Once it's ethnically/class cleansed it will suddenly be prime real estate again.
The US is moving to the european model where the rich live in the cities and the poor live in the burbs. And this is *planned,* not accidental, just as the shift to suburbanization was planned, just as all major 'urban renewal' is planned.
A major crime against humanity, similar to what happened in New Orleans.
I attended the Knight Foundation‘s “Civic Engagement Showcase and Learning Conference” this morning in Detroit, and it was an eye-opening experience.... Predictably, non-profits and arts groups were heavily represented—I sat next to Detroit Opera House founder and director David DiChera in our small-group breakout session—but there was also a smattering of media and tech folks, many from the social entrepreneurship scene...
There’s also the big elephant in the room—gentrification—and what it means to people who have lived here for decades to suddenly have their city infiltrated by innovators, do-gooders, hipsters, land grabbers, and entrepreneurs who have little sense of Detroit’s history or specific plans for inclusion...
http://www.xconomy.com/detroit/2012/09/07/on-pixels-atoms-and-gentrification-what-drives-detroits-future/
Jan. 5, Detroit News: Many potential home buyers in Corktown, Midtown and downtown often get outbid, many real estate agents said. It's a combination of not enough high-quality inventory and stiff competition.
Amber Wilson, 28, knows this firsthand. The Southgate resident wanted to move to Corktown, but quickly found herself outbid on at least three residences earlier this year.
"Some Oakland County couple paid more than $100,000 cash for a loft, because they wanted their daughter to move back from Chicago. I can't compete with that," said Wilson, a graphic designer who had been pre-approved for a $120,000 mortgage loan...
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2012/01/complaints_about_detroit_gentr.html
This summer, development savant Tony Goldman came to Detroit full of ideas for reinvigorating the city, encouraging us all to "get back to the idea of an unsettled America that drew people to the West during the gold rush -- and use that idea to energize Detroit with artists." It is unclear whether this quote is directly from Goldman himself, or the diction of the Crain’s columnist who wrote about him. In fact, who said it isn’t even important. The narrative it evokes has an emotive past, and had been used to describe Detroit long before Goldman came to visit. Words like "pioneer" are often the synonyms for the first gentrifiers to move into a community, and this article, along with innumerable others, alerts us that Detroit is a place for these unencumbered urban pioneers to pull up their bootstraps in the face of tall weeds and even taller crime rates and finally save the city.
http://www.modeldmedia.com/features/gentrifyfeature1211.aspx
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