Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

I sense a pattern. The nouveau riche area of Wapping, Hobart, October 2010.

I have already railed before about the gentrification of the areas of what were formally slums here in Hobart. Primarily, these areas were those that previously housed the various destitutes, waifs, beggars, prostitutes and cocktail waitresses that seem to surround working docks. When the work at the docks dry up, all that are left are the slums. Eventually – after a period of mass forgetting – those with the bread to spare force out the toothless grannies left, bulldoze the filth and shift in their high-rise apartments, underground parking and diamond-studded collar wearing Pekinese.

What I want to know is, as I suspect, this a universal phenomenon? Dear readers, have your cities experienced similar ‘urban regeneration’? How has is worked out?

Comments

Roddy said…

This is something you should ask the people from the slum areas of New Delhi. They are the most recent to suffer the fate of the working class when the Worlds wealthy want the land they once called home. Alas it was all for the advantage of the sporting elite and their Commonwealth Games pursuit.
All I see is that they relocate the working class away from the more desirable areas, and create enclaves of needy away from the inner city areas. Out of sight out of mind.
Is it for the betterment of the of the general populace? I will allow you to be the judge of that.
Personally I call these areas the slums of the future. Only time will prove me correct.

1 November 2010 at 09:48

Roddy said…

I forgot to mention that I like the symmetry and bold colour contrasts. Nice shot.

1 November 2010 at 09:55

Kris McCracken said…

Roddy, I shall ask them next time I see them.

1 November 2010 at 11:22

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