I mean, in Marat’s case (not sure about Dinara) it was more a case of *too much* in his head, imho. Somebody wrote once, maybe Bodo, that the common trope of “for an athlete, too much intellect and imagination is not a blessing, but a curse” has never been truer than in Safin’s case. I think he was cursed with both a…

Let me describe a very common scenario. The city (New York does this too, many cities do this, it’s a common picture) consistently under-funds services and infrastructure in a relatively poor and typically minority community for a long time; it doesn’t provide quality schools, quality hospitals, it under-funds…

Really, if you just want to say “I get that there are solutions, but the political changes required to implement them are so massive that they often seem insurmountable,” that I can totally understand. Even then, there are purely local changes that could go a long way toward solving some of the issues of poverty and…

I try not to let fictional notions of constraints, constraints that are purposefully created, color my knowledge of the actual nature of the constraints and possibilities. All of the challenges, constraints, and processes you describe as either organic or immutable are neither. If you want to say that the challenges…

I don’t study this shit for a living either; I do it (I do public policy at the local level, before that in consulting, before that in the non-profit world, always in the housing “space” as we tritely say. Of course, before I did it as a profession, I was required to study it, in grad school, but as always, I’ve…

We’ve spent a boatload, relatively speaking, on giving the people who can already afford yachts vastly more money, and very little else (except war). So “boatload” is correct, in a way, but not apt to what you’re describing.

Even in other countries (particularly in other countries), the overwhelming body of evidence is that all it does ultimately is create more debt for low-income borrowers. As far as the actual empirical research is concerned, micro-credit is pretty much an overwhelming failure; even the World Bank and the IMF admit it…

If the process of gentrification displaces people from communities, they generally end up in worse housing conditions, places with worse services, etc. Using my logic, providing good services without first driving up the rents, home prices, and property taxes to unsustainable levels for existing residents would be…

There’s no empirical evidence that micro-lending has positive impacts, unfortunately. It’s faddish, but that’s it. The longitudinal studies don’t show good outcomes.

I do. Gentrification happens to poor communities of all racial/ethnic composition, although as an urban redevelopment process, it tends to more significantly impact POC communities. And of course, poverty is “raced” and “gendered” in the U.S., so while the vast majority of people of all types are not rich, the worst…

I wrote that cities owe all communities good services, and that no community should have to wait for gentrification in order to receive those services. I think that’s slightly different. It also doesn’t have anything to do with the equitable distribution of coffee shops, fwiw.

Let’s track it back:

To quote a truly incisive thinker, what does that have to do with coffee shops?

You realize there’s a whole comment-thread with a lot of points that go beyond the text of the article itself, right? I mean, you wrote some of them, so I’d think that would have been your first clue.

Who said they did? They owe you a school, good roads, transit, hospitals, emergency services, trash collection, clean water, safe power, building inspection, health inspection, and all the other public services that should be provided to all residents. And you shouldn’t have to wait for rich white people to put in a…

I suppose you can call an equitable distribution of resources, to correct an unfair distribution of resources explicitly and purposefully created by policy, a “subsidy,” if you wish, but then what do you call the existing inequitable distribution? Just “the way things are, shrug, too bad?” No— the existing state is…

Everything you just described was created by policy. But policy is invisible when it benefits the wealthy and the white, but anathema when it benefits the poor and people of color. GTBW!

But... wealth in the U.S. is created and maintained by incredible institutional subsidization at all levels. *Inequality* is created, not miraculously born. You’re saying “poor communities shouldn’t get any of the inherent, purposefully created and purposefully maintained advantages that rich white communities…

Why does it take richer people moving into an area before it gets the services that are... literally the City’s job to provide to all residents?

Same but with an open can of evaporated milk. The smell was horrible and ineradicable.