Gentrification

[on-reserve.livejournal.com]

Hey All,

Posting this as it came up for me in a previous post that was sort of an amalgam of "eccentric and annoying Davis Square traits."

I realize this is a hot-button issue but I trust that people can express themselves civilly. Ok, I *hope* we can.

Gentrification. It's a big deal. People in this community talk an awful lot about how we don't want Davis to "turn into another Harvard" but in some sense the people living there now and who have populated the square over the past decade *have* turned Davis into something different from what it was.

How does one say, "I don't want Davis Square to get too gentrified" without taking responsibility for being part of the gentrification that has happened thus far? Who decides how much gentrification is too much, not enough, just right?

Maybe Davis is better, maybe it's not -- it probably depends on who you ask and what they were looking for in a neighborhood when they picked Davis.

Comments

[xjustquietx.livejournal.com]

I think gentrification is pretty much inevitable. There seems to be a cycle: A bunch of poor artists move into a neighborhood that may not be the very definition of desirable, to be able to make rent and make a living doing what they like. Then the artists revitalize the community/fix-up the crummy apartments/et cetera. Then come the cafes and boho shops. Now that the neighborhood is a a little nicer (nice is a relative term, I know) and still cheap, in come the huge development companies. Building owners start raising rent. The quirky little shops and departments of transitional assistance get pushed out.

It happens everywhere. It's happening in Providence, it's happening in Fort Point - name any neighborhood, practically.

I guess the most we can do to combat it is to get more involved politically. I am sure Mr. Ron Newman will be happy to weigh in on how we can help. ;) We can look at the legislature of cities/neighborhoods which still have the quirky shops and the strong sense of community, but not the chain stores (I am thinking Martha's Vineyard, even though I hate it there).

That being said (boy am I ranty today) I really really abhor the way some of the longtime residents regard us "transients." I've seen on the Somerville News website (just don't go there, it is all trolls) things written such as, "It used to be that everyone had an Irish or Italian last name and their family had been here since..." something that reminds me of WWII Germany. Some people can be so small-minded.

But I try to sympathize, I think it's important to look at both sides of a situation... I can see how someone would want to keep their neighborhood the same. But what it comes down to is, change is inevitable, and fearing the unfamiliar is ridiculous.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Actually another trend is that the children of those who engaged in White Flight from the 1950s through the 1970s are recolonizing cities, now that dropping crime rates in the 1990s made cities safer places to live. They're tired of the boring sterility of suburbia and having to drive everywhere. Ditto a lot of older people in the 'burbs, who are looking to a day when they can no longer drive and become reliant on a public transportation network. That's driving gentrification as well.

That being said (boy am I ranty today) I really really abhor the way some of the longtime residents regard us "transients." I've seen on the Somerville News website (just don't go there, it is all trolls) things written such as, "It used to be that everyone had an Irish or Italian last name and their family had been here since..." something that reminds me of WWII Germany. Some people can be so small-minded.

That kind of provincialism is peculiar to Boston, and comes from the fact that except for international immigration, virtually nobody moved here for about 40 years starting in the mid-50s. Massachusetts experienced a huge population loss during that time. There were a number of reasons for this that would take a while to go into, but when that happens, neighborhoods and towns become very insular, because new ideas and new people aren't coming in.

[enochs-fable.livejournal.com]

I'd actually be interested in hearing those reasons or places to read about them!

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Well, the catalyzing factor for it all was the decline of American manufacturing starting in the 1950s due to cheap competition from Asia. Housing costs were expensive here and so, therefore, was labor. So manufacturing in the state went in the tank. The mills in Lowell and Lawrence, the shoe factories in Brockton, all closed down. Ditto the mill towns out west: Springfield, Pittsfield, even Worcester. Heck, they used to make cars in Somerville; Assembly Square used to be a Ford plant.

Then there were the taxes. You've probably heard this place termed "Taxachusetts." That's no longer true, despite the extent to which conservatives still call it that. But the name persists and for a good many years it was quite accurate.

When the tax base started to erode you started to have what's been termed the "death spiral". High taxes cause productive residents and businesses to leave, so there's no choice but to raise taxes on those who are left, until the higher taxes induce *them* to leave, and so on.

There was a popular t-shirt in the 80s that said "Will the last person to leave Massachusetts please turn out the lights?"

That all changed with the Mass Miracle of the early 90s. Broad-based tax cuts along with the ascendancy of the tech economy really did bring this state back from the grave.

[larksdream]

That's really interesting. Is there a book you'd recommend?

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's a really tactful way of saying, "Cite, please." I'll have to remember that one.

Mostly this is stuff I've gathered from talking to people who've lived here for a long time...it's probably colored with a lot of accumulated prejudice. But the decline of American manufacturing and the depopulation of Massachusetts are pretty well common knowledge. Population stats are easy to look up on census.gov, for example.

Unfortunately we now have the opposite problem--the economy was so good for so long that it got impossibly expensive to live here and now housing costs are driving all but the wealthiest and poorest classes away.

If you want a current example of the taxation death spiral I alluded to, look at DC. DC is a really weird place because much of the most valuable land--what would be high-value office space in other cities--is occupied by the federal government, which doesn't pay property taxes.

[on-reserve.livejournal.com]

I was thinking the exact same thing :) (about being interested in reading further)

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

They're tired of the boring sterility of suburbia and having to drive everywhere.

I was born in and grew up in a suburban college town: Davis (ironic, eh?), Calif. I basically refused to learn to drive, and as soon as I could moved to Sacramento, the closest "city." Which it really wasn't; it was an older suburban sprawl. Finally, I escaped to places like Montreal and San Francisco, and finally (after a brief detour into Atlanta, aka "Bad LA") on the cusp of Davis and Porter.

I love it here and have been in the same apartment for over 5 years. Why? Because everything I need is within 10 or fewer blocks of my home. Grocery, live music, books, hardware, all sorts of ethnic food, two T stations, dry cleaners, veterinarian, Goodwill (for when I clean out my closets), pet store, pharmacy...without a car or even without requiring public transportation, I can get everything I need to survive. Add to the fact that I consider Harvard and Union Squares "walking distance" and I'm living my lifelong dream.

There's not a lot of places left in the world where you can do everything you need to without leaving your feet. I appreciate living here every day.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I don't know that a town often referred to as the best biking city in America is a great example of have-to-drive-everywhere suburbia ;).

But I'm with you on not learning to drive. Didn't do that until this year, and that only because biking six miles to work (outside of public transit range) gets a bit annoying when it is 15 degrees out.

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

Ha!
Well, see...it is great for biking, with bike lanes and bike-only streets...but if you want to go to anything they don't have in town (they're kind of anti-chain, and really good ethnic groceries are hard to come by; there was no liquor store in town until I was in highschool), you have to go to Sacramento. Now, people do bicycle there...but it's 10+ miles away. Or at least you used to; they've gotten more stripmalls, and there's actually a McDonald's in town and not out on an onramp at the edge of town.

Then, too, it rains, is very windy, and hits 100° in summer.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I basically refused to learn to drive

That's exactly what I did. First I moved from our deep suburb into downtown Rochester, NY, and then to the Boston area, landing first in Dorchester and then Davis 12 years ago. I still don't drive and probably never will.

For a long time I've toyed with idea of moving to Brooklyn, NY. But when I look around me at everything I have here, I have to ask myself why? I don't feel deprived of anything living in Davis. Whatever I want is accessible to me. In a way Davis is my dream town.

[moria923.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize you'd lived in Dorchester. What part?

thorbol and I did what you did in reverse: we started out in Somerville and ended up on Dorchester. We would have liked to stay in Somerville, but we wanted a house, and the prices were better here.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Fields Corners. Absolutely hated it. I moved up to Davis after 3 months there, and I've never been back!

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

Gah. Visiting Davis is like the worst part of my job.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Why?

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

Our trips to Davis represent the most stressful part of my work. We go there to use their test facility and the month(s) before is (are) stressful as we are trying to get our experiments together to ship it there before we get there. Once there, we have to deal with bad hotels, too much in and out burger, working 18 hour shifts, tests not working, bad results, a dirty working environment, being cold, and the possibility of doing serious physical harm to our bodies. Some of it is just status quo for my work and Davis is better than many of the other test facilities we use that run 24 hours a day (sleeping in hallways on concrete floors), so I really shouldn't complain.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my neighborhood in Wilmington DE (Trolley Sq.) was like that. I picked it carefully, mostly because at the time I moved there I owned some rather unreliable junkheap cars and didn't want to have to rely on the car for the basic necessities of life. I'd love to live in such a neighborhood again but for several things:

1. It's impossibly expensive unless you get along with roommates, and I dont' get along with roommates.
2. I've become an avid motorcyclist, and I need offstreet parking for my bike.
3. Long-term, I want to be out of multi-family housing. I live in half of a 2-family house in Belmont. While I'm lucky right now in terms of my immediate neighbor, if either of us were to move, that luck likely would not continue. I had Neighbors From Hell in my last apartment. (Long story.)
4. Long-term, my sweetie and I want to have a child. The poor quality of most urban schools makes remaining in an urban environment a non-starter.

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

True...
1) I have a little one bedroom, and my rent hasn't changed in 5 years.
2) Yeah...
3) Me too. My downstairs neighbours were kicked out of hell for their nasty behaviour. The landlord likes me.
4) I went to suburban schools and was not impressed with them, either, but I see your point.

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

I lived in Davis for years before moving to NM. The town I live in NM is very anti-chain. The chamber of commerce and the city council run out the chains. They just let a starbucks in about two years ago, which was a pretty big deal. I think they caved, since there are few places open past 7 pm in the non-summer months and it seems like no one else wanted to start a coffee shop.

All of this is a double-edged sword, though. It's nice to support local businesses, but it sucks to constantly pay more. The nearest Target is a 45-60 minute drive away, so sometimes there doesn't feel like the only choice is to suck it up and pay.

[jadelennox]

Though that increases the standard of living for the town as a whole, since local businesses in general will mean more money staying in the community. It hurts in the small, but helps in the big.

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

I think it might actually be a toss up. I am not certain there is any real money in this community. The federal government pays for most of the town. Most of us work for the feds to start off with and given a huge land crunch the feds have had to step in to do stuff that property taxes should do. This place is not really your average town.

I think what keeps me spending the gas money to get to Target and all of the other stores 45 minutes away is that options we do have for local businesses are severely constrained ("downtown" is two blocks by one block) and exceptionally overpriced ($5 for a box of cereal, $5 for a box of Boca Burgers). After awhile, you get so pissed standing in line to pay $4 for a tub of yogurt that you are willing to drive.

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of unsupported assertions in this post, and they may not be all accurate. I'm especially curious about your assumptions about the role of the federal government in Somerville.

In other news, there's a Target at 180 Somerville Ave, just outside Union Square. (It surprised me, too!) If your car takes 45 minutes to get there, you have a very slow car. ;-)

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

Hrmm. Would this be the mesa-top town with more Chinese and other Asian food places than fast food joints, where every road into town crosses a rez, and where one can find bird's nests made of paper shreddings?

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

You know it occurred to me just now that the real answer to this statement is "I would support local business more, if I could get what I wanted here without the price gouging."

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

There's actually a Target near Union Square, just off McGrath-O'Brien.
180 Somerville Ave. Just head down Highland Av and veer right.