If I were the elite of Bo$ton this is exactly the kind of wonderful article I would like to read on a Sunday morning:
"Parisian entrepreneur gets taste of socio-economic split; High-end shops serve up hope, apprehensions" by Liz Alderman | New York Times August 10, 2014
Sorry I'm so sour on it all.
PARIS — One recent sunny morning, Cédric Naudon, a wealthy French entrepreneur with a taste for fine food, walked down a quiet street in a neighborhood of Paris known as the Haut Marais and gestured toward a phalanx of shuttered storefronts as the sound of power drills pierced the air.
“This is where the butcher’s shop will go,” said Naudon, peering into a half-finished space. “It’s going to be totally designed, with a library so people can think about the meat,” he said. “Over there will be the cheesemonger, where the cheese will be hidden in designer drawers and taken out and explained.”
He pointed to other outlets destined for an organic bakery, an oyster bar, a fishmonger, ethnic restaurants, and a coterie of neighborhood mainstays.
“It’s empty now,” he said, looking around the block, which seemed entirely under renovation. “But when all this opens, it will be completely unique.”
As a wave of gentrification sweeps through Paris, Naudon has taken the phenomenon to a new level. An enigmatic man who says he made a fortune in real estate in New York and Paris, he has snapped up about half an area north of the Marais, one of the city’s trendiest districts, with plans to restyle it into a sleek epicurean village called La Jeune Rue, or Young Street, dedicated to farm-fresh gastronomy and a culture of chic.
And for the rest of you?
See: French Food For Lunch
Aaaaah, let 'em eat cake!
An international team of designers, including Tom Dixon and Maud Bury, is styling 36 storefronts around the Rue du Vertbois — home of the legendary Chez L’Ami Louis restaurant — and two adjacent streets. Unlike the Marais or St. Germain, where an invasion of chain clothing stores has nearly stamped out French artisanal life, here fashionably dressed butchers, bakers, and restaurateurs will work in an upscale collective dominated by the principal of zero waste, peddling high-concept foods from mod spaces using biological products sourced only from French farmers.
When all is said and done, the French people will dine on them. Bon appetite.
The project is expected to animate a quartier of mixed classes and ethnicities that is now something of a dead zone for culture and night life. Situated between the Place de la République and the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, the area has long been home to numerous Chinese clothing wholesalers and small shops that have resisted previous efforts at development. While a smattering of wealthy young urbanites has recently moved in, a number of low- to middle-income residents remain, along with several public housing units.
I'm not complaining the paper is for and of them; however, nor am I going to waste much time this $hit as time is short and ISIS sends the beast with wrath.
Many Parisians are eager to see new life breathed into the area. But the redevelopment has also touched a nerve among residents who worry that Naudon, with his deep pockets and taste for high design, will turn the area into the latest in a string of bohemian bourgeoisie enclaves that have sprung up around Paris, driving the working and middle classes ever farther out.
What, after all the good pre$$ for the first three-quarters of this?
Don't start mixing the me$$ages now. That would spoil the fun for the 1.... percent.
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In some ways, the trend of gentrification has become almost unstoppable. Paris, New York, London, and other major metropolises have undergone waves of urban renewal for decades, each ushering in more wealth than the last, while pricing out those with less money.
BOSTON, too! Why leave them out?
While the essence of Paris has hardly disappeared, the impact has been striking, said Anne Clerval, an associate professor at the Université Paris-Est.
And they have a $ociali$t pre$ident, too!
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