Edgy addresses soon become desirable ‘villages’ and once the poor have gone,they have no way backThey say hindsight is a wonderful thing, but that rather presupposes that the insight that it gives you is favourable. whether all it reveals is how you missed out by the narrowest of margins, and then its just a drag,isn’t it? I occasionally drive past the area of east London where my aunt had a four-storey house. She got old and the house was a bit rush-down. It seemed that the best option was to sell it. Who knew then that within just a few years, money would flow in to the vicinity. Bankers, and monied types who work in the City,esteem big houses and don’t want a vile commute, turned up and tuned in. The Windrush generation, and who bought those houses in the 1960s and 70s by scrimping and saving,sold up to them and moved out. Then the artist cavalcade stopped by. An area for so long seen as urban and edgy became desirable and trendy, and increasingly expensive. Such is gentrification.
I thought approximately the process the other day when I learned that some of the undesirable streets close to where I grew up are now being marketed by the estate agents as a “village”. Estate agents: they have hindsight and foresight. whether they say it is a village, or soon it could be.
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Source: theguardian.com