It's an incredibly myopic, and frankly, greedy, view of the world.
What's greedy is thinking that one has any right whatsoever to the land and community that other people have invested decades of their lives to build. Democracy is and should be run by the people who actually live in an area, not by literal invaders who want to take it away.
The place to apply leverage on the housing problem is on the employers and investors who are forcing concentration of industries in one tiny area. There are plenty of places in the US with plenty of land and a willingness to build.
So where do you live exactly? Were you born there? If not, how old were you when you "invaded" it? Because somebody lived there before you, right? How cruel of you to take their house from them.
I wasn't aware of the fact that if I own a piece of land adjacent to my house, and then choose to legally sell it to another party, who then pays taxes to the local government to fund the externalities of their presence (traffic, water, electricity, schools), that it's an "invasion".
Cities either grow or die. There is nobody in Detroit complaining about gentrifiers "invading" their neighborhood. Instead, they are desperately trying to maintain the infrastructure and find money for schools as their city has lost population over the years. I grew up in a rural county with a declining population. The elementary and middle schools I attended have been shuttered. The only hospital in the county has closed, forcing the locals to drive an hour to get to one in a neighboring county. The young all leave and never return, because there's no jobs, leaving their parents to never see grandkids except on holidays. That's the alternative to growth. If you can find a city in the US with absolutely no growth or decline in the population, and a strong economy, please let me know.
A city that fights development and growth will just push the poor out quicker, as older houses that they could have afforded are snapped up and remodeled by rich folks who otherwise would have built a brand new home.
>There is nobody in Detroit complaining about gentrifiers "invading" their neighborhood.
There most definitely are people in Detroit who are complaining about gentrification despite the fact that the vast majority of the city isn't gentrified at all.
What else do you call it when a bunch of people who don't live somewhere think they know better than the people who do?
I grew up in a semi-rural area with an exploding population. When one farmer retires and builds a neighborhood that's not that different from the existing houses, it's not a big deal. When a property developer wants to steamroll the city's zoning and put 200 apartments sharing a fence with people who've maintained the community and lived for decades with 1 or 2 neighbors, that is a big deal. When a bunch of people from out of state decide they know what a random city should look like (ahem, strongtowns), that's colonialism.
> When a property developer wants to steamroll the city's zoning and put 200 apartments sharing a fence with people who've maintained the community and lived for decades with 1 or 2 neighbors, that is a big deal.
You and your neighbors own the land you have purchased. Nothing more. You don't get to dictate what others can or cannot do on land that doesn't belong to you. If someone wants to build 200 apartments, it's likely that there is expected demand for those 200 apartments. That's 200 families. So what if they are going to share a fence with you. Buy a bigger plot of land to create a buffer then.
Places change and evolve. You can try to delay things as much as you want, but it's only that, a delay. And ultimately, not up to you.
HN loves to talk about uncosted externalities, except when those externalities are imposed on someone they don't like. Drastic changes to the character of a place are an enormous burden on the people who made the place desirable in the first place. If not for the existing residents paying taxes to build infrastructure, there wouldn't be land worth developing.
What I love about these arguments is how arbitrary they are as to when the location has reached it's pinnacle of awesomeness and should be frozen in time from then on.
"Manhattan was once a Dutch colony. Those horrible gentrifiers in Harlem need to get the fuck out, now! Harlem is for the Dutch! Colonialism!!!"
The lack of self-awareness is thoroughly amusing. Racist white people in city centers could have made the exact same complaint as their neighborhoods gradually shifted to more and more minority occupants. At the end of the day, your just Daniel Day Lewis in Gangs of New York. "Keep the invading hordes out! This is OUR land!"
I've lived in suburbs, city centers, rural areas, deserts, inland, coastal. I put my money where my mouth is and rented in high density new builds in downtown SF for 3 years. It was utter crap. There's no community, no shared story, and literal crap on the streets. I've also seen what happens when urbanites move out to the country; they don't know how to respect the space of others. They build monuments to anti-Native American racism right up to the edge of their property line, when they have 10 acres they could have used to gap out like everyone else.
The ethos of a place is provided by the people who've lived there for a long time. That ethos can only be preserved when growth is carefully considered, and doesn't screw over the people who've cooperated for a very long time to make the place what it is.
What's greedy is thinking that one has any right whatsoever to the land and community that other people have invested decades of their lives to build. Democracy is and should be run by the people who actually live in an area, not by literal invaders who want to take it away.
The place to apply leverage on the housing problem is on the employers and investors who are forcing concentration of industries in one tiny area. There are plenty of places in the US with plenty of land and a willingness to build.