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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>(from Antipode, Volume 34, Issue 3, Page 427 - June
2002):</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>"---the process
of gentrification, which initially emerged as a sporadic, quaint, and local
anomaly in the housing markets of some command-center cities, is now thoroughly
generalized as an urban strategy that takes over from liberal urban
policy."</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial
size=2>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>True. In 1974 my wife and I bought and
occupied a large and beautiful house for $22,000 in a decaying part of
Detroit. The house was deteriorated, but it was all we could afford at the
time. It would have been worth 10 to 15 times more in a suburb not 10
miles north. Our neighbors were the General Motors World Headquarters
(before it moved to the capital intensive downtown riverfront), Berry Gordy
(Motown) before he moved to Los Angeles, Aretha Franklin's preacher father
before he was shot and killed by a burglar; and the original homes of the Dodge
Brothers, Henry Ford, and Edison the inventor. Only five miles from
downtown, this was the rich suburbs in Detroit's heydays. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>But in 1974 this gentrifying island was
nestled among wave upon wave of housing and commercial squalor in all
directions, the product of deadly deindustrialization. My wife and I
dedicated 10 years of labor and financial scrapings to house
rehabilitation. Hundreds of others in the neighborhood did the
same. Nine or ten other housing clusters in the city were also
so engaged. Mind you, they built some good housing in Detroit's early
days. I'm told that today the housing value in
these neighborhoods is soaring. So, lots of human capital and
a tiny bit of investment capital in the "gentrifying" days is paying
off today.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>This is happening in an emaciated city with a
ramshackle commercial infrastructure; hoards of abandoned homes and factories;
vast swatches of vacant land that formerly held homes, retail, and
industrial; a population loss of over one million; and quality of life data in
the sewer. Some survival activists are into urban farming.
Developers (ably assisted by compliant business-friendly
governments) for years have been cherry-picking cheap prime sites
for present and future investment. A tract about the size of an elongated
square mile in the downtown riverfront area, facing Windsor,
Ontario, is today's focus. There you'll
find vulgar capital investment in the form of casinos, convention
centers, major league stadiums, and "high culture" establishments that make
this a playground for the well-to-do. Of course there's a business-
government nervecenter and infrastructure where, incidentally, the
Detroit Economic Club convenes. General Motors and parts of Ford are
there. A narrow extension of this area goes a couple miles along a
northern corridor into the research and educational complex around Wayne State
University where automotive and other technologies are on the daily
platter. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>It's all a big, integrated financial, technical
system. The land start-up costs were rock bottom, but the bucks are
there today. Indeed, that's the generalized urban strategy that's taken
over from liberal urban policy, and we've watched its evolution for
decades. It's happening all over the U.S.A., and we're told it's also an
international phenomenon. If you're capitalist-minded, it's the way to
go. If you're not, it's another reason to organize
resistance.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Bob Mast</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>