The New American Gentry
February 1st, 2008I find it interesting that this meme is being driven simultaneously in the U.S. and Britain. (See the post below.) I wonder why? No, seriously. I’m not being sarcastic. I really do wonder why?
Are stories like these peer-to-peer warnings for rich people? Get out of your urban bubble bombs before they implode?
Via: Wall Street Journal / Yahoo:
The word “gentrification” conjures up images of once-poor urban neighborhoods invaded by cappuccino bars and million-dollar condos. Now, broad swaths of rural America — from New England to the Rocky Mountain West — are being gussied up, too.
Affluent retirees and other high-income types have descended on these remote areas, creating new demand for amenities like interior-design stores, spas and organic markets. For many communities, it’s the biggest change since the interstate highway system came barreling through in the 1960s and 1970s.
With the Internet allowing people to work from almost anywhere, the distinction between first and second homes has become blurred. Many people are buying retirement property while they’re still employed. Millions of soon-to-retire baby boomers, say demographers, will propel this trend for years to come.
“What we’re seeing is a class colonization,” says Peter Nelson, an associate professor of geography at Middlebury College and an expert on rural migration. “It really represents a shift in the nature of the economy from a resource-extraction economy to an aesthetic-based economy.”
Such change can create social tensions, as longtime residents are either driven away because they can no longer afford housing or are forced to adapt to new careers.
The impact of rural gentrification is playing out in this lakeside town, situated roughly 100 miles from Boise in Valley County. For decades it’s been home to ranchers, farmers and timber workers. It has also served as a weekend retreat for residents throughout the state who flocked to Payette Lake for summer fishing and boating.
Today, Valley County is attracting newcomers from as far away as New York and Sydney. They’re putting up second and third residences costing well over $1 million — price levels once reserved for the few waterfront properties.
In recent years, developers have snatched up land for $100,000 an acre in some cases, or 40 times what it fetched as farmland. Though home prices here are declining as in other parts of the nation, houses still cost about 60% more than in 2004.
“It really represents a shift in the nature of the economy from a resource-extraction economy to an aesthetic-based economy.”
And just what is an “aesthetic-based” economy supposed to mean? One that looks good on the surface, but has no substance? That certainly describes today’s U.S. economy. I wonder how ‘aesthetic’ their old homes will be when they’ve sat unsold for months and have been occupied by squatters. I wonder how aesthetic their new digs will be when the economy collapses and the angry peasants around there light a torch to their mansions…
tm
I wondered about this to & came to the conclusion “aesthetic-based” economy is based on creating & living in an attractive area. You know, somewhere with forests, lakes, mountains etc. Only now someone else will be left to extract the resources so they can drive their Beemers, colour co-ordinate their house and all that other b/s. The aforementioned professor has got cottage-cheese-for-brains.
No tm, that’s not the situation.
The capital pools are moving, they are moving from where they have been to where they will be. The financiers inside the machine know when, where, and generally how things will occur over the process of ‘collapse’. There will be no rural mobs pitch forking these people, these people will throw money and influence around with those rural folks just as they please.
This movement is not simply some city folk finding new digs in an out of the way place, this is a planned migration.
There is a great deal of fantasy and romanticism erected around the idea of ‘collapse’.
Rome didn’t collapse for everyone, for some it was simply a migration to Byzantium.
You might have a former spook or hedge funder moving in sometime soon!
Of course, the really smart ones aren’t just going to their backyard, they’re re-locating globally to NZ and Argentina/Chile/Uruguay. Owning land that can produce food is going to be a huge profit-opportunity, and owning land within a few hundred kilos of a major aquified, even more so.
“Are stories like these peer-to-peer warnings for rich people? Get out of your urban bubble bombs before they implode?”
This sounds more like a real-estate sales pitch to me.
“It really represents a shift in the nature of the economy from a resource-extraction economy to an aesthetic-based economy.”
This means that, instead of farming the land or otherwise using it productively, the ten-acre estate-size lots surrounding the McMansion will produce nothing but elegant swaths of lawn grasses. Thus, where someone used to make a living growing crops on this land, now someone else will make a few bucks mowing the lawn for the “gentry.”
The “economics” of this is: further loss of agricultural land to development, lost local incomes (these people work and spend their money elesewhere), and lost food production.
tm’s prophecy for those who fall for this hype is probably correct.
Whoever wrote this article is a certifiable moron: Productive use of land is bad; the conversion of timberlands and farm field into lawns is good.
I’d like to see these yuppies try to “gentrify” our little mountain remote subdivision out here in far west Texas! They won’t be able to tolerate our rocky dirt roads, and, anyway, there is so much anti-Nature Conservancy feeling out here that I doubt if these critters will be able to get that much of a foothold.
Now, there is a huge new subdivision, a “gated community” created especially for yuppies, the largest rural community of this kind in Arkansas my brother recently moved to from Connecticut. Roads are paved, shopping malls, golf courses, lakes…called “Hot Springs Village.” It is a place like this that the article speaks of. And I am aware of that area of Idaho, and other areas like McCall, Cascade, Orofino, etc., which used to be considered “patriot-militia” and Helen Chenoweth country. To see it go to yuppies is sad.Glad it is unlikely to happen to my area of west Texas, which doesn’t have the water capacity to handle too much yuppie developments. But I have a feeling that eventually a large portion of these rich types will see the wisdom of what the folks who have lived there a long time possess.
http://www.somethinghappeninghere.net
Sounds like another BUBBLE in the making.
GREEN ACRES IS THE PLACE TO BE, FAAARM LIVING IS THE LIFE FOR ME!
Seriously, do I sniff the next bubble?
Except this time, is it a bubble made for the kill off of the noveau riche?
This phenomenon has been occuring throughout the US for YEARS – what rock did the author of this article climb out from under to post this “NEWS?”
Yes Kevin – ISNT IT ODD – so many writing, advising people to get OUT OF THE CITY?
If I had a newspaper I would have been saying this years ago.
And Sharon, I agree with you, the author needs to get a grip.
I don’t care about the yuppies – I care about Mr. Roberts and his family. They need a lawyer to write legal documents that put all of their names on the title of the property so that when Mom passes, they only pay her share of the tax on the property. Its really a hassle, but with joint tenant holdings, when one goes, well, the others don’t have to pay taxes on their share.
Or for that matter, Mr. Roberts’ Mom could sell it to the family for a dollar. No kidding. I think she has to live for a few years for it to be legal (but that’s only a Medicare requirement) but shucks, why don’t people who own land/ property know this? Well I didn’t either, but I learned it from my Mom who insisted on all of the above. All of Mom’s assets are joint tenant, and Mom sold me the house and 3 acres for a dollar about 10 years ago.
Uncle IRS Sam, I love you too.
Sell your property to your children for a dollar. Let them worry about it.
But I wouldn’t want to be ANY OF THESE PEOPLE who might not have a clue as to what’s about to come down.
It all sounds so pretty on paper, or in the mind. You know, move to the country, grow your own yadayadayada. But start getting those fingernails dirty, or your back hurting, or you don’t have a clue as to how grow lettuce in the winter, or corn in the summer, and all those damn MICE are in your house in the winter. OH MY. And where is MY THERAPIST?
I think that some who move away from the city to the country must have good intentions. But there is a long learning curve to not only provide for oneself, but survive. And I think these newly rich do not understand that they are going to be rowing in the same boat as the rest of us.
No amount of money will get you a free pass.
I pity those who have no clue that their dollars aren’t going to be worth a rats ass in hell.
They are already worth about a quarter apiece, and oh my, isn’t that view over the golf course something?
I was just talking to the guy who first referred me to Cryptogon, where they had hardware store jobs, cashed out of the San Francisco Bay area with perfect timing as their house had tripled value, and got land. Everything on the farmland in the central valley is really expensive, like just getting a septic tank approved. The zoning board condemned their trailer and the solar panels, and $10-20,000 costs for a list of basics like a regulation width gravel driveway, much less a greenhouse, tractor,well,seeds – only possible because one of their household does lucrative translation work 8hrs/day. Anyway, their observation is that all the students in the popular agriculture programs at Univ.California have been failing to make it work, unless they inherit the farm. These organic farm students get jobs improving other people’s farm, but drop out one by one with west nile hospital bills or children and cannot get get enough for their own land plus basic infrastructure.
“sharon Says:Whoever wrote this article is a certifiable moron: Productive use of land is bad; the conversion of timberlands and farm field into lawns is good.”
It is moronic. I understand the U.S. now imports more food than we export. When the rest of the world is starving, why would they continue selling their food to us? We need to be preserving as much farmland as possible to feed ourselves. Or perhaps this is just our social engineers’ way of putting us all on a diet…