It’s confession time. I was blissfully unaware of this term until I entered the Berlin sphere. But now I know. Gentrification (in short: the up-grading of inner-city areas with redone buildings, restaurants, bars) is bad. Baaaad. It is so evil that everybody I hear talking about it has a thoughtfully furrowed eyebrow, and this concern in their voices. It is so evil that everybody has to have an opinion about it. A negative one, obviously.
Found on wexforce.com
Because gentrification is to blame if people with a low income have to move houses because rents rise, if there are cafés opening who offer more than filter coffee, if – Jesus almighty – young couples who want children AND a nice apartment. For people who can afford to drive a BMW. Gentrification – or Gentrifizierung in German, which has this nice whiff of catching a disease – is the new synonym for the devil in Berlin. The favourite club to verbally kill every initiative that is smelling of enriching an area with new aspects. As happened at the beginning of the week, when the co-working space I call my home got accused of fuelling gentrification in Moabit by an irate visitor.
And that made it suddenly clear to me. I am one of “them”. I am a mean gentrifier. I do have an apple computer and I am working on “projects”. No latté, I am sorry, but I might just for spite acquire the taste one day… But hey, at least I am honest about it. I live in Charlottenburg, a part of the city frowned upon as boring and establishment by the very same people who whinge the most about gentrification from their cool Altbau apartment in (please insert whatever is hip right now, it changes too fast for me to keep track). And that’s the main beauty of the whole gentrification discussion. Its irony.
Found on ferretpress.com
Like when, in one and the same article, a journalist of city magazine “Tipp Berlin” proclaims the area of Nord-Neukölln (street fights? check! social problems? check! every week a new restaurant opening? check!) as the hippest thing since the 80’s Lower East Side of New York (no comment on arrogance, there) while later brooding absolutely humour-free over the imminent threat of gentrification of this alternative paradise. Or don’t people who burn cars of their fellow citizens in the name of fighting gentrification just speed up the development of “gated communities”?
So I wonder – if we all are inevitably part of the problem gentrification as soon as we go out into a new restaurant, a hot club or show any kind of entrepreneurial spirit, if gentrification is a more complex and harder problem to solve than with burning torches and philosophic discussions, why don’t we all just relax and stop being hypocritical about it?
Relax, Berlin 
10 Comments
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Pleased to say I am a key driver for Gentrifizierung, love it!
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Yeah, I know. You should be ashamed of yourself….
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Did not we speak about gentrification of Berlin in February when we met Mrs. Unterhauer?
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Hey Lukas, thanks for stopping by. Yes, we did, well spotted! It proved as a prophetic conversation (we did talk about me leaving to Berlin, right?), because since then the topic keeps popping up around every other corner now …
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Haha Gentrification (my God you are right- it does have this nice whiff of catching a disease) is a bad baaaaaddd word here in Istanbul as well!
And over here, it has been the synonym for Devil for a long time!
Like any discussion- the beauty (and the tragedy) lies in the irony and the hypocrisy!
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You know, those are my thoughts exactly. Well said Eva.
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@Lua: Thanks for sympathising! You are right, it seems a topic in many cities. It’s just so omnipresent (at least I feel it that way) and made an instrument to stifle initiatives by some people, which annoys me.
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@ Carlos: Thanks for commenting. Good to hear we’re on the same page there.
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Laughing quite hard…”Or don’t people who burn cars of their fellow citizens in the name of fighting gentrification just speed up the development of ‘gated communities’?”
Apparently, we all have a dash of Sell-Out in us whenever we opt for the new, the convenient, the efficient, and, well, in some cases honestly the safe and the clean (does that make me sound petty?).
About 10 years ago in Chicago, someone developed this brilliantly elaborate website called the Lincoln Park Trixie Society that was written so-tongue-in-cheek, for a while people didn’t know if it was real or not! A “Trixie,” by definition: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=(Lincoln%20Park)%20Trixie
And evidently I fit the mold because I was at the time a young urban professional, yes, living in Lincoln Park, I drank Starbucks (not daily, but I wasn’t among the masses crowding the door with pitchforks and battering rams either), AND *gasp!* I drove a VW Jetta. I had bought it in ‘99 because I liked its pick-up and thought it had more soul than a Honda or Toyota, but sadly within a couple years it became the big bad mainstream symbol of gentrification
In any case, you raise a good point about the hypocrisy over it; people really would benefit from taking several deep and calming breaths and just own up to those aspects they themselves embrace, distinguish which factors are actually causing the harm and develop a more constructive approach to what is, as you say, a complex issue.
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Thanks so much for this very constructive contribution! I definitely am in love with this term … constructive. Very funny definition of Trixie. And great to see that the definition of “mainstream” and “alternative” are so different across the countries…
Maybe I am just a hopeless “Why can’t we just all get along?”-nerd, but I do honestly believe that life would be so much easier if less people would be too full of themselves to realize that sometimes a fellow citizen can even be a lot to be learnt from and likeable although they are driving the “wrong” car or like “mainstream” music. This dogma of being “different” to me is just as intolerant and red-neck, only in a “different way”.
I personally can’t see anything wrong in striving for a nice life, as long as we don’t walk over others to achieve it. People in Berlin sometimes even seem to feel guilty if they have a nice apartment or car. I really hate bragging or showing off, but isn’t that a tiny bit odd, too?
Anyway, it is a very interesting and most probably never-ending discussion generator, this gentrification thingy, as the dynamics of city development and society seem to automatically generate it. Thanks for contributing with such an interesting comment!