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jersey_girl660 t1_izh3yx2 wrote

Reply to comment by Dryheavemorning in Fishtown, Point Breeze have become far wealthier in the last 10 years and other new Census findings by Dryheavemorning

I said there’s only so much room. And yes I’ve been to north Philadelphia….. north Philadelphia is not all of Philadelphia. There’s only so many empty lots you can build on before you have to start buying existing buildings and remodeling or demolishing them. the city is only 143 sq miles. Other then annexing land that is the size it’s always going to be. You can only build y amount on x amount of land.

If gentrification involved only building new units there would be no displacement. Old and bee residents could live together. But that’s not usually the case. Yes sometimes they build on empty lots or abandoned buildings but they just as often buy existing homes to turn into whatever it is they’re building.

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An_emperor_penguin t1_izhjhjf wrote

> There’s only so many empty lots you can build on before you have to start buying existing buildings and remodeling or demolishing them

Saying this is a problem would imply people should never be able to sell their homes or move or anything, somehow the "anti gentrification" crap always comes back to shoving minorities into ghettos

>You can only build y amount on x amount of land

There's this great "new" technique of putting houses on top of each other that would let us build more :)

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Dryheavemorning OP t1_izh6s1l wrote

You're acting like this is New York or SF, we don't have 400k extra people handing this way soon and Philadelphia has historically been a City of homeowners. It's true that desirable locations are limited but even those are still incredibly underdeveloped now.

I'm Fishtown adjacent and my neighbors that bought their houses for $5-15k in the 80s and 90s are very happy about the changes to the neighborhood. Many bought empty lots near their houses for next to nothing and sold them for incredible profits. "Gentrification" is such a vastly diverse experience based on hyper local circumstances that the term is near worthless and just used as a boogeyman for change.

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Away_Swimming_5757 t1_izhbn5m wrote

Damn, you really have a closed mind to all the additional perspective the other commenters are sharing with you.

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