My comment to this morning’s The Guardian article on gentrification:
Gentrification accomplishes two things. First, it is a level-set that is biased in favor of those who have money. Second, diversity in people and architecture is displaced by less interesting objects that only appear to be bright and shining.
Personally I favor countries, cities, and neighborhoods that exhibit that distinct flavor of benign neglect (what the Japanese refer to as a wabi-sabi). That’s one of the reasons I live in an obscure corner of Mexico.
I think it was Hegel who said ‘What is undifferentiated is lifeless.’
Spike Johan 