“Or discussions around displacement and gentrification, when free-market urbanists try to hammer it in that if we just build more, everything will work itself out. But this ignores that relying solely on a market rife with institutional racism means that while more affordable housing in historically black communities may be built, the commercial affordability for black owned small businesses is eliminated, or new white residents prefer a $5 cupcake to patronizing the black-owned pastry shop, simply continuing the sucking dry of wealth and income in black communities, in turn pushing more and more families out of our city.”
This doesn’t make any sense. The market urbanist solution for rising commercial rents is that, if allowed, developers will respond by building more commercial space.
This is why Tokyo has such an abundance of affordable restaurants.
