[anigbrowl]

However, this is part of the typical cyclic trend: artists / poor people move into a cheap neighborhood, make it trendy, then get forced out when the rent goes up. The starving artists move to another more affordable neighborhood, and the cycle starts all over again. Trying to stop the cycle by preventing development is just delaying the inevitable.

I partly agree, but artists move to an area partly by choice. Poor people are often born there, and then forced to move because the area has become trendy underneath their feet.

it's hard to argue that the changes haven't been beneficial from an outsider's perspective.

The city might be better off in the aggregate, but the poor people presumably ended up in other places, which are slightly worse off.