[swatcoder]

> The reason neighbourhoods get gentrified is because the residents made them attracitve. The reason neighbourhoods decay is because people don't invest themselves in them long enough, or because they don't invest in them at all because they want to get out.

Gentrification isn’t an art project. It’s people with more wealth or income-opportunity coming in and buying up cheap stuff at the prices they can afford. That a prettier coffee shop with gourmet pastries opens up, or that the restaurants have cutesy little parklets, is a second order effect.

In most cases, what makes the neighborhood “more attractive” and starts this in motion is either a growing industry within commute distance or that some other neighborhood got too pricey.

It has very little to do with the prior or new people in the neighborhood, except that the new people have access to more money than the old people and so price them out. Care for community or other forms of moral character have absolutely zero to do with it.

[motohagiography]

This criticism of gentrification ignores the sellers who are glad to take the money for what they invested, and the reason the industry moved to that area in the first place was to get access to the people who were there. The landowners are the community, provided that they are present and managing their investment. This is a fundamental cognitive divide as well, as the positions aren't reconcilable because it's a chicken/egg problem. One is as good a metaphor for either as the other.

I may even have a proof that people mostly migrate to where they can find stability, and away from where there is uncertainty and volatility. Long term residents are the stability.

When there is an imbalance between the sides, it needs correction, and advocating for the people who actually build these desirable streets and neighbourhoods that are so attractive for others to come to seems like the braver cause these days.

[jjoonathan]

> The landowners are the community, provided that they are present and managing their investment

That's a big, gigantic, huge, gnarly, completely unjustified assumption that is responsible in entirety for your conclusion. It's like saying "provided these people did good, they did good." Well, yeah. Duh. What if they didn't?

> This is a fundamental cognitive divide

Oh, I agree. It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary (or should I say rent / land value) depends on not understanding it.

[nine_k]

> The landowners are the community

In cities with multi-tenant buildings it's typically not so. Renters are the community, or a large part thereof.