It is common to the point where you can look at pretty much any major public improvement or monument in an American city and odds are pretty good that some black folks lived there before it got built. That is ALWAYS the property that needs to be “improved” by stuff like this. Like, “hey we turned this shitty black neighborhood into a big arch or a field of flowers, what an improvement!”
I’d like to point out that even when this isn’t true, the “major public improvement” tends to border one, close enough that it gets cut off from the surroundings and goes into financial ruin causing others to look at the neighborhood a few years later and THEN decide its property that needs to be “improved” (gentrified)… To the point that the original inhabitants are priced out of their own family homes.
One of those “whew, they dodged a bullet… Of wait, they didn’t” times that happens quite a lot.
It is common to the point where you can look at pretty much any major public improvement or monument in an American city and odds are pretty good that some black folks lived there before it got built. That is ALWAYS the property that needs to be “improved” by stuff like this. Like, “hey we turned this shitty black neighborhood into a big arch or a field of flowers, what an improvement!”
I’d like to point out that even when this isn’t true, the “major public improvement” tends to border one, close enough that it gets cut off from the surroundings and goes into financial ruin causing others to look at the neighborhood a few years later and THEN decide its property that needs to be “improved” (gentrified)… To the point that the original inhabitants are priced out of their own family homes.
One of those “whew, they dodged a bullet… Of wait, they didn’t” times that happens quite a lot.