[Spooky23]

Woah there nelly.

"Lifting the barriers" to development doesn't mean that a 50 story residential tower will be built in Central Park West. You are the barrier. Lifting them means that as a citizen, you lose control of your surroundings.

So when a big company, say Pfizer, works with the city to raze your neighborhood through an eminent domain process, you're fucked. (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London)

It doesn't eliminate gentrification, it industrialized the process.

[krschultz]

Somewhat OT, but I worked in the building constructed due to that eminent domain process, it was really nice.

Pfizer later sold the whole thing for pennies on the dollar to a defense contractor after pulling out of that town, all that after never actually building on all of the land that was leveled.

[rhino369]

I wouldn't call giving free reign to eminent domain "lifting barriers."

I don't think Manhattan is a good example of a place with too restrictive laws. But SF and DC certainly are. In DC for example, you wouldn't see 80 story apartment buildings in Georgetown, but you would see them in Chinatown, NOMA, NavyYard, and other places.

Instead lower middle class black neighborhoods are converting to overpriced condos as fast as house-flippers can do it.