Fuck Gentrification - Join the Fuck Parade...Part 3!

[fredfelt]

do you bother reading my posts?

I take notice of the occasional one. Although I admit most of what is said here passes my by unnoticed.

 

[Pickman's model]

I take notice of the occasional one. Although I admit most of what is said here passes my by unnoticed.

yeh. well i have addressed the issue of the brick lane bagel shops earlier, whether on this thread or the cereal cafe thread, i don't recall which.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I think there's some confusion here about what gentrification is.

My definition of gentrification would be the driving out of an existing demographic over time through increases in house prices and rents. Such social cleansing might happen in an unplanned way over a number of years, as has been happening in Hackney, or in a brutal, planned way far more quickly, as is happening in Elephant now.

What doesn't happen is for shops, restaurants and bars to open up that then drive poorer people away from an area. If they have affordable rents in social housing, people stay put during gentrification processes and there are generally plenty of places within their price range as well in the area even post-gent, although the disappearance of markets etc to be replaced by avaricious chains is a big problem. Cereal Killers and their ilk - little places replacing other little places - have driven nobody out.

 

[Supine]

Not sure if this has been posted

View From The Side: Class War, Cereal Killer And Gentrification

 

[fredfelt]

yeh. well i have addressed the issue of the brick lane bagel shops earlier, whether on this thread or the cereal cafe thread, i don't recall which.

At the risk of repeating an idea - which I'm sure I am doing on such a big thread....

My grumble about our high streets is the their take over by corporations. They pay shite and suck cash out of the local and national economy. With small and local business on our high street it typically means the money stays local and circulates locally.

It's not just the cash, it's all the other networks that occur when people trade with other people locally. I mean that in the broad sense of businesses and customers. These networks just don't happen with chains.

This cafe is not to my tastes at all. However there are plenty shops, large and small which are not to my taste. In my mind a measure of a healthy high street is a varied high street where small shops are able to draw enough custom for them to operate - what they do is of far less consequence.

A sense of place occurs when local people are able to live and work in their community. It's not like a chain came and took business from other similar locally owned business. I can't see how this stupid cafe will contribute to other shops closing.

 

[Pickman's model]

At the risk of repeating an idea - which I'm sure I am doing on such a big thread....

My grumble about our high streets is the their take over by corporations. They pay shite and suck cash out of the local and national economy. With small and local business on our high street it typically means the money stays local and circulates locally.

It's not just the cash, it's all the other networks that occur when people trade with other people locally. I mean that in the broad sense of businesses and customers. These networks just don't happen with chains.

This cafe is not to my tastes at all. However there are plenty shops, large and small which are not to my taste. In my mind a measure of a healthy high street is a varied high street where small shops are able to draw enough custom for them to operate - what they do is of far less consequence.

A sense of place occurs when local people are able to live and work in their community. It's not like a chain came and took business from other similar locally owned business. I can't see how this stupid cafe will contribute to other shops closing.

there are generally two sorts of businesses which i find objectionable. on the one hand, there are the large chains which reduce the variety of local businesses to almost a monoculture; on the other hand there are the businesses, frequently small, which cater to the gentrifier. the cereal cafe falls into the latter. it does nothing for long term residents but seems to fill a void for the undiscerning interloper.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I can't see how this stupid cafe will contribute to other shops closing.

Nor can I. Neither can I see how it will contribute to people being driven out of the area, except as part of a wider process whereby any kind of urban regeneration results in rent hikes. That's the process that needs attacking.

 

[Pickman's model]

Nor can I. Neither can I see how it will contribute to people being driven out of the area, except as part of a wider process whereby any kind of urban regeneration results in rent hikes. That's the process that needs attacking.

there are none so blind as will not see: this cafe is objectionable even if it causes no other business to close or to lose an ounce of custom. it is objectionable, in my eyes, because it caters to the gentrifier & because it offers nothing to the long-term (or even short-term) working class resident. it helps create and sustain a culture different to that which the area previously had. it is no accident it was sited in brick lane, as its target market are very much the hipsters who live in the area and their counterparts who visit.

 

[fredfelt]

there are generally two sorts of businesses which i find objectionable. on the one hand, there are the large chains which reduce the variety of local businesses to almost a monoculture; on the other hand there are the businesses, frequently small, which cater to the gentrifier. the cereal cafe falls into the latter. it does nothing for long term residents but seems to fill a void for the undiscerning interloper.

Okay. Understood. I would hope that there's space on a diverse high street to cater for varied tastes and different communities.

 

[Pickman's model]

Okay. Understood. I would hope that there's space on a diverse high street to cater for varied tastes and different communities.

yes. but brick lane is decreasingly diverse, caters for a decreasing number of tastes and for a decreasing number of communities.

 

[cesare]

I think there's some confusion here about what gentrification is.

My definition of gentrification would be the driving out of an existing demographic over time through increases in house prices and rents. Such social cleansing might happen in an unplanned way over a number of years, as has been happening in Hackney, or in a brutal, planned way far more quickly, as is happening in Elephant now.

What doesn't happen is for shops, restaurants and bars to open up that then drive poorer people away from an area. If they have affordable rents in social housing, people stay put during gentrification processes and there are generally plenty of places within their price range as well in the area even post-gent, although the disappearance of markets etc to be replaced by avaricious chains is a big problem. Cereal Killers and their ilk - little places replacing other little places - have driven nobody out.

I think that this more closely defines what gentrification is:

History of the Term

The term ‘gentrification’ was coined in 1964 by a British sociologist – Ruth Glass – when referring to the alterations she observed in the social structure and housing markets in certain areas of inner London. Glass observed; "One by one, many of the working class quarters have been invaded by the middle class - upper and lower ... Once this process of 'gentrification' starts in a district it goes on rapidly until all or most of the working class occupiers are displaced and the whole social social character of the district is changed" (Glass, 1964, p.xvii).

Early definitions of gentrification, like that of Glass, tended to focus on the residential housing market and the rehabilitation of existing properties. However, since then the definition has widened to include vacant land – usually in prior industrial use – and newly built designer neighbourhoods, as well as neighbourhoods of working-class housing. Smith’s (2002: cited by Atkinson and Bridge, 2005) more recent work has argued that gentrification has broadened once again to become a new form of neo-liberal urban policy. Where the original definition focused on ‘sweat equity’ gentrification, with the middle-class householder rehabilitating their dwelling; more recent discussions have included off-the-peg new-build developments, often beside water or in other notable locations in the city.

Initially confined to western cities, gentrification has spread globally. Evidence of neighbourhood alteration and colonisation illustrated by an increasing concentration of the middle class can be found across the world; including cities such as Shanghai, Sydney and Seattle. As well as this, the process can now also be observed in regional centres such as Leeds in England and Barcelona in Spain. (Atkinson and Bridge, 2005).

Which is just an excerpt from here: 2. History and Explanation of Gentrification - Gentrification

I've been living on or near the Eastern boundary of the City since 1998 and working here for much longer, and I definitely think that the entire east side of the City has shifted eastwards and been replaced by not only expensive housing (as per One Aldgate) but also more expensive eating (cf the entire redevelopment of Spitalfields).

 

[ViolentPanda]

If even 20% of the protesters were genuinely local that would be a massively exciting development. Most people affected by gentrification quietly move on to a better life in the suburbs, and wouldn't go back even if they could.

Please quantify "most people".
or admit you've made a sweeping generalisation based on your own preconceptions, rather than on substantive data.

 

[no-no]

Cereal shop sells overpriced cereal most folk can't afford, same as any other fucking shop then. They all stock shit I can't afford. Whoever attacked the cereal shop was indulging in a bit of spite imo. There are plenty of other viable targets, the cereal shop got some press but at the expense of looking like idiots.

 

[butchersapron]

Symbols don't matter, they say as they applaud the latest socially liberal top-down symbolic trick pulled by politicians.

Symbols do matter and attacks on symbols get to the heart of the matter. They directly attack what they mean to people and how they are viewed in a way that an attack on a wider structure (how, btw? all you, attack the real target types, tell us how) will not. Things start at a point - they're not the finished product. This looks like a great start. The finished product might have enough legs to have a go at what the liberals on here (note their absence on other things criticising that wider structure) are whining about.

Well done to all. More of it. More symbols. More attacks.

 

[ViolentPanda]

so you're saying most people affectrd by gentrification move to the suburbs. so why are so many people affected by gentrufication moving to eg brick lane?

The circulation effect from centre to periphery held true as late as the '80s (in some cases) in London. It's dead in the water nowadays, though. Both centre and periphery are priced beyond what most earners can afford, in terms of rent. It's why BtL landlords will continue to coin it in via house-sharing.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I've been living on or near the Eastern boundary of the City since 1998 and working here for much longer, and I definitely think that the entire east side of the City has shifted eastwards and been replaced by not only expensive housing (as per One Aldgate) but also more expensive eating (cf the entire redevelopment of Spitalfields).

I don't know the area too well, but are there still also cheaper places to eat? I can think of one very good Chinese restaurant near there that's not that expensive.

I read a very poor article recently berating the Brunswick Centre because a couple of the restaurants there are on the pricey side. But the article neglected to mention, or was ignorant of the fact, that within a couple of minutes' walk there are two greasy spoons and at least two cheapish kebab places. (Not to mention that there's a Nando's in the BC itself.)

 

[Pickman's model]

The circulation effect from centre to periphery held true as late as the '80s (in some cases) in London. It's dead in the water nowadays, though. Both centre and periphery are priced beyond what most earners can afford, in terms of rent. It's why BtL landlords will continue to coin it in via house-sharing.

no, i was taking the piss out of Sparkle Motion.

 

[cesare]

I don't know the area too well, but are there still also cheaper places to eat? I can think of one very good Chinese restaurant near there that's not that expensive.

I read a very poor article recently berating the Brunswick Centre because a couple of the restaurants there are on the pricey side. But the article neglected to mention, or was ignorant of the fact, that within a couple of minutes' walk there are two greasy spoons and at least two cheapish kebab places. (Not to mention that there's a Nando's in the BC itself.)

I'm sure I can think of a few examples that are still clinging on, as well.

 

[Pickman's model]

I don't know the area too well, but are there still also cheaper places to eat? I can think of one very good Chinese restaurant near there that's not that expensive.

I read a very poor article recently berating the Brunswick Centre because a couple of the restaurants there are on the pricey side. But the article neglected to mention, or was ignorant of the fact, that within a couple of minutes' walk there are two greasy spoons and at least two cheapish kebab places. (Not to mention that there's a Nando's in the BC itself.)

not to mention a pret a manger by russell square tube

 

[cesare]

Seriously, the East End isn't being gentrified simply because there are still a few cheap places to eat left? Bloody hell.

 

[ViolentPanda]

3 Rice Krispies artfully arranged on the corner of a rectangular piece of reclaimed slate, with a dash of yoghurt smeared next to it, pointing towards the middle

At least, it looks a bit like yoghurt...

 

[butchersapron]

Sonmeone on this thread who went to private school actually argued that people going on about class is what make classs happen. And it wasn't challenged. Fucking hell.

 

[Pickman's model]

Seriously, the East End isn't being gentrified simply because there are still a few cheap places to eat left? Bloody hell.

littlebabyjesus likes to paint himself a bit alternative and edgy but give a slight scratch and you find the happy gentrifier who doesn't even realise he's a gentrifier.

 

[The Flying Pig]

Do one with your pie and mash mate that signed up at the same time as you

Are you really as weird as your post suggests are you that obsessed with those fascists scumbags. Do u see fascists coming up through the flpprboards. While some are attacking sugarpops

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Seriously, the East End isn't being gentrified simply because there are still a few cheap places to eat left? Bloody hell.

That's not what I said. The East End is being gentrified because rents are going through the roof. That's what forces people out.

 

[cesare]

Are you really as weird as your post suggests are you that obsessed with those fascists scumbags. Do u see fascists coming up through the flpprboards. While some are attacking sugarpops

You're proper dodgy, get to fuck

 

[Pickman's model]

That's not what I said. The East End is being gentrified because rents are going through the roof.

no, you don't get it at all. that is not the reason the east end is being gentrified, that is a symptom of gentrification.

 

[cesare]

That's not what I said. The East End is being gentrified because rents are going through the roof. That's what forces people out.

So are you saying that the East End *is * being gentrified then?

 

[cesare]

Sonmeone on this thread who went to private school actually argued that people going on about class is what make classs happen. And it wasn't challenged. Fucking hell.

Which one was that?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Plenty of gentrified pubs around that area. Saturday night, full of rugger buggers watching the England game. Thought that would be their ideal target,!!

Would class war attack them? Would they fuck! Don't want people fighting back now do we!

What makes me laugh when people like you sound off, is that you've obviously got no clue about Class War's history of taking the fight to the class enemy, rugger buggers and all. If you had, you'd know that they welcome people fighting back.
Mug.