Reddit reviews Good Neighbors: Gentrifying Diversity in Boston's South End

Gentrification moves in two waves. It's well documented.

Basically poor, usually young people with education, artistic and handyman skills and time move into an area and start modestly fixing buildings up. This group tends to live in some harmony—or maybe détente—with longtime resident population, usually the working class and people of color.

Over time, first wave gentrifiers make a neighborhood "safe" for rich kids, young professionals, wealthy eccentrics and others who like to slum it (but not really) and we transition into second wave gentrification as developers create difficulties for original residents and first wave gentrifiers, who then are forced out.

The Meadowlark building downtown is a little microcosm of this. It used to be an extreme shithole, with like a Bosnian restaurant in the basement and a couple of studios. A local artist literally cleaned up the building for his studio and now what is it? It's mostly a boring office park for 9-5ers. Someone put a bird on it.

Eventually gentrified areas lose their character and become dorky and some other area will become the trendy neighborhood.

You can already see it happening again in the areas Bixby mentions, but also traditionally working class and Mexican-American neighborhoods of north Moorhead.

So it goes.