I’m from a country considered third-world and a common vacation spot for foreigners. One of our islands have a lot of foreigners even living there long-term. I see a lot of posts online complaining on behalf of the locals living there and saying this is such a bad thing.
Currently, I fail to see how this is bad but I’m scared to asks on other social media platforms and be seen as having colonial mentality or something.
In: Economics
I live on the island of Samui, Thailand. Gentrification is happening here… *rapidly*.
Generally, gentrification means better housing, better infrastructure, reduced crime, etc… but also higher prices. The locals get to charge more for services here, so they benefit.
However, locals are also paying more for everything themselves. If they own land/housing, they’ll probably benefit, but the lower-end people will probably be pushed out, to be replaced by richer people.
Gentrification isn’t innately bad and is part of progress generally, but it can hurt/displace the poorest people in that area.
This depends a lot on the nature of the region.
In the US, gentrification almost always involves wealthy whites (maybe also including asians depending on the city) moving into black/latino communities and displacing the people that lived there, destroying the community. Typically this involves high-income professionals buying out existing landlords – so it’s usually a wealth transfer within the white community to the detriment of a marginalized community, who then have to incur the cost of moving, increased travel to their jobs, etc. so they often get poorer in the process. It’s an example of systemic poverty because those marginalized communities never get the opportunity to generate wealth because the land owners weren’t interested in selling to them, but when this other group come in, usually backed by generational wealth from their parents/grandparents, they can take that opportunity.
Would you think it’s a good thing if you can no longer afford to live in the area that your family has lived in for generations?
Take San Francisco for example, if you make $100,000 USD a year, you are considered to be in poverty because you won’t be able to afford a house. It’s not a problem for the new tech engineers, but if you grew up in the area with an average job, there’s literally no choice for you but to move, even if you love the place.
Because high income households tend to have larger square footage per person. When gentrification pushes the poorer people out, they are forced into even more overcrowding or just outright homelessness. Urban California is the living example of this.
The foreigners start living there, everything gets expensive because there are people who can afford it now
To make more profit we make thing expensive to the poor locals to force them out & make room for more rich foreigners
It can be a good thing if the place is a full on slum or dirt poor, but in general, It increases the prices and gradually kills the culture. It makes the place generic.
Are you talking about Bali? I think it holds a nice balance but it may have changed in the last 10 years.
It works well when they’re tourists or living in hotels etc which is very affordable for a westerner to do in Bali but things get out of hand when they start buying property and capitalism comes into play, increases house prices and then within 20 years it has a negative impact on the locals because they can’t afford to live in their own town.
Go to a lot of holiday locations and the locals actually living conditions are getting worse as they can’t afford the previously affordable. From places in the UK in Cornwall etc to small islands i’ve heard about it.
I think in large cities it’s more of an annoyance that people have to move but tbh that’s been happening as long as cities have been about
Gentrification often leads to displacement of local residents due to increased cost of living, which can disrupt communities and heighten income disparities.
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