Paris, The New American City
| In Paris, France the poor and immigrants live outside the “inner-city,” with the very rich and well connected being close to the city center. As gas prices will continue to rise, jobs move back to cash strapped cities lowering taxes, and the facade of better living in the suburbs vanishes with my generation of disillusioned home buyers; the city will become more and more gentrified. And why not, music, good food, access to the newest and best things reside closer to city centers. As our jobs move out of manufacturing and into cubicle work, the city – where people can work in boxes that go up and up and thus utilize space better – will become more attractive as a destination to house future businesses. We are seeing it more and more especially in the North East, once communities where white resident was pitied for presumption that they were somehow “left behind,” or lost and a nice car was assumed to be owned by a drug dealer or a white kid coming to buy drugs, are now being overrun by condos and gentrification as the sons and daughters of white flight return to the city. When I lived in Washington, DC communities that American University professors would ask why I dared to go to are not hot spots for new residents of the city; as gentrification marches east and the poor residents keep being pushed farther and farther out by higher and higher rents. I don’t know how a poor person could even afford to live in Manhattan; let alone the increasingly gentrified Bronx and Brooklyn. In Philadelphia blocks that would get you shouted down, “Whitey go home” I know because my father would be told that as he went home, are now up-incoming neighborhoods with local organic markets. Gas prices will go up, the suburbs will increasingly be abandoned and the poorer you are, the farther you will have to travel into the city to service the needs of the wealthy. That, like Paris, will be the new American City. Labels: Gentrification, Global Climate Change, Global Warming, New American Cities, New Urbanism, Paris, Saving the Environment, Suburban, White Flight |

















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