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What does a gentrifying city look like? Talk to the man who delivers the mail
- BoorishBears 9y agoI’ve noticed a pattern, you know gentrification is in full swing once the neighborhood gets a new name. For example my last apartment was in Downtown Hartford, CT. But Hartford gets a bad rap for some violent hotspots in the north end of the city. So the Downtown “neighborhood” became “Riverfront”, because downtown bordered the Connecticut River. Events were held at “the Riverfront”. The municipal efforts to draw new business were “Riverfront Recapture”. They bought the domain Riverfront.org and go out of their way not to use the term Hartford too much. My new apartment is in Downtown New Haven, and there’s a similar story. Historic Yale is surrounded by some very violent areas. So my neighborhood isn’t “New Haven”. It’s “Chapel West”. They bought the domain chapelwest.com. It also avoids referring to New Haven, instead framing the location by street names and intentionally leaving out the city until much further down. Any projects in the area are referring to Chapel sweat. I think when your neighborhood gets it’s trendy new name to avoid associating it with the heritage of the surrounding area, gentrification is in full swing.