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by CanceledAccount 1656 days ago
Redesigning infrastructure always produces winners and losers. Slowing down traffic will always make someone’s commute longer. Unfortunately, making these decisions is hard but necessary, because the trade offs are worth it.

Gentrification is when a place becomes more desirable to live. It’s caused by people enjoying themselves. Gentrification is wealth creation. If housing prices rise too much, you can build more housing. It’s something to be desired, not avoided.

3 comments

> Gentrification is when a place becomes more desirable to live.

Yes, but the real problem here is that this term is also used to discuss an overlapping but different thing: the poor and otherwise vulnerable parts of society being displaced by raising rent. There should be two words to describe these things to ensure we don't talk past each other.

Anyway, the displacement issue is a problem solved by ensuring affordable housing through various means, not by ensuring the housing stays affordable due the location being a terrible place to live (as you already mentioned, I'm just putting it in the other "gentrification" context).

Redesigning always happens in little pockets though. And it often takes years due to how broken infrastructure planning is. So the first people to take advantage of it are the rich. And so shit without cars gets the stereotype of being only for the rich. And the cycle continues.

I've accepted it's just never going to change in the US. There's too many opposing forces all at odds with each other. Really makes you fucking mad how much the "Greatest Generation", in addition to their cancer boomer children, really fucked this country.

> Gentrification is when a place becomes more desirable to live. It’s caused by people enjoying themselves

Absolutely not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification