When they don't have it people want it, and when they get it, they don't want it. Run down cities, rust belt cities wish for gentrification, people who live in places going down hill wish for it too, it brings safer neighborhoods, better stores, more jobs, on the other hand people decry rising rents and "changing the character" of the neighborhood, as if unemployment and the transients didn't also"change the character" of the neighborhood.

Basically people want it both ways. Have their cakes and eat them too.

Or maybe people want a middle-ground (in outcome or in rate-of-change) which for whatever reason doesn't seem to be in the cards.

People want their neighbourhood to get nicer and their rent to stay the same. Which is an understandable thing to want, but not practical.

You're either ascending, or you're declining as a city. Things don't remain frozen in time. People age, buildings age, new people are born, commerce brings people in, those are the dynamics.

Theoretically you could, but I don't want to be the one designing a PID controller for that...

I don't think it's a binary either-or. People obviously want safety and opportunity. They also tend to want to preserve the micro-culture of their neighbourhood. "Globalisation" (whatever that is) feels homogenous and corporate. Some people don't want that, they don't want to live in a place that could be anywhere else. They want to own the land and property, not be priced out.

I'm quite surprised at people here suggesting that it's okay to displace the poor. It's not. Change, process and improvement are most effective when they take everyone along for the ride. Everyone's seen Gataca, right?

I'm sure there are plenty of alternatives to the current gentrification model. Plenty of low-cost housing, for one. Sensitivity from local councils who take a long-term view and try to protect local business, for another. A complex discussion, I don't have all the answers.

About "displacing" people, honest question: why people who already live somewhere (but rent and don't own) should be privileged compared to people who have the same financial ability, but didn't live at said place before? Why is being "priced out" of same place you already live at perceived as something worse than not being able to afford to move into some neighborhood to begin with?

BTW, apartment that I live in right now is already below the market, and if the landlord decides to adjust the price next year when my contract expires, I'll have to move. I don't feel that I'm privileged to some special treatment just because I already live here though: free market is what it is.

>Why is being "priced out" of same place you already live at perceived as something worse than not being able to afford to move into some neighborhood to begin with?

Because there are costs involved with relocating, which the former aren't being given any choice about. Finding a new place to live and moving there involves a lot of time, effort and stress. Not to mention any friends and family they're now less able to keep in touch with.

> Why is being "priced out" of same place you already live at perceived as something worse than not being able to afford to move into some neighborhood to begin with?

1) The people being priced out are often the people that made the neighborhood nicer to live in. Developers don't improve neighborhoods, people do. And these people are usually the first to go when developments move in and drive up the cost, because they are often the most vulnerable to the price increases. (Your artists, musicians, students, young families, folks on shoestring budgets opening hipster coffee shops and restaurants, etc)

2) It's not so much that all these people feel like they deserve to live in this one particular nice place. You don't see people complaining that they can't live in gated communities or mansions. It's that nearly every lower-class or middle-class urban place that was even slightly nice to live in is rapidly becoming "rich-people-only". Where does that end?

Are middle class people eventually going to economically banned from all urban environments nationwide? Because that's the trajectory we're currently headed in, unless some massive correction happens.

> why people who already live somewhere (but rent and don't own)

Renters are highest risk, but it's not just renters who get displaced. Property owners can also get displaced through gentrification -- owning property does not make someone immune to this problem

It's usually the people who move in (or not moving in) who change neighborhoods. It's the internal migrants, like in North Dakota, or immigrants or professional class who change neighborhoods for the better. This is why poor areas _want_ "gentrifiers" to come in to invigorate places in stagnation or decline. It's atypical for improvement to be grass roots.

Anyone who has lived in a typical urban core from the 90s knows that poor neighborhoods don't just start having cleaner streets, more shops and services out of the blue displacing liquor stores and repair shops and weeds.

> (Your artists, musicians, students, young families, folks on shoestring budgets opening hipster coffee shops and restaurants, etc)

But eh — those guys actually have to move _in_ to gentrification to happen. And before they move in, it's usually really ordinary poor people moving out: because, believe it or not, "starving" liberal art major is not as poor as an illegal immigrant family with 5 kids.

> It's that nearly every lower-class or middle-class urban place that was even slightly nice to live in is rapidly becoming "rich-people-only". Where does that end?

I'm not from US, so I may not be seeing what you're talking about exactly, but you're talking about late-stage gentrifying here. But early stage gentrifying is the opposite: it makes poor, awful areas into those nice middle-class areas to begin with. So by the time you (we're talking about low-middle class, right?) have to move out when the area is full of elite condos, there's another neighbourhood that just became trendy enough for you to move it.

> Property owners can also get displaced through gentrification -- owning property does not make someone immune to this problem

Don't see a real difference here: it's all just free market mechanisms regulating situations where a lot of different people compete for the same thing.

Community. I guess there is huge cultural differences in this regard.

Some people live in tight knit communities. If they are forced out then they lose a massive piece of their life that is not easily replaced.

Different cultures will obviously have different views regarding communities and societies at large.

What people want is for their neighbourhood to be better, while not in the process being driven from their homes to make room for wealthier people. Maybe it's naive or a pipe dream.

Oh, certainly. If we could, most people would want control over what kind of "element" rich, poor, educated, uneducated, employed, unemployed, criminal, non criminal, etc. gets to move into their neighborhoods and cities.... But that has proven problematic, in the past. Not just in the US but in many places.

Whats the point of having cake if you can't eat it?

Sure, eat it and then you won't have any left. So, you can have the cake or you can eat it, but you can't have and also eat it.

I'd rather eat the cake and be done with it.

Why Is Gentrification Such a Bad Word?

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/gentrifi...

I started reading the article and it told about tricks that landlords used to evict renters.

I don't understand. Why can't landlords just refuse to prolong the rent contract? It's their property — how come renters become a problem for them?

"seizing homes a family has owned for generations because of $150 owed in property taxes, even if that was just a clerical error; changing the locks while carrying out “repairs,” lying that the building is being condemned, or turning off utilities"

Wow. That's totally not cool. High-profile officials should be made resign over cases like those.

It's the Guardian. That's their thing. That paper employs an admitted KGB spy (after his spying was revealed.) Same paper that supported Stalin. The Guardian has a deep rooted history in the 'class' struggle. Not a condemnation, just context. It's the American Left equivalent of MSNBC or analogous to the right wing Washington Times.

Comparing the guardian to the Washington Times...

That's a new one.

One's a highly respected newspaper age old newspaper with a very well designed independent funding structure which at worst has a slight leftward bias.

The other is owned by the Moonies.

I remember when we used to call gentrification "progress".

A lot of factors converge to make gentrification opposition the next cause celebre. Sometimes even upheld by the gentrifiers themselves.

It plays very nicely into current economic, racial and so on divides in the cultural war.

It's a bit tongue in cheek. Also property / rent prices are a major problem in London. All sorts of people are trying to move here and there's an approximately fixed supply.