Gentrification

[The Masked Tulip]

Has this happened in your area?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4244560.stm

A particularly strong signal that house prices are booming is if an area is starting to 'gentrify'.

Gentrification is the conversion, over a period of years, of less developed and desirable districts into thriving neighbourhoods occupied by professionals and young families.

The process is always a fairly visible one.

It starts with the arrival into an area of 'pioneers' - often actors, designers and people in creative occupations - who are attracted by a particular feature of that area, such as run-down period properties, derelict old warehouses, or simply proximity to a town centre.

Driveways start filling with prestige cars such as Audis, Golfs and people carriers

Following their arrival small independent delis, coffee shops and art studios tend to open up, along with new bars to cater for the new crowd and an estate agency or two.

[backtoparents]

and an estate agency or two.

there goes the neighbourhood...

[Guest Bart of Darkness]

A particularly strong signal that house prices are booming is if an area is starting to 'gentrify'.

Does putting in a new post boxt to replace the one that was blown up by fireworks count as "gentrification"?

[mercsl]

Bermondsey SE1 is a prime example, seen a lot of changes in the 10 years I have lived there.

[red]

Hackney is an interesting one; it has a few OK areas but on the whole it's a toilet.

There has been talk for years about its 'gentrification' despite it having useless transport links, decaying buildings, cr@p schools and an awful crime rate. In boom years it seemed to make sense to buy in a place that could prove to be a goldmine but it just hasn't improved - if anything it's got worse. I have a feeling that it will drop like a stone during the crash...

[homeless]

LMAO

This guy is so full of shit that heres what i think.

I think hes a struggling media type, and to justify living in some stinkhole hes wrote this article to explain to his parents and friends why he lives in an area they wouldnt be seen dead in.

Actors moving into your area means its going downhill, most actors cant make the rent payments.And the succesfull ones disappear to the country pad and the already fashionable areas.

architects moving in will just ruin the area, they will take lovley victorian houses and turn them into studio flats ie bedsits.

The main job of most architects is to make money for the smallest space possible, the last thing there hired for is to create some fabulous creative design, this is the elite position of architects the ones that get to design the dome or canary wharf, And hence these guys also wouldnt be seen dead in the scumsville area either there in the fashionable area with the succesfull actors.So basically this guy is saying the best up and coming area is where all the educated and creative failures live.

heres my criteria for an up and coming area with all the greenwich village or nottinghill dreaming ********.

first things first it needs character, which means all the old houses havent been turned into bedsits

next it needs to not be far away form good employment

and also it needs to not have modern houses in it or council houses(whos gonna pay half a mill for a flat next door to a tower block)

i think what ive said will give you a better idea than a bunch of out of work would be actors moving in.

[Prophet of Doom]

Driveways start filling with prestige cars such as Audis, Golfs and people carriers

All bought by idiots with money they don't have to spend....

[Elizabeth]

LMAO

This guy is so full of shit that heres what i think.

I think hes a struggling media type, and to justify living in some stinkhole hes wrote this article to explain to his parents and friends why he lives in an area they wouldnt be seen dead in.

Actors moving into your area means its going downhill, most actors cant make the rent payments.And the succesfull ones disappear to the country pad and the already fashionable areas.

architects moving in will just ruin the area, they will take lovley victorian houses and turn them into studio flats ie bedsits.

The main job of most architects is to make money for the smallest space possible, the last thing there hired for is to create some fabulous creative design, this is the elite position of architects the ones that get to design the dome or canary wharf, And hence these guys also wouldnt be seen dead in the scumsville area either there in the fashionable area with the succesfull actors.So basically this guy is saying the best up and coming area is where all the educated and creative failures live.

heres my criteria for an up and coming area with all the greenwich village or nottinghill dreaming ********.

first things first it needs character, which means all the old houses havent been turned into bedsits

next it needs to not be far away form good employment

and also it needs to not have modern houses in it or council houses(whos gonna pay half a mill for a flat next door to a tower block)

i think what ive said will give you a better idea than a bunch of out of work would be actors moving in.

Everything you have said is both true and untrue. Every area I have ever lived in has been decrepid slum and every time I move there it gets gentrified around me for the last 23 years. Course the rents go up and I have to move the the next ungentrified slum. Next place I move, I want to be the gentry rather than the peasants that get pushed out. The article was highly unoriginal and incredibly uninforming... geez, who writes this cr*p... and don't they have anything more interesting to write about?

[Night Owl]

Apparently my street is gentrifying. I've got a couple of housing-benefit-extended-Chav-family residences on my street. They are totally unable to communicate with each other without shouting and have never heard of a doorbell - screaming from the road seems to work much better, especially if it's an aggravated lovers tiff. I try not to park my car outside those particular flats because I am a bit concerned about the fags and other debris that get thrown from the windows (left wide open as a matter of course)... but to get to the point, apparently they are a major improvement on the families that were living there before - no theft so far, only the occasional bit of broken glass and one burnt out scooter - area's going up fast, better buy quick

[alexays]

LMAO

This guy is so full of shit that heres what i think.

I think hes a struggling media type, and to justify living in some stinkhole hes wrote this article to explain to his parents and friends why he lives in an area they wouldnt be seen dead in.

Err I think he's a good old Estate Agent:

"MONEY TALK

By Dan McLeod

Director at London estate agency, Atkinson McLeod"

Good old Vested Interest trying to help you out.

[Dicky]

Hackney is an interesting one; it has a few OK areas but on the whole it's a toilet.

Funny you say toilet.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/4552581.stm

The lavatory, in the Totterdown area of Bristol, measures 24ft by 13ft and is expected to fetch upwards of £25,000.

[Guest Charlie The Tramp]

Canonbury Square in Islington.

All run down bedsits in the sixties and seventies, along came Roger Moore and now its the in place for the rich. I believe house prices are now in the millions.

[Prophet of Doom]

With all this "gentrifying" going on, where are the lowlifes that leave the area moving to?

This means there must be some other areas going downhill fast, a vast increase in homelessness, or those who made the area grotty in the first place are becoming more "gentrified" themselves!?

Which is it?

[IPOD]

Canonbury Square in Islington.

All run down bedsits in the sixties and seventies, along came Roger Moore and now its the in place for the rich. I believe house prices are now in the millions.

I'm not denying there are some places which have genuinely "gentrified" over the years, ie stopped being the crime-ridden sh1tholes they once were and become pleasant places to live (ie Notting Hill, Brixton [to some extent], ...?) but mostly what has happened is genuinely nice places to live have become astronomically expensive, and the cr@p areas have experienced a kind of 'overspill' effect, as would-be inhabitants of a more salubrious district are forced by price rises to buy in a less desirable one. The actual instances of a total sh1thole becoming a safe leafy middle-class area are few and far between. For example, Peckham has been cited as an "up-and-coming" area for so long I think the estate agents have all grown beards waiting for the hordes of buyers to beat a path to their door. Same goes for all the rest of the "up-and-coming" areas; they're simply the last places to be touched by a boom because no-one would choose to live there if they didn't have to, and so you end up with the smackheads and doleites cheek-by-jowl with miserable first-time buyers.

[El_Pirata]

With all this "gentrifying" going on, where are the lowlifes that leave the area moving to?

This means there must be some other areas going downhill fast, a vast increase in homelessness, or those who made the area grotty in the first place are becoming more "gentrified" themselves!?

Which is it?

I believe in the theory that as one area is gentrified, another one goes down the toilet.

Where I live, on the one hand, you've got the likes of Clerkenwell and now Shoreditch becoming yuppie loft-living areas. These places were once dens of criminality (Oliver Twist was set in Clerkenwell, and until relatively recently there were parts of Hoxton the police would not set foot in).

Then you've got places like Dalston, Homerton and Hackney. A lot of my nan's family were from Dalston and Homerton, when it was a fairly respectable lower-middle class/respectable working class area. Most of them shipped out to the Woodford/Loughton area well before the war. Since the war the whole place has been on a steep downward path and is now pretty much a thrid world slum - which means it feels like home to many of its newest residents.

[the end is a bit nigher]

since when have audis and golfs been prestige cars?

[frugalista]

When my dad was a nipper they moved out of slum area Islington and bought a place in upmarket Ilford.

That would have been about 1957.... How times change.....?

frugalista

[Michael]

Hackney is an interesting one; it has a few OK areas but on the whole it's a toilet.

There has been talk for years about its 'gentrification' despite it having useless transport links, decaying buildings, cr@p schools and an awful crime rate. In boom years it seemed to make sense to buy in a place that could prove to be a goldmine but it just hasn't improved - if anything it's got worse. I have a feeling that it will drop like a stone during the crash...

Inner London is a law unto itself ...Islington for example is a dump ...although more convenient than Hackney and families especially are polarised between poor immigants living in council flats and people like the Blairs......Walking around it you see a nice street and think it's nice then suddenly

come to a horrible council block......and this is an area that has been very expensive and gentrifried for many years ............The kind of rich people who live there seem to be immune to the squalor....around them

so if Islington can gentrify , anywhere can

[HPCheese]

My avatar really is a picture of me! I used to wear a hoodie and tracksuit bottoms until a new-media-type moved-in next door. His white iPod earphones and 2nd-hand golf got us thinking - now all the men in my street wear top hats and carry canes!

[Guest KingCharles1st]

Has this happened in your area?

Biggest load of total crap I have read since logging on to HPC.. If this article had been written threee years ago- then maybe... sheeesh..