Gentrification
Jan. 3rd, 2006 01:06 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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davis_squareHey 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-03 08:11 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-04 12:12 am (UTC)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.