“Why we should subsidise hipster novelists’ housing” was a theory proffered by UK Guardian journalist Brigid Delaney, that we had lots of fun with in January, when Delaney wrote:
Bankrupt and boarded up – the city of Detroit hardly sounds like an inspiring place to work on your novel. But if your rent is covered – then suddenly the prospect is a lot more appealing. Detroit non-profit organisation Write a House is renovating two three-bedroom houses and is accepting applications (worldwide) for writers to move in rent-free. If the writers stay for two years, they get the deeds to the house. I suspect the organisation won’t be short of applications.
As I responded, “Yes, lets import a squadron of Second Amendment-adverse leftwing literary hipsters into feral Detroit — would they even need the ‘This Home is Proudly Gun-Free’ signs that James O’Keefe once handed out to MSM journalists to paint targets on their back?”
Blogger David Thompson spots another Guardian contributor who ought to be the first to take Delaney up on her suggestion, based on his latest column, which features the headline, “Creating ‘mixed communities’ means starting at the top – so let’s bulldoze Belgravia,” one of London’s poshest neighborhoods, regarding which, the Guardian’s photo captioner wrote, “Belgravia … a dangerous concentration of affluence?”
I asked Bane from the last Batman movie for a comment, and all I could get from him were vague mumbles about “the fire rises, my friend.” But as Thompson writes:
Peter Matthews, an Urban Studies lecturer with an interest in “urban inequalities,” questions the “rosy image of mixed communities.” And yet he wants to ensure more of us live next door to “the poor and marginalised.”
When trying to create a better social mix, the focus is almost always on deprived areas. Aren’t the posh bits a problem too?
Thus, Matthews is calling for “deliberate urban degeneration.” As Thompson responds:
Imagine those three words, in bold, on the policy document. Followed by, “It’s what you people need, good and hard.”
As someone who grew up in what would now be considered a “deprived area,” amid lots of “social” housing and all manner of inventively antisocial behaviour, and then escaped, I’m not sure I’d appreciate a second taste of what it was I was hoping to get the hell away from. It’s hard to feel nostalgic for casual vandalism, routine burglary and bus stops and phone boxes that stank reliably of piss.
Exactly. Both America and England tried deliberate urban degeneration — good and hard — after World War II. It worked out just swell for all concerned:
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So why nuke Belgravia, when you can simply move to Detroit?
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