Jargon Watch: "Terminal Gentrification"
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 08.25.08
Richard Florida talks of the creative and spiky cities, those places that attract the best and the brightest in an idea-driven economy. They are thriving, but one can have too much of a good thing. National Post columnist Kelvin Browne visited Venice and writes that it has become "a highbrow Disneyland. A "living museum city" is the euphemism often used. People will still own homes in Venice, but they will be mostly foreigners. The homes will be their second or third ones: Aspen in the winter, Venice in the summer, and New York, London or Dubai in between."
He notes that cities like New York and London are following this pattern.
"London is an example of a place that's becoming less real, or certainly less affordable, to most of the people that would normally live there. If you think Manhattan is expensive, double it and you have central London... As in Venice, houses that once held five families now have one -- and they're seldom home. The result is that the mix of housing stock available is now hardly a mix, it's all upscale. It's terminal gentrification." ::National Post
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I was under the impression that cities like Paris, London and Venice were, from their inception, places where the elite resided. Until the late 20th century, most people, including the majority of the poor, lived outside of cities. It was the nobles, merchants, and priests, upper class people, who lived in the cities.
Luckily gentrification is only one step in a continuously evolving city as described in this article:
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/report_nations_gentrified