The End of Gentrification?
When people ask me if I like living in Seattle I always pause, because of course I love the abundance of greenery, the views, the fresh air, the board game cafes and all the makerspaces- that's why I moved here, but I don’t love the constant construction, the absolute destruction of Capitol Hill and Central District, the white-washing of Columbia City, references to Rainier Beach as 'the ghetto', the closing of so many mom and pop businesses and restaurants, and the thousands of outsiders pouring in, who are drastically morphing the city and quite literally draining its personality without any real understanding of the impact.
Seattle is growing incredibly fast. In fact, 86,320 people moved here last year. That’s roughly 236.4 a day. The demographic of these people is generally middle to high income and a high percentage of them are white.
This has caused massive gentrification. Everyday people are forced to move out of their homes and neighborhoods, because wealthier people have moved in. In this <p><a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/seattles-vanishing-black-community/">this</a></p> article, a pastor reminisces Seattle’s most cultured areas, and how the soul of them is fading.
It can feel overwhelming. However, there is a solution. Getting people where they need and want to be- faster.
Transportation systems like the Link Light Rail have the power to shift the tone of this conversation. Making the city accessible to people living in the outskirts of it is what will ultimately save the city from the trajectory it’s on. The Light Rail was a project that was voted into fruition in 1996, but has only expanded in the last few and it’s already making impacts on the city. There are plans to extend it as far south as Federal Way and as far north as Lynnwood, but not until 2023.
But is it this a wasted project? With more and more companies putting billions of dollars into self-driving car technology, and companies like Elon Musk’s Hyperloop One, it seems as if spending money on projects like the Light Link extension, which may become obsolete in a less than a decade, could be a horrible decision.
The Hyperloop https://hyperloop-one.com/, currently still being tested, could potentially take someone from San Diego to San Francisco in 30 minutes for 25$. It’s a mode of transportation that propels pods through a vacuum tube at airline speeds. For a nerdier explanation: http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/hyperloop-news/. They are currently developing passenger and cargo systems in several countries, including the United States, and predict it will test its first passenger ‘flight’ this year.
It’s moto,’ Be anywhere, move everything, connect everyone’, sounds promising and could be exactly what cities like Seattle need to bring its fragmented parts back together.
The Seattle Light Rail is nice, but systems like Hyperloop are a better solution. However, as companies like this one get closer to their first launch, it’s immensely important for people who come from communities that gentrification affects the most to get involved and work their way onto those developing teams. These companies need to be as diverse as the communities they will set out to serve and will need many different shades bringing forth designs and ideas for these projects to truly be successful.
N. Page | February 2017