More Than a Place For The White House
Garance Franke-Ruta’s essay in The Atlantic about the recent history of gentrification and “urban comeback” in Washington, D.C. is super interesting. It’s such a weird city to visit, and, as Franke-Ruta explains, its neighborhoods of revitalization and decay are so intertwined with historical events and policy. Later in the essay, she explores her own neighborhood, the U-Street area—a must-read for anyone who has been to the city and never made it past The Mall.
---
Previously on The Billfold
---
---
---
If you visited Washington and never made it past the Mall, no wonder you thought it was a weird city to visit. (probably you didn’t! and if you did no big, there’s interesting free stuff there.)
(This is the deeply ingrained defensive reflex of the native Washingtonian speaking.)
No, no, no. My brother lives there and I’ve been often! I should have expanded on that. It’s a city dominated by notions of government and power and bureaucracy, this this piece is a history of the city as a black city, really, and I think it’s a great read.
It is a great read, and thank you for sharing it! My hackles are raised (often unnecessarily, as here) when people start talking about DC the city, because, as you note, it’s so dominated by what other people see/think/think they know about it. And so much of that “DC has no identity!/Hill staffers amIrite” moaning drowns out the many people who build lives here, have memories here, and love it, busted politics, sad history and all.
(to be clear, I never thought you were knocking DC or projecting anything on it!)
@ms. olsen I spent my first years after graduating from college in DC, maturing into an adult, much like Logan is spending her years in New York, and I am similarly protective of the district.
I get amused by people who say DC is dominated by notions of power, because what city isn’t? Moreover, what aspiring, ambitious twenty-something isn’t looking up the career ladder at what the influential people do? Further, New York is the ultimate power city, it’s just that its power comes in the form of the financial sector (which certainly has the capacity to affect as many lives as the federal government) and circles of cultural cachet (which imagine they have the same).
I can see, though, from the article, that it’s trying to portray the historic, neighborhood-y, community-based DC that I love, and maybe Logan is just trying to tell all the Billfold’s readers to put away their stereotypes and read it. Someone should write this history for LA, where I now live!
Something to read on Amtrak between Union and Penn today! Perfect!
Also, I’ve been hating on (and working to support the people most affected by) gentrification in this city since ’03, so there!
Friday afternoon exclamation points!!!
@cherrispryte Well, now I have read it, and I have some things to say! Namely that, for all that the word gentrification is thrown around, there’s very little time spent on what that actually means, on an individual level. Yes, U St is – mostly – way safer now, and that’s huge. But there were people living in that neighborhood before the author showed up in 2006, and they’re being pushed out – hell, they’re pretty much already gone. Its fun to see my local haunts mentioned in the Atlantic, and I suppose if the aim is to talk about DC as a place with a culture, then this works, but to me, talking about U St without talking about the current complicated interaction between rich and poor (and black and white) is just missing a huge point. Amanda Hess wrote a piece 2 years ago that addresses this by focusing on a single block: http://www.tbd.com/articles/2010/11/in-gentrifying-logan-circle-affordable-housing-meets-hate-crimes-31696.html
If you haven’t already read it, I highly recommend doing so, it’s a really good companion piece to this one.
Omg, “Dodge City.” Now that I know the origin of the name, I am retroactively horrified for having ever gone to that bar.
Excellent read. Especially as I am knee-deep in hunting for apartments in mostly up-and-coming neighborhoods. I hope to soon be ensconced in a place where I can scoff at any subsequent new residents who move in, as is DC tradition.