JetUNsetter

I had to go to a very old part of my city, which would normally be considered dodgy. I went there under that assumption: it would be dirty, dodgy, unsettling to walk around and miserable. It was nothing but. New flat developments have been erected and artisanal this and artisanal that were everywhere.

At first, I welcomed the relief that I was not in a dodgy place, had my latte at the artisanal coffee shop and strolled around to explore the new face of the neighborhood. The feeling I quickly got though, is that I walk in a city without a name, without a soul. It looked and felt common: the shape of the buildings and the offerings at all these artisanal shops could be anywhere. Any of the big cities of the world. Had a magically landed on that place without knowing which city I was in, it would have been impossible to say where I was. Even if I knew which city to name in any event, it would be impossible to say which part of it I was in.

The misery of it is that all gentrified places look alike. They seem to come out of the same business plan and someone has saved money on architects and just copies and pastes the same design across. Not an amazing design to begin with…

It’s sad and soulless. It was the same when globalisation first began: all high streets of the world would sell the same brands and all young people of the (western) world would wear the same outfits and look alike and behave alike.

Why are we doing it? We are even happy to buy that flat that looks exactly as everyone else’s, we are amazed by the quality of the sourdough at the new local bakery and live exactly the life as anyone else. But we are happy to be gentry. That is all that matters. Interestingly, we behave like Ivan Illyich, who was not real upper class and could only decorate his house as anyone else did in middle class, as Tolstoy informs us. He was so happy to be shown off as gentry or to be mistaken for one, that he did not care he was in fact just common. The important thing was not to be lower.

I am not suggesting poverty is interesting or that a life spent among criminals is wanted. But I am wondering where all these investors take us with their uninspired plans, copied and pasted designs and sourdoughs. By the way, bread was historically the food of the poor but sourdough is somehow a sign of progress these days…

How can we get to houses that have our identity, to clothes that suit us, food that is of our taste, cities that are uniquely adjusted to the local weather, history and needs? How can we escape the need to be gentry? Are we just lazily escaping the burden to be ourselves? Please help me make sense of this one too…