere was prompted in the late 1970s by the disinvestment in the city core (of American cities especially) following 40+ years of Keynesian managerialist planning and policies that explicitly favoured suburban development. It was a reversal of what David Harvey calls the "Keynesian spatial fix", where suburbanization was largely an attempt by New Deal policy-makers to stimulate consumption of consumer goods (especially cars and housing) to edge America out of the Great Depression. Infrastructure and tax policies were rewritten to reinforce this pattern of development. It worked, but came at a tremendous cost to the inner city. After the late 1970s, downtowns were so undervalued in American cities that it was only natural for upper middle classes to begin taking advantage of them as they did. Since the rich have always occupied the centres of continental European cities and there was never the flight of capital to the suburbs, there was never a gentrification phenomenon, per se, but the net result is the same: the rich occupy the centre, the poor get pushed out to the fringes. This is especially true in French cities.

Now, Toronto occupied a middle ground between the American example of near total inner city disinvestment and suburban flight, and the French example of maintaining a wealthy inner city and dispersing the poor to the edge. Toronto had a city core that was neither very rich nor very poor, with quite a few pockets of wealth - there was certainly never any widescale abandonment of neighbourhoods like what characterized a lot of America during the Keynesian period. At the same time, it built a lot of public housing projects on what was then its periphery, making the city a quiltwork of rich and poor spread across the entire area. Finally, transit service in Toronto was always moderately good - even in the suburbs, so access to employment was fairly equitable wherever you lived. In light of this, you can't really accuse Toronto of falling prey to the same forces of gentrification that swept across American cities. It was a totally different kettle of fish.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

This doesn't fit as a response to any one post above, however:

The truely very rich simply don't know gentrification because they don't move from their neighbourhoods. Forest Hill and the Bridle path will never (barring a depression like meltdown) fall into disuse and dilapidation. The residents there simply wont allow it and they have enough stored $$$ to maintain the area. Very rarely will you see a new super rich neighbourhood pop up in an established city simply because the critical mass of people and land/buildings generally is not available to create another enclave of giant homes on giant lots.

The very poor often have little choice. Their options are quite simply, find the cheapest housing costs (rent or own) available, often (but not always) regardless of the condition of the area. Now 2 things can happen, 1 they take pride in their home/neighbourhood and work to improve/maintain/update the area 2 They just don't care and let the area fall further into dilapidation. In the first example there may be a time when the area has become appealing enough to another class (middle class let's say) and they begin to invest in the area eventually squeezing the lower class out.

That leaves the middle class (lower-middle, middle-middle, upper-middle) playing a kind of musical chairs around the city as one area falls out of favour and another falls into favour.

 

[adma]

Maybe a closer Toronto exemplar than Forest Hill might be the Annex--that is, as a neighbourhood that started out upper or upper-middle-class, only to later enter a rooming-house phase (serving plenty of U of T students, natch) and be threatened by apartment development--until Jane Jacobs' successes led to the long road back upward...

 

[Whoaccio]

They do not guide them at all. They just flush them out. In Chicago there has been much work on tearing up former public housing and replacing it with mixed income communities. Oh and guess what, the former residents get allocated oh say between 25 and 50 percent of the new low income in the mixed thing. And then that slowly is reduced by the time of finishing to about 5 percent. Nobody gives a damn what happens to the former residents. Nobody. The local government only cares to help the rich class, the developers.

Ohh, the humanity. How dare people want to remedy failed urban experiments like Cabrini Green. Filthy capitalists. This may surprise you but poor people don't like being segregated into homogeneous ghettos. In Toronto at least, experiments with mixed market housing have exclusively been preferred to homogeneous income communities by both market residents and low income residents. In Regent Park rundown units are being replaced and new retail being introduced thanks to abandoning the idea that poor places should stay poor.

Change has been for the most part the removel/obliteration of manufacturing from both country and city. This is the change that has damned cities and communities.

Who woulda thought, gay couples and espresso bars don't make for lively neighborhoods, heavy industry does. I will go out on a limb and assume that you have never actually lived near a manufacturing plant. I went to school next to a toilet factory, let me say I would have loved it to be replaced by lofts.

Arsons, intimidation and such things are very common in this. So that's why I said literally.

No, arson and intimidation are not "very common." That is simply false. In Toronto, there has been no major cases of coffee bar owners breaking the legs of the porn shops they are trying to replace. No vegan IT consultants "intimidating" the drug dealers out.

Involuntary movement is not voluntary. People move because they can not afford it, not because they really want to move.

Its not involuntary. I can't afford to live on 5th Avenue, it doesn't mean there is something less than fair going on.

Oh I am very well aware of consumption explanations of gentrification. But it is big ignorance to avoid the production explanations.

Huh? That doesn't even make sense. What you said was that gentrification is bad because it doesn't produce jobs for locals. The reality of life is that almost nobody in any income bracket lives near to their job. If jobs are created thanks to gentrification which otherwise wouldn't have, then the economic benefits are clear. And what is it with people who don't take economics behaving as though production and consumption are somehow separate? You can't have one without the other. For something to be consumed it has to be produced, first.

Oh yeah? Looks like we have a wise guy here. We know what we do to them - beat them down into the ground by showing how wrong they are. Prepare to be shamed.

My god, you sound more and more pompous with each word. The only person you are "beating into the ground" is yourself with your bombastic rhetoric and poor grasp of the issues and outright lies.

1) Your point here assumes that scholars are never opposed to gentrification. Have you ever looked into the actual literature of gentrification? You clearly have not. Most of the known scholars in this field are against gentrification. They are mainly geographers and sociologists.

No, my point was clearly not that. My point was that you have to be a total idiot to issue some banal statement like "very few people say that the old communities like or benefit from gentification.[sic]" Its simply not true. You only arrive at this ridiculous "consensus" by limiting your research to urban geography and sociology, ignoring the more pertinent field of economics and commerce. Not to mention then going on to slag well respected scholars like Lance Freeman with prosaic arguments such as "nobody agrees with him" because he doesn't fit your hackneyed stereotypes of consensus.

2) I know Freeman very well. He wrote that book there goes the hood - and trust me, I do plan on buying it sooner or later. I am currently studying gentrification extensively, and after my current book I plan to read one by a well acclaimed Neil Smith. Smith tore Freeman and extra a$$#0|3 in his damning review of the there goes the hood book. Smith is one of the biggest experts on gentrification and is a big opponent of it. Similarly there are many scholars who are. Look into David Harvey, he might enlighten you a bit....
Freshman approach? Hah, what a fool to throw such accusations when you do not even know the literature. Freshman yourself my boy. "facepalm"

How the hell could you be studying anything "extensively" and slag something without reading it, then go on to slag others for not conforming? Let alone barbarous arguments about tearing of assholes. Here is a wild suggestion, if you stop exclusively researching authors on the basis of whether or they agree or disagree with globalization, you might not come of as such an amateur. If you are too lazy to actually read books that you may disagree with, at least go to Amazon and read the reviews for Lance Freeman's book. He is hardly the pariah you seem to think he is.

Hold it. Stop right there. Most people who are getting displaced are renters, not owners.

Believe it or not, in order to rent something someone has to own it.

It's not always dumps. The media and developers sometimes portray certain places as dumps on purpose, in order to get support for their project.

Sneaky capitalists. Then again, according to you poor people prefer living next to smokestacks and other poor people, so maybe you actually believe that.

Excellent question. This is where the whole problem lies... in manufacturing leaving the city in this era of neoliberal globalization. And hey, top experts in the field share this opinion, it is not me shitting out rants.
An alternative idea is this - preventing neighborhoods from deteriorating by imposing rent control, so that former renters do not get flushed out. Furthermore, it really depends where one is. For example, in Chicago, there has been so much segregation... that is not helpful, as it often creates ghettos.

Rent controls? Is this a joke? Even left wing economists like Paul Krugman have seen rent controls for the scam they are. Nothing decimates the rental stock faster than rent controls. Its clear you didn't even take high school economics, but if you limit the ability a society can invest into rental stock via price floors, what do you expect would happen to the supply?

Gentrification usually deals with the displacement of the poor, not the displacement of the middle class. The questions we need to ask is why has a neighborhood been allowed to fall into the decay in order to allow gentrification to start later on.

Neighborhoods have fallen apart because of people like you. Rent controls producing urban decay and blight, zoning to discourage middle and upper class residents from moving in and this idea you have that poor people don't know how to live. You even answered your own question, if you are asking why neighborhoods fell apart to allow gentrification to occur later. The logical rearrangement of that is that we (you, or your idea specifically) prompted the neighborhoods to fall apart to stop them from gentrifying.

 

[ididthat]

Here, there are quite a few neighbourhoods made up of post-war high rises that dot the city. Some of these neighbourhoods have become notorious for their levels of poverty, etc. Let me be clear here: I'm not talking about government housing, but privately owned rentals. For some reason these neighbourhoods are pretty resistant to gentrification, and I think that removes some of the confrontation from gentrification here. If these people lived in structures and neighbourhoods more conducive to gentrification (i.e. more attractive to gentrifiers), the displacement of the poor argument might hold more water here, but for now these neighbourhoods remain too old to be new and too new to be old. Just a theory.

I would like to agree that these neighbourhoods are more resistant, but is it possible that these rentals are lower in rent because they get subsidy money from the government through the rent they collect?

I mean that this is not the truest definition of government housing, but compared to say those offered by TCHC, they are priced where the rent is still within reach of those on social assistance. For some of the areas, is it possible that it may not be an issue of resisting gentrification as much as it is that without the private owners renting for such a low cost, these people would have no where else in the city to go? I do not know the exact numbers, but say the average family gets about $1100/mo for social assistance, and they pay $850/mo in rent, that leaves about $250/mo for everything else. Now we look at the fact that these private owners know that the $850 is the max allowed for a social assistance recipient to pay for housing, why as a person or company trying to make money, wouldn't I keep crappy and usually substandard accommodation around as long as possible and milk the system in the process.

Plus, what also hurts the communities is that there does not seem to be a lot of people who look to these areas to open anything other than sub-par businesses in them? A reasonable question for a small business owner should be, "If there is barely enough money to put food on the table, how are the residents going afford to buy trendy trinkets for the house or $5 coffees?"

I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying that it's how it is for some of the people that live in the ungentrificated areas. Maybe that is why there is so much resistance instead of too new to be old and too old to be new.

Could this be some of the reason that Mimico and Long Branch are having such a tough time coming along.

 

[LAz]

Gentrification is a very broad term, and there will be substantial differences in how it plays out for anyone of probably hundreds of reasons. You do project American assumptions about gentrification on to Toronto.

While it is a broad term, the whole essence in the term is "displacement" which makes the effect the same. If there was no displacement, it would not be gentrification but instead it would be urban redevelopment. The difference between urban redevelopment and gentrification is big.

but gentrification does not mean renter displacement and does not require it. Areas with a high rates of home ownership can and do gentrify, and it usually works out pretty well financially for the displaced.

It depends. Some do like it, and some despise it.

Tenant protection laws, zoning laws, etc. all can affect gentrification making the process easier or harder on the displaced population, perhaps even limiting how many are displaced or how quickly the process happens.

In the so called third wave of gentrification, since the 1990s, local governments have actively participated in helping gentrification boom. They did so by doing what they could to help the developers gentrify. Since the 1990s the primary force in gentrification is the big time developers themselves, not the small pioneers who go in and rehab a house in which to live in. The process since the 1990s has been going as faster than ever, and with more government support than ever. These zoning laws and whatnot... they're useless. They get adjusted on purpose so that the developer will be helped.
You see, the neoliberal urban regimes welcome this, as it means more tax dollars. The government no longer pursues a full employment policy and with so many things privatized, they become slaves to those who give them tax. Big corporate developers = more tax => former neighborhood resistance fails. Very few places have managed to resist gentrification, and those that have have only done it for a temporary time. It is an ongoing battle.

here are also huge cultural differences between cities that affect how gentrification plays out. The blacks vs. gays baggage simply does not exist in Toronto the way it does in various American cities. Race doesn't play the same role here at all.

Race has not played a role anywhere in the gentrification process in quite some time. The only way that race can even be an issue is if the lower class is of a certain race. Gentrification does not care who who is. Class is the only thing that matters. There are class differences.

And consider that Canadian cities and American cities developed (sometimes very) differently. Maybe it's the post-war slab that makes gentrification in Toronto different from that in Chicago. Here, there are quite a few neighbourhoods made up of post-war high rises that dot the city. Some of these neighbourhoods have become notorious for their levels of poverty, etc. Let me be clear here: I'm not talking about government housing, but privately owned rentals. For some reason these neighbourhoods are pretty resistant to gentrification, and I think that removes some of the confrontation from gentrification here. If these people lived in structures and neighbourhoods more conducive to gentrification (i.e. more attractive to gentrifiers), the displacement of the poor argument might hold more water here, but for now these neighbourhoods remain too old to be new and too new to be old. Just a theory.

From what I have seen, most gentrification that has occurred in Toronto has been south of the bloor-danforth line, where there are few highrise complexes. One interesting thing in Toronto is that there are many more highrises than in the US, and boy do I love them. At any rate, gentrification will probably creep up and reach those places sooner or later. Cabrini Green fell in Chicago, and that model can be used elsewhere. The difference is that the sheer size of highrises is far greater in Toronto. Plus, there has been less "disinvestment".

Gentrification was not invented in the neoliberal (post-1980) Anglosphere as people often believe.

Did I say that it was invented in the post 1980 realm? Don't put words into my mouth. Some things that resembled it were first recorded in the 1930s, but it actually started as a real process in the 1950s and 1960s. It was rather sporadic at first. And it did take place in the big time cities of the anglophone world first.

In light of this, you can't really accuse Toronto of falling prey to the same forces of gentrification that swept across American cities. It was a totally different kettle of fish.

After reading your post where you were perhaps trying to sound smart, mentioning harvey and others... I beg to differ with your conclusion.
Why not read deeper into harvey's stuff and you might be able to stumble upon neil smith and jason hackworth. Many more actually. The point is that there is an overwhelming body of literature that talks about gentrification all over the world.
I recommend that you look into Neil Smith's rent gap thesis. That there is a good starting point in seeing that there is potential for gentrification absolutely anywhere. Anyhows, Gentrification has only intensified and expanded all over the world since the 1990s, and Toronto is absolutely no exception. Tens of thousands have been displaced in big Canadian cities such as Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and others.

Very rarely will you see a new super rich neighbourhood pop up in an established city simply because the critical mass of people and land/buildings generally is not available to create another enclave of giant homes on giant lots.

It takes time. It's a process called Super-Gentrification, where the rich displace the middle class.

Ohh, the humanity. How dare people want to remedy failed urban experiments like Cabrini Green. Filthy capitalists. This may surprise you but poor people don't like being segregated into homogeneous ghettos. In Toronto at least, experiments with mixed market housing have exclusively been preferred to homogeneous income communities by both market residents and low income residents. In Regent Park rundown units are being replaced and new retail being introduced thanks to abandoning the idea that poor places should stay poor.

Cabrini Green was once a good place in case you did not know.
Poor places do not stay poor. Their poverty is created through disinvestment and so they become poor.
Mixed income is a joke. The displaced poor get only like 5% if not less of the new mixed income places. What a joke indeed. You are reading Freeman's cheers for gentrification I bet, where the genius based his research and data off of those who moved in, not those who moved out.

Who woulda thought, gay couples and espresso bars don't make for lively neighborhoods, heavy industry does. I will go out on a limb and assume that you have never actually lived near a manufacturing plant. I went to school next to a toilet factory, let me say I would have loved it to be replaced by lofts.

The service sector industry should not be the only industry. That bothers me. Why must it all be service based? Having some factories does not mean butting them right adjacent to communities out of nowhere. But nonetheless, we do need manufacturing. How many of those jobs have been sent to china and elsewhere? The rich simply do not want to pay people more here if they can get slaves to work for less in china or some other god forsaken place.

No, arson and intimidation are not "very common." That is simply false. In Toronto, there has been no major cases of coffee bar owners breaking the legs of the porn shops they are trying to replace. No vegan IT consultants "intimidating" the drug dealers out.

In the literature it is very common for former tenants to be intimidated to move. Some of the worst intimidation has been noted in the UK. Regardless, intimidation does happen.

Its not involuntary. I can't afford to live on 5th Avenue, it doesn't mean there is something less than fair going on.

Tell me about the people who got displaced from south parkdale.
Here... http://www.urbancentre.utoronto.ca/pdfs/researchbulletins/CUCS-RB-28-Slater-Parkd.pdf

For something to be consumed it has to be produced, first.

When I speak of consumption and production explanations I am talking about some gentrification terminology which you have demonstrated to have absolutely no knowledge about. Consumption explanations more or less say that it is all supply and demand, people want to move there and whatnot. Production explanations say that gentrification is produced through disinvestment, and one key thing here is the rent gap. Please don't say some nonsense like "oh we have a big rent they havea small one so what if there is a gap" - it's something totally different from this hypothetical imbecilic reply that I made up.

Bah, here, I don't even want to argue, I guess I must chow down all the food for you to swallow, here's the rent gap - http://www.enoughroomforspace.org/project_pages/view/198

Here is some info on consumption and production explanations...
http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~zchoudhu/page3.html



-pause before second post-

 

[LAz]

Its simply not true. You only arrive at this ridiculous "consensus" by limiting your research to urban geography and sociology, ignoring the more pertinent field of economics and commerce.

Urban Geography do not ignore these other fields. There are benefits in some ways, but the negatives outweigh the good - the social cost is what bears the biggest burden and why this is not a good process. Gentrification does not fix the underlying problems.

Not to mention then going on to slag well respected scholars like Lance Freeman with prosaic arguments such as "nobody agrees with him" because he doesn't fit your hackneyed stereotypes of consensus.

Look here, it is a well known fact that Freeman is not a respected source for any of this. His methodology is simply "shit" because he focuses on those who moved into neighborhoods, not those who moved out. His methodology is totally flawed. But, the ones with big money and power like what he says so he easily becomes a poster boy.

If you are too lazy to actually read books that you may disagree with, at least go to Amazon and read the reviews for Lance Freeman's book.

I have talked to one professor who is reading his book "there goes the hood" and as clear as can be, it is obvious that his methodology is outright flawed. I shit on amazon.com book reviews - go to the geography journals and elsewhere. Neil Smith wrote a pretty review of his book. I do read reviews, thank you very much, but I read those that are actually published, not random idiot's jibberish on amazon. Neil Smith tore the idiot apart in his review of the book.
It is you who are jumping to conclusions with things that do you suit your opinion, not me. I do read the literature. And trust me, there is very little academic literature out there that supports it. Why don't you go read some of it, instead of accusing me of being close minded.


I'll give you the first paragraph out of Neil Smith's review of Freeman's propaganda. Yeah, I will spend my time to copy it here.

"Warning. This book is further from view than it seems from the title. Lance Freeman splashed into view in 2004 with a co-edited article that purported to show that gentrification was a good thing, the locals actually liked it, and academics should get with the program. In fact, academics demurred, roundly panning the methodology and disputing the findings. This book suggests that the author either did not read the critiques or is happily unaffected by them."

Pwn3d.

And to think that I don't read reviews. HAHAHAHHA!

Believe it or not, in order to rent something someone has to own it.

We're dealing with displacement in case you have not noticed. Owners often do not even live in the nighborhood in which they are rented, and it is no secret that sometimes many like the thought of gentrifying the neighborhood in which their property is not in.

Then again, according to you poor people prefer living next to smokestacks and other poor people, so maybe you actually believe that.

Stop putting words into my mouth. The poor like being poor is what you imply that I support. What I am saying is that the poor are often not so poor as they are portrayed. There is a good article that I read on Chicago's Pilson neighborhood. Several local scholars from schools nearby did work on this. Indeed, the rhetoric was to paint this community as an infested terrain of shit, povery, and misery. The residents rose up and fought against this slander!! Yes, media slander!!! And they managed to prevent this gentrification!! And god bless them! But who knows how long they will be able to hold out. I have been there recently and parts of the east and north are beginning to crack thanks to the developers.

Rent controls? Is this a joke?

It is no joke, and it only applies to the former residents only in the neighborhood in question. It's only one out of several things that could be done in order to help a single area and their people avoid being uprooted.

As I had said in my post, I am not sure what the best way is to counter gentrification, and that is just one idea in my brainstorming mode.

Neighborhoods have fallen apart because of people like you. Rent controls producing urban decay and blight, zoning to discourage middle and upper class residents from moving in and this idea you have that poor people don't know how to live. You even answered your own question, if you are asking why neighborhoods fell apart to allow gentrification to occur later. The logical rearrangement of that is that we (you, or your idea specifically) prompted the neighborhoods to fall apart to stop them from gentrifying.

You clearly are not even looking at what I write. Do you even know what blight is? Do you? Do you know how local authorities identified blight? In many cases blight was dirty dishes. The whole blight argument is an empty hole with nothing in it.
Zoning is not the issue. Decay is an issue, but it is often produced thanks to the authorities for not wanting to invest in a certain neighborhood. You forgot about redlining I suppose? Places were crippled on purpose. There was intent to make them fall apart. I never said that my sole solution was rent controls. But, even those who support gentrification in the literature do speak of some rent control and the provision of affordable housing. The supporters of gentrification in the literature like Byrne do say this. They all do. Even Freeman. So go education yourself on this issue before you make an ass out of yourself again. And read Neil Smith's review on Freeman's book. That's the first step that I would recommend.








God damn it all, there is nothing that pisses me off more than someone accusing me of being a blind idiot, when I have been reading literature on gentrification from the top academic journals and scholars this entire summer. I have been reading both sides. I have read very much on this. And based on things that I have read I formed opinions. I do not take a side just because I do not like what is said. In fact, it does not matter what I like or do not like. What matters is the scholarly discourse. I personally see some great aspects of gentrification, but that most definitely can not and must not override the literature and scholarly work on this. No matter how many good things I saw in this last year, and there were a lot, I simply can not and will not ignore the bad things associated with this process. If someone is going to attack me for reading the literature, and accuse me of not doing it while attacking me - well sorry, but #$(*D&*#&@&^@^&$*&#$^$(#!!@&#()#



(post edited, added italics)

 

[Therion]

I view gentrification as Darwinism at work. You take some dude who smokes pot all day, hasn't finished grade 8 and lives on social assistance. He gets kicked out, his place is taken by industrious couple who contribute to neighbourhood by the simple fact of having money. Crack houses disappear, the remaining locals can find jobs in the many local establishments that pop up like mushrooms, and everyone benefits. Except the pothead, but in what sense is this not his fault? The people that replaced him spent countless hours and tens of thousands of dollars on their education, don't they deserve it more than him?

 

[LAz]

I view gentrification as Darwinism at work. You take some dude who smokes pot all day, hasn't finished grade 8 and lives on social assistance. He gets kicked out, his place is taken by industrious couple who contribute to neighbourhood by the simple fact of having money. Crack houses disappear, the remaining locals can find jobs in the many local establishments that pop up like mushrooms, and everyone benefits. Except the pothead, but in what sense is this not his fault? The people that replaced him spent countless hours and tens of thousands of dollars on their education, don't they deserve it more than him?

Gentrification occurs even when people are not crack addicts. It simply happens all over, regardless of who the people are. Many times well off people get gentrified.




As for the poor - you treat them awfully bad. You need to ask yourself this... they were once middle class. Their neighborhood was once good. So what caused it to fall apart, and will this gentrification really get rid of the problem or will it just move the problem?





I'll say one thing, gentrification is pursued in such cruel methods... not everywhere, but in the US and Canada at least... that the displaced are not cared about. In Moscow at least the displaced all get rehoused, 100% of them. Granted that they get screwed, but at least they get some compensation. Here it's very very limited, almost nothing.

I think that gentrification can be okay. But the rhetoric and stated objectives are just wrong.

 

[toraerach]

I view gentrification as Darwinism at work. You take some dude who smokes pot all day, hasn't finished grade 8 and lives on social assistance. He gets kicked out, his place is taken by industrious couple who contribute to neighbourhood by the simple fact of having money. Crack houses disappear, the remaining locals can find jobs in the many local establishments that pop up like mushrooms, and everyone benefits. Except the pothead, but in what sense is this not his fault? The people that replaced him spent countless hours and tens of thousands of dollars on their education, don't they deserve it more than him?

I think that's a really unfair characterization of the poor. Laziness is not the only cause of poverty - there are many reasons why people are poor and why they remain poor. It could be that you had to drop out of high school to support your family when you were a kid. It could be that you have a major disability preventing you from working. It could be that you're a senior living on a modest fixed income. It could be that, for whatever reason, the financial stability you planned on disappeared (failed marriages, bad investments, having to take care of relatives or friends who you didn't plan on being responsible for, etc.). Sometimes things just don't work out.

Some of the hardest working people I've met have been poor. That's just the way life is sometimes. That's not to say that gentrification is in itself a bad thing or that the poor cannot benefit from it, but they are not all lazy crack addicts who squandered their potential or are by nature less productive than wealthier people. Sometimes poverty should arouse in us compassion and not disdain.

 

[LAz]

Blaming the victims is part of the conservative ideology. In such environments gentrification thrives. The big part in getting gentrification going forward is to paint all the poor people as decrypt derelict problematic scum that are a problem for the city and need to be cleansed. Many times it is fabricated on purpose. Much goes into this discourse to frame the poor as shit on purpose, in order to displace them. A great example is Pilson in Chicago. The communities rose up and countered the false rhetoric successfully.

But, the rhetoric will be around almost all the time. The problem is that it outright corrupt and false! Maybe not in every case, but it sure is in many many cases. I don't know harder working people than the poorest.

And lets remember... the most efficient way to get rich is to have people working for you, not by working hard yourself.

 

[Therion]

I was being facetious/sarcastic, mostly. I'm quite familiar with the socio-economic aspects of poverty. I simply strongly disagree that gentrification is a bad thing. Also, what's the alternative? You can't forbid home-owners to sell their property if they wish.

 

[Riverdale Rink Rat]

Don't apologize, dude!

I was being facetious/sarcastic, mostly. I'm quite familiar with the socio-economic aspects of poverty. I simply strongly disagree that gentrification is a bad thing. Also, what's the alternative? You can't forbid home-owners to sell their property if they wish.

Anyone that trys to win an argument about gentrification by citing Moscow as an exemplar of what we should do has officially jumped the shark.

I continue to believe that are 'friend' from Chicago has never actually been to Toronto and was/is a troll looking to start an argument for entertainment/education of others value. His/her Google Mapping my 'nabe in an effort to seem relevant, or citing South Parkdale, are, IMHO, attempts to map arguments from Chicago or a university classroom (or both) onto Toronto.