Subj : Re: 3.5 weeks to being la
To   : poindexter FORTRAN
From : boraxman
Date : Sun Jul 24 2022 12:43:25

 pF> I've seen that firsthand. I went to school in San Francisco in the '80s,
 pF> and  lived there through the '90s at the ramp-up of the first dot-com
 pF> boom. San  Francisco changed, subtly at first and now materially. SF
 pF> used to be a  melting pot of cultures, demographics and income levels.
 pF> Lots of people  who'd lived there multiple generations. Now:
 pF> 
 pF> 1. Working class people have a hard time affording to move there or
 pF> raise  kids there.
 pF> 
 pF> 2. Multi-generational families are ending as elderly parents choose to
 pF> sell  to fund a retirement instead of passing the house along to the
 pF> next  generation.
 pF> 
 pF> 3. Income inflation from the tech sector has caused house prices and 
 pF> discretionary spending (dining out, especially) to soar.
 pF> 
 pF> You used to be able to run into people who'd lived there all their
 pF> lives,  who grew up there, went to high school there, and so on. They're
 pF> getting  fewer and farther between. Sit at a bar, coffee shop or a
 pF> restaurant and  strike up a conversation with a plumber, roofer, or a
 pF> fireman. There was  also a tolerance that seems to have gone away, too.
 pF> It's a shame.
 pF> 
 pF> The thing that struck me was talking a walk through the SOMA
 pF> neighborhood,  hotbed of tech companies. I shot lots of photos of an
 pF> urban sprawl from  2000-2002 - lots of warehouses, grafitti, gritty
 pF> live-work lofts, and so on.
 pF> 
 pF> In 2018, the warehouses had given way to high-rise condos. Restaurants
 pF> I'd  loved looked empty on a weeknight. But, there was a line of waiters
 pF> on  wheels and doordash drivers leading into the parking lot of a condo.
 pF> 
 pF> What's the point of living in one of the most eclectic cities in the
 pF> world  if you're going to eat overpriced takeout in your living room?

That describes here too.  I grew up in an area with a mixed demographic.  I recall people of different ages, people living close to their families and a real sense of community.  We knew our neighbours well and people were really part of the community, with a multigenerational feel.

That has declined now.  The patter is that young families move to the fringes, so there are neighbourhoods where they are all young families, with different ethnic enclaves (the older ethnic enclaves dispersed).  People don't know each other and the new people have no relation to any older ones which were there.  The inner city (expensive here) has another specific demographic, young professionals, and they don't really stay either.  The city centre is international students, with towers of the buggers.

Melbourne is just turning into a 'churn and burn' population machine, just a human dumping ground, a factory which sorts people based on markets.  It isn't home anymore.  Everything about Melbourne just screams "This was done just so property developers can bank money", and Sydney perhaps not to different.

This is why I have such antipathy towards the entire enterprise of property speculation, investment, etc, it murdered my home city, turned the communities I live in to ugly arrays of concrete bunkers, took away opportunities and to some degree, took away our humanity.

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