4 ms·
It doesn't take a vast conspiracy to rid prospering metropolitan areas of working class non-white people; it's the business-as-usual of capitalist growth.
by mgunes 13y ago
It doesn't take a vast conspiracy to rid prospering metropolitan areas of working class non-white people; it's the business-as-usual of capitalist growth.
- davidw 13y ago> it's the business-as-usual of capitalist growth. Eh? Capitalism is about making money. Racism is the other thing. Sometimes the two mix, but they are different things.
- tptacek 13y agoThe alternative is Detroit. Which would you rather see?
- geogra4 13y agoI live in Detroit and I'd rather live here than San Francisco.
- mgunes 13y agoNo, the only alternative isn't Detroit.
- tptacek 13y agoWealthy people move in, raise property values, spur local economy, but displace lower-income families and the kinds of independent marginal businesses that served them. Or, wealthy people move out, property values plummet, services are slashed, land goes vacant, crime skyrockets, and kids can't safely get to school anymore. What is the middle ground? I'm asking seriously. Imagine you were a city planner or the mayor of SF or Detroit or BDFL of California or whatever. What's your plan?
- jakobe 13y agoIf I were a city planner, I'd require that all new (or renovated) appartement buildings include a percentage of "affordable appartements", with fixed limits on the cost per square foot. That's how cities like Vienna keep rents affordable.
- tptacek 13y agoIsn't the majority of all housing in Vienna controlled by the state? It's probably easy to make rent controls work if you can bypass incentive problems by simply making all housing public.
- Dylan16807 13y agoHow do you keep wealthy people from renting all the cheap apartments in the not-cheap buildings? I'm not sure I comprehend the plan.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoGentrification is often a problem of inefficient or overly segregated housing supply. Historically, many cities have benefited from highly productive industries without becoming gentrified ghettoes of the rich.
- tptacek 13y agoDidn't San Francisco's city management exacerbate this problem by imposing new low-density zoning restrictions at the same time as an influx of wealthy professionals starting driving prices up?
- ChrisNorstrom 13y agoLast I checked Indians, Asians, Whites and all sorts of people from Jewish to Hindu are a part of silicon valley companies. Next time you see a SV company, click on its about page and look at the faces before you turn this into a race issue.
- mgunes 13y agoIt's not a race issue; it's a class issue. The non-white people that SV companies employ tend not to be the underprivileged people that are driven out of metropolitan areas due to gentrification.
- mwfunk 13y agoWell, you painted it as at least partially a race issue in your previous comment. If it's not a race issue, you shouldn't reference race in whatever point you're trying to make, unless you're just trying to be incendiary for its own sake. And if you can't make a point without being incendiary about it, realize that whatever point you're trying to make is almost certainly objectively wrong, or perhaps your philosophy is more about maintaining a romanticized self-image than actually trying to make the world a better place or even acquiring basic wisdom about anything. Bomb (or brick) throwing is trivially easy and makes the thrower feel like a badass without actually helping anyone. Actually trying to look at all sides of a complicated issue, figuring out what should be done about it, and trying to make a difference is hard, thankless, and humbling. It will make you feel stupid and inadequate for the task, because it's hard and it's worth doing. People who care about those things don't have your comment history; people who are feeding intellectual conceits do.
- surrealize 13y agoIf SF was undergoing business-as-usual capitalist growth, a lot more housing would have been built, and fewer people would have been displaced.