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

[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.

[on-reserve.livejournal.com]

In-and-Out burger? Obviously you're talking about Davis CA!

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

You know, I think I am just confusing people in this thread in between talking about living in NM without chain stores and discussing my annoyances with Davis, CA. I had only meant to talk about what it actually felt like to live without the chain stores (expensive!) and then also got sucked into talking about Davis CA. I should just shut up now.