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Comment by borgia | Hacker News Reader

Enjoyable read overall, but his ending slunk into a somewhat currently beaten path of "success but at what cost?" regarding local culture.

There have been many such articles springing up recently decrying the "damage" "gentrification" is doing to the culture of certain areas in the USA. It's a little tiring. The types pushing the narrative whining over the rapid development and investment in some areas then whine over the lack of development and investment in other areas.

Aside from that though it was a good read.

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"gentrification" == "cleaning up crime"

I for one am glad that I can now safely walk through parts of town I would've never been able to set foot in without being shot, raped, and/or robbed in the 90s.

(I don't live in NYC, but the same thing is happening where I live, and it's the same people whining and acting like lower crime rates are a bad thing)

rather "cleaning up crime" ⊂ "gentrification" or "gentrification" ⇒ "cleaning up crime"

and other people care about other parts of the process

I know places (locally) that I consider gentrified where friends have been beaten up for being the wrong minority. Gentrified doesn't always mean safe.

Has the probability of this increased, decreased or stayed the same though?

Studies have shown police tend to "over-police" poor neighbourhoods. Disproportionate even to the percentage of crime that exists in those areas.

So I wouldn't be surprised if they spent less time in newly gentrified areas and spent most of their time patrolling the worse areas. Offsetting the crime reduction.

Like Michael Griffith in Howard Beach:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Beach_racial_incident

>The types pushing the narrative whining over the rapid development and investment in some areas then whine over the lack of development and investment in other areas.

Of course. They're happy with the way some areas are and don't want them to change. They're unhappy with the way other areas are and want them to change. This is completely consistent.

Personally, I feel there's no question that gentrification is destroying a lot of unique culture that I personally enjoy, and replacing it with a generic culture that I don't really need any more of. Call it whining if you must, but I think it's a shame this is happening more and more often. I'd prefer that different places retained their different characters.

Yeah, the overwhelming impression I got from the actual description of the tour was that NYC hadn't changed much in 17 years, with the obvious exception of the WTC.

The title reminded me of an ancient backpacker guide I picked up in some Asian hostel which warned that Malaysia deported people for looking like hippies, and suggested that Ko Samui was the sort of place where you might be able to pitch a tent on a beach or share a hut with a fisherman.

Pretty much. And he ends up admitting as much near the beginning. Go back to the early or mid 80s or so and the differences would be much more pronounced. Not so much in today's locations and major landmarks not existing but in them being rather different kinds of places, e.g. Bryant Park and 42nd St. And I assume most guidebooks simply wouldn't have mentioned areas of town like MEPA or the lower East Side which are rather trendy these days.

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