The frontiers of gentrification are “pioneered” by certain social cohorts who settle sequentially, usually over a period of five to twenty years. The four-phase cycle often begins with—forgive my tongue-in-cheek use of vernacular stereotypes: (1) “gutter punks” (their term), young transients with troubled backgrounds who bitterly reject societal norms and settle, squatter-like, in the roughest neighborhoods bordering bohemian or tourist districts, where they busk or beg in tattered attire.
On their unshod heels come (2) hipsters, who, also fixated upon dissing the mainstream but better educated and obsessively self-aware, see these punk-infused neighborhoods as bastions of coolness.
Their presence generates a certain funky vibe that appeals to the third phase of the gentrification sequence: (3) “bourgeois bohemians,” to use David Brooks’ term. Free-spirited but well-educated and willing to strike a bargain with middle-class normalcy, this group is skillfully employed, buys old houses and lovingly restores them, engages tirelessly in civic affairs, and can reliably be found at the Saturday morning farmers’ market. Usually childless, they often convert doubles to singles, which removes rentable housing stock from the neighborhood even as property values rise and lower-class renters find themselves priced out their own neighborhoods. (Gentrification in New Orleans tends to be more house-based than in northeastern cities, where renovated industrial or commercial buildings dominate the transformation).
After the area attains full-blown “revived” status, the final cohort arrives: (4) bona fide gentry, including lawyers, doctors, moneyed retirees, and alpha-professionals from places like Manhattan or San Francisco. Real estate agents and developers are involved at every phase transition, sometimes leading, sometimes following, always profiting.
This cycle reminds me of some sort of unspoken scouting process where the alpha gentry send out the scruff to make sure the coast is clear for their safe passage.
Ahhhh white people! Forever civilizing the barbaric corners of the world. Even 150 years of Cultural Marxist indoctrination can’t kill that civilizing spirit. Not quite, anyway.
Almost makes you think there’s some hope for white people after all. Almost makes you think.
These four classes vary a great deal, but they are all white. The “gutter punks” are the only ones that actually confront a minority environment head-on; once you have a certain number of whites, no matter how scruffy, the environment becomes significantly safer and more civilized. The hipsters don’t confront minority dominance in quite the same way, but they serve a vital role in the process; they actively repel black people. One of the things us less respectable folks have discussed is how upper-class whites keep their neighborhoods free of blacks and safe, and it seems that certain things that upper-class or SWPL whites love- old-fashioned architecture, trees and flowers, dogs- actively repel black people. I think hipster style does as well. By the time the bobos show up it’s already over
One of the main things that keeps whites out of the cities is schools, but if they had cooperative home-schooling, that would not be a problem. Running further and further out is getting to be a bad strategy, particularly with high gas prices.
I recall an old Doonesbury cartoon where an inner city realtor encouraged “urban youths” to vandalize old buildings to facilitate the gentrification turnover process– graffiti was fine, but don’t touch the copper plumbing!
Steve Sailer a couple of weeks ago did an article about bilingual charter schools as a way to create white public schools, as long as the language is, say, German or Gaelic.
Another weird thing: anything heavily STEM repels Blacks & Hispanics.
And that includes even stuff like Creationism and Global Warming skeptics. Most creationists and Christian scientists are either mostly White or a certain type of Asian.
It didn’t surprise me that a dude like Todd Akin sat on the House Science Committee for Space, Science & Technology. He also homeschooled his children.
And despite the commercials, and propaganda, even religious homeschooling is made up of ethnic Europeans and a few other races.
And most homeschoolers in the USA aren’t secular in aggregate. As a whole, they are religious. A few are secular, but they are mostly numerous in big liberal cities.
I lived in New Orleans during the 1990s. During that time, the Cotton Mills at the CBD was undergoing conversion from derelict to Condos. The CBD was already gentrifying, as was the lower Garden District (Courtney Love IIRC had a place there, Anne Rice had converted a Convent into a massive mansion).
New Orleans is not like other areas, it is pre-auto, i.e. the best areas are on the main street car lines or former lines; but a few blocks from a million dollar Federalist or Greek Revival mansion in Uptown (near Audobon Park) on St. Charles (the ritziest place in New Orleans, and the million dollar houses there would be equivalent to $10 million in other places like around Austin, New Orleans is devalued due to Black violence) — you’ll have a crack house. Yes, Crack Houses just a block or so from beautiful pre-Civil War mansions.
I am doubtful about the ability of Whites to gentrify New Orleans due to the dense, checkerboard pattern of million dollar houses and total crack houses; physical separation from violent Black thugs is nearly impossible. A number of years ago a White woman part of a yuppie couple was shot in her doorway holding her infant by a couple of Black thugs in the Fauburg Marigny. That did not surprise me, when I was there a Catholic Priest in collar was murdered outside Cafe Zinc, where Ellis Marsalis used to play.
And let’s not forget liberal activist Kirsten Brydum:
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/S-F-activist-slain-in-New-Orleans-robbery-3192134.php
She won the Admanda Kijera award before we even invented it. Of course, her fellow San Fran activists were quick to propose a CIA conspiracy as the cause of her death.
@ Whiskey – I think you’re talking about Helen Hill and her husband, two more New Orleans “activists” who were certainly shot by unknown people of Northern European extraction.
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2011/10/filmmaker_helen_hills_husband.html
I was born and raised in the vast shipyards/swamps/Section 8s of New Orleans East. The SWPL types who move here post-Katrina are just the wrong kind of people to spark any rebirth of the city as anything more than a kitschy adult Disneyworld for spoiled staycationers. The same people who protested the cold storage warehouses at the Gov. Nicholls St. Wharf are the same ones that have no fucking clue that their homes would never have been built 70-150 years ago if it weren’t for the kind of industry that they whine about now. Fucking posers, all of them…
I don’t think we can classify this as “gentrification” really. That implies rich people moving into bad neighborhoods and sprucing them up. Here in New Orleans, those have pretty much always been the nice places where the rich white folks lived. I don’t know if the author of that piece actually walked around down here, but most of the houses in the so-called white teapot are 100+ years old. They were built by old Southern money. The slaves and lower-class whites were banished to the outskirts of the city when it was originally founded. I would allow for gentrification in the Marigny and the Bywater, but that seems to be mostly hipster types with little money, though most are white.
The white parts are the high ground of dirt piled up by the bend in the river — the crescent of the “Crescent City” — you really want to have your house above sea level the next time a hurricane comes.
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tamburlainethegreat, yep – The demographics of this map are pretty much identical to the NOLA I grew up in decades ago, although central city is less white than it was (many of the whites who lived there never returned to their destroyed houses after Katrina).
That area around which the white teapot exists has a ton of Tulane and Loyola students. There is very very limited on campus housing so most of the people live in little leased houses around the campuses and near the park.
I’ve seen decay then gentrification in several places – it often works like this:
1) Nice area that’s inaccessible to minorities due to economics or then-acceptable discrimination is built up and has a long run as “the place to be.”
2) Aging population living there in the prime time disengages, remembering how good things used to be but not being interested in anything new, and often not able to afford proper upkeep of their property – this leads to “blight” which causes property values to decline.
3) Now-affordable and “open” because of non-discrimination laws (and more open population) lower income minorities join the community, but are only reluctantly accepted.
4) Either it works out, or it doesn’t – if it doesn’t, the blight gets worse until it is unbearable and nobody wants to live there but some have no choice due to rock bottom valuations of property
5) Rescue of the area often starts with gay men – I have theories about why:
a) They won’t have the same level fear that many women would living in a somewhat dangerous area. Gay dudes probably grew up being picked on, so they know how to avoid and/or deal with trouble.
b) Dual high incomes for a gay couple allow renovation and redevelopment, perhaps of more than one property at a time.
c) Because of discrimination, gay men (and women) have a built-in community. One guy has an idea, and a bunch of his friends (also gay couples) may follow.
d) Skills with design and decorating? Yeah, it’s a stereotype that happens to be true sometimes. The places will start looking pretty nice.
note: this is from my years of personal observation, in several states. I think it’s a *great* thing. God bless the fags!
6) Open minded people who *do* have other choices for living, and are attracted to the emerging great neighborhoods due to counterculture ideals, relatively cheap prices, unique architecture, or whatever – they start moving in. Prices start to rise dramatically.
7) With most of the big problems gone, either good people priced out of the area or bad people chased out because they are troublemakers, the neighborhoods are “safe” and the money really starts to flow in – development projects, businesses, etc.
8) Return to step #1
Many view gentrification s a basic evil. I’ve never understood this. As if it’s better to have violent, dangerous chaotic city centers.
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