>My neighborhood on 123rd St. is pretty much typical-- most of the street
>were abandoned brownstones which are all in rapid process of being converted
>over to three-unit buildings selling for almost $2 million, across the
>street is a low-income high-rise apartment owned by a local church which
>will be levelling some smaller buildings and parking lot to make way for
>high-rise apartments selling closer to market rate, and 125th St around the
>corner where a slew of new chain retail stores have moved in. The
>neighborhood is a pretty complex mix of incomes but the overwhelming
>pressure is from people (like myself) fleeing higher rents in lower
>Manhattan, which drives up the rents. We're paying $1575 for a one-bedroom
>apartment and we may quickly get priced out ourselves. There's been some
>city planning involved, but most of it are small investors -- my landlord is
>a nice yuppie minister who runs a house church out of his first floor
>unit -- buying old units, putting some bucks in and raising rents.
You're ignoring a whole lot of background, about 20-25 years worth - the subsisized projects across from the northern tip of Central Park that was quite consciously conceived as the gentrifying beachhead (see Neil Smith's classic article on the gentrification of Harlem), the renovation of the Apollo Theater using Urban Development Corp. bonds, the creation of the enterprize zone on 125th St, etc. It's been a few years since I looked at this stuff closely, but I am sure you will find a pattern of recent tax breaks and other subsidies behind this superficially spontaneous turn of events.
Doug