The point of decreased property values is even mentioned in the article as desirable and here you are saying it isn't. The objective here is to make housing affordable, not the preservation of wealth centres.
Don't want none of them other demographics moving here to increase the crime, and marginalize the culture.
I think they're not the racist one here.
I wasn't calling it "explicitly racist", I was calling it "vaguely racist" because, while we all new what they were implying, They didn't come out and say it. Ergo "vaguely racist".
Nobody is talking about "neoconservative demographic shifts" causing problems in cities in this article. The demographic referred to is "poor people".
But please continue being intentionally obtuse for the purpose of calling me a racist.
> I wasn't calling it "explicitly racist", I was calling it "vaguely racist" because, while we all new what they were implying, They didn't come out and say it. Ergo "vaguely racist".
You're saying that "poor people" can't include Caucasians and Asians, then?
Midwesterners are quite notable for being both neoconservatives and poor, along with (generally) being majority-white. He could have easily been referring to them. What made you associate "Poor people" and "Racist"? Poor people are a demographic.
No, they aren't, especially the former.
And economically, they're on average more poor than a lot of areas. See "County Level Poverty." [1] And if you're comparing wages between the two, Midwesterners make significantly less on average than those on the West Coast.
Although I was moreout giving an example and sticking with it for the sake of the main argument to begin with.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism
[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rur...
This person is not describing gentrification, in fact, they're describing being avidly opposed to the opposite of gentrification.
Demographic shifts forced on an area by an unelected bureaucracy are almost guaranteed to be detrimental to the lifestyle the residents enjoyed prior to the shift. Whether that is gentrification pushing up property tax, low income housing pushing up crime rate, large influx of practitioners of non-tolerant religions who verbally and physically assault resident women dressed to western standards, or even large influx of young western professionals who don't respect the religion that was previously dominant in the area before.
Neighborhoods are a sum of their parts, and those who choose to live in them, choose them because they like them the way they are.
Overriding the wishes of those people to push your own agenda can be necessary for a city, perhaps, but should never be dismissive to the point of blaming and shaming the original residents to assuage your own guilt.
Are you sure?
> A large influx of people into your area is almost guaranteed to [lead to] possible demographic shifts that marginalize your culture.
Gentrification sure sounds like an instance of that, and I've been hearing about techies pushing out hippies and artists for about as long as I've been old enough to pay attention. The fear of cultural change in SF is a constant enough thread in SF that a knee-jerk reaction that it's racial seems like an uncharitable reading.
It was always a futile dream, mostly propagated by people who themselves enjoy small towns and certainly not "shared by all". It turns out that many knowledge workers actually like big cities for the leisure options, health services, people and neighbourhood diversity, much bigger selection of potential life partners, and high availability of jobs.
As for leisure options, a beach shared by 1M other people is not much of an option. Living in Colorado has orders of magnitude more leisure options for instance.
It is definitely less conveneient to have to move out of your house and wait for something bigger to be built.
Speak for yourself. My quality of life has been very positively correlated with population density. It's why I'm settling down on the east side of San Francisco, and I'm eagerly awaiting the new development there.
This is why many people (not me!) support draconian immigration restrictions.
To minimize these concerns in the way you do seems non-productive and can only lead to more polarization.
These types of initiatives stem from Agenda 21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21 proponents that, while advocating many admirable things, tend to completely ignore the feelings of the populations they are intent on engineering a radically different future for.
I am saddened that the dream we all shared of allowing small towns to once again flourish, because knowledge workers could be located anywhere on the planet, are being quickly forgotten in favor of ultra-dense citiscapes.