In a specific neighborhood or city

44 comments

  4. signs gentrification is coming your way:

    – you see people jogging

    – you see a young white person wearing a Black Flag or Joy Division shirt

    – you start to see old ’00s Japanese cars parked around with left-wing bumper stickers on them, or maybe the bumper sticker for the college radio station

    – you see people riding old steel bikes with drop handlebars who look like they are choosing not to drive, rather than being forced to bike because of a recent DUI

    – less graffiti, more “street art”

    – the abandoned auto shop hosts a pop-up gallery or concert

    – laundromat or hardware store or other “everyday working class necessity” businesses start turning into coffee shops or record stores or other “expendable income sponge” businesses

    – real estate listings increasingly refer to properties on the edges of your iffy neighborhood by the name of the better neighborhood that borders it

    – real estate listings increasingly refer to the entire neighborhood by a name it was never known by before

    – the liquor store beer and liquor selection increases substantially in variety and size

    – less families, more young people cohabitating as roommates

    – brewery with a patio shows up

    – coffee shop that lets you pick your beans and does pour-over shows up

    – less wax drink cups, more Ball mason jars

    – where before there were taco trucks run by Mexicans, food trucks show up that serve modern fusion cuisine

    – (midwest/south only) they build a crappy streetcar line or a rebranded “BRT” line and add bike lanes to the “main street” (that one road that has some old brick buildings on it that used to be shops in the ’50s) in a project that’s way more expensive than it needs to be with money that would’ve gone way further and done way more good if it was used to simply increase frequency on already-essential bus routes, or rebuilding or adding sidewalks or pedestrian crossings in areas that lacked them previously but have lots of pedestrian fatalities.

  5. Gays and artsy types move in. I saw it multiple times in Atlanta, gay guys move to a run down area, start upgrading their homes and it becomes the next hot spot.

  8. Big demographic shifts. Not just the people of the neighborhood, but the local businesses as well. Combine that with the rents skyrocketing and the culture shift.

  11. Beyond the super obvious stuff

    -old buildings get torn down – before the beginnings of gentrification, the lots weren’t worth removing the condemned buildings

    -renovations teams start showing up in neighborhoods that haven’t been renovated in decades

    -lawns start getting cut on a weekly basis

    Once a neighborhood goes from condemned to livable all the other stuff starts to happen pretty quickly. A lot of this is spearheaded by property developers / home flippers looking at analytics to find the next neighborhood to invest in.

    [edit – by the time you see most of the things in this thread the neighborhood has already been gentrified, it’s just taking everyone else a while to figure it out.]

  17. At some point, a Whole Foods opens up.

    The murder rate goes down over time.

    Home prices/rents go up quickly.

    More coffee shops and breweries.

  18. One thing that has stood out is a new trendy name that has come out of nowhere. We live in “insert name” and it’s been called that forever. Uhhh, no it hasn’t!

  20. – Franchises start replacing local businesses.

    – Investment in things to draw people to move to the area rather than investment in the community already there.

    – Leveling community areas or affordable housing to build yet more shopping centers.

    – Mass buying of local properties by real estate investors, while pricing out local buyers.

    – The housing becomes mostly rentals instead of long-term family homes.

    – Outdoor town center built featuring all designer brands and chain stores.

    – No discernable personality to the area. Bc it’s manufactured.

  21. You see youngish white people walking alone late at night or early morning. Bonus – seeing them jogging at anytime of day.

    More places that sell things like playa bowls or coffee when there wasn’t before.

    More bike lanes.

  22. All good answers. But those are well established gentrified areas. The FIRST sign is the first quirky coffee shop that isn’t a Starbucks. See one of those and grab you some real estate, because the bougies are coming and they’re bringing stupid housing prices with them.

  27. Anyone who doesn’t work in tech, finance, or construction can no longer afford to live there. Everything starts appealing to upper-middle class suburbanites.

  29. Coffee shops and microbreweries are the first sign. They need cheap retail space to survive.

  32. The verges and roundabouts are deliberately planted and maintained instead of just being allowed to grow wild

  40. I experienced this in Atlanta through the full process. I moved into a neighborhood that was mostly elderly residents that have probably lived there 20+ years. The house I bought needed repair but this was in 2011 so the price was manageable.

    The first signs things were changing was an increase in racists judgemental posts on Nextdoor that were like “Sketchy AA male acting weird and walking in the street.” When I moved in my neighbors were extremely friendly and let us know some of the characters in the area. Watch out for the guy who tries to get you to drive him to Auto Zone then try to scam you for cash type stuff. There were a few people who were in and out of jail that generally were scary but harmless. Yelling a lot for no reason, tossing shit in the road while they walked down the street, that kinda stuff. Oh and I heard stories of people stealing flowers. And I could put anything out front and it would be picked up within an hour or so. This even happened to the toilets I replaced when I moved in lol (The last few years this was NOT the case)

    Then a new development went up down the street (my street was half in a nice city zone and half in the incorporated county). This is what really started the process. Another development went up a year or so later.

    I noticed there were more people just going on walks in the neighborhood. It wasn’t like someone obviously going/coming from work or a long walk to the store. Homes eventually started to go for sale – this may have been from a slight increase in value, someone dying, or just general turnover. But there was a noticeable increase.

    Nextdoor continued to get more of those inane posts, and increasingly “Was that gunfire or fireworks?” every other day. The abandoned gas station that was kind of a cool photo spot for me was taken down. That thing was probably sitting empty for 15 years but NOW it’s time to take it down. The bus line was removed from our street.

    Skip maybe five years, and I ran into a lot more families out and about, many houses were renovated, flipped, etc. Eventually a Publix was developed very close by which is basically the same stamp as Whole Foods for a fully gentrified area. Even selling after the pandemic boom I made out pretty happily, moving for reasons not related to the neighborhood.

    The people I knew from before the changes generally are still there and are all very friendly. The new people are friendly, but I always felt like “man you should have seen this area before”

    I’ve seen many new restaurants go up in new developed areas, but luckily the previously standing ones also generally remained. Some “Eye-sore” businesses that were probably there since the 50s closed, some torn down and built up in new stylish buildings. I was upset my lawn mower repair guy left pretty quickly.

    I would like to say that people on Nextdoor drastically changed their tone like 3-5 years ago. Likely a result of social changes that happened, but maybe because younger people also started moving in. Oh and it was extremely funny to me to see “that one Qanon guy down the road” moved away within 2 months of Biden’s election. Guy had trump / Q flags all over his lawn and a big qanon flag under an american flag, trump flag on his roof. But that’s just a random memory from going through this history.

  43. houses are painted grey and then sold to white people

    the immigrants are from canada

    new people work in tech

    there’s a whole foods or a small mom n pop tofu hut, sometimes a co-op grocery store

    university students don’t go away after they graduate, they buy property

    immigrants are getting priced out and returning to the old country, or moving to less expensive states

    the cab drivers and service workers live more than 1 hour outside the city. Could be as much as 3 hours outside the city.

    Warehouses bought by tech or turned into residential properties

    Restaurants don’t use plates, do use mason jars, wood plantks, and industrial-looking decor

    Beer gardens

    “Converted into a walkable greenspace”

    Old movie theaters and porn shops get shut down, are replaced with family-friendly Alamo drafthouse, minigolf, arcades

    Straight people take over gay bars

    Lesbian bars go out of business

    They keep blocking off the street for festivals/craft fairs/lunar new year/local live music

    there’s less stuff to do that’s cheap or free

    the streets are cleaner, like less trash, less smelly, less unsightly homeless addicts

    more dog poop tho

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