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

[ffsear]

So he's enough of a low cunt to fabricate a family death to try to come out on top in an argument.

Awaits long spiel from ffsear about foster-mothers.

lovely, thanks

 

[ViolentPanda]

Thanks, eighteenth century! It's a joy to me that we can unironically draw up and put into practice real world divisions where property-owning baby boomers sit comfortably on one side of the definition, but own nothing except a bit of leveraged retail space or a fucking burger van and you're on the other with a nod to Kierkegaard or something, neglecting actual meaningful divisions in order to bite your own tail. What a load of shit.

Not a caricature of the WC per se, but a caricature of a useless pattern that grants you admission, and one that doesn't feel challenged by modern complexities. See above.

I don't know London. Probably somewhere much nearer the M25 now. And 'fading' isn't necessarily connected at all to property values either. But when the crash comes and the music stops and various demographics migrate to or settle in particular places, it'll be a lot clearer.

Marx was 19th century, you Noddy.

 

[mauvais]

Marx was 19th century, you Noddy.

It predates Marx. And are you really going to quote several pages of backlog?

 

[Pickman's model]

It predates Marx. And are you really going to quote several pages of backlog?

going back to the eighteenth century unhelpful tbh as - as widely acknowledged (see e.g. e.p.thompson, 'the making of the english working class') - the modern class structure didn't come into being until the nineteenth century. in addition, that shopkeepers are petit-bourgeois should not come as a surprise to anyone and certainly doesn't need to conjure kierkegaard from his grave.

 

[Pickman's model]

It predates Marx. And are you really going to quote several pages of backlog?

we didn't really go through this before, you and i, so i would like it if you didn't piss about but simply acknowledge the rightness of #1414.

 

[Mr Moose]

From a <poncey hat firmly on> sociological perspective, I find it interesting that the new social class you refer to (I'd say "stratum" of an existing class, myself), whose habits appear to worship "authenticity", are such massive fans of pastiche. If it were nostalgia - forty and fifty-somethings eating the cereals/reliving the fashions/riding the bicycles of their youths - I could understand that, but it's twenty and thirty-somethings attempting to create an "authentic" set of consumption decisions to validate the way they see themselves - membership (through purchasing choices) of a semi-elite social stratum that deliberately eschews the idea of itself as a movement.</poncy hat off>

Possibly, or a couple of canny lads who saw their customers coming.

But it does sometimes seem like any random frivolity will do. A movement it's not. Being kind I'd say sometimes it's just being young.

 

[mauvais]

we didn't really go through this before, you and i, so i would like it if you didn't piss about but simply acknowledge the rightness of #1414.

I'm disclined to go through anything with you as it's rarely a pleasurable or even polite experience.

But since you and some others disagree with my experience of gentrification, I'd like to figure out what the defining characteristics are meant to be.

This is Hulme, Manchester, probably in the early 1990s.

The hipsters and boho types of the time came, but they didn't revive anything, because they came at the end. Then much of the area was demolished. What's that if not top-down control? Now it's popular with yuppies and city commuters. So is that ultimately gentrification, or is it excluded because it's a particular failure mode, i.e. shit 1960s planning?

As another example, this is part of Southampton now.

Built from the mid-2000s onwards. Big influx of yuppies, ranging from lower middle class to yacht-owning nouveau riche. But before this existed, it used to be a dock, or in some cases, underwater. I don't think it was hipsters that filled in the Solent, but maybe it was. So, is it not to be filed under gentrification because there was no housing there before? OK, but it brought a load of money and property demand into the city, and around the corner which had always existed, it changed the local economy along the usual lines of old man pubs becoming bars and restaurants and so on, which looks a lot like gentrification to me. But in case you don't know Southampton, there's no burgeoning scene or anything FFS, there was never any great pull from culture. The buildings and availability of property came first, then the image of a particular lifestyle that it portrayed, and then the inhabitants, and then the things to service them.

Again, what's that if not top-down?

Now I can see the difference between (re)development and the more common sliding-tile pattern of gentrification, especially in places where the above doesn't work. For example it's not like you can demolish parts of, say, Paris and reinvent them - you would have to appropriate and alter what exists. Ditto elsewhere for different reasons. But most of what I see, especially in Britain, admittedly outside London, is not a slow subversion - it's new, often speculative construction that largely precedes and generates the influx, rather than merely reflecting it.

 

[Pickman's model]

I'm disclined to go through anything with you as it's rarely a pleasurable or even polite experience.

But since you and some others disagree with my experience of gentrification, I'd like to figure out what the defining characteristics are meant to be.

This is Hulme, Manchester, probably in the early 1990s.

The hipsters and boho types of the time came, but they didn't revive anything, because they came at the end. Then much of the area was demolished. What's that if not top-down control? Now it's popular with yuppies and city commuters. So is that ultimately gentrification, or is it excluded because it's a particular failure mode, i.e. shit 1960s planning?

As another example, this is part of Southampton now.

Built from the mid-2000s onwards. Big influx of yuppies, ranging from lower middle class to yacht-owning nouveau riche. But before this existed, it used to be a dock, or in some cases, underwater. I don't think it was hipsters that filled in the Solent, but maybe it was. So, is it not to be filed under gentrification because there was no housing there before? OK, but it brought a load of money and property demand into the city, and around the corner which had always existed, it changed the local economy along the usual lines of old man pubs becoming bars and restaurants and so on, which looks a lot like gentrification to me. But in case you don't know Southampton, there's no burgeoning scene or anything FFS, there was never any great pull from culture. The buildings and availability of property came first, then the image of a particular lifestyle that it portrayed, and then the inhabitants, and then the things to service them.

Again, what's that if not top-down?

Now I can see the difference between (re)development and the more common sliding-tile pattern of gentrification, especially in places where the above doesn't work. For example it's not like you can demolish parts of, say, Paris and reinvent them - you would have to appropriate and alter what exists. Ditto elsewhere for different reasons. But most of what I see, especially in Britain, admittedly outside London, is not a slow subversion - it's new, often speculative construction that largely precedes and generates the influx, rather than merely reflecting it.

all i asked you to do was agree with me, not to post up a load of guff which has nothing to do with the point under discussion - which was about class not about top down nonsense.

 

[mauvais]

all i asked you to do was agree with me, not to post up a load of guff which has nothing to do with the point under discussion - which was about class not about top down nonsense.

Fuck off.

 

[ViolentPanda]

It predates Marx. And are you really going to quote several pages of backlog?

As many posters are aware,I don't have much choice but to respond to posts as I encounter them, as I have neurological issues that mean that my short-term memory is - to use a technical description - so holey it makes a collander look solid.

 

[mauvais]

As many posters are aware,I don't have much choice but to respond to posts as I encounter them, as I have neurological issues that mean that my short-term memory is - to use a technical description - so holey it makes a collander look solid.

My apologies

 

[Pickman's model]

I'm disclined to go through anything with you as it's rarely a pleasurable or even polite experience.

But since you and some others disagree with my experience of gentrification, I'd like to figure out what the defining characteristics are meant to be.

This is Hulme, Manchester, probably in the early 1990s.[...]

yes, i am aware of the crescents. tell me, what happened to the w/c residents who were there in the 1980s?

 

[Pickman's model]

Fuck off.

it's that sort of response which has earned you the poor reputation you enjoy.

 

[cesare]

Housing developers don't set trends - they follow them.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Now I can see the difference between (re)development and the more common sliding-tile pattern of gentrification, especially in places where the above doesn't work. For example it's not like you can demolish parts of, say, Paris and reinvent them - you would have to appropriate and alter what exists. Ditto elsewhere for different reasons. But most of what I see, especially in Britain, admittedly outside London, is not a slow subversion - it's new, often speculative construction that largely precedes and generates the influx, rather than merely reflecting it.

In London I think you see both. Areas with slow subversion change over a number of years but often many of the original inhabitants remain, the people of lower incomes left being mostly those who had social housing before or soon after the process started, but they do remain - they are not, or have not been so far, pushed out. Somewhere like Chiswick in West London is like that.

Areas with conscious, top-down social cleansing would be the likes of Elephant as I mentioned before, with demolition of council blocks and relocation of tenants elsewhere.

In neither case, though, is the process driven by the kinds of bars/restaurants/artisanal bakeries that are present. That's very much cart-before-horse.

 

[ViolentPanda]

My apologies

No problem. I'm aware that it makes my posting style irritating.

 

[Pickman's model]

I'm disclined to go through anything with you as it's rarely a pleasurable or even polite experience.

But since you and some others disagree with my experience of gentrification, I'd like to figure out what the defining characteristics are meant to be.

This is Hulme, Manchester, probably in the early 1990s.

The hipsters and boho types of the time came, but they didn't revive anything, because they came at the end. Then much of the area was demolished. What's that if not top-down control? Now it's popular with yuppies and city commuters. So is that ultimately gentrification, or is it excluded because it's a particular failure mode, i.e. shit 1960s planning?

As another example, this is part of Southampton now.

Built from the mid-2000s onwards. Big influx of yuppies, ranging from lower middle class to yacht-owning nouveau riche. But before this existed, it used to be a dock, or in some cases, underwater. I don't think it was hipsters that filled in the Solent, but maybe it was. So, is it not to be filed under gentrification because there was no housing there before? OK, but it brought a load of money and property demand into the city, and around the corner which had always existed, it changed the local economy along the usual lines of old man pubs becoming bars and restaurants and so on, which looks a lot like gentrification to me. But in case you don't know Southampton, there's no burgeoning scene or anything FFS, there was never any great pull from culture. The buildings and availability of property came first, then the image of a particular lifestyle that it portrayed, and then the inhabitants, and then the things to service them.

Again, what's that if not top-down?

Now I can see the difference between (re)development and the more common sliding-tile pattern of gentrification, especially in places where the above doesn't work. For example it's not like you can demolish parts of, say, Paris and reinvent them - you would have to appropriate and alter what exists. Ditto elsewhere for different reasons. But most of what I see, especially in Britain, admittedly outside London, is not a slow subversion - it's new, often speculative construction that largely precedes and generates the influx, rather than merely reflecting it.

if you knew anything about the crescents, you would have known that a) shoddy construction resulted in the flats leaking; b) the ducting made the buildings attractive to cockroaches and mice, leading to their unpopularity among residents; c) (and this part is poor planning rather than execution) the walkways lent themselves to criminal use. so the destruction of the buildings not due to hipsters or squatters (of whatever class) but poor construction & to an extent planning.

 

[mauvais]

yes, i am aware of the crescents. tell me, what happened to the w/c residents who were there in the 1980s?

Displaced to other bordering areas of Manchester, or outwards, some of which have subsequently been redeveloped and gentrified themselves, or are due to be, and some of which have been further neglected, which is why it serves as a reasonable illustration of the gentrification merry-go-round.

it's that sort of response which has earned you the poor reputation you enjoy.

You're being a cunt. Not withstanding your general rudeness and belittling, I'm trying to understand an issue and another perspective, rather than attempting to assert some absolute truth, and whether you agree with or even appreciate it, I put some effort into a post, which you then tell me is a load of guff. So if I have a reputation to enjoy, at least I enjoy it not being yours.

 

[Pickman's model]

Displaced to other bordering areas of Manchester, or outwards, some of which have subsequently been redeveloped and gentrified themselves, or are due to be, and some of which have been further neglected, which is why it serves as a reasonable illustration of the gentrification merry-go-round.

You're being a cunt. Not withstanding your general rudeness and belittling, I'm trying to understand an issue and another perspective, rather than attempting to assert some absolute truth, and whether you agree with or even appreciate it, I put some effort into a post, which you then tell me is a load of guff. So if I have a reputation to enjoy, at least I enjoy it not being yours.

whiel i appreciate you put some effort into your post, it did not address the point in the post it affected to answer: so guff in that context, valuable perhaps in another.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Housing developers don't set trends - they follow them.

Yup. Setting trends costs money, so what developers do instead is to magpie ideas that seem appealing. It's one of the reasons that the architecture of small-to-medium scale housing developments has a risible reputation - either generic with little bits of local vernacular architecture attached (panels of pudding stone walling set in brick appear to be popular in Norfolk, for example), or the sort of glass 'n' metal arsery that parts of The Heygate site are receiving. Nothing new, nothing adventurous. No Thamesmeads, and (at the other end of the scale) no Cressingham Gardens, just generica.

 

[mauvais]

Housing developers don't set trends - they follow them.

It follows population demand, and some trends, but within local bounds, I don't believe this is necessarily the case, any more than consumer product is always a response to demand. You can sell a location and lifestyle just like you can be sold a car or an iPhone you never knew you needed. Indeed, our predilection for buying into aspirational bollocks means you could easily sell a luxury apartment built in somewhere distinctly less than luxurious, as the current absence of things the tenant might consider important (bars etc) in a place is often ignored because the apparent influx of people of the same demographic suggests that it won't be long before it does exist. Up-and-coming.

Edit: and that in itself is a trend, of course, which now established (not least that city apartments are the place to be, regardless of the specifics) makes it even easier

 

[cesare]

Yup. Setting trends costs money, so what developers do instead is to magpie ideas that seem appealing. It's one of the reasons that the architecture of small-to-medium scale housing developments has a risible reputation - either generic with little bits of local vernacular architecture attached (panels of pudding stone walling set in brick appear to be popular in Norfolk, for example), or the sort of glass 'n' metal arsery that parts of The Heygate site are receiving. Nothing new, nothing adventurous. No Thamesmeads, and (at the other end of the scale) no Cressingham Gardens, just generica.

They have to be fairly sure of a trend to invest steeply in it. Look to construction and estate agents for recession signifiers etc.

 

[Pickman's model]

They have to be fairly sure of a trend to invest steeply in it. Look to construction and estate agents for recession signifiers etc.

that's why so many places are converted esp. pubs.

 

[ViolentPanda]

In London I think you see both. Areas with slow subversion change over a number of years but often many of the original inhabitants remain, the people of lower incomes left being mostly those who had social housing before or soon after the process started, but they do remain - they are not, or have not been so far, pushed out. Somewhere like Chiswick in West London is like that.

Areas with conscious, top-down social cleansing would be the likes of Elephant as I mentioned before, with demolition of council blocks and relocation of tenants elsewhere.

In neither case, though, is the process driven by the kinds of bars/restaurants/artisanal bakeries that are present. That's very much cart-before-horse.

Every local authority in London has been or is currently engaged in what the housing academic Prof Paul Watts calls "state regeneration" - local authority demolition and/or re-tasking of social housing in order to create new private dwellings. Big or small, it's all "conscious social cleansing" when it results in people being moved away from their locale, even if they're only moved a few miles down the road.
And the effect on communities is impossible to measure accurately, but has so far (in the instances I'm aware of in Lambeth and Southwark) meant the physical end of longstanding individual friendships and intra-family relations, as well as the death of community assets (different forms of social clubs; community activities to help neighbours etc). They may not be killing us as individuals, but "regeneration" and what accompanies it certainly kills us collectively - as communities.

 

[cesare]

that's why so many places are converted esp. pubs.

Yes, relatively small investment in the first instance but contributing to a feeling of prosperity and encouragement. Not a huge amount to lose if they've misjudged it.

 

[Pickman's model]

Yes, relatively small investment in the first instance but contributing to a feeling of prosperity and encouragement. Not a huge amount to lose if they've misjudged it.

yeh. but a loss to the community around it.

 

[cesare]

Every local authority in London has been or is currently engaged in what the housing academic Prof Paul Watts calls "state regeneration" - local authority demolition and/or re-tasking of social housing in order to create new private dwellings. Big or small, it's all "conscious social cleansing" when it results in people being moved away from their locale, even if they're only moved a few miles down the road.
And the effect on communities is impossible to measure accurately, but has so far (in the instances I'm aware of in Lambeth and Southwark) meant the physical end of longstanding individual friendships and intra-family relations, as well as the death of community assets (different forms of social clubs; community activities to help neighbours etc). They may not be killing us as individuals, but "regeneration" and what accompanies it certainly kills us collectively - as communities.

At least they've learned something (I hope) from the 70s eg not taking all the displaced families and moving them onto one massive project cf Thamesmead.

 

[cesare]

yeh. but a loss to the community around it.

The closure of the pub was a loss to the community, for sure.

 

[ViolentPanda]

At least they've learned something (I hope) from the 70s eg not taking all the displaced families and moving them onto one massive project cf Thamesmead.

It's pretty much piecemeal dispersal nowadays, for the very worst of reasons - there are no new estates, nor will there be.
Here, we're being told that we can have a new property (the council and its "co-developer" plan a phased "construct and decant" operation) on the estate. it would mean ceding our secure council tenancies for an "assured lifetime tenancy" instead though, and given the potential power that gives the local authority in varying our tenancy T & Cs and our rents, we're currently giving them the finger. Oh, and the new "social" properties will be around 25% smaller than the current ones.

 

[cesare]

It's pretty much piecemeal dispersal nowadays, for the very worst of reasons - there are no new estates, nor will there be.
Here, we're being told that we can have a new property (the council and its "co-developer" plan a phased "construct and decant" operation) on the estate. it would mean ceding our secure council tenancies for an "assured lifetime tenancy" instead though, and given the potential power that gives the local authority in varying our tenancy T & Cs and our rents, we're currently giving them the finger. Oh, and the new "social" properties will be around 25% smaller than the current ones.

I really hate that term - decant What's happening on your estate sounds similar to what's happening to the social housing in Tower Hamlets and Hackney.