On the brink of gentrification, the Westend in Munich is one of the old quarters, traditionally home of workers and craftsmen, now to be taken over by business school graduates and the like. The still mixed indigenious population – many Turkish people live here, you get Halal food on every corner – recedes slowly with rising rents for the flats and the advance of stylish cafés.
Funny – it’s the east end here in Vancouver. Only, I’ll bet, worse. An area known as the Downtown Eastside has been home to a wide mix of societal rejects for decades. To outsiders it’s been a frightening area, but the people that have lived there have never been violent with outsiders. Sadly, any nastiness has been confined to community members. It’s actually mostly been a very tight-knit community, with most of the residents looking out for each other. Now, gentrification is driving them out. To where, I have no idea. It’s very sad.
Stephen, I guess all towns have these quarters, gradually different but from a similar structure and genesis. It depends on the politics how these develop upwards, gradually and taking up some of the residents, finding adequate space for the others, or rather brutally, just driving out the long-term population. At least in Germany we don’t have the latter.