^^ I vote for the I-270 divide (if there MUST be one).
If current Fountain Park residents were to be slowly displaced by a different demographic wouldn't it be ironic that the displaced residents would feel EXACTLY how the originally displaced residents felt?
But what's interesting is how we view the exact same scenario in different lights. It's a painful thing either way.
During random conversations over the years with old white people who grew up North City or parts of South City that are currently in bad shape it's easy to hear and see the pain and passion and how deeply the whole mess has affected them. I was with a woman who began crying uncontrollably after seeing her old state street neighborhood around Chippewa that she hadn't seen for 30 years.
A nice old mailman onced waxed poetically for an hour about feeling like his family had no choice but to leave a now non-existent part of North City. He never said anything remotely racist (unless saying that the neighborhood eventually went completely to sh*t and was eventually bulldozed is racist). He was just deeply hurt by the whole thing. It's hard to believed that something so large scale and so uniform actually happened, you know what I mean?
But what's interesting is how we view the exact same scenario in different lights. It's a painful thing either way.
During random conversations over the years with old white people who grew up North City or parts of South City that are currently in bad shape it's easy to hear and see the pain and passion and how deeply the whole mess has affected them. I was with a woman who began crying uncontrollably after seeing her old state street neighborhood around Chippewa that she hadn't seen for 30 years.
A nice old mailman onced waxed poetically for an hour about feeling like his family had no choice but to leave a now non-existent part of North City. He never said anything remotely racist (unless saying that the neighborhood eventually went completely to sh*t and was eventually bulldozed is racist). He was just deeply hurt by the whole thing. It's hard to believed that something so large scale and so uniform actually happened, you know what I mean?
This wouldn't be the exact same scenario though. Former residents who decided to leave Fountain Park weren't displaced. They chose to leave largely for better economic opportunities. I'm not saying those that left their neighborhoods are entirely to blame- we all know government policy played a huge role in incentivizing suburban migration. But it's a much different scenario. If someone actually were to be displaced in Fountain Park today due to rising rent during the process of gentrification, they would be effectively forced from their homes. I suspect though that most residents of Fountain Park are homeowners and would welcome gentrification today.leeharveyawesome wrote:If current Fountain Park residents were to be slowly displaced by a different demographic wouldn't it be ironic that the displaced residents would feel EXACTLY how the originally displaced residents felt?
But what's interesting is how we view the exact same scenario in different lights. It's a painful thing either way.
During random conversations over the years with old white people who grew up North City or parts of South City that are currently in bad shape it's easy to hear and see the pain and passion and how deeply the whole mess has affected them. I was with a woman who began crying uncontrollably after seeing her old state street neighborhood around Chippewa that she hadn't seen for 30 years.
A nice old mailman onced waxed poetically for an hour about feeling like his family had no choice but to leave a now non-existent part of North City. He never said anything remotely racist (unless saying that the neighborhood eventually went completely to sh*t and was eventually bulldozed is racist). He was just deeply hurt by the whole thing. It's hard to believed that something so large scale and so uniform actually happened, you know what I mean?
gentrification = city progress. It's funny to me when people argue that it is somehow a bad word..
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Or perhaps, growth and development = gentrification (or at least nearly always).jcity wrote:gentrification = city progress. It's funny to me when people argue that it is somehow a bad word..
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A lot of the literature on gentrification is outdated and relevant more to the coasts than to cities like St. Louis. Gentrification can hurt people when stable, poor communities of long-term renters are forced out by reinvestment. But that scenario is much less common in St. Louis, where gentrification often involves abandoned buildings, sales by resident owners or slum-lord buildings with unstable (transient) occupancy. Low-income housing credits have also helped tremendously.
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^ There you go. This makes the "gentrification" conversation in St. Louis so frustrating and unproductive.
Calling gentrification a negative is incomprehensible in STL. Money equals investment. Concentrated poverty equals crime. The balance, right now, is on the concentrated poverty side, and that needs to be broken. That's all there is to it.
No argument here. Every neighborhood would benefit from more middle class households and greater economic diversity in the City. I was just saying the cause, process, and effects of gentrification in St. Louis would be totally different for every party involved than they were for the neighborhood change that occurred during the "white flight" of the 20th century.onecity wrote:Calling gentrification a negative is incomprehensible in STL. Money equals investment. Concentrated poverty equals crime. The balance, right now, is on the concentrated poverty side, and that needs to be broken. That's all there is to it.
NY Times - Two Times the House, in Hopes of Sparking Dialogue in St. Louis
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/07/arts/ ... louis.htmlOn July 29, a blighted and abandoned house in St. Louis will briefly stand in two locations at once.
Only the brick shell of the 1890 home at 4562 Enright Avenue will remain in its underserved neighborhood one block north of Delmar Boulevard — which is known to its residents as the Delmar Divide, a stark racial and socioeconomic dividing line that runs through the city.
The Delmar divide?
To understand Charlotte’s rage, you have to understand its roads
https://thinkprogress.org/charlotte-rag ... .etx5j7ghq
To understand Charlotte’s rage, you have to understand its roads
https://thinkprogress.org/charlotte-rag ... .etx5j7ghq
elsewhere on this site, more recent effort by WU to encourage employees to live close to where they work is / was giving financial incentives to buyers in Fountain Park and other 'beautiful' areas north of Delmar. Is this gentrification? People with more income might improve schools but what are the other consequences?