Quotes About Gentrification

We don't hesitate to acknowledge that Jews in Eastern Europe were forced to live in ghettos where opportunity was limited and leaving was difficult or impossible. Yet when we encounter similar neighborhoods in this country, we now delicately refer to them as the inner city, yet everyone knows what we mean. (When affluent whites gentrify the same geographic areas, we don't characterize those whites as inner city families.)

The urban renewers had struck again. They'd evicted me, a fortune-teller, and a bookie from the corner of Mass. Ave. and Boylston, moved in with sandblasters and bleached oak and plant hangers, and last I looked appeared to be turning the place into a Marin County whorehouse.

In my own young black life, I have done my part to gentrify a half-dozen mixed neighborhoods ranging from Spanish Harlem to Fort Greene to the ninth arrondissement of Paris. Many of my well-educated black, Latino, Asian and Arab friends have done the same.

Modern elites live in bubbles of liberal affluence like Ann Arbor, Brookline, the Upper West Side, Palo Alto, or Chevy Chase. These places used to have impoverished neighborhoods nearby, but the poor people got chased out by young singles living in group homes, hipsters, and urban homesteading gay couples.

This had been a bad section of town before the Circus moved in and brought in money, which attracted other businesses. The area had been gentrified not because of some government interference, but by good old-fashioned capitalism, which was one of Jean-Claude's favorite things.

there are a few houses on the street left in their original trim, today's newcomers seldom moving in until they have ripped the guts out of these decent Victorian villas to turn them into models of white and modish minimalism.

People who gentrify are usually new transplants to a city, changing it to suit their particular cultural needs and whims.

In many cities, it's become popular to hate 'gentrifiers,' rich people who move in and drive up housing prices - pushing everyone else out.

My take on gentrification and change is it's usually always a better thing, because when you see all these businesses open and flourishing, that means there are more jobs.

San Francisco is an interesting place. It's always been such a nice culturally diverse environment, which it still is, but there's a lot of money there now and a lot of dot com's so it's a little different than it used to be.

Silicon Valley today is populated mostly by people who would consider themselves winners of the traditional race. This causes the exclusion of the voices that are vital to a round, robust society. It's beyond gentrification.

I had been sleepin there for a long time hwen the Fort Worth police put up no-loiterin signs all over the place and made me have to move my sleepin spot. I found out later some rich white folks was "revitalizin" downtown. Raggedy black fellas sleepin ont he sidwalks wadn't part of the plan.

Gentrification is a public policy for managing strangers: a way of removing those who would be eyesores; those who would reduce the value of a neighborhood; those whose proximity would be registered as price.

We can't have Harlem become one borough for the rich.

I used to live above Manganaro's, when old Times Square was still peaking, and it still had a lot of diners and theaters on the forty deuce, as they used to call it. It was full of character. And it wasn't Disneyland. Now it's so touristy and full of bright lights, I can't stand it. It's like going to a big mall.

One of the organizing principles of gentrified thinking is to assess everyone based on what they can do for you, and then treat them accordingly.

Vincent Gallo once said Williamsburg was like a giant dorm room with no homework. He was right. And now you've got lawyers who just learned to snowboard moving here to be young again. Anyone who tells you they'd rather live here is lying or stupid - or both.

I'd hate to see new housing building accelerating while taking down buildings where there's 50 people living in rent-stabilized apartments.

This is a sad town," he said. "One can be here 10 years and not make enough friends to count. Anything with any character, any history, they will tear it down and they will put in a neon sign. Or something in plastic.

I'm jealous of that time when you could afford lofts and survive on almost nothing. You can't do that anymore.

While gentrification has tamed El Barrio, it cannot rewrite its past...

I think you should define the word 'gentrification,'" my husband tells me now. I ask him what he would say it means, and he pauses for a long moment. "It means that an area is generally improved," he says finally, "but in such a way that everything worthwhile about it is destroyed.

White people moving into Brooklyn, I don't see anything wrong with that. I think that's fine and I think that's beautiful, but to hear about certain black people whose rent is getting hiked up so high and they're not able to get leases renewed. Now that I think is wrong.

Manhattan is increasingly less available to average-income earners.