Changing cities

In London, entire areas once rat infested and blighted by crime and decay have had once elegant, old buildings restored and new ones erected alongside them, creating exciting healthy, new urban centres boasting community spaces, theatres, bars, restaurants, and more.

A British sociologist coined the term in the 1960s to describe the middle classes reclaiming of working- class Islington, close to the financial city of London, which was finally in post-WW II reconstruction.

Gentrification was controversial because it caused the area to change socially as its working-class residents were pushed out by higher living costs. A game in the park to find the most empty snack bags for my well-to-do friends’ daughter and her new Islington-born friend was won by the latter who instinctively knew to look near the bins, not on the lawns.

In New York, gentrification has come to mean the rapid influx of young, well-to-do white people into once low-income urban neighbourhoods. Here it is controversial particularly in relation to areas with high African-American populations, such as Brooklyn.

The new arrivals, originally arty and with university degrees but challenged by a lack of affordable housing, spotted the potential of the wonderful residential buildings in this NY borough and, by moving in, quite quickly attracted floods of resources; property values have soared in response.

It irks people like African-American movie mogul and Brooklyn resident Spike Lee as it underscores US history of racial and social inequality.

A weekend walk through Brooklyn, where 46 percent of homes moved from the bottom half of home price distribution to the top half between 2000-2007 and the borough’s population increased by 3.5 percent since 2010, helps illustrate the argument.

Manhattan’s Central Park and Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, which are the heart of the areas’ appeal, have the same creator who also designed a handsome although much smaller park in Bedford-Stuyvesant, which is being gentrified but still largely populated by poorer African Americans.

That park has been abandoned to the homeless, weeks of grime cake the pavements, but new eateries with vegan and organic foods, designer shops and coffee bars, settling in beside black churches, reveal the change that will eventually ensure better amenities.

Gentrification is good and bad.

But these are the facts: People need living space, developers and investors are opportunistic, and many lower-income occupants are overcome by higher rents and costs and become displaced, but longtime local homeowners who stay enjoy safer, cleaner streets, improved facilities and schools, and increased value and equity in their homes.

Would it happen in PoS or San Fernando? No, because we don’t have the need or the housing stock to recolonise. Most of the once cherished, desirable homes north of Park Street and Belmont have been destroyed or unsympathetically restored, similarly in South.

Notwithstanding, whenever we consider urban regeneration we should know that a New York City Housing Authority study found that public housing developments in high-income neighbourhoods had lower violent crime rates than those in low-income neighbourhoods.

Injecting resources and money into decaying, low-income, urban centres creates more racially and socially integrated neighbourhoods with revitalised economies, which in New York correlates with higher school test scores.

These new communities work well too, not only because of their human diversity but also they mix residential, commercial, retail and ent e r t ai n - ment usage, making them d y n a m i c spaces that do not become ghost towns at night.