January 2004
The People's Republic of StarbucKEA
Patrick notes a very interesting post of Adam Greenfield's on the disproportionate amount of energy spent by our young Adbusting types on "uncooling" consumer brands such as IKEA and Starbucks. Greenfield says:
The dynamic at work in both cases is one many of us might recognize from bad relationships: when a deeply wounded person suffering from low self-esteem finally fights back against the various agents of their distress, very often it's the closest, most sympathetic soft target they lash out at first, in defiance of all logic (or justice).
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January 27, 2004 in Current Affairs , Design , Food and Drink | ✍ 10
Gentrification and the Faux-Bombardiers
Why is gentrification such a dirty word?
James Kunstler wrote quite eloquently about the misguided politics of anti-gentrification activists in his book The City In Mind. In an interview with the right-on Christian Science Monitor, he said:
"If you're against gentrification, you're saying, well, we don't want the well-off to come up and fix up this property in the city. Are you simply going to say, the well-off have no business fixing up urban property at all? Are they morally restricted to living somewhere else? Where is that somewhere else? The suburbs? Because that's where they are."
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