Gentrification

This morning, I made a dreadful error. I commented on the Bristol B24/7 Facebook page that the opening of a new Australian style café on North Street in Bedminster constituted yet more evidence of the gentrification that is consuming some areas of Bristol. I thought it fair comment given how the monied classes have changed the city and priced-out working class people, who can no longer afford to live there. As you can imagine, B24/7 is the home for those very people and my comment did not go down very well.

One reader assumed I’d preferred the area when it was crawling with drug addicts and another questioned whether I’d prefer beef dripping sandwiches. Now I’m big and ugly enough to wave away such snobbery and I’m old enough to remember when the whole Bedminster and Southville area was lively and vibrant, without the need for niche cafés and craft breweries and how Thatcherism gradually throttled inner cities.

I’m not looking through rose-coloured glasses. I worked for 25 years just off East Street in Bedminster and saw at first hand it’s decline from the traditional busy street, full of independent businesses. There was no question that urban renewal was necessary. What I didn’t expect to happen was the gentrification, brought about in part by the arrival of people who saw Bristol as a less expensive version of London. That’s why there are Australian style cafés instead of greasy spoons. When I am in certain parts of Bedminster and Southville these days, it feels more like Clifton.

Maybe this isn’t a bad thing. Some call it progress. There is certainly some truth in the assertion that the area had gone too far downhill. I just fear we’ve brought in a form of economic apartheid where the haves can live in an area but the have nots have been squeezed out.

The snobbery of some of the comments didn’t surprise me. For someone with a balanced personality – I have a chip on each shoulder to prove it – I’m always going to bite. I’m certainly not saying that having a bit of money is a bad thing but I find it slightly nauseating that the chattering classes assuming that those of us who don’t would be happy with beef dripping sandwiches.