Yet Another Predictable ‘Fill-in-the-Blanks’ Article About Gentrification
So the New York Times has offered up yet another story of how GENTRIFICATION IS RUINING URBAN CHARACTER (see below), this time about Austin’s South Congress Ave (or “SoCo”). Nothing against the author — the piece is interestingly-written and well-researched — but at the same time, one could swap out South Congress for some other trendy urban corridor of a major North American city and say pretty much the same thing. Sometimes I wish we could read a article on the subject that says something different, more nuanced about the evolution of such places, how, for instance: 1) the process is not just a binary of “then” and “now”, but rather, a succession of phases in which newer arrivals are constantly displacing the previous ones (like how the mid-2000’s revamp of the Hotel San Jose on South Congress likely helped to create the conditions that “pushed out” the first wave of pioneers in the 1980’s); 2) the most recent of these arrivals — the buyers of the new high-end condos, the guests in the new boutique hotels, the day-trippers from the suburbs, the shoppers in the new branded retailers — — are characterized not just as the anonymous (pejorative) “they” but rather, described with just as much detail and curiosity as the “longtime” members of the community who complain about them; and 3) the impact of urban change, while no doubt jarring, disorienting and disruptive to some (which I am in no way trying to minimize), can at the same time be enticing, exciting and positive to others, while also — inasmuch as it generates spillover that can then help to revitalize other long-neglected communities — ultimately healthy for cities and regions. Indeed, my first question after reading such articles is, where are all of the cool and weird people in Austin going now? Because I can pretty much guarantee that it will be a few years before that part of town gets written up in the Times…