« Neighborhood Safety Charrette | Main | Sox Magic Number 2 »
Mach on Gentrification
Thanks for the tip and a nod to Matt's blog entry on the Gentrification issue in Olneyville on RIFuture website.
Very interesting reading. But what I liked was the comment made by Mach after the post and the one that mentioned Mt. Hope by Dan. It seems some of the same forces are at work over there but even worse with some far left leaning artsy fartsy types crying foul after spitting into the soup. Read it and you'll see what I mean even if you may not agree with me.
Heres's the link to the post:
Debate on Olneyville Gentrification Continues
And here is Mach's comment quoted from the rifuture.org website (Why can't we get people like him in Mt. Hope?):
Right this wrong?I'm sorry, but maybe because I'm one of those who moved into the area I have trouble seeing how my move was a "wrong" that needed someone to be "righted." Apparently what some want is for better living conditions in Olneyville, but when these better living conditions present themselves they don't want white people to move into them. Or, they want what is bought and developed to be turned into low-cost housing, although nobody was apparently willing to make the significant investment necessary to rehab the blighted and polluted lands if they couldn't get their money back - i.e. if they had to be low-cost units. What a surprise, that there is little interest in spending vast sums of money to fix-up buildings that won't generate a return. Would it be nice if there was such an interest? Absolutely. Was there such an interest? Not that I know of.
People bitch and moan about gentrification and complain about how nobody tries to improve their neighborhoods, but when people actually move in and start improving things they scream "gentrification!" As far as I have seen, that means "WHITE PEOPLE!" I eat at Olneyville restaurants (La Lupita is the best Mexican food around and of course NY System), I ride the bus with my neighbors, I used to buy my groceries at Shaw's (not anymore), I get my tires fixed at George's, I get cheap booze at Al's. I don't rob people, I don't assault people, I don't pay for prostitutes, I don't buy or sell drugs, I don't blow through the stop sign at Delaine & Valley like most people do, I pick up trash on my street as I walk to the bus stop (sadly, no garbage cans around though), and I even relax with a good game of kickball in the PKL. In short, I try my best to be a good neighbor and I support my neighborhood because I like it. What I don't like is the possibility of being stabbed when I get off the bus (end of my street last week, guy lived), prostitutes in my park, trash up and down my street, and shootings in my neighborhood (August was a aprticularly active month).
Olneyville can't have it both ways - you can't say you want to improve your neighborhood and then bitch that the people who are actually trying to help out are white and not minorities. If you want the shootings, stabbings, rampant littering, and poor business to end then the people responsible for those things need to go and people who don't do those things need to stay. But, you shoot yourself in the foot when people who move into the neghborhood and don't happen to be poor or a minority are derided as supporting "gentrification" despite the fact that they are exactly what Olneyville wants to be - good neighbors who make a decent wage.
Discourse is, with respect to the relation of forces, not merely a surface of inscription, but something that brings about effects. - Michel Foucault
Mach
Posted at September 26, 2007 06:33 PM