Lion in Winter

They are indeed. Pilsen, where I used to live, is fast gentrifying from the east traveling west. Lakeview, where I used to work and was a mixed but largely working class area of light manufacturing, industry, and small local businesses has gone the same way in a plague of townhouses and factories converted to lofts. Bronzeville is an area of Chicago that is just coming out of ghettohood, with all the public housing knocked down, and speculators are buying the lovely old brownstowns and converting them into condo apartments that are still cheap because there is almost no infrastructure around them yet - but it's coming.

Pulaski

This thread seems to have muddled two different phenomena that have some superficial similiarities - [1] the largely occupied, but poor neighborhoods, where the homes are perhaps older but generally in decent repair, and where there might be public housing or relatively afforable apartment homes, which sounds like what you're describing in Lakeview and [2] the neighborhoods with many derelict or abandoned homes, houses are generally in a poor state of repair, and with few oppotunities for employment, especially for the young, which is more like Gary, IN, and a number of towns around Detroit, MI and towns in parts of Ohio fom what I have heard, and also areas in and around New Orleans. I can see that gentrification of the former is arguably destructive, but, as with mining towns in the UK, notably in the North East and the south Wales valleys, towns in the second category are communities that are dying - in their current state of continuing decline there is almost nothing worth saving, so the mediium term alternatives are either gentrification (and that may not be possible) or just being bulldozed - with the latter what has been happening in some towns in MI and OH.

Lion in Winter

I don't disagree on the destitute and decaying neighbourhoods as such - it's just they are never revived or improved for those who are actually living there. Those people somehow, with minimal to no resources, have to find somewhere else to go. Nobody cares at all about their lives, their communities, their families, their jobs, their quality of living - nothing. Just push off and let us build some townhouses and condos, oh and put in all the shops and services that we didn't think you were important enough to need while you were actually living here.

Pulaski

But my point is that those were gone, along with most of the population, before regeneration/ "gentrification" started. The issue therefore isn't that regeneration is bad, it's that the community was allowed to enter a death spiral in the first place. When a community is critically dependant on one employer or one industry type, such as coal mining or iron and steel production, or cotton spinning and weaving as is common in my neck of the woods, then it can be tough to find another source of employment to stop the community dying.

ddsrph

I got my license in Indiana. At that time you could get a learner permit at 16 and license at 16 1/2. I could already drive somewhat but on my 16th birthday took off from school and took the written and got my learner permit. On the exact day of 16 1/2 took off from school again to take drivers test.

HDWill

If I were a billionaire, I would buy up whole blocks of derelict houses in Detroit, bulldoze them, and carefully excavate their foundations. Then plant some nice trees and pay to keep the landscaping maintained for decades, until the land could be productively redeveloped.

I believe that when the city government bulldozes vacant properties, they just throw dirt over the foundations and cellars, which will make it much more expensive to redevelop in the future.

Pulaski

I would too.
That wouldn't surprise me.

ddsrph

If I was a billionaire it would be private jets, yachts and supermodels. I would leave investments to the wannabes.

zzrmark

Taking us on an off topic tangent, I was quite surprised at how well some of the towns in the S. Wales valleys were doing when I visited the region about five years ago, back in the 80's they were boarded up and dying, regeneration there has been with carefully thought out investment in smaller industries. If you want an example of gentrification in the UK you only have to look to Brixton which has changed from a lively ethnic centre into a place overrun by white hipsters. I walked the missus, stepson and his mate after dark from Streatham to Pop Brixton (the very hipster container bars) and my sister and I then walked back via some back streets, totally different from the 80's and all it's goings on when my dad lived on the Hill opposite HMP.

Lion in Winter

My son went through Brixton on a coach a few weeks ago, on his way from Portsmouth to Liverpool. He sent me a text complaining because it wasn't on fire and there were no guns. He grew up hearing The Clash in the car

Lion in Winter

Well sure. There is usually long-term deterioration of an area. For most of the same reasons that nobody cares about the people later either. On this we agree (I feel a bit faint).

And yes, when steel went pear-shaped in the US, so did Gary. Detroit - cars and steel. Flint, Michigan, can't even manage clean tap water at the moment.

Steerpike

It's also part of the natural evolution of cities, certainly in America. In San Francisco, I lived in the 'outer Sunset' and later the 'outer Richmond'. Both areas have great specimens of Russian churches, Russian cafe's, but ... few Russians. They also have a ton of Irish bars, but few Irish. That's because the Russians and the Irish moved out, and the Chinese moved in. I'd guess those areas are 90% Chinese at this point. 50 years from now, could be something else. People arrive, settle in cities, then gradually move out to the 'burbs'. I was hell-bent on living in San Francisco, which I did on arrival in 83. After 10 years, it was too expensive and crowded for me and I moved out to the burbs. In my particular 'burb, back in the 90s, it was all 'white' and boring. Now, it's transitioning with the arrival of Chinese, Vietnamese, and others. Many of the 'whites' are moving to Oregon, Nevada, Arizona (like I did!). You don't see this level of change in the UK, and it's quite strange, but I see it as the natural way things are over here.

Pulaski

Actually you do, if you know where to look - for example Whitechapel, in East London, at the time of Jack the Ripper was a predominantly Jewish community, but aside from a famous Kosher restaurant there is little sign now that there was a Jewish community there, because now it is predominantly Pakistanis and Indians in that area. In Gloucester there was a Ukrainian community, probably around a century ago, and AFAICT the only remnant is the Ukrainian church, and I assume that the Ukrainians have been assimilated into the local population - and that area is now also dominated by Pakistanis and Indians.

scrubbedexpat099

I used to go drinking in Whitechapel, had a girlfriend who was a nurse at the Hospital, lots of music pubs, quite a lively scene and not that long ago. Also remember a Jewish takeaway that was one of the very few places open most of the night.

Pulaski

This is a solid effort by Indiana to match Florida, but Indiana just doesn't have the depth of resources to come back day after day with a new example of craziness.

Indiana man arrested for attacking neighbor with weed whacker.