Sprawl: a Compact History, Part VI -- Gentrification

Bruegmann on the gentrification of his own Chicago neighborhood:

As an older working-class population left the area in the wake of the departure of manufacturing firms, they were replaced by new residents driving Volvos with license plate frames advertising suburban automobile dealerships. As an increasingly affluent population moved in, densities plummeted and automobile usage soared. [...] Increasingly, although my neighborhood looked like a traditional city neighborhood, [...] it started to function in ways that made it similar to any suburb, and it gradually obtained a comparable demographic profile.

This is an interesting point. The decrease in people density (and increase in car density) with gentrification seems pretty obvious now that I think about it, but it hadn't occured to me before Bruegmann pointed it out.

It's traditional (especially among relatively adventurous first-wave gentrifiers) to consider the "everything got nicer and more expensive" stage of gentrification as an invasion of boring suburban values. Maybe it's more useful to think of them as boring middle-class (upper middle-class? striving class? ambitious class? persona-creating class?) values that show up wherever the requisite people happen to be.

By "more useful", I mean "closer to the actual reality". I think there's a much smaller difference in class/culture/style/background/mindset between first wave adventurous gentrifiers and later stage "There's this great coffee shop just a short walk from my front door" gentrifiers than the first-stage people would like to admit.

These "boring values" can be summed up with one word: "nice". Which is to say, they're primarily aesthetic. Gentrification is "nice" with some extra amenities that only increased building density (with respect to the suburbs) can bring. It's a different tradeoff than an affluent suburb, but it's the same people doing the trading. 

¶ 1/25/2006 09:44:00 PM