Does environmental sanity always mean gentrification?
A couple of weeks ago La Presse had an essay on eco-gentrification, when efforts to make an urban area greener and generally pleasanter are followed by a wave of higher rents and wealthier residents. Now an urban studies scholar says we shouldn’t think of better environmental management as necessarily entwined with gentrification.
david100 01:29 on 2019-08-22 Permalink
Again, it’s pretty hard to disaggregate this phenomenon from (1) the increase in demand because of massive immigration and vastly different tastes in housing preferences among younger people and (2) the fact that housing scarcity created by the artificial land shortage (ie. ultra lowrise zoning) necessarily means that people who can afford to will live close to the best amenities, shortest commutes, etc. And those people will improve their new neighborhoods, and that will draw more people like them.
The idea that improving a neighborhood necessarily makes it yuppie haven’t been out to the Pointe de L’ile or Sainte Anne’s, which – with nice new renovations aren’t exactly pulling people in or making waves with the perverse anti-growth alliance between conservatives and anti-capitalists.