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

[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 think you're being a touch paranoid. I really was asking if you know of any books on the topic. If it's all anecdotal then by all means -- share more stories :)

I am very familiar with what you're talking about as my dad was born, raised and still lives in Brockton. I lived there for much of my life so I've seen the decline and attempts at recussitating a dead factory city.

[larksdream]

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

*LOL* Actually, it wasn't. I find local history to be very interesting, but most books about Boston (that I've read) are all like, "Molasses! Also, famous rich people!" and they're all pretty much the same.