DC gentrification: flipping a city

Good visualization below of DC gentrification nudging eastward and southward into once-black neighborhoods.

I counted six new condos on a single block in the Mt. Vernon Triangle area last weekend. Driving through these areas the contrast could not be starker: young yuppie millenials supported by their parents sipping lattes on the way to the new Wal-Mart alongside the residents from the housing projects two blocks away. It feels like the whole city is in the process of being flipped.

From 2002 to 2013 according to this site there were 600 new condos built plus another 680 rental apartment buildings.

http://dcinno.streetwise.co/2014/10/07/map-fix-see-where-all-of-dcs-new-condos-have-been-built-over-12-years/


What I don't get is how there are that many people who can afford these luxury apartments--and they all seem to be luxury apartments. I believe people who really can't truly afford them are buying them anyway, that's the housing addiction we live by in America. See the Housing Bomb
http://www.amazon.com/The-Housing-Bomb-Environment-Threatening/dp/1421410656

Affordable housing in DC does not exist, unless you live in a bedroom in somebody else's condo.

Take a look at this graph: all the growth has been at the highest-rent levels while the lower-rent levels are phasing out. The Founding Fathers thought DC should never become a place of luxury where elites could take root, now it is becoming a boutique town.
http://dcinno.streetwise.co/2014/10/07/map-fix-see-where-all-of-dcs-new-condos-have-been-built-over-12-years/

And notice the highest growth is in $1500 "or more." In DC there "or more" is often a lot more.


I love the new "cool" names they are giving to the gentrified neighborhoods:
Mt. Vernon Triangle
NoMa
Atlas District

Each of these is essentially just a motherload of condos with the obligatory smattering along the street level of Starbucks and wanna-be chic bars and cafes, Wal-mart, Potbelly, these are the faces of the new DC--the same faces we see at every shopping center.

Even the new independent restaurants are still just restaurants, just more consumption. How about a High Line for DC, something to do?

What strikes me is how, despite the newness of the buildings, there is so little that is innovative about the construction.

By the way, whenever you hear someone say "there's nobody who is really from DC," that tells you two things: 1) that person is not really from DC and 2) they have no idea what they're talking about. My grandfather came to DC in the 1860s.

What a divided city!