100% of the discourse surrounding gentrification is unproductive. Gentrification is simply the racialized term for the multifaceted housing crisis.

Upwardly mobile twenty-somethings of white, Indian, or Asian descent want to live in the city. They ALSO cannot afford 1.5 million dollar single family homes. The neighborhood that is claimed to be gentrified is actually simply affordable. People have to live somewhere, and the upwardly mobile twenty-somethings have to live somewhere too. If there were more apartments available, more city centers in each city, and less development regulations, then this wouldn’t be a problem.

It’s a shame when people think they have to work their own neighborhood WORSE so that people won’t want to come there. The issue is that this doesn’t deter them from moving in anyway. And when they move in, they’ll want bike lanes, and not to have to deal with indiscriminate acts of vandalism and harassment from homeless drug addicts who hang around outside their buildings.

It is a class issue. The average 40yo lifelong neighborhood resident who doesn’t want white people moving in actually has FAR more in common with the “gentrifiers” than they do with any other group.

People that use the word gentrification unironically are either maliciously lying or just plain dumb. Especially in neighborhoods like Navy Yard in DC, or O4W in Atlanta, both of which were literally weed-filled parking lots and cratered asphalt outside of abandoned factories collecting wind-strewn litter for years, occupying half a dozen square miles of wasted space. When they were “gentrified”, maybe 40 homes were able to secure a massive bag selling to developers, and then multiple thousands of people were able to live there. Anyone arguing against this is literally malicious and hostile to their own neighbors.

They fantasize that it is a situation similar to Disney’s “Up”, but it’s not. People need to have a place to live.

It’s happening now in Chinatown. They are arguing against the completion of the Philly Rail Park, which is in a completely wasted section of the city, currently utilized for almost nothing, on the other side of Vine, and they fight against it because it will make people want to live in a neighborhood that’s closer to them.

Atlanta’s Belt Line, which is a thematically and philosophically identical project, has spurred double digit billions of dollars of infrastructure and housing investment. There are now communities for active 55+yos, housing for thousands of people, exercise, outdoor yoga, hundreds of stores and restaurants that didn’t exist before. Not to mentioned the explosion in tax base.

And they want to block this for Philadelphia because it would make their own neighborhood nicer. Even though it starts ABOVE (not in) Chinatown, and continues all the way to the art museum. And CT/Philly nimbys get to ruin it for everyone because having a software developer live within a half mile of their outermost store is simply an insurmountable offense. It’s plainly disgusting.

The entirety of it right now is abandoned rail segment surrounded by empty surface level parking lots and abandoned buildings. It could be the new center of Philly and contain housing for literally tens of thousands of people. Easily. But it can’t be done, because it would allow upwardly mobile middle class people a place to live.