How Authenticity and Gentrification Destroys Communities
“Gentrification, at its deepest level, is really about reorienting the purpose of cities away from being spaces that provide for the poor and middle classes and toward being spaces that generate capital for the rich.” ― Peter Moskowitz
Neighbourhoods gentrified by profit driven developers, chain stores grabbing plots of land in every trendy part of the city. Authenticity, a basic desire of the individual, is being replicated by city planners down to smart looking vintage chain stores determined to be the most authentic second hand something in town, to the redevelopment of whole neighborhoods into painted versions of what heartfelt authenticity is supposed to look like.
Authenticity is becoming harder for us to figure out.
Automatization is what you might expect of a well developed consumer society. Decisions about how we do things, how we live, and what we want to do to keep busy at the weekends can all be drilled down into an App that we keep on our smartphones.
We have accepted automatization as a way of life; Smartphone Apps that claim to carry out tasks that were previously the…
