Not the same people though. The quote from the article holds true for tenants who cant afford higher rents. Gentrification is generally a processes of displacement. There the old saying, that graffiti tags keep the rent low holds true.
Workers whose skills are no longer needed get let go and have to retrain to more productive skills. People who live in a neighborhood that gets too nice for them to afford wind up moving to a neighborhood they can afford.
If you argue that neighborhoods shouldn't improve because rents will go up, you're basically arguing against economic progress in general.
It's the same as saying a longer-lasting higher-quality product shouldn't be released because it will cost more than the lower-quality one.
You'll see them complaining that rents are too high. And you'll see them objecting that better public transportation would "change the character of the neighbourhood" or whatever, which tends to be code for pushing up the rents.
> Finally, I also doubt that the improvement of public services is the main factor driving land prices up. For instance, here is Lisbon, it's mostly due to the foreigners buying up the stock (more than half the buyers are foreigners). I suspect the cause is similar in London.
No respectable economist agrees with you. Foreign investors are a bogeyman who are easy to blame for everything since they're not there to defend themselves.
It's economic growth. With the exception of retirement communities, it's locally-situated companies producing more value, hiring more employees, paying them more, which results in those employees wanting nicer homes, nicer neighborhoods and better public services. And why shouldn't they?
They want things to get better but to capture all the surplus from the betterness. So they want to continue to live where they did, have the streets be cleaner, have the stores be nicer but not have anything go up in price.
The economy isn't generally zero sum but some things definitely are close to zero sum.