Fuckers who complain about gentrification are usually twenty something hipster crackers from McSprawlville by way of Nowhere. Gentrification is so terrible. It's a fucking tragedy when blighted boarded-up crack houses get renovated. Or when home owners actually see appreciation in their property values. You miss the good ol' days when entire blocks were empty but for a few hookers, dealers, packs of feral dogs and garbage tumbling around...even though you grew up in a gated golf community. Nah really, you just hate that rent keeps going up and that fine arts degree only landed you a bike messenger job.
Thats some lazy ass thinking dude. Gentrification sucks for a reason, and yeah lots of fauxhemians get all bent out of shape about it but it is a problem. Don't give me this "yeah sure sucks when the crime goes down lol!" sarcasm because you know that ain't what it about. If you think gentrification is turning poor people into happy homeowners you are tripping.
You don't know shit. Nothing.
What's it about fucker? Huh? Black people who hate whites? Losers who hate those who work hard and moved up? Fucking bleeding heart bitch. Do you work for HUD? No, better question...do you own property?
I find nothing wrong w/ Gentrification. But when u look a how cultureless SOHO is I cant co-sign %100. My hood is next and I'm all for it. I dont imagine Abercrombie & Fitch in the South Bronx..............yet. Sometimes the scrubbing away can turn a hood into anytown usa. The right mix of folks is essential.
Well, OK. I was looking for a fight after watching the star wars geeks vs punker geeks video, but...
It's important to distinguish between gentrification issues associated with urban places like NYC boroughs, DC or Oakland--where there is fierce competition for real estate.
Then you have larger to medium to smaller urban areas. Which are far more widespread throughout the USA than these few really big urban areas.
On the other hand, where I'm coming from (VA), these areas are in dire need of gentrification. Richmond, for example, has a formerly beautiful urban center that is all but empty and lifeless. VCU and State Gov. create work day traffic, but the place is a ghosttown after five. 30 years of entitlement programs have done little to help. Gilpin Court anyone? But gentrification is the only thing that will help. Look at parts of downtown Norfolk.
Then you have smaller urban areas like downtown Petersburg or Hopewell that are all but empty. Those types of areas are all over the USA--surrounded by sprawling car centered suburbs/exurbs. Shit is sad. Not only is this social segregation b/w xenophobia (bonus: stupid country club living mentality), but also (go ahead call me a crazy tree hugger) these increasing and more intense heat waves are thanks this sprawling car centered lifestyle. I digress.
Also, WTF @ assuming property owners have the only legitimate opinion on gentrification?!
Sorry but this is true. There is a hierarchy of power in this country that is as real as racism. You can pretend like it doesn't exist, but it does. Property owners have more invested in a community than renters. End of story. Period. Bye. Call me.
That's why I busted my ass to buy a house and continue to bust my ass harder to pay the mortgage. You you should do the same. And not trying to be funny, so should your mom.
I don't know too much about Chicago but my impression was that the large projects were being demolished because they were becoming worse and worse, with more crime, more squatters, and less opportunity than ever.
And, of course, they would yield valuable real estate...
But basically housing projects have become these lawless fortresses where nobody goes in, or out. I am all for getting rid of that. Housing projects were a terrible idea to begin with and their destruction will hopefully yield (eventually) a more vertically navigable society.
As for where the people go? Well, out here they are often going to the top of the Bronx, to lower-income communities in Long Island or Westchester or New Jersey, or to outer Brooklyn... and from an outside view and inside testimony the living conditions are better... the danger is that these far-out destinations become suburban slums.
There needs to be a distinction made between poverty and gentrification. Gentrification doesn't cause poverty, nor does it end it. It is the free market economy, or more ruthlessly put, big bank take little bank.
I would like to hear deej's alternatives though...
Also, WTF @ assuming property owners have the only legitimate opinion on gentrification?!
Sorry but this is true. There is a hierarchy of power in this country that is as real as racism. You can pretend like it doesn't exist, but it does. Property owners have more invested in a community than renters. End of story. Period. Bye. Call me.
That's why I busted my ass to buy a house and continue to bust my ass harder to pay the mortgage. You you should do the same. And not trying to be funny, so should your mom.
Or if you stay in the same area, buy something together. My moms is a broke ass school teacher. She'd paid rent since my parents split in the early 80s. I pressed her for years to buy something. There where tons of programs available to help her buy something and fix it up without dropping a dime until the second month's mortgage---which turned out to be only $100 more than the rent she was paying and when she divided her mortgage interest deduction on her income taxes, she actually pays less than when she rented.
Fatback duder you are crazy. Gentrification doesn't just affect homeowners smart guy. Yr nearing that pull-up-by-bootstraps-or-shut-up territory that I thought record nerds would be above.
Re: Chicago's housing projects - absolutely something needed to be done. In the 80s and 90s, the towers (especially at cabrini and robert taylor, which was w/ something like 20,000 and 25,000 people respectively the largest projects in America) were controlled by drug lords and gangs, shootings and crime were rampant. Rough place to live to say the least.
1st off though, you should be aware that the 'bad idea in the first place' thing is a little off-base; prior to the rise of housing projects, Chicago had overcrowded slums, and the projects were a progressive step in urban development; rather than people living in shacks with no facilities you had the government helping to making more liveable conditions for everyone. What happened, though, like all of Chicago's urban development from this period, was that it became affected by segregation as much as by economic issues; Lathrop Homes were an all-white housing project, the Dan Ryan was built and split the black south side from bridgeport and other, whiter areas. The projects became ghettoized and eventually were totally unpoliceable.
So yeah, high-density housing projects need to go. But you have to recognize that for their time and place they were a neccessary and progressive development in some ways - I mean, I can think of plenty of better (utopian) solutions but they prob would have shipped me to the USSR if I was advocating them in the 20s and 30s. But realistically, it was an improvement in many ways, believe it or not. (Initially, Robert Taylor was designed as a 'city within a city,' that would have its own stores, schools, etc.)
And yeah, I'm definitely suspicious of the motives of politicos hell bent on bringing down the projects; you can bet that if they weren't on PRIMO REAL ESTATE things would be a little different. Cabrini is walking distance from navy pier!
I don't mean to conflate poverty and gentrification, but they are certainly linked.
I don't know where you live exactly but I'm not sure unless my mom plans on moving to the outer burbs she could pay a mortgage thats lower than her rent.
"the projects became ghetto-ized" = the plan all along. read up on your read ups. I agree that it was a progressive step in terms of services although that was a pretty empty promise, basically this was advanced and PC segregation at work. I think the dissection of upper Manhattan and The Bronx would be very edifying for you as far as the objective behind some of this construction goes. Robert Moses and shit.
Again, I don't know much about Chi but it seems very similar.
In NYC the projects were "ghetto-ized" living even when they were first constructed albeit for poor immigrants, jews italians and irish. The idea of the housing project was flawed, maybe a noble theory but the people carrying it out were anything but.
Oh damn so on point, urban bike culture is insufferable...dudes who show up to parties looking scruffy with their jeans rolled up wearing messenger bags and ranger caps, gtfoohwtbs. I don't care how practical it is, you look like a hipster doofus.
Someone should make a graemlin of kramer saying 'hipster doofus.'
don't fuck with bike messengers.
fuck with people who cop the look who aren't messengers.
thank you.
that is all.
i beg to differ. my mailman performs the same function as bike messengers, albeit more efficiently, yet he doesnt feel the need to "send a message" with the shit he wears. get these dudes a blue uniform and a reality check. your part of the system if your delivering packages to BUSINESSES. take that hipster shit to urban outfitters where they appreciate it.
Um, your mailman isn't riding a bike.
Rolled up pants have a function, as does the bag and most gear that couriers wear. I was a courier for years, had what I'm sure you all consider this trendy "look," yet, what do you know, pretty much my entire outfit was based on function - putting in 300 miles a week on a bicycle in urban traffic.
There were some dudes/girls who were definitely clowns and hung up on some kind of fashion, but just like most things in life, "real headz know the deal" and look that way for a reason.
I don't understand the deal with rugged ass, "I ride 300 miles a week in urban traffic, bro" Great! Are you fronting or are you complaining? If it sucks that much then do something else. If you are capable of conjuring up the 3rd hand image/fantasy of being some cornball bike messenger then I am sure you'll qualify to something else. But dudes walk around all "Bro, traffic was all thick today, and I put my life on the line everyday n' shit, but that's just a urban way of a being a bike messenger man. you have to be hard to hang" Come on, you ride a bike around all day. I mean window washers who hang off the side of 50 story buildings don't run around acting all hard, adopting some fake ass wanna be hard persona. Who gives a shit?
You are replying to my message, but you don't seem to be talking to me.
Or are you?
Because if you are, I have no idea what you are going on about at all.
"the projects became ghetto-ized" = the plan all along. read up on your read ups. I agree that it was a progressive step in terms of services although that was a pretty empty promise, basically this was advanced and PC segregation at work. I think the dissection of upper Manhattan and The Bronx would be very edifying for you as far as the objective behind some of this construction goes. Robert Moses and shit.
Again, I don't know much about Chi but it seems very similar.
In NYC the projects were "ghetto-ized" living even when they were first constructed albeit for poor immigrants, jews italians and irish. The idea of the housing project was flawed, maybe a noble theory but the people carrying it out were anything but.
"the projects became ghetto-ized" = the plan all along. read up on your read ups. I agree that it was a progressive step in terms of services although that was a pretty empty promise, basically this was advanced and PC segregation at work. I think the dissection of upper Manhattan and The Bronx would be very edifying for you as far as the objective behind some of this construction goes. Robert Moses and shit.
Again, I don't know much about Chi but it seems very similar.
In NYC the projects were "ghetto-ized" living even when they were first constructed albeit for poor immigrants, jews italians and irish. The idea of the housing project was flawed, maybe a noble theory but the people carrying it out were anything but.
"the projects became ghetto-ized" = the plan all along. read up on your read ups. I agree that it was a progressive step in terms of services although that was a pretty empty promise, basically this was advanced and PC segregation at work. I think the dissection of upper Manhattan and The Bronx would be very edifying for you as far as the objective behind some of this construction goes. Robert Moses and shit.
Again, I don't know much about Chi but it seems very similar.
In NYC the projects were "ghetto-ized" living even when they were first constructed albeit for poor immigrants, jews italians and irish. The idea of the housing project was flawed, maybe a noble theory but the people carrying it out were anything but.
Yeah I entirely agree with this.
I do too. That's why I'm fed up with 30+ years of this ineffective entitlement system. (projects, Section 8, etc.) That's why I support diverting those funds to support home ownership. Try to call me GOP pull-up-your-boot-straps or whatever, you don't know me, I've dedicated most of my adult life to public service. But if you REALLY care, you know there's a time to step back and say, you know what...I don't think these policies are working. That time is now.
?? I'm in full support of incentives to help move people from apartments to ownership but I think getting rid of section 8 entirely is probably not realistic.
The problem with gentrification is that its more about people relocating and not about apartment dwellers moving up the chain to becoming owners.
?? I'm in full support of incentives to help move people from apartments to ownership but I think getting rid of section 8 entirely is probably not realistic.
The problem with gentrification is that its more about people relocating and not about apartment dwellers moving up the chain to becoming owners.
?? I'm in full support of incentives to help move people from apartments to ownership but I think getting rid of section 8 entirely is probably not realistic.
The problem with gentrification is that its more about people relocating and not about apartment dwellers moving up the chain to becoming owners.
dude. you really need to read shit and stop putting words in my mouth. ineffective does not equal get rid of. divert funds does not equal get rid of. changing public policy does not equal get rid of.
whatever we do, we need to have results oriented public policy. and what results do we have from years of section 8 and housing projects? not good ones. promoting home ownership is the only thing that has demonstrable positive impacts on communities.
(For the record: PLEASE do not confuse what I'm saying with Bush's Orwellian Ownership Society steez. Like much of his social policy, he is stealing ideas from progressive results oriented liberals and proposing empty set-up-to-fail programs.)
I like the 'there's more then two options' approach.
Its not an either/or thing. Gentrification is not wholly good or wholly evil but I'm tending towards 'why put up with the negative effects when there is another way,' i.e. smart urban planning that doesn't just follow dollar signs.
Oh come on you can read subtext, i'm sorry i didn't capture the nuances for you. The idea that we have to choose between high density housing projects and the mall-ing of American cities = 2x as naive (or lazy)
Oh damn so on point, urban bike culture is insufferable...dudes who show up to parties looking scruffy with their jeans rolled up wearing messenger bags and ranger caps, gtfoohwtbs. I don't care how practical it is, you look like a hipster doofus.
Someone should make a graemlin of kramer saying 'hipster doofus.'
don't fuck with bike messengers.
fuck with people who cop the look who aren't messengers.
thank you.
that is all.
i beg to differ. my mailman performs the same function as bike messengers, albeit more efficiently, yet he doesnt feel the need to "send a message" with the shit he wears. get these dudes a blue uniform and a reality check. your part of the system if your delivering packages to BUSINESSES. take that hipster shit to urban outfitters where they appreciate it.
Um, your mailman isn't riding a bike.
Rolled up pants have a function, as does the bag and most gear that couriers wear. I was a courier for years, had what I'm sure you all consider this trendy "look," yet, what do you know, pretty much my entire outfit was based on function - putting in 300 miles a week on a bicycle in urban traffic.
There were some dudes/girls who were definitely clowns and hung up on some kind of fashion, but just like most things in life, "real headz know the deal" and look that way for a reason.
I don't understand the deal with rugged ass, "I ride 300 miles a week in urban traffic, bro" Great! Are you fronting or are you complaining? If it sucks that much then do something else. If you are capable of conjuring up the 3rd hand image/fantasy of being some cornball bike messenger then I am sure you'll qualify to something else. But dudes walk around all "Bro, traffic was all thick today, and I put my life on the line everyday n' shit, but that's just a urban way of a being a bike messenger man. you have to be hard to hang" Come on, you ride a bike around all day. I mean window washers who hang off the side of 50 story buildings don't run around acting all hard, adopting some fake ass wanna be hard persona. Who gives a shit?
You are replying to my message, but you don't seem to be talking to me.
Or are you?
Because if you are, I have no idea what you are going on about at all.
90% of the people at dunkin donuts/starbuck at 8:55 am are like machines ordering their coffee. however, there is that annoying 10% who just came in off the street and wanna hold up the line while they order a fucking banaberry smoothie or some weird food item at starbucks that the cashier hasn't rung up in six months.
You've made a very powerful enemy today, my friend.
Oh damn so on point, urban bike culture is insufferable...dudes who show up to parties looking scruffy with their jeans rolled up wearing messenger bags and ranger caps, gtfoohwtbs. I don't care how practical it is, you look like a hipster doofus.
Someone should make a graemlin of kramer saying 'hipster doofus.'
The worst part of hipsters embracing bikes is that they generally do a horrible job about it.
"Hey, instead of getting a good bike for my height and usual riding environment, let's get this garbage looking piece of shit and slap on a basket and a horn! Gotta make sure I make that kickball game with a bunch of other 20 something douchebags in time, like I don't already live in an extended adolescence fantasy world enough!"
the dichotomy is between gentrification and leaving shit blighted. i know there are contentious and special issues associated with gentrification on the south side of chi, for example. but hose really don't apply to my area per se.
i'll never forget going on the wrong direction on the L back in 93. my friend said get off at the last stop. i think it was the red line? i went almost to the "other" last stop forgot where i got off. i had to wait about 45 minutes for the next train. it was march and cold as fuck. i walked down to try to find a place to get smokes. i tried to imagine what it would be like to live in that area. but i honestly couldn't. i'm not gonna lie.
I don't know too much about Chicago but my impression was that the large projects were being demolished because they were becoming worse and worse, with more crime, more squatters, and less opportunity than ever.
DUUUDE you just took me back to my days in Las Vegas. Plain and simple if you can't live right I really don't have any sympathy for you or your destructive way. Get some muhfucking home training.
There needs to be a distinction made between poverty and gentrification. Gentrification doesn't cause poverty, nor does it end it. It is the free market economy, or more ruthlessly put, big bank take little bank.
Truth spoken
I would like to hear deej's alternatives though...
me too.
BTW BEST URBAN COMPLAINT THREAD POSTERS: BOHEMOTH AND FATBK
Oh damn so on point, urban bike culture is insufferable...dudes who show up to parties looking scruffy with their jeans rolled up wearing messenger bags and ranger caps, gtfoohwtbs. I don't care how practical it is, you look like a hipster doofus.
Someone should make a graemlin of kramer saying 'hipster doofus.'
The worst part of hipsters embracing bikes is that they generally do a horrible job about it.
"Hey, instead of getting a good bike for my height and usual riding environment, let's get this garbage looking piece of shit and slap on a basket and a horn! Gotta make sure I make that kickball game with a bunch of other 20 something douchebags in time, like I don't already live in an extended adolescence fantasy world enough!"
i also don't get why you'd want a track bike (no brakes, no freewheel, 18c tires) for riding up and down hills, swerving through dangerous traffic and torn the fuck up city streets.
Comments
Well, OK. I was looking for a fight after watching the star wars geeks vs punker geeks video, but...
It's important to distinguish between gentrification issues associated with urban places like NYC boroughs, DC or Oakland--where there is fierce competition for real estate.
Then you have larger to medium to smaller urban areas. Which are far more widespread throughout the USA than these few really big urban areas.
On the other hand, where I'm coming from (VA), these areas are in dire need of gentrification. Richmond, for example, has a formerly beautiful urban center that is all but empty and lifeless. VCU and State Gov. create work day traffic, but the place is a ghosttown after five. 30 years of entitlement programs have done little to help. Gilpin Court anyone? But gentrification is the only thing that will help. Look at parts of downtown Norfolk.
Then you have smaller urban areas like downtown Petersburg or Hopewell that are all but empty. Those types of areas are all over the USA--surrounded by sprawling car centered suburbs/exurbs. Shit is sad. Not only is this social segregation b/w xenophobia (bonus: stupid country club living mentality), but also (go ahead call me a crazy tree hugger) these increasing and more intense heat waves are thanks this sprawling car centered lifestyle. I digress.
Sorry but this is true. There is a hierarchy of power in this country that is as real as racism. You can pretend like it doesn't exist, but it does. Property owners have more invested in a community than renters. End of story. Period. Bye. Call me.
That's why I busted my ass to buy a house and continue to bust my ass harder to pay the mortgage. You you should do the same. And not trying to be funny, so should your mom.
And, of course, they would yield valuable real estate...
But basically housing projects have become these lawless fortresses where nobody goes in, or out. I am all for getting rid of that. Housing projects were a terrible idea to begin with and their destruction will hopefully yield (eventually) a more vertically navigable society.
As for where the people go? Well, out here they are often going to the top of the Bronx, to lower-income communities in Long Island or Westchester or New Jersey, or to outer Brooklyn... and from an outside view and inside testimony the living conditions are better... the danger is that these far-out destinations become suburban slums.
There needs to be a distinction made between poverty and gentrification. Gentrification doesn't cause poverty, nor does it end it. It is the free market economy, or more ruthlessly put, big bank take little bank.
I would like to hear deej's alternatives though...
Or if you stay in the same area, buy something together. My moms is a broke ass school teacher. She'd paid rent since my parents split in the early 80s. I pressed her for years to buy something. There where tons of programs available to help her buy something and fix it up without dropping a dime until the second month's mortgage---which turned out to be only $100 more than the rent she was paying and when she divided her mortgage interest deduction on her income taxes, she actually pays less than when she rented.
Re: Chicago's housing projects - absolutely something needed to be done. In the 80s and 90s, the towers (especially at cabrini and robert taylor, which was w/ something like 20,000 and 25,000 people respectively the largest projects in America) were controlled by drug lords and gangs, shootings and crime were rampant. Rough place to live to say the least.
1st off though, you should be aware that the 'bad idea in the first place' thing is a little off-base; prior to the rise of housing projects, Chicago had overcrowded slums, and the projects were a progressive step in urban development; rather than people living in shacks with no facilities you had the government helping to making more liveable conditions for everyone. What happened, though, like all of Chicago's urban development from this period, was that it became affected by segregation as much as by economic issues; Lathrop Homes were an all-white housing project, the Dan Ryan was built and split the black south side from bridgeport and other, whiter areas. The projects became ghettoized and eventually were totally unpoliceable.
So yeah, high-density housing projects need to go. But you have to recognize that for their time and place they were a neccessary and progressive development in some ways - I mean, I can think of plenty of better (utopian) solutions but they prob would have shipped me to the USSR if I was advocating them in the 20s and 30s. But realistically, it was an improvement in many ways, believe it or not. (Initially, Robert Taylor was designed as a 'city within a city,' that would have its own stores, schools, etc.)
And yeah, I'm definitely suspicious of the motives of politicos hell bent on bringing down the projects; you can bet that if they weren't on PRIMO REAL ESTATE things would be a little different. Cabrini is walking distance from navy pier!
I don't mean to conflate poverty and gentrification, but they are certainly linked.
Oh God.
Again, I don't know much about Chi but it seems very similar.
In NYC the projects were "ghetto-ized" living even when they were first constructed albeit for poor immigrants, jews italians and irish. The idea of the housing project was flawed, maybe a noble theory but the people carrying it out were anything but.
You are replying to my message, but you don't seem to be talking to me.
Or are you?
Because if you are, I have no idea what you are going on about at all.
Project........................get it?
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/ourtown/060804/flosstradamus/
I do too. That's why I'm fed up with 30+ years of this ineffective entitlement system. (projects, Section 8, etc.) That's why I support diverting those funds to support home ownership. Try to call me GOP pull-up-your-boot-straps or whatever, you don't know me, I've dedicated most of my adult life to public service. But if you REALLY care, you know there's a time to step back and say, you know what...I don't think these policies are working. That time is now.
The problem with gentrification is that its more about people relocating and not about apartment dwellers moving up the chain to becoming owners.
NETS in Brooklyn?
TOTAL FUCKING BULLSHIT!!
dude. you really need to read shit and stop putting words in my mouth. ineffective does not equal get rid of. divert funds does not equal get rid of. changing public policy does not equal get rid of.
whatever we do, we need to have results oriented public policy. and what results do we have from years of section 8 and housing projects? not good ones. promoting home ownership is the only thing that has demonstrable positive impacts on communities.
(For the record: PLEASE do not confuse what I'm saying with Bush's Orwellian Ownership Society steez. Like much of his social policy, he is stealing ideas from progressive results oriented liberals and proposing empty set-up-to-fail programs.)
A-OK?
The negative effects of gentrification pale in comparison to the negative effective of doing nothing.
So I'm going with the lesser of two evils.
Its not an either/or thing. Gentrification is not wholly good or wholly evil but I'm tending towards 'why put up with the negative effects when there is another way,' i.e. smart urban planning that doesn't just follow dollar signs.
your diaper's showing.
The idea that we have to choose between high density housing projects and the mall-ing of American cities = 2x as naive (or lazy)
You've made a very powerful enemy today, my friend.
*sips on strawberry mango smoothie*
The worst part of hipsters embracing bikes is that they generally do a horrible job about it.
"Hey, instead of getting a good bike for my height and usual riding environment, let's get this garbage looking piece of shit and slap on a basket and a horn! Gotta make sure I make that kickball game with a bunch of other 20 something douchebags in time, like I don't already live in an extended adolescence fantasy world enough!"
i'll never forget going on the wrong direction on the L back in 93. my friend said get off at the last stop. i think it was the red line? i went almost to the "other" last stop forgot where i got off. i had to wait about 45 minutes for the next train. it was march and cold as fuck. i walked down to try to find a place to get smokes. i tried to imagine what it would be like to live in that area. but i honestly couldn't. i'm not gonna lie.
DUUUDE you just took me back to my days in Las Vegas. Plain and simple if you can't live right I really don't have any sympathy for you or your destructive way. Get some muhfucking home training.
Truth spoken
me too.
BTW BEST URBAN COMPLAINT THREAD POSTERS: BOHEMOTH AND FATBK
i also don't get why you'd want a track bike (no brakes, no freewheel, 18c tires) for riding up and down hills, swerving through dangerous traffic and torn the fuck up city streets.
PUCHITO MAKING SOME MOVES THOUGH