This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

image from from the Box Tank
I missed this, but apparently Queens is right for gentrification:

“It seems to be the next big thing,” says Pamela Liebman, the president and chief executive of the Corcoran Group. “Queens has this gritty feel to it in parts, which makes it feel cool. When I go to speaking engagements and people ask what is the next big thing, a lot of speakers are starting to say, ‘Queens, Queens, Queens.’ ”
“there is sort of constellation, almost a critical mass, of visual art in Long Island City,” Mr. McMillan said.
“You get the artists and sculptors hanging around, opening up studios and living in that area,” he said. “That is exactly the kind of thing you want for the development and creation of a new neighborhood.”

Sounds about right: figure out which neighborhoods have large artist populations, talk up the neighborhood as the “next big thing,” allow large developments, raise rents, displace the poor and artists leaving the Upper East Side-like neighborhoods where a thriving, ethnically-diverse neighborhood was.
How to fight it? I don’t know – but I think there may be no way to fight gentrification.