Horrible article, but some of the comments were great. In response to someone asking who the author was: Other than a few witty comments from people that all agreed it was a steaming pile of poo, it's a pretty piss-pore piece of pseudo journalism.What he is not is a good journalist...that story had zero point other than taking up space...ah!!! Maybe he was contributing in his own little way to filling the vast vacancies in the city he referred to...one shitty article at a time. I wonder how many Megabytes fit in a square acre?
The things about Detroit in particular were moronic, but the broader point about gentrification bothers me a lot more. Am I supposed to feel like a racist, because I am white and make a decent salary, while many of my neighbors are poor and black? What's the alternative (and what anti-gentrification types clearly have implicit in their arguments)? That we stay in the suburbs, because the cities belong to the blacks now? That's the racist way of looking at things. So many of the whole metro areas problems boil down to the de facto segregation that exists here. So why is desegregating after all these decades a bad thing? The only thing that can save Detroit (or any other severe ghettoized area) are jobs and schools. The only way to improve the prospects of either of those is to (dramatically) increase tax receipts. I wish these people would consider what they're saying before they speak so as to spare us their half baked thoughts. I feel dumber for having read it. Sorry, rant actually over now, I swear (unless I think of something else to say).
I mostly agree with you on the article. I don't think gentrification is really viewed as an issue of "this is a terrible thing and you should feel awful" so much as a "this is a very grey area issue that has no easy solution and certainly isn't malicious." Of course areas should strive to improve and have more money flowing through them, but it does push out people who have very little means to move somewhere else or somewhere to go, and there increasingly few places overall for them to go. You most certainly should not feel guilty about being well established or for going somewhere that you desire to be and is within your ability to live. It's similar to when sexism is discussed and they say 'men are the problem', it refers to the institution, not the individuals.