gentrification is perceived as a growing threat in many cities. The process by which rich "gentrifiers" move in neighborhoods, rising property prices and thus drive out those who can not afford these prices, has drawn criticism from activists and planners for years. However, io9 article by writer Annalee Newitz, first published by io9 that " This is what is really gentrification " we said that the issue is not quite the struggle between good and evil it first seems. Gentrification is a process dependent on the economy, the political climate and the mercurial nature of urban development itself - and sometimes the struggle against it only serves to exacerbate the problem. Find out what we may face gentrification after the break.
in many cities, it has become popular to hate "gentrifiers," wealthy people who travel and driving up housing prices - push everybody out. But what happens in these urban areas rapidly changing is much more complicated than that.
We call Aliens
gentrification is a form of immigration, although almost nobody ' called that. People who are usually gentrify new grafts to a city, changing according to their specific cultural needs and whims. That is why the criticism of gentrification often resembles a distorted version of anti-immigrant sentiment: "They changed our neighborhoods, their shops and houses are repulsive, we no longer feel welcome here." The difference is that the people we call immigrants are generally not rich. Gentrifiers are.
These days, my hometown of San Francisco is the most famous example of gentrification in the United States, and perhaps in the world. This is due entirely to the madness of the technology bubble, which has sent the cost of living in the stratosphere of the city and transformed the working class, immigrant neighborhoods like the Mission in the class immigrant neighborhoods higher.
In the mission, Latin American grocery stores and dive bars have become shops dedicated to selling exotic sodas, organic chocolate, and high-end stereo equipment cleverly disguised as hip, retro stereo equipment cheap. The markets where people once spoke Spanish became cafes where people of many countries use English to talk about mobile applications and cloud storage. Scrawled on the sidewalks of the Mission, you'll see graffiti that said things like "die techie scum", or that blame "Google trendy professionals" to make the area too much.
transformation of San Francisco came to the attention of the world because of a powerful essay by Rebecca Solnit in London Review of Books . In it, she wrote about how technicians destroyed the Mission district of immigrants she loved once, and shows great, Google the white buses as a mini Death Stars, disgorging their workers as techie " foreign overlords. " Although she is on the side of immigrants moved to this test, the language echoes Solnit nevertheless anti-immigrant rhetoric - the word "foreigner" is the same, only instead of being illegal, these are foreign overlords
anyway, the message is clear. The people want the immigrants get hell.
It is easier to blame foreigners for what happened to your city rather than deal with the complex reality of urban life. City planner Kostof Spiro writes that cities are not static - they are "a process", always changing over time. Mission today neighborhood of San Francisco, for example, was once a neighborhood Irish and German working class. And some of these technicians "foreigners" invade now come from the same countries of Central Europe and South America its current residents do.
The Skyscrapers Istanbul
recently I traveled to Istanbul, a city of over 17 million in Turkey undergoing a form of gentrification much more radical than any in San Francisco. projects "urban transformation" sponsored by the government led to the destruction of entire neighborhoods, their informally built homes razed to make way for bright high density collections towers. Residents are forced to leave their homes with the laws of eminent domain, and are sometimes left with an insignificant financial interest in new developments -. Or sometimes nothing at all
urban activist Yaşar Adanali told me about a visit from a man who was displaced from his home in the immigrant neighborhood Tarlabaşı near the city center. This area, once a thriving and diverse neighborhood, was almost completely leveled to make way for a new housing development. Man Adanali met was one of the last people still living there, his house precariously next to a massive full well construction materials.
Halen # Tarlabaşı Yenileme Alanı içinde Yasayan sakin son Hasan Özdogan. Mücadeleye devam ediyor. pic.twitter.com/FsuLgDZ5Tc
- Yaşar Adanalı (@ysrdnl) 4. August, 2014
Adanali He said that his family had come from Black sea coast near the border between Georgia and moved into the house in 1955. housing costs in the quarter were cheap at that time because of the anti-Greek riots in the city led its previous inhabitants on. Fleeing the attacks, many Greeks have sold their homes at rates for new immigrants below market, enabling the poor family of this man to acquire a house. Gentrification, in other words, is not a simple story of good movement wicked. Cities are composed of waves of these morally gray travel, somewhat violently coercive and others eerily quiet.
We Know It When We See It
in the latest issue of Boom an academic journal devoted to studies conducted in California, Rachel Brahinsky social geographer explains: "gentrification capitalism is playing in the landscape. It is essentially urban form of our economy. "She speaks of San Francisco, but it might as well be describing Istanbul -. Or many other cities that are changing the money flow will result in flow of immigrants
yet gentrification unfolds differently depending on where it happens and when. the policy may be more important than money. in earlier times, gentrification was the result of military conquest or regime change. the wide boulevards of Paris, built in the 19th century over so-called old quarters "unhealthy", were created at the discretion of the Emperor Napoleon III. When you walk along the beautiful streets near the Seine, walking on the houses of poor crushed ago centuries.
gentrification is visible only for people who know the context in which it takes place. A visitors to San Francisco might not realize that she was walking through a contested terrain, recently amended by gentrification, just by visiting the Mission. But for residents of long-term city, gentrification is obvious. We always know when we see it.
Anti-development in San Francisco
that said, we do not always understand. In San Francisco, residents who resist gentrification are blocking the development of new projects of high density housing. They imagine that the parks and neighborhoods of the city will be destroyed to make room for closed communities of shiny skyscrapers filled with condos. Yet without new housing, as architect Mark Hogan remarked in another essay in Boom , housing prices in the city remain "incredibly high."
Indeed, anti San Francisco -development policies are wronged to low-income communities that were originally designed to protect. Hogan wrote:
The slow pace of infrastructure projects for San Francisco very few people and risk turning it into a caricature of itself for tourists and wealthy residents enough to live in a fantasy, not a living city.
preventing the city to transform to meet the needs of new residents, San Francisco risks turning into a place where only the rich can live.
Fearing the kind of rampant high rise development that people see on a daily basis in Istanbul, activists in San Francisco went to the other extreme. And the results are the same: the poor are forced to make way for the rich. Our cities need to find another way, somewhere between trashed ruins Tarlabaşı and the fantastic city of Mission expensive low density.
Immigrant City
No matter how you contextualize, gentrification is often forced on a city by its immigrants rich. Sometimes the government is pushing for these urban transformations, which is the case in Istanbul. And sometimes the government is trying to counteract, as in San Francisco. But anyway, you have an immigrant class that uses its financial power to buy property by paying prices that current residents can not afford. Money remade the city.
But do immigrants. When different immigrant groups are fighting each other to reshape the city, gentrification is a possible outcome. There are other possible results, too. City planners can manage development so that there is enough room for neighborhoods to grow without kicking on everybody. A recent study revealed that the creation of separate income neighborhoods leads to less social mobility for everyone, we cementing in a society rigidly divided into classes. Above all, we must avoid becoming divided by class neighborhoods.
A first step would be to revise our attitude towards immigration in cities. Instead of seeing immigrants as foreigners, we should welcome their new perspectives, new wealth of cultural traditions - and yes, their liquidity injections. While cities of the twentieth century inflate in the twenty-first century megalopolis, we must make room for all our immigrant populations, rich and poor. The only crime is to sacrifice one to make room for another.
The editor of Article Annalee Newitz of io9 has been republished with permission from io9.
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