Gentrification can be tough on gang members when they get displaced
Left: a movie poster from 1986 demonstrates that change has been a constant in the Echo Park neighborhood.
Of course, things are tough on other groups too. Some residents complain about yoga events in the local park ("Echo Park: Yoga Wars in a Gentrifying Barrio," LA Weekly).
This song on gentrification in Echo Park is from 2010 and is in response to an earlier LAT article, "Destination Echo Park" (which is not unlike my response to a similar article about the Shaw neighborhood in the Post, see "Shaw (and Mid City East) as a one-over neighborhood: revitalization, displacement, gentrification as a function of critical mass and timing").
Labels: commercial district revitalization, crime, neighborhood revitalization, public safety, urban revitalization
posted by Richard Layman @ 1:57 PM&Permanent Link
4 Comments:
i hate the word "gentrification" - even this four-year old song shows it has lost all meaning.
I don't like the word that much either, it is more often an epithet and doesn't have much in the way of explanatory power.
I meant to mention that the LAT article is almost like an Onion piece.
e.g., http://www.theonion.com/articles/sometimes-i-feel-like-im-the-only-one-trying-to-ge,11249/
I also thought it was a bit like an Onion article. I like to think I am a pretty compassionate guy, but I find it hard to muster much sympathy for guys who used to terrorize their neighborhood. We humans are an interesting lot when it comes to nostalgia...
well, sociologically it has to do with what Logan and Molotch called "the use value of place" in _Urban Fortunes_. They go back because their social ties and networks are based on and tied to Echo Park.
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