Funny How No-One Approves…

The ‘Guardian’ bangs on about gentrification yet again:

Although gentrification only became a mainstream topic of discussion relatively recently, the process of places changing due to an influx of wealthier residents has of course been happening for a very long time. We wanted to hear from people in cities around the world who have watched gentrification change their local area over the long term.

Do they find anyone at all who says how marvellous it is that crime is low and the area looks nicer and you can walk around after dark now?

Reader, they do not…

Ouseburn will be just another soulless riverside development of boxy apartments for semi-professional people; and the overlapping Byker district will inevitably suffer a serious knock-on effect. Byker was a showcase for affordable, well-designed social housing. It will become another casualty in the shameless rush for profits. This resembles a bad sci-fi movie … local people invaded by aliens. (Anonymous)

Gosh, if a working class white chap said this about an influx of immigrants, the ‘Guardian’ would pitch a shitfit.

But it’s clearly OK to push out local people if you have certain attributes…

Infrastructure has not been improved on much and public transport has always been abysmal so the tech companies send fleets of buses to the public bus stops to fill in for the dearth of options. Worse, the companies give their employees free meals, and the local governments get no sales tax money for any free services Google, Facebook and many other companies provide. As the corporations continue to ‘improve’ their holdings, the rest of the non tech workers must make do with eroding public services. (Anonymous, Silicon Valleyresident for 31 years)

Up the workers! Unless they are tech workers, in which case, boooooo! Never mind the use that Guardian readers and writers alike make of that tech, of course…

My parents are Nigerian immigrants that moved to London in the late 1970s. As our family grew (they had five children), we moved around south eastLondon quite a bit: Deptford, Catford, Sydenham. We eventually settled in Brockley, buying a very cheap but large council owned town house. At the time, Brockley was very run down, and regularly featured on Crimewatch. In the mid-late noughties things started to change; the Afro-Caribbean shops started to disappear and were replaced by fancy delis and Gastro pubs. My parents still live in Brockley but they downsized in 2007, selling our family home for more than four times the price that they bought it for in 1992. That is negative gentrification. I guess people feel the area is safer than it was when we first moved there. But it does come at a price to people like me who currently cannot afford to buy property there. (Anonymous, Brockley resident for 15 years)

The chutzpah is so strong with this one, I don’t think I can do it justice!

. Dalston was a no-go area when I was young as it was pretty dangerous, as was Stratford but now it’s a place you want to avoid because it is so gentrified and so full of wealthy kids from elsewhere thinking they are in an authentic East London scene, when really it’s a sad place where many locals get turfed out as they can’t afford £500,000 flats and don’t understand what these new hipsters or yuppies are …. from what I’ve seen, the gentrification of Newham has meant the loss of a wonderful, funny and vivacious working class community. (George, Newham resident since 1971)

But it’s safer. I’d happily forgo the ‘vivaciousness’ if it meant I wasn’t mugged! Wouldn’t anyone?

Just fifteen years ago, the nearby NDG park was so full of drug dealers that children would never dare to venture in to play on the rusty old swing set. Then the residents organised, demanded more police presence, and lobbied the municipal government to renovate the playground. They succeeded and now the park is teeming with families while the drug dealers stay on the far south corner, and only after dark. The park did much to make the neighbourhood more attractive to the up and coming professionals who couldn’t afford the high house prices in Westmount, but nevertheless wanted to be near their private schools. So young people moved in, renovated, had children, and created the demand for the fancy shops and cafés. (Barbara Bedont, Monkland Village resident for 15 years)

And this is a good thing!

There are no ‘bad buildings’, or 'bad areas', just bad people. Remove the latter, and everything’s rosy.