Gentrification has been one of the most controversial and problematic urban developments of the past fifty years. It has benefited cash-strapped central-city governments in need of wealthier taxpayers and higher assessed property values but has proved a bane to lower-income residents who can no longer afford the rent in their gentrifying neighborhoods and feel increasingly out of place among the invading hordes of young professionals. Nowhere has this dilemma of gain and loss been more evident than in New York City. During the 1970s commentators bewailed New York's impending bankruptcy and rampant housing abandonment; the South Bronx was a burned-out ruin eliciting comparisons with Berlin at the close of World War Ⅱ. Thirty years later, reporters told of the transformation of once-empty shells into upscale town houses, of hyperin-flated housing values, and of an unabated influx of the rich and hip to Gotham's inner city. New York had seemingly quick-changed from a basket case to a treasure chest, with accompanying gains to city coffers and real estate moguls and losses to the displaced poor.
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