Comment by Silfen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Silfen | Hacker News Reader

I have some "old Seattle" credentials. I grew up in Capitol Hill. I absolutely believe that Amazon is unfairly scapegoated, but at the same time do understand the gripes that many have about the city's changes. The most bitter are just the vocal minority, but there are many more natives who are uncomfortable to some degree. Given that I'm also a tech-yuppie-gentrifier, I think a lot of the toxicity is unfortunate and misdirected.

While it's definitely a terrible idea to fossilize a city, some parts of town are entirely unrecognizable, even from what they looked like three years ago. I don't long for the SLU of old or the abandoned lots of the Denny triangle, but there was an entire "sense of place" that was wiped out almost overnight. The wrong people are blamed for it, but I can completely understand where the grievances originate.

I'd place the blame most squarely on the NIMBY establishment and our single family zoning. There were bound to be growing pains from all this growth, but they didn't have to be so extreme. If we could upzone Magnolia and Wallingford, it would give the CD/south seattle renters quite a bit of relief.

I also think that the HQ2 stuff has much more to do with hitting the limits of our transit and housing infrastructure than the leftward swing of city politics, but that's probably best left to another post.

>> but there are many more natives who are uncomfortable to some degree.

Seattle native who also grew up on Capitol Hill, and still lives here. As a home owner since the late 90s, the Amazon boom has dramatically increased my net worth.

But that said, I'd much rather have the house be worth $300k if it would mean the last 7 years hadn't happened. It's really been too much, too fast. I didn't buy a house here to get rich, I bought here because my family and friends are here.

The thing that really bugs me is the loss of community, and what exists where the sense of community used to be: crowding, the ever increasing spread of pockets of artificiality, pretentious restaurants, luxury cars swarming the hill, and outsiders absolutely as far as the eye can see.

Furthermore, if you look at the responses in this in comments on Reddit, or in comments on articles, you can see the response we get for saying that that the wholesale destruction of our community makes us uncomfortable: "shut up you fucking ingrate", or my favorite, from people who actually believe that they are liberal, "yeah, it sucks that people can't afford it, but I got mine".

We are talking about the wholesale, unchecked destruction of entire communities. Virtually all of my friends who don't own property are gone. We have neighbors from China who don't talk to anyone. Everyone is from someone else, and just here to consume or make it big or whatever. The property values are attracting people with real wealth and/or speculators, and if I wanted to live around Yuppie Gentrifiers, I would have moved to Madison Park.

There is very little sense of community left. I feel like Amazon should have made its own town somewhere else, and left us ours.

Oh so the problem is that the new people speak the wrong language.

This breaks the HN guidelines, which ask: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

More generally, would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments here? If you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

So, I get that you feel like your home is threatened and changing. You feel like this is your town, your neighborhood and you liked it that way. I'm sorry that you're experiencing such psychic pain.

You are empowered to vote for representation that can protect these communities. In this case, for whatever reason, it appears not enough people in the community wielded their power to create the outcome that you think is best.

Aside: I'm from a small town that is experience crazy growth as well. In my life time, we've gone from a single stop light to 10 and have doubled in size. Our water table is unable to cope with the new amount of people -- there is a real risk that the aquifer will deplete. Another side effect, water is becoming more expensive. The response to this problem hasn't been to blame new residents, it's been political efforts to restrict new development.

I think when one lives somewhere, it becomes your town. That's kind of the definition of community.

The world population is increasing, and people are moving from rural areas and smaller cities to large cities in record numbers in every country on earth. The generations behind you want the opportunity to live in cities too. What gives you more right than they?

There are plenty of cities that aren't growing, even very nice ones. Cincinnati, St. Louis. If you wanted things to stay the same for your entire adult life, you should have picked one of those.

And wherever your friends move to, people like you will look down on then for being "outsiders".

Many newcomers didn't choose to not have enough jobs in their home town. I'm sure many would have preferred being able to stay with their friends instead of moving to Seattle for jobs.

You could try making friends with newcomers instead of walling yourself off from them.

As someone who worked for Amazon in Seattle, the above poster is partly right. Most of it has to do with Amazon's toxic culture and hiring practices. They will hire anyone with a pulse, speaking English decently not required, having a personality not required. So you end up having people who are just there to make money and have little desire to connect with humanity.

Your friends leave town as you get into late twenties and thirties, regardless of city. Your loss of community may be correlated with Amazon's growth, but it may not have been caused by it.

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