I've lived in this metro area of 1.5 million for 25 years. What happens is the young "bohemians" find an inner city community with cheap housing or large rooms they can rent out for dirt cheap as their studio/living, (which is the birth of the "loft"
. Most commonly its an area with old housing and rundown boarded up retail businesses OR an old warehouse area.
This area becomes "hip" so then a coffehouse or 2 will move in and from there it snowballs to a full fledged neighborhood of small indy retail shops with condos and upscale restaurants. I've seen this exact scenario happen in 5 different places in the inner city here. One of them was more planned by the city itself and is directly next to the downtown area. The huge property tax revenue they now get from that area is funding other similar urban renewal projects in the city.
This attracts lots of youth and urban professionals and of course raises the rent of all the housing and apts in that area which may lower the rents in the suburbs where this gentrification doesnt occur. So this attracts the lower income people to the suburbs.
Interestingly some of the suburbs "downtowns" are being gentrified as well to certain extent also. Lots of little indy retail shops etc.
Edit history
Recommendations
0 members have recommended this reply (displayed in chronological order):
= new reply since forum marked as read