Overall, the debates I’ve heard regarding gentrification, including some discussions from my second Macaulay Seminar course, painted it in a very bad light; it was a whitewashing takeover of poor communities of color, of their neighborhoods and culture, and which resulted in their displacement as the places they called home became too expensive for them to afford. I remember seeing a picture on Facebook not too long ago of a development flyer along an NYC riverfront. I can’t remember which borough it was talking about, but the person who posted the photo included a caption, which was something along the lines of “It’s coming…” with it meaning gentrification, of course. As for my personal experience, I was at Baruch’s career fair back in February, and one of the employers was a real estate development/management group; they had a cool looking picture of a vibrant waterfront community with lots of buildings and people. While the image looked nice, the first thing that popped into my head was gentrification: “Oh, a bunch of wealthy (white) people developing land that belongs to someone else, and selling it at triple the price.” This thought in and of itself seemed to epitomize gentrification’s double-edged-swordness… I’m not sure if that’s a word, but I can’t think of any other way to phrase it. Anyway, on the one hand, we have this nice, ideal picture of gentrification creating vibrant, bustling communities with a variety of shops/stores to choose from, an increased police presence, and enhanced safety. On the other hand, it also strips that land away from local communities, jacks up the prices, brings in outsiders, many of whom are white, and tends to displace the originals. As expected, people have very different opinions from one another in regards to this subject matter because some directly benefit, while others have their homes, communities, and livelihoods stripped away from them all in the name of profit and development.