Gentrification

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Paul McMorrow writes about gentrification in Union Square. He notes that with the arrival of the Green Line, it will be much more desirable to live in. This will cause an increase in demand for housing there, and that there are two choices: Allow enough additional housing to be built to prevent prices from rising insanely, or preserve its "character" (appearance) at the cost of pricing out just about everybody who already lives there.

"Desirable, inexpensive, low-density -- choose any two!"

Comments

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. (And that is why we have taxes and subsidies and set-asides).

Anyway: Hooray for density.

I'd love to see more moderately-priced housing being built.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I really don't think Union Square - or most of Somerville, really - needs more NEW! FABULOUS! EXPENSIVE! LUXURY! CONDOS! I'd love to see more moderately priced stuff happening.

I also hope the gentrification doesn't drive out all of the smaller businesses around there that aren't retail or restaurants. We need more than retail and restaurants for our local employment base.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, the harder a developer has to fight to get the right to build, the more they're going to be biased toward expensive housing, because it's a lot easier to mark up the price of a quasi-luxury condo by 20% (to pay for the zoning fight) and still get it to sell.

As for the business mix, basically forget it. A certain sort of business exists in a certain place because there are customers willing to buy from them and they can afford the rent. The rent is generally determined by what alternative commercial tenants are willing to pay. The type of customers depends a great deal on the income level of the neighborhood and whether people have autos (and hence can drive to the malls). The result is that a low-end and a middling neighborhood are going to have tremendously different business mixes; the businesses of one neighborhood can't survive in the other neighborhood.