This next 20-30 years might belong to mid-sized cities.
This is happening now in the up-and-coming neighborhoods in Tel Aviv. Namely Jaffa (the arabic part of town), Florentin (ex-junkie land), and Shapira (another ex-junkie/prostitution land). The prices are going up so quickly that people find themselves unable to pay rent within a year or two, getting the same income. Additionally, gentrification seems to be happening much quicker than usual in places like Shapira. This is mainly due to projects like Venn (https://www.venn.city/about/) which also operates in Brooklyn and Friedrichshain (Berlin). What they do is buy up massive amounts of properties, renovate them, gate them, double or triple the price on them, add "public spaces" (which are only accessible by the people living in one of the Venn apartments) and disguise it as a social project that is "helping" the neighborhood...
I'm not sure I appreciate the difference between this and gentrification?We speak nowadays with contrition of redlining, the mid-twentieth-century practice by banks of starving black neighborhoods of mortgages, home improvement loans, and investment of almost any sort. We may soon look with equal shame on what might come to be known as bluelining: the transfiguration of those same neighborhoods with a deluge of investment aimed at a wealthier class.
Isn’t redlining an agreed upon practice of discrimination? Sort of like, “Hey fellow white-guy, I think that this black family, who appears to qualify for our better mortgage rate has some “technical issues” that are unique to just them (wink...wink...) so they’ll have to unfortunately pay our premium mortgage rate.” Gentrification may be similar, but as far as I know it’s typically not as well organized or intentionally subversive although the end results can be the same. For former D & D gamers like myself, maybe redlining is lawful-evil, where gentrification is more chaotic-neutral to chaotic-evil depending who you ask.