A Gentrifying Fishtown

When I googled Fishtown, one of the first articles that game up was "A Creative Renaissance in Philadelphia's Fishtown," published in the travel section of The New York Times. The article detailed a few of the trendy places to eat and shop in the once working class Fishtown neighborhood.

Some further investigation led to the realization that the Fishtown that Murray wrote about, based on 1990 and 2000 census data, is rapidly disappearing. After the publication of Coming Apart, some residents of Fishtown argued that Murray didn't understand their community and was mischaracterizing them. In this article, Murray responded to the criticism of Fishtown residents.

Murray contacted an expert on Fishtown, Ken Milano, who told him:

Some of the complaints I heard were ‘What Fishtown is Murray talking about?’ The one in the book is barely recognizable in 2012. Yes, there are still working folks here, but to the newcomers, they are the pain-in-the-ass juvenile delinquents who mess with their cars, vandalize their houses, and make life miserable for the newbies.

 Murray then responded to the criticism:

[There] is a legitimate underlying reason why people living in Fishtown in 2012 believe that I got it wrong: I described Fishtown in its latter years as a working-class community during the late 1990s.

Gentrification is in high gear. I could see it when I visited Fishtown during the writing of the book — abandoned factories that had been turned into chic loft apartments, and blue-collar bars transformed into trendy watering holes for the twenty-something singles who had moved in.

For the newcomers, there are no memories of a tight-knit community organized around the family and the Catholic Church where everybody knew everybody, doors could be left unlocked, and children safely allowed to play outdoors, knowing that neighbors were keeping an eye on them, and where local problems were solved in local ways. There are also no memories among the newcomers of how that community slowly unraveled in the face of the forces that I blame (well-intentioned but disastrously destructive reforms of the 1960s in education, criminal justice, and welfare) and the forces that the left blames (the loss of skilled blue-collar jobs, the decline of unions, globalization).

With gentrification often comes tension between original residents and newcomers. In a place like Fishtown, the tension is exacerbated by the disparities in education, wealth, and cultural background between the original residents and newcomers. As newcomers are often wealthier than original residents, they are often able to change the face of the neighborhoods they enter, opening cafes, coffee shops, galleries, shops, et cetera that cater to their preferences. This article, published on a Fishtown-centric blog, explores some of that tension.

What is happening in Fishtown is not isolated. As I alluded to in class, neighborhoods in San Francisco including SoMa and the Mission District are rapidly gentrifying. Other neighborhoods, including Hayes Valley, Cow Hollow, the Marina District, Outer Sunset, and even the Tenderloin, are feeling the effects of gentrification. Talk to someone from New York, especially residents of Brooklyn, and I'm sure you'll hear much of the same. The gentrification of parts of Philadelphia has even led the city to be referred to, in some cases disparagingly, as the "Sixth Borough," as residents of New York move to Philly en masse. Here's another article exploring the influx of New Yorkers into Philly.