Let me justify my post. I’m a current U of C student. I was talking about the urban renewal projects of the mid 20th century (I linked to that section of the Wikipedia article). Hyde Park’s gentrification process is very much complete at this point. I don’t know about Washington Park and Woodlawn, with regard to whether they’re better now than they used to be.
I’m not trying to start an argument, but that wiki article is rather thinly referenced. I was in school there about 30 years ago, and most of the buildings were 1950s vintage or older. Most way older than that. I’m talking north of 59th, south of 53rd, and east of Cottage Grove. I’m just curious where exactly all of this urban renewal took place. If it is south of the Midway Plaisance, it may have just been making way for the law school buildings. And I think that the Kenwood part of town just north of Hyde Park has always been very well off.
I’m genuinely curious, but if the original poster wants to pursue that area for a gentrification article he needs to do a lot of research.
Off the top of my head, in Sydney the suburbs of Paddington, Newtown, Darlinghurst, and The Rocks would certainly count.
In Melbourne, from my limited knowledge Fitzroy and Carlton.
Downtown LA and its “Arts District.”
I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 7 years. I once had to pick up a friend from the bus station down off Alameda, south of Little Tokyo. This was during my first year in town–nothing but hookers, pimps and drug dealers hanging outside the warehouses and storage facilities. Now… coffee shops, bars, gourmet hot dog places, a place that only serves Pie and coffee and upscale professional lofts.
Downtown Fort Myers, in the historic district by the federal court house. The old post office had been going to rack and ruin and it was restored, along with the old Edison theatre. Now the old storefronts are filled with restaurants, shops, etc., and the apartments above have been converted into lofts. During the housing boom, the lofts were going for almost $350k each…
I think what happened to Paris definitely fits the bill: Some guy mowed down all the slums to make room for busy thoroughfares, and basically told the poor to go fuck themselves.
Mowing down the crappy shit to make way for expensive shit and telling the residents to GTFO has nothing to do with “gentrification.” You’re talking about certain, largely discredited, ideas associated with “urban renewal” which was an earlier philosophy of city planning. Compare with “New Urbanism”
Gentrification just means higher income individuals start buying property and living in an area previously considered slummy. In New York, very often the driver is artist types in need of large cheap spaces, and people who want other people to think they are artists.
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Gentrification just means higher income individuals start buying property and living in an area previously considered slummy. In New York, very often the driver is artist types in need of large cheap spaces, and people who want other people to think they are artists.
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First the artists. Then the gays. Then hipsters. Finally the Yuppies move in.
In NYC, you are talking about places like Harlem, Hells Kitchen (AKA Clinton), Alphabet City, Williamsburgh Brooklyn.
Across the river, Hoboken NJ and Jersey City NJ have also experienced gentrifcation over the past decade.
Same with the NoHo arts district in North Hollywood.
Some candidates in Sydney:
“The Rocks” on the the northern edge of the CBD (around the pylons of the Harbour Bridge) including the area known as “Suez Canal” (a pun on “sewers”) with brothels, sly grog shops, opium dens replete with illict gaming on blood sports like pitbull and cock fighting. The area was featured the Hungry Mile during the Depression. Now it’s an upmarket tourist trap and now even the Mile is being rebadged as Barangaroo.
Woolloomooloo and Darlinghurst are much larger areas to the east that were gangland slums rife with vice, sly grog and disorder up to the 1930’s when they were known as “Razorhurst”. They were still pretty rough areas up to the 70’s when a wave of unconstrained development looked as though they’d be turned into a pre-stressed concrete jungle til the BLF’s Green Bans brought that to an end and the path to gentrification opened.
On the western side of the city, Balmain/Birchgrove peninsular were the quintessential working class suburbs, primarily for wharfies, and now are quintessentially gentrified.
Actually, it’s exceedingly difficult to spend anywhere near that much for a studio in CoHi. The only places with the balls to even ask that much are some of the new buildings near the metro that were intended to be condos. Even so, most offer incentives that make the effective rent lower than $1800/month. U St. is a much better example of gentrification and sky-high rents, although the racial makeup is still pretty diverse.
Do you really think that pre-90s North Hollywood even compared to skid row downtown? While it certainly was lackluster until the fabrication of “NoHO,” I personally wouldn’t have called it a “slum.” Maybe a little “seedy” at places–but I guess all these terms are really subjective anyway.
It started long before the ball field went in. Probably the first step was Larimer square, which was totally part of the skid row area. The 16th st mall came next. Without those firsts it is questionable that the site would have been chosen for Coors’. I’ d call it at least a 25 year process from skid row to trendy.
Logan Square is improving?
I lived there, as a boy, in the 1960s.
A warm rush of memories sets in…
So far as I remember (third-hand when I was in Hyde Park in the 90s), around the 1950s-1960s, the University condemned some properties for the benefit of fancy professors and administrators who were already firmly ensconced in the HP. It wasn’t gentrification so much as it was a bit of selective, forcible resettlement to stanch any, ahem, “ghettoization.” In other words, I think mcgato has the better of this dispute.
Loads of areas of London qualify, but one that sticks in the mind is Notting Hill. Forty years ago it was a very poor immigrant area which witnessed the1958 Notting Hill race riots - pitch battles between local white teddy boys and black immigrants. To this day the Notting Hill Carnival is an annual commemoration of this event and a celebration of Caribbean culture - the Carnival now incongruously snakes past the homes of multi-millionaires and the private homes of conservative politicians such the Mayor of London and PM David Cameron (a posh boy conservative group now known as the ‘Notting Hill Set’).
This. I know people who were there when small pox was a serious issue. Some of the absolutely oldest and tiniest row houses fetch some of the highest prices.
Shrugs We’ll have to agree to disagree on whether it’s “easy” to spend $1,800/month on a condo in Columbia Heights. I agree it’s on the high end, and there are only a few buildings near the Metro station that ask it. But these are large, prominent buildings - it’s not hard to find those very expensive studios. Prices are lower over by 16th street and Mt. Pleasant, of course - you can get a small one-bedroom for around $1,200.
Agree that U Street is a better example of gentrification in some ways, but it’s an older gentrification story, and unlike Columbia Heights, U Street has been an entertainment neighborhood for a long time, even back when it was a bad idea to live there.
As someone who owns (and rents out) a condo in CoHi, and lived there for several years until about 9 months ago, $1800 for a studio is basically unheard of. The only building I see even requesting such a price is Allegro and most of their studios do not rent for that much. Check their website. Check craig’s list. As I said before, I know someone that lived in the only other similarly priced that got 3 months free rent for a one year lease. It seems as if Allegro are offering 2 months. Most of the other buildings near the metro do the same thing. I suppose it’s a small point to argue, but honestly, $1800 for a studio in Columbia Heights is just not common at all, nor will the market really support that price given that there are so many condos in that area, with more to come.
Hell, you can find a studio in most parts of the city for $1800.
Yesterday Cracked.com did a article on the Weirdest Cities People Actually Live In(or lived) - A (ex)Soviet City build out over the Caspian Sea, an densely populated Egyptian city packed w/ garbage from its trash-picking inhabitants, a Japanese city near an active volcano where the residents often need to wear a gas mask, an ad-hoc village made of ships anchored for years in the Suez Canal due to the 6-day War, a Chinese city designed for dwarves, and of course the famed (and now demolished) lawless Enclave of ‘Kowloon Walled City’ just outside of Hong Kong.
In other words, the OP REALLY needs to punch up his article to compete with the likes of that (let alone Seanbaby busting on bad Karate training videos or Man-Comics*), I’m thinking 5 years at most rags to riches (and I mean lots of rags to lots of riches), probably can get away with only one or two complete tear-downs; perhaps some 17th or 18th century king pushing out the peasents and putting in his couriers in the SAME housing (good angle), I guess at least one city where the poor inhabitants were adjacent to what turned out to be extreme but here-to-fore untapped mineral resources, or a major production facility or the like; maybe some Native American Indian casino story, cool stuff like that.
But arguing how much the real estate have increased in Georgetown DC over 2 decades, or how East Harlem is now somewhat more Genetrified than it was in the 1980s…the OP better be some writer to pull that off.
*No one is safe!