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Gentrification
Feb. 8th, 2005 12:22 pmSo they're "gentrifying" on the next block over from where our office is. This neighborhood, while not the worst in Chicago by any means, certainly is a "disadvantaged" one. Its kind of rough; there was a gang shooting on our block back in September, and its definitely an area where you should watch yourself on the el late at night.
But for some time now they've slowly been building on an area that, according to the billboard in front of it, will eventually be condos that will sell for "starting at" $199,999. Each. Two hundred thousand dollars. For a condo. It looks like there are three buildings right next to each other, and they all look like either two flats or three flats- its hard to tell with constrution only partially done. And construction has gone quite slowly- they had started it just as I started working here in the office back in August, and at this rate probably won't be done till at least summer.
But every time I walk past the construction site I kind of get the chills. It is so hard to believe what will eventually be there, and the people who will probably move in, and the local stores that will close up to make room for Starbucks. Not that I'm a classist- although maybe I am more than I think I am. But because it is such the exact, dead opposite of the similar structures I saw all the way throughout my trip to Palestine in November.
For months on end, this site sat there, three partially-constructed, cement-block structures, very rectangle and cold and open.
Kind of like this structure here. Except not. Because instead of a construction zone, what that picture really is, is a "deconstruction zone". It is a clinic that the residents of the village of At-Tuwani, in the hills just south of Hebron, have been trying to build for months. But every time they build it, it gets demolished. Why? Because they don't have a permit to build it. They don't have a permit to build a clinic on their own land, that has been theirs for centuries, in a village that desperately needs clean water, an electric generator, and most of all, a clinic for its children. It is a crime to build this clinic. If you are caught building, you will be arrested. And, as I have mentioned, what you have built will then be torn down. Pushed down. With a bulldozer. So the residents of the village build at night, as quietly as possible, with no light except the moon and the stars. Hoping that the structure will stand just long enough to come back another night soon, and build some more before the progress is noted, and halted by a bulldozer.
They resemble the rooftop view in Bethlehem, in the Deheisha Refugee Camp. These buildings are ad-hoc structures, once hastily assembled to be temporary dwellings, added onto over the years, the decades, as families grew but without the money to build well, as families continued to be exiled from their ancestral homes, hoping to go back and knowing they won't be able to.
They resemble the homes in the Beqa'a Valley, where homes and farmland were confiscated and demolished to construct Israeli-only "bypass roads". Fences are put up to bisect land, where olive trees and grape vines are separated from their owners. If the land isn't farmed in three years, it automatically becomes property of the State of Israel- a lose-lose situation. Land is taken, and homes are demolished.
They also resemble these houses in East Jerusalem, bombed out and taken over by military, falling apart because the owners- if they still own them- can't afford to repair them, or don't have the access to that which can make them again habitable.
I get the chills when I see this "gentrification" site. It looks all too much like a war zone, too much like where so much destruction has happened too many times. In some areas- the Beqa'a valley, in the village of Beit Omar, in so many towns, cities and villages- these gray cement-block houses with no roofs or doors are busy coming down. I guess I just get really indignant when I think of the ones going up one block from where I'm sitting now. Two hundred thousand dollars? I walk past this every single day on the way to and from the el station. It gets harder and harder to just walk past and not think this way.
Some go up, some go down. Its like some kind of morbid children's nursery rhyme. I can only shudder.
But for some time now they've slowly been building on an area that, according to the billboard in front of it, will eventually be condos that will sell for "starting at" $199,999. Each. Two hundred thousand dollars. For a condo. It looks like there are three buildings right next to each other, and they all look like either two flats or three flats- its hard to tell with constrution only partially done. And construction has gone quite slowly- they had started it just as I started working here in the office back in August, and at this rate probably won't be done till at least summer.
But every time I walk past the construction site I kind of get the chills. It is so hard to believe what will eventually be there, and the people who will probably move in, and the local stores that will close up to make room for Starbucks. Not that I'm a classist- although maybe I am more than I think I am. But because it is such the exact, dead opposite of the similar structures I saw all the way throughout my trip to Palestine in November.
For months on end, this site sat there, three partially-constructed, cement-block structures, very rectangle and cold and open.
Kind of like this structure here. Except not. Because instead of a construction zone, what that picture really is, is a "deconstruction zone". It is a clinic that the residents of the village of At-Tuwani, in the hills just south of Hebron, have been trying to build for months. But every time they build it, it gets demolished. Why? Because they don't have a permit to build it. They don't have a permit to build a clinic on their own land, that has been theirs for centuries, in a village that desperately needs clean water, an electric generator, and most of all, a clinic for its children. It is a crime to build this clinic. If you are caught building, you will be arrested. And, as I have mentioned, what you have built will then be torn down. Pushed down. With a bulldozer. So the residents of the village build at night, as quietly as possible, with no light except the moon and the stars. Hoping that the structure will stand just long enough to come back another night soon, and build some more before the progress is noted, and halted by a bulldozer.
They resemble the rooftop view in Bethlehem, in the Deheisha Refugee Camp. These buildings are ad-hoc structures, once hastily assembled to be temporary dwellings, added onto over the years, the decades, as families grew but without the money to build well, as families continued to be exiled from their ancestral homes, hoping to go back and knowing they won't be able to.
They resemble the homes in the Beqa'a Valley, where homes and farmland were confiscated and demolished to construct Israeli-only "bypass roads". Fences are put up to bisect land, where olive trees and grape vines are separated from their owners. If the land isn't farmed in three years, it automatically becomes property of the State of Israel- a lose-lose situation. Land is taken, and homes are demolished.
They also resemble these houses in East Jerusalem, bombed out and taken over by military, falling apart because the owners- if they still own them- can't afford to repair them, or don't have the access to that which can make them again habitable.
I get the chills when I see this "gentrification" site. It looks all too much like a war zone, too much like where so much destruction has happened too many times. In some areas- the Beqa'a valley, in the village of Beit Omar, in so many towns, cities and villages- these gray cement-block houses with no roofs or doors are busy coming down. I guess I just get really indignant when I think of the ones going up one block from where I'm sitting now. Two hundred thousand dollars? I walk past this every single day on the way to and from the el station. It gets harder and harder to just walk past and not think this way.
Some go up, some go down. Its like some kind of morbid children's nursery rhyme. I can only shudder.
