Urban gentrification marches on

In the Upham's Corner neighborhood of Boston's Dorchester section.

Adapted from a recent item in Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,' in GoLocal24.com

One of my daughters lives in the middle of Bedford-Stuyvesant, in Brooklyn. Bed-Stuy, as it is usually called, has long been infamous as one of the most dangerous, highest-crime urban neighborhoods in the nation. But it has a superb stock of beautiful old brownstones and even some lovely parks.

Real-estate speculators developed most of these homes for the expanding middle to upper middle class from the 1890s to the late 1910s. Many have beautiful ornamental detailing inside and out.

As New York City has boomed in the past couple of decades, gentrification has spread  even to such areas as Bed Stuy. So now there’s even a fancy, over-priced French restaurant a few streets from my daughter’s apartment, epitomizing the cycle of prosperity, decline, poverty/crime and revival that seems to happen in virtually every American city. The downside of the economic revival, of course, is that people (usually of color) who could afford to live in what had become a slum are forced out by the much higher rents and housing-purchase costs that accompany gentrification.

Consider a  New England example: Parts of South Boston and Dorchester, which were  once mostly lower-middle-class-to-poor sections of Boston. Large parts of them  are now very expensive -places to live in -- and., it must be said -- much safer than they were 47 years ago, when I worked in Boston. They are sharing in the burgeoning wealth of the higher-education, healthcare, technology and financial-services powerhouse that is Greater Boston.

Boston's nickname was "The Hub''  when I was a boy. It certainly applies now, in some ways more than when I was young and the old city seemed tired and gritty.