May 23, 2007: Williamsburg Realty
I was talking to a reporter this week about the gentrification cycle-- where artists move into a poor or working class neighborhood and introduce a creative culture, which then attracts professionals, who attract restaurants and other service based businesses, which in turn attracts even wealthier people, whose competition for apartments raises real estate values, eventually forcing out the original residents of the neighborhood and the artists who made the place cool in the first place. But looking at this picture, I realize that's a tremendous oversimplification.
My theory is that it's all going way too fast -- there's no longer an artist cycle. We're going from poor/working class straight to wealthy. Someone recently told me that East New York is getting expensive. Holy shit.
I'd agree with Joel that it's happening much quicker than before. But that's sort of a testament to the rejuvenation of the city in general, the general growth of our population and slowing down of sprawl (it might not seem like that, though.) Oh and an end to serious rent control in the 1980s.
But you left out one step -- the Gays. The artists/lower class gays (outsiders, but well educated and "productive" outsiders) move in and then are followed by the middle class Gays. This has been happening for at least 60 years. (To think the Hamptons and Provincetown were failed resort/farm areas from the 19th century and were populated by artists and then the gays beginning around WWII. Now try buying there.)
The question is whether cities will stand up to make sure the economic mix stands (through a form rent control, access to health care and homes for the middle class) and also to assure that the permissiveness of the city is still part of the mix.
That chick has a nice butt.