Spike Lee on gentrification

..in 2008 i decided to go on a trip. i was mostly retired and didn’t have the cash so got a job as a security guard. it was a sweet gig as i patrolled an empty city building on the dtes. i was locked inside. along the outside of the building were these small alcoves where homeless people would come at night and sleep. i befriended one fellow who said he had been sleeping there for more than 2 years. it was a safe place.

..across the street they had just completed a high rise and people were moving in. a part of the gentrification program. one evening i was outside getting some fresh air when one of the new tenants came across to talk to me. he asked me to remove the guy that had been there for 2 years. i tried to dissuade him nicely from his mission but he insisted. and when i refused he threatened to tell my boss. i gave him the number and told him to fuck off.

Lovely epaulo13. And a great rant by Mr. Lee. WE BEEN HERE

Thanks, Maysie -- and thanks, epaulo for sharing your own experience. I mean, geez, we're not talking about hipsters loosing their favourite pop-up coffee shop to a Tim Horton's here. I wholeheartedly support Lagatta's Lefebvre-ian moment -- the right to the city isn't granted, it's appropriated (and contested, and negotiated) through the very process of living in the city.

Of course neighbourhoods change. That is a very simplistic take on what Lee is objecting to here. He is talking about a) the character of the change, and b) the hypocrisy behind those changes. Gentrification isn't about making a neighbourhood look nicer, it is about commodifying space such that we are made to believe it's nicer -- while the niceness is just a façade that comes at the expense of the people who lived there and the culture they created. That culture is discarded as unimportant -- non-profitable -- and replaced by "developed" real estate. Lee's important point is that none of the things we credit gentrification for -- nicer schools, safer streets, more facilities -- were beyond government's power before middle-class white people moved in. And yet here we are.

I agree, mersh, and in some major or particulalry desirable cities the speculators don't even live in the same country. An extreme example is Venice, which has been pretty much emptied of Venetians.

However, I must point out that working-class and poor residents are just as annoyed by violent, thieving drug users. They just don't have the clout to keep their neighbourhoods safe.

Thing is, if you aren't poor or non-white, and aren't paying attention, your first encounter with those kinds of attitudes is likely to be from people who think garden spaces, clotheslines, posters, and children need to be controlled because they interfere with property values.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11417677

We had a really creepy business pamphlet sent out by the city a year or so ago which essentially urged business owners to look out for and restrict doorways and other spaces where people might loiter, as if hanging out in the street was something threatening.

Oh, absolutely. I've been an active member of a neighbourhood tenants' association for about 25 years. Winning anything, such as a lot set aside for a housing co-op or non-profit housing (OBNL, in French) is so hard, and we've lost several important fights, such as the destiny of the former School for the Deaf, a large greystone building between Jarry Park and Jean-Talon market, and across from a métro station.

Now our big fight involves the new campus of L'Université de Montréal, and more generally, the development of the industrial area at the junction of Villeray - Park-Extension and La Petite-Patrie (a short walk west of where I live). Nobody is against the campus, but against expulsions, and we want more social housing among the mix. It is amazing how quickly condo developments are getting thrown up in brownfields.

I wasn't going along with the distinction between legal and illegal drugs - violent drunks are certainly as much a menace as the users of anything illegal - just pointing out that people in working-class neighbourhoods don't like living in dangerous, insalubrious conditions any more than wealthier people do.

Doing housing clinics, we face more and more problems. Remember, the northern half of this area is in Twit Trudeau's riding, and he is always nattering on about the middle class.

Berlusconi was a notorious opponent of clotheslines, which are enshrined in Italian culture due to the mild and usually dry weather. He wanted them taken down in Genova before the G8. He was actually complaining about women's underwear! Guess not all the bras and panties on display were up to snuff by his exacting standards.

That is very vulgar and nouveau-riche; even upper-class Italians treasure their clotheslines (what are maids for, after all?). But as usual, they are less conspicuous in posh areas as there are rooftop terrasses and large balconies, so the washing doesn't hang beneath small balconies and windows, and across streets.