If you ever doubt that place is central to social and personal character, simply observe the process of gentrification, the motivation for it in a neighborhood “on the decline” and the results of it. Turning an established, but down-on-its-luck neighborhood into a coffee shop and boutique district has consistently divided long-time residents though it can in touristy areas revitalize an economy—Think Williamsburg, VA. On the one hand are those who see a promise of better times in “revitalization” or profit from moving out as strangers move in. On the other hand are those who see a destruction of a way of life to which they had become accustomed. History relates, however, that no neighborhood has either a permanent physical or social character.
In the inevitable change in human neighborhoods over a few generations lies a parallel to the inevitable change in species over many generations. No species is a permanent resident because environments undergo vicissitudes that reduce or replace resources: water, for example, or food. Over the span of all life, climates and landscapes have changed. On the scale of millions of years a mountain system becomes with erosion a region of rolling hills; a shallow sea becomes a delta filled with eroded remnants of those mountains. Seas transgress and regress, but such changes rarely affect several contemporary generations. As environments change, so do the residents; lush vegetation yields to sparse vegetation dominated by xerophytes when desertification occurs. In the animal kingdom, trophic niches of one period are filled in a succeeding one by different species.
If, as David Raup estimates in Extinction, the average lifespan of a species is four million years—some, like the horseshoe crab, counterbalance the shorter lifespans of others, like the Elephant Bird—then residents of any neighborhood either natural or artificial are destined to change, and in their changing, cause a change in the character of a “neighborhood.” We are only 200 to 300 thousand years into making and filling our neighborhoods that we have since abandoned rather than “gentrified.” If it weren’t for archaeologists, we would not even know of old neighborhoods like Göbekli Tepe or Machu Picchu.
If I were to go back to the neighborhood of my childhood, I would observe the same but slightly altered homes and yards I knew as a kid. And in each of those homes I would find a different family. The original occupants are either dead or gone. Originally settled mostly by immigrants from Italy, the neighborhood now sports a diverse “nationality” background. In all the nearby cities, the same change has occurred. Buildings, like gopher holes, have to be maintained, which is work that the young and employed can do better than the old and retired. Entropy prevails in peeling paint, rotting wood, and missing roof tiles. Economic circumstances change, also. The Steel City, Pittsburgh, lost its steel mills decades ago, and with that loss came the ineluctable decline of its neighborhoods. Even before that decline, however, the city made an effort to gentrify. Three Rivers Stadium, now rubble in some other location, was built where neighborhoods of Pittsburgh’s poor once lived on the North Side (of the Allegheny and Ohio rivers). And of course, the apocalyptic rider accompanying entropy and economic downturn is death. Everyone ages; everyone dies. All neighborhoods change as mine has, as British castles have become hotels, and as new or repurposed buildings replace old buildings, a warehouse or brewery, for example, becoming an apartment building or restaurant or an old church becoming a popular bar.
As the remnants of the original population age, they sometimes seek to gentrify the “old” place. But populations change in both size and character. In trying to save an old neighborhood and revitalize a location, the rebuilders destroy what was. Three Rivers Stadium was an effort to revitalize the North Side, but its building wiped out a neighborhood, just as its successors, Heinz Field, a Science Center, and Rivers Casino wiped out Three Rivers. The gentrified has been gentrified. The process seems to be endless, and as the population changes, so the gentrified neighborhood will have to undergo further gentrification—or abandonment.
In small towns in the Rust Belt or in the Tobacco Belt, Main Streets are lined with repurposed or empty buildings, those in the county seats faring better than in most communities because of numerous law and medical offices. Gentrification works well in some neighborhoods with new condo buildings that accommodate a different population, but only for a while. The replacements there will also undergo changes in resources and will see their revitalized or new surroundings undergo the same entropy. Where a modern apartment building of strangers now exists, a neighborhood of people related by nationality or employment once stood. In the local upscale coffee shop people sit next to others with their eyes on their laptops or smart devices, their ears covered by headphones, and their focus on their isolated selves. The original draw, such as a factory, no longer serves as a centripetal force.
In some instances gentrification means an ostensible “recapturing” the character of the past without actually “living” that past as it was or as it meant to the original residents. That’s Williamsburg, VA, and any one of a number of “historic” sites. But even the coffee and the foods are different. Things aren’t what they were regardless of the efforts to preserve them in a gentrified rebuild.
So as in other lands over many generations, I hear in my own land the complaint that “things aren’t what they were.” In that contemporary complaint, there’s nothing new. Every aging generation will make it. Some will attempt to counter it with efforts to gentrify. Some will simply move away. I would invite you to examine the places you knew as a child to see what has occurred in that neighborhood. How has the place changed? If you say, “Well, my neighborhood is pretty much the same as it was,” then you fail to realize the subtle changes that inevitably occur in any neighborhood. It has changed as all things change. And whether or not you want to admit it, you have changed as it has changed—even if you are a long-tine resident. The extinction of that way of life is ineluctable, even during efforts to restore or gentrify.
In the inevitable change in human neighborhoods over a few generations lies a parallel to the inevitable change in species over many generations. No species is a permanent resident because environments undergo vicissitudes that reduce or replace resources: water, for example, or food. Over the span of all life, climates and landscapes have changed. On the scale of millions of years a mountain system becomes with erosion a region of rolling hills; a shallow sea becomes a delta filled with eroded remnants of those mountains. Seas transgress and regress, but such changes rarely affect several contemporary generations. As environments change, so do the residents; lush vegetation yields to sparse vegetation dominated by xerophytes when desertification occurs. In the animal kingdom, trophic niches of one period are filled in a succeeding one by different species.
If, as David Raup estimates in Extinction, the average lifespan of a species is four million years—some, like the horseshoe crab, counterbalance the shorter lifespans of others, like the Elephant Bird—then residents of any neighborhood either natural or artificial are destined to change, and in their changing, cause a change in the character of a “neighborhood.” We are only 200 to 300 thousand years into making and filling our neighborhoods that we have since abandoned rather than “gentrified.” If it weren’t for archaeologists, we would not even know of old neighborhoods like Göbekli Tepe or Machu Picchu.
If I were to go back to the neighborhood of my childhood, I would observe the same but slightly altered homes and yards I knew as a kid. And in each of those homes I would find a different family. The original occupants are either dead or gone. Originally settled mostly by immigrants from Italy, the neighborhood now sports a diverse “nationality” background. In all the nearby cities, the same change has occurred. Buildings, like gopher holes, have to be maintained, which is work that the young and employed can do better than the old and retired. Entropy prevails in peeling paint, rotting wood, and missing roof tiles. Economic circumstances change, also. The Steel City, Pittsburgh, lost its steel mills decades ago, and with that loss came the ineluctable decline of its neighborhoods. Even before that decline, however, the city made an effort to gentrify. Three Rivers Stadium, now rubble in some other location, was built where neighborhoods of Pittsburgh’s poor once lived on the North Side (of the Allegheny and Ohio rivers). And of course, the apocalyptic rider accompanying entropy and economic downturn is death. Everyone ages; everyone dies. All neighborhoods change as mine has, as British castles have become hotels, and as new or repurposed buildings replace old buildings, a warehouse or brewery, for example, becoming an apartment building or restaurant or an old church becoming a popular bar.
As the remnants of the original population age, they sometimes seek to gentrify the “old” place. But populations change in both size and character. In trying to save an old neighborhood and revitalize a location, the rebuilders destroy what was. Three Rivers Stadium was an effort to revitalize the North Side, but its building wiped out a neighborhood, just as its successors, Heinz Field, a Science Center, and Rivers Casino wiped out Three Rivers. The gentrified has been gentrified. The process seems to be endless, and as the population changes, so the gentrified neighborhood will have to undergo further gentrification—or abandonment.
In small towns in the Rust Belt or in the Tobacco Belt, Main Streets are lined with repurposed or empty buildings, those in the county seats faring better than in most communities because of numerous law and medical offices. Gentrification works well in some neighborhoods with new condo buildings that accommodate a different population, but only for a while. The replacements there will also undergo changes in resources and will see their revitalized or new surroundings undergo the same entropy. Where a modern apartment building of strangers now exists, a neighborhood of people related by nationality or employment once stood. In the local upscale coffee shop people sit next to others with their eyes on their laptops or smart devices, their ears covered by headphones, and their focus on their isolated selves. The original draw, such as a factory, no longer serves as a centripetal force.
In some instances gentrification means an ostensible “recapturing” the character of the past without actually “living” that past as it was or as it meant to the original residents. That’s Williamsburg, VA, and any one of a number of “historic” sites. But even the coffee and the foods are different. Things aren’t what they were regardless of the efforts to preserve them in a gentrified rebuild.
So as in other lands over many generations, I hear in my own land the complaint that “things aren’t what they were.” In that contemporary complaint, there’s nothing new. Every aging generation will make it. Some will attempt to counter it with efforts to gentrify. Some will simply move away. I would invite you to examine the places you knew as a child to see what has occurred in that neighborhood. How has the place changed? If you say, “Well, my neighborhood is pretty much the same as it was,” then you fail to realize the subtle changes that inevitably occur in any neighborhood. It has changed as all things change. And whether or not you want to admit it, you have changed as it has changed—even if you are a long-tine resident. The extinction of that way of life is ineluctable, even during efforts to restore or gentrify.
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