Gay Guys Make the Best Neighborhoods (Gayborhoods!)

Lol a moderator created a public poll (Thanks Alex!), but I don't have the power to change the poll myself, nor were any changes made to the text.

 

But suburbs and icky and not fun at all...especially for those of us who are in our 20s.

Not to mention the fact that suburban sprawl is not environmentally sustainable, as I mentioned earlier, so I am glad to see more people moving back into the urban cores of cities after decades of mass exodus. Even though it does come at some social cost to the people who were already living in these inner city neighborhoods, we need to accept the fact that gentrification is a reality, and we have to deal directly with that social cost.

New York City lost a lot of population in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, when the city was in decline, as all the white people with money abandoned the cities for the suburbs, taking their money with them, and leaving inner cities to become dilapidated and poor and unable to maintain basic infrastructure, graffiti-filled subway cars and over 2,000 murders a year.

But of course gentrification in itself is a very controversial topic (see for example, the recent Spike Lee rant about "motherfucking hipsters" taking over formerly poor black neighborhoods of Brooklyn, NYC.)

But also as I said, I don't think the gays-fixing-up-neighborhoods thing is a direct cause of gentrification. The gays move to these poor neighborhoods because they are outcast from mainstream society and and are pretty poor themselves, so they seek out an affordable inner-city neighborhood to form their own community together and just so happen to turn the neighborhood into a lively pleasant downtown destination.

Only after the poor gays have fixed up the neighborhood does the spike in demand happen that results in all wealthy whites suddenly wanting to live there and thus 'gentrify' the neighborhood.