Re: <nettime> Gentrification - or a focus on income and wealth?

[Alexandre Carvalho <tudoflui@gmail.com>]

Dear all;

Gentrification has always been an issue to the people that suffer its
consequences, namely people from the lower classes, not old ladies
with eight-room apartments for herself and her cats. in Sao Paulo
this is very clear in the neighborhood of Belenzinho, East of the
city, where huge condos are rising up and driving people out of their
homes. i am a physician working with homeless populations in this
area, and i can tell you that even the shelters are closing up thanks
to the massive power of the real estate industry there. there is even
one avenue, Celso Garcia, where on one side you see the forces of
capital pumping the condos, and on the other side the old buildings
and favelas.

Capital is blind to people's sufferings. Gentrification became now
a hot issue for left theorists maybe, but actually it has always
been felt on the skin by the people who are not participating in the
economic "country club".

You can turn your eye to class inequality and disparity - "let's focus
on that!" but completely overlooking the fact that right on this
moment people are being evicted from their homes and have nothing but
the streets or shelters. if conserving your home is a "conservative"
matter, and therefore necessarily a right-wing agenda, honestly i dont
see any linguistic value in using the terms left, right, liberal or
conservative.


and #FTP 

Atchu

Sent from my subjectivity


> On May 16, 2014, at 1:44 AM, Alexander Bard <bardissimo@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear Friends
> 
> Concerning the recent discussions on the evilness of Google and/or
> Facebook as corporations (one thing) and the evilness of Google and
> Facebook employees for causing major gentrification to speed up in
> the Bay Area (an entirely different issue to me), can soebody please
> explain to me how gentrificaton became a major cause of concern to
> leftists? It smacks of good old conservatism to me.


<....>



 

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