Gentrifiers in Portland exchange greetings. Perhaps they're discussing the virtue of their Priuses.

Sandra Tsing Loh wrote a excellent piece in the Atlantic snarkily speculating what this recession will do to America’s culture leaders, the Xers, she calls them (a.k.a. David Brooks’s bourgeois bohemians and Richard Florida’s creative class).  Reared in America’s upper- and upper-middle class Valhallas, these college-educated, socially conscious idealists, having never tasted the bitter foot of Maslow’s hierarchy, have heretofore devoted their lives to the maximization of self-expression.  When one is accustomed to an easy life of economic privilege, one becomes too easily inclined to view the concern for things like economic development (the creation of actual wealth) as crass—dare I say unsophisticated!— hobbies.

Having splurged on overpriced liberal-arts degrees, pricey socially conscious clothes, and fashionably “fair-trade” this-that-and-the-other, the once trendy interest in all things eclectic and environmentally sustainable is no longer financially sustainable.   The lofty eclectic idealism has, over the past few decades, morphed this left-leaning bohemianism from an identity once defined by a distaste of consumption into an identity defined by its taste in consumption.

Wither the free-range chicken bistro?  Now that carelessly accrued credit card debt is out of fashion, how can one survive without a steady diet of the moral superiority digested from politically-charged cuisine choices?  Will the forced economic sobriety of our current economic affairs force America’s left-leaning culturally-righteous to reexamine their once-proud disregard of economics—that crass topic!?

Bid farewell to the increasingly progressive, self-righteous, self-congratulatory, overwhelmingly white, and socially stratified Portland.  Hello, diverse, affordable, yet bland, Cleveland.  Farewell to the ritzy Rive Gauche Xanadus, hello to the staid skid-rows bereft of artisan boutiques and scarily “authentic”.

Loh writes,

This economic catastrophe is teaching the Xers that their prized self-­expression and their embrace of personal choice leads to … the collapse of capitalism. Time to inculcate not those self-satisfyingly hip and rebellious values—innovation! self-fulfillment!—cherished by the creative class (a class, after all, that includes in its ranks those buccaneering entrepreneurs who’ve led us down the primrose path), but those staid and stolid values of the bourgeoisie: industry, sobriety, moderation, self-discipline, and avoidance of debt.

Hear, hear!  Perhaps now economic development will actually get a fair hearing when policymakers are forced to consider feel-good measures as taxes on plastic bags and carbon emissions, favored by the elite self-expressionistas, but opposed by the lower- and lower-middle classes, and by nearly every family on a budget.  Fewer can afford the luxury to sacrifice economic well-being for the sake of a political statement.

When real estate prices deflate and consumer spending dives, does gentrification wither? In real estate, sale prices and rents are “stickier” when falling than when rising. Thus, rents and prices should not fall as fast as a drop in consumer spending warrants. Consequently, shops suffer this gap between revenue declines and rent declines, causing them to go out of business much faster than they otherwise would.

The New York Times discusses an example of this unfortunate process playing out right now in the once-gentrifying Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles.  The paper notes that

The deep recession, with its lost jobs and falling home values nationwide, poses another kind of threat: to the character of neighborhoods settled by the young creative class, from the Lower East Side in Manhattan to Beacon Hill in Seattle. The tide of gentrification that transformed economically depressed enclaves is receding, leaving some communities high and dry.

However, these gentrified neighborhoods did not just change economically.  They changed socially, too, attracting a base of residents with the  job skills, education, and worldly curiosity to support a variety of local retail shops.  Even when these shops that opened under brighter economic times shutter their doors due to a souring neighborhood economy, the intrinsic demand sparked by the changing neighborhood culture does not disappear.

When happy days are here again, these neighborhoods will likely sprout coffee houses, soap shops, thai restaurants and the like rather than pawn shops, tatoo parlors, and car repair shops of the long-gone decades of disinvestment.

Blight and glitz, a tale of two Washingtons united in liberalism.

Marc Fisher in the Post today writes about Marion Barry’s return to life as a civic organizer.  The voice that once denounced the evils of gentrification now seeks more redevelopment in his home ward east of the Anacostia.  The article sports one especially telling paragraph:

In public settings, Barry still says that “if we are not careful, we are going to become a city of the very, very rich and the very, very poor.” But alone in his car, he sounds like a developer, touting the idea that bringing in residents with stable jobs and a stake in the community will do more to stabilize neighborhoods in Southeast than any government giveaway.

Too late, Barry.  Washington is a city of the very, very rich and the very, very poor.  Moreover, the very, very rich are well-educated and typically white whereas the very, very poor are almost always black and are victims of the city’s miserable public schools.  The only thing these two Washingtons share is a long-standing affinity for liberalism and the Democratic Party.

However, it is nice to see that Barry has moved away from the angry separatism of his earlier years and toward an integrationist attitude.  Ward 8 has enough poverty as it is and it could use some wealthier residents to move in and share their wealth.  Whereas good fences make good neighbors, sometimes good neighbors make good neighbors.

The high cost of living in Washington is changing the city in some unexpected ways.  Artists require lots of cheap space for their shows and cheap housing since they tend to make little money.  Washington provides little of either and so it’s no wonder that the city’s creative scene is weak for a city of its size.

The Baltimore City Paper writes about how many musicians in Washington are slowly being priced out to the suburbs; many others are simply choosing to move to Baltimore, where rents are much cheaper.  The canaries are in the coal mine in Tenleytown:

Fort Reno concert organizer Amanda MacKaye sees musicians as being priced out of Washington. MacKaye books the twice-weekly summer concert series, held in a Tenleytown park, through an open application process. In keeping with Fort Reno’s mission to serve the local community, only musicians hailing from within the District of Columbia are eligible. So it’s no small matter that MacKaye, who has booked the series for four years, has seen a drop in the number of Washington-based acts seeking the series’ coveted spots and an increase of applicants from just outside the city.

All the high-priced lawyers and lobbyists are pricing out the artists, who, admittedly, have always been a sideshow in Washington.  The city is not one where someone can afford to show up without a plan—only the rich can afford that.  Since the city is too expensive for artists, the city will naturally continue to suffer from a lack of artists and the homegrown art that takes patience few can financially afford.

Thus Washington faces an odd paradox: the preponderance of bourgeois bohemians provides a market for alternative music and art scenes, but also makes the economics for such a scene impractical:

Jason Urick, a member of electronic noise outfit WZT Hearts and resident of warehouse concert space Floristree, also sees Baltimore as more affordable for artists, where they can spend more time on their art and less on the job. “[Washington] is an affluent city,” says Urick, who grew up in the D.C. suburb of Gaithersburg and settled in Baltimore eight years ago. “I think that [Baltimore] does attract more artists because they [can] do less and eke by here rather than what it takes to eke by in D.C.”

Ironically, a housing market crash in the District just might enhance the city’s cultural vitality.

…economics.

The lack of affordable housing is one of the primary drivers of gentrification as middle class people move into previously ignored, yet affordable, neighborhoods.

The New York Times ran a story about the complications of gentrification in Portland, a city known for its liberal politics. With self-proclaimed progressives moving into a once-black neighborhood, they are unwittingly pricing out (or “victimizing”, if you prefer a neo-Marxist term) the former residents who aren’t nearly as well-off as they.

One resident sums up the hypocrisy of these leftish newcomers:

“I’ve been really upset by what I perceive to be Portland’s blind spot in its progressivism,” said Khaela Maricich, a local artist and musician. “They think they live in the best city in the country, but it’s all about saving the environment and things like that. It’s not really about social issues. It’s upper-middle-class progressivism, really.”

A Prius in every driveway does not a just city make! Thus the interests of the wealthy Left trump the interests of those whom they claim to defend.

A local civic group has resorted to hosting a forum to alert the mostly white newcomers to what they’re doing to the neighborhood. From the article’s description, the forum comes off as a demeaning affair meant to parade in front of the mostly white crowd of newcomers the mostly black residents, few of whom the newcomers had spotted during their days ensconced in their elite liberal arts and law schools.

Even still, this therapeutic, self-indulgent drive to assuage white guilt does nothing to keep rents affordable for long-term residents.

Yet what has been clear from the meetings this month and last is that talking about the impact of gentrification is easier than finding ways to reduce it. For some minority residents, the notion that white Portland now says it feels their pain is cold comfort.

“That’s been our history,” Norma Trimble, who is Native American, said during the question-and-answer session this month. “They take all you’ve got. They take your land. Now they want your stories.”