Gentrification and urbanization week 5 reflection

Prompt:

How do you think gentrification has affected Seattle, Berlin and possibly your hometown, and how does it compare across these places? What connections do you make between gentrification and one or more of the themes of the program?

I think there are many issues have been brought up to people’s sight because of this gentrification issue. Such as minimum wage protesting, low building efficiency. I think this kind of problems happens typical in many cities around the whole world when we try to max-urbanize them. This problem is very extreme in many cities in China now, and it is becoming extremer and extreme everyday. Since 21th century, China’s GDP has been pumped up by enormous sales in real estate. In the mean time, people’s salary, however, did not increase proportionally with the increase in rent of apartment or sales prices. In many big cities, many young people need to live in other nearby city and take a train to other cities for wok everyday. According to the reading, gentrification is not a normal phenomenon. Branden Born, an associate professor of Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington, said that: “We mean a rate of change that is not natural — most likely we would consider it to be too fast, in that it pushes long-term residents from their neighborhoods.”

Regarding to the theme of program, I think it can be related to many themes. New immigrants are big portions of demands in housing. The possible topics can be: “how does the new immigration affects the gentrification in Berlin”? Even education can be related to gentrification as well, like: “How does the gentrification affects the tuition rate and space for students”? I think gentrification is a very interesting topic in urban design and it will become more and more noticeable in the future. It is worth research more and know more.