On Jun 12, 2012, at 11:32 AM, Angelus Novus wrote:
> What irks me about the really existing anti-gentrification movement is how culturalized the discourse is: basically lamenting that the "wrong" people are moving into the neighborhood, i.e. "hipsters" or "students" or Swabians moving in and displacing Turks and leftists.
>
> I've been guilty of some of this culturalism -- I'm always up for bashing Southern Germany! -- but what sticks in my craw about this stuff is 1) That white counter-cultural leftists are unable to problematize their own relationship to gentrification, i.e. students and hipsters gravitate to neighborhoods where leftists and other assorted oddballs have already formed a beachhead of gentrification, and 2) how the reflexive anti-statism of this movement basically inhibit its own ability to do anything effective: like, rent control would be nice. Or ending tax incentives to landlords. But to get all that stuff done, one has to dirty one's hand with political decision making and legislation. So people would much rather engage in symbolic, marginal politics.
I saw a really good movie the other night, My Brooklyn (disclosure alert: the director, Kelly Anderson, is sort of a friend of mine, and I contributed some money to the project).
http://www.mybrooklynmovie.com/
Although I wish she'd known more about the longer trajectory of history that led to the gentrification of downtown Brooklyn, particularly the area around the Fulton Mall (the history that Bob Fitch wrote about, and that I reprised in my Fitch memorial talk), one of the strengths of the movie is that it brings out just how much of the process is about conscious state planning on behalf of developers and the upper classes. Too much gentrification discourse is about the choices that individuals make and not about the state-capital partnership in making it happen.
Anyway, can't recommend the movie highly enough.
Doug