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How to know if where you live is “up and coming”: fried chicken vs. coffee shops

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Re: How to know if where you live is “up and coming”: fried chicken vs. coffee shops

#171

So besides "chicken shops" which must be a regional indicator for poor or undesirable what other establishments are also present? There should be an obvious transition type of business that precedes the coffee shop. Combined with chicken shops perhaps the availability of different businesses could give entrepreneurs an indicator where to set up similar or buy up space?

I'd look at what type of cars are parked in the street at night.

...or the fact that there are cars parked on the street vs not.

I've lived in poor suburban neighborhoods and generally, the poorer the neighborhood, the more cars were parked on the street. I've lived in neighborhoods that looked like used car lots! Poorer neighborhoods tend to have more houses without garages. And in neighborhoods that have garages, the poorer families tend to use their garages as extra bedrooms, workshops, meth labs, basically anything BUT storing cars.

Note, this stereotype probably only works in the suburbs, because in urban areas, every potential parking spot is filled with a car by default.

Re: How to know if where you live is “up and coming”: fried chicken vs. coffee shops

#172
post #50

My "rule-of-thumb" indicator: whether or not there are a lot of check-cashing, bail-bond and furniture rental establishments.

Same principle applies to 'big chain' type retailers and such. If the local grocery stores aren't large regional chain stores... likely not a good area.

What does "likely not a good area" mean? In NYC there are plenty of "nice areas" that don't have major chain stores. In many cities this is the case.

I grow tired of the underlying racism people exhibit (such as yours) without even being aware of it. You're probably not a blatant racist but I think a lot of people from mainstream white culture need to start inspecting and criticizing their view of the world a bit more.

There are a lot of good people living in what you call "not a good area".

Re: How to know if where you live is “up and coming”: fried chicken vs. coffee shops

#173
post #101

Well, China is definitely not an "up and coming" country. I've been here like a week and I already don't want to ever look at chicken in my life again.

Be gentle but firm if the locals keep trying to feed you pizza and fried chicken. Food in China is awesome. Ask to go where the people you are visiting eat lunch normally.

(Restaurant) Food in China is terrible! The bigger the city you are in, the more so. You probably like it because you're not used to the taste of MSG which is used freely and generously in China to cover up stale ingredients. Having eaten out daily in Shanghai and Guangzhou for a few years, I got pretty sick of it.

Re: How to know if where you live is “up and coming”: fried chicken vs. coffee shops

#174
post #30
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peckham is up and coming though, so it seems to have worked to some extent, albeit a year too late.

That's the thing, you'd need to demonstrate how "coffee shop / chicken shop" density correlates with house prices over time, and whether it's a predictor or a lagging indicator. There might be better correlators - art galleries and cocktail bars are probably other good ones, or most effects might be mostly priced in, or house price increases might be mostly related to investment in repairing shoddy properties, etc. e…

You'd have to filter for 'trendy' ones though. Something like cocktail bars based out of shipping containers on top of abandoned multi-storey car parks or cocktail bars with the same names as businesses at the same address that used to be shoe shops. :-) Something like that...

Re: How to know if where you live is “up and coming”: fried chicken vs. coffee shops

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author of the piece should add a times series on violent crime and shootings. These should decrease with time if the area is "up and coming"...

They might spike while gentrification is ongoing, especially in the early stages. My hypothesis for this statement is that more affluent people are: 1. More likely to be robbed (ie: they have items that others want), and 2. More likely to report crimes against them to the police. (ie: They trust the authorities, and they might need police reports to file insurance claims (affluent people are more likely to insure the…

This may be true for non-violent crime.

For violent crime, there is a direct correlation with black Londoners.

"In London in 2006, 75% of the victims of gun crime and 79% of the suspects were "from the African/Caribbean community."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_K...

This does not solely reflect lower socioeconomic standing as Pakistani + Bangladeshi communities have higher levels of poverty, and similarly poor areas of cities in Wales and Scotland do not have the same proportionate level of gun crime that occurs in London.

http://www.poverty.org.uk/06/index.shtml

Re: How to know if where you live is “up and coming”: fried chicken vs. coffee shops

#176
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pawnshops, payday loan services, barber shops... And pubs closed down, because it is too dangerous for them to operate. Also signs on restaurants "Customer only toilets"

Why barber shops? Don't well-to-do people also go to the barber to get their hair cut?

Most have the barber come to them or have a private barber in the building. My office has a separate room and a barber comes in every other week to cut hair.

Re: How to know if where you live is “up and coming”: fried chicken vs. coffee shops

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, check cashing shops are a huge sign I'm in a poor neighborhood. Businesses with signs in Spanish is another, though that's probably specific to Texas and the southwest, since we have a lot of poor Hispanic neighborhoods here. Unfortunately, the Hispanic neighborhoods here are almost universally poor. You go farther north, there probably won't be many Hispanic neighborhoods at all. Put them together, and seein…

Your experience here is a bit anecdotal and might say a bit about what your frame of reference for what it means to be "hispanic". But of course, I don't know you, so feel free to ignore my point :D However, if you walk around the (objectively affluent) La Cantera mall in San Antonio, you'll hear maybe 1/3 of the conversations in Spanish. About 30% of the folks in Texas speak Spanish, so if you're in Texas you're in…

As someone who lived in florida, those affluent hispanic areas don't have billboards in spanish. Billboards in spanish signal a large amount of single-language homes, and when that single language isn't the native tongue it doesn't bode well for socio-economic prospects

Re: How to know if where you live is “up and coming”: fried chicken vs. coffee shops

#178
This analysis is simplistic and flawed.

It asserts a correlation between the fried chicken/coffee shop ratio index and home price, which is reasonable enough. It then assumes that homes that are undervalued vis-a-vis their implied value by the FC/CS index are up and coming. This likely makes sense in an environment of overall rising house prices. However if house prices are falling or stagnant overall it may be the coffee shops which are lagging the market.

Re: How to know if where you live is “up and coming”: fried chicken vs. coffee shops

#179
post #10

There's no justification for the assumption of a high coffee-to-chicken ratio implying up-and-coming. It's not an unreasonable assumption, but it's definitely anecdotal.

Well, as are most things in life, even in science before they are checked out -- they start as observations. The important thing is whether it serves well as a predictor. If we were that interested we could do a scientific analysis, counting coffee shops and chicken places in different urban areas, averaging incomes, checking trends etc. But since it's not that important to most of us, we can just use it as a kind of…

right, which shows you the value of Big Data. Probably the best measures of real estate value trends are available not to real estate experts, but to Google starting with everybody's inboxes, combined with search, geolocation, etc.

Re: How to know if where you live is “up and coming”: fried chicken vs. coffee shops

#180

A more interesting indicator that authors may consider is how many people living in the area do jogging. When I moved to London's SE4 postcode three years ago (it's pretty close to Peckham, FWIW), the regeneration of the area has just started and the more middle-class looking people appeared around, the more men and women in running gear were visible in the streets in the morning. Poor on average take worse care of t…

Jogging, fried chicken, and coffee shops.

Yup. You'd be paying fines and penalties if you posted this from the USA. I doubt there'd be criminal prosecution under 42 USC unless you repeatedly continued posting this kind of content after warnings, but that is not legal advice.

It's illegal for anyone involved in the housing or real estate industries to propagate racist information. Also it's illegal to advocate racist opinions about housing policy in public discussions.

And jogging is just as obvious as fried chicken and coffee shops.

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