[URBAN NOTE] "Stop Gentrifying My Hipster Enclave!"

[rfmcdonald]

I liked Wonkman's post, triggered by the controversy over the Walmart in Kensington Market. The neighbourhood has already started gentrifying. Trying to stop this at an arbitrary point is silly.

Within my (short!) lifetime, it was a radically different place. An unrecognizable place. A place which has almost nothing in common with what it has become, and what is now apparently going to be preserved in aspic as the “perfect” Kensington.

I don’t want a Walmart in or around Kensington. I don’t want a Walmart in or around any community. I think there’s a valid, robust and worthwhile analysis of Walmart, and the forces it represents, as a fundamentally destructive and distortive force upon society, upon us as individuals, upon markets and capitalism, and upon a whole ream of similarly important things.

But can we talk about something other than “Gentrification”?

That boat’s already sailed. It’s happened. You can’t prevent it, and given that this gentrification has effectively destroyed whatever came before, you can’t turn it back.