GENTRIFICATION—COMING TO A CITY NEAR YOU

Gentrification. It’s changing New York, just as it’s changed San Francisco, Los Angeles, and many other cities. In the seventies, New York was the king of cool: Seedy theaters, gritty rock bands, and more murders than the police could ever realistically expect to solve. 

Yet recently the city’s been transformed, with rents getting pushed up by people who were sadly expecting a more authentic place. It seems like every day, a small business they never got to patronize is being pushed out just to make room for an apartment building in which they would be interested in living. 

What is a young artist struggling to make ends meet with the money their parents are sending them to do? While Harlem and Brooklyn neighborhoods like Bushwick and Williamsburg are becoming hot commodities on the east coast, it’s a similar story with Boyle Heights in LA, the Mission in San Francisco, and other areas from Oakland to Austin to Boston. 

Will they be able to stave off the relentless tide of clean streets and citizens with high incomes? Or will their transplants be forced to reckon, like Matthew Gentry in this video, with a city that’s not the one they fell in love with a few weeks ago?

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