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Dear Readers,
While All Things Pakistan has remained alive and online, it has been dormant since June 11, 2011 - when, on the blog's 5th anniversary, we decided that it was time to move on. We have been heartened by your messages and the fact that a steady traffic has continued to enjoy the archived content on ATP. While the blog itself will remain dormant, we are now beginning to add occasional (but infrequent) new material by the original authors of the blog, mostly to archive what they may now publish elsewhere. We will also be updating older posts to make sure that new readers who stumble onto this site still find it useful.
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Great post. Gentrification is a topic that always interests me.
“Contrary to planned gentrification that keeps into account the needs of the displaced,”
Hmmm…I am not an expert on gentrification, but from what I know and see around me (for example, Los Angeles and San Francisco), there has been an exodus of the former inhabitants once gentrification becomes deeply entrenched and solidified. I tend to think that gentrification is usually very well planned for those who will commercially benefit (i.e. the wealthy) than for the more disadvantaged residents.
And economically speaking, it seems like the only people who lose out are the previous, impoverished ones. For example, you could very well place a cap on rent for the current residents, but the wealthy business employers who move in, knowing that they can get cheap labor, continue to pay very low wages to the ones who are supposedly protected by some kind of displacement preventive. Or, in the absence of a rent cap, they may be forced to move out, but may continue being employed or seek employment in these now gentrified areas–and they may still get exploited wages wise, not to mention the added expenses of transportation from their new residence to their place of work.
I am also wondering if it’s fair to say that gentrification is often one of the methods in creating a capitalist-style wage-labor dependence, e.g. that in order to survive in these gentrified places, you must either be employed by someone or you must employ someone. I would imagine that it’s very difficult to practice self-subsistence.
Regarding this post specifically on Pakistan, does anyone know where exactly the displaced folks are fleeing too? Like in terms of Karachi, are people moving out to places like Orangi? Or other places?
Karachi’s real estate market is little bit down these days, or you can say its prices are not fluctuating or its not increasing so much. IF you want to invest, I think this would be a right time as you may find some good property in reasonable prices.
Eidee Man, karachi and all other real estate bubbles in Pakistan have burst. So has the real estate bubble in Dubai into which so many Pakistanis have sunk their money. Just goes to prove that if something looks like too good to be true, it probably isn’t.