In my local community I can’t really say that there is any particular sense of community. 

 Rather than being a matter of how well everyone gets along, it has more to do with my neighborhood being in a constant state of flux than anything else.  Gentrification has torn down not just a bunch of old, dilapidated buildings but a certain loss of community has gone down with it.  I suppose it’s difficult for people to come together as a community when the community is always changing but it’s even harder when what is built in its place is just a bank.

 Just this summer for example, across from my apartment building the abandoned warehouse that housed an assortment of bums and what one friend describes as “cart people” was torn down and an Xsport Fitness was erected on the land.  I once had a nice view of the skyline but now I get to stare at the brick wall of a parking structure that is a mere forty feet from my living room window.

  In addition to the new eyesore on my block, my neighborhood is filled with shopping plazas, overflowing parking lots and new condominiums.  In just a two block radius, all of my needs can be conveniently met when I decide to visit Target, CVS Pharmacy, the currency exchange, the Laundromat, grocery store, bowling alley, movie theater, Starbucks, or of course, the local Italian beef joint.

  But if you walk down a few blocks in the other direction, you will find that the other half of my neighborhood consists of 35 acres of three- and four-story apartment building projects and two-story row housing.

  Many of the young kids, kids who have probably been living in this neighborhood their whole lives, often graffiti or tag the new buildings going up during construction.  People think it’s sad that the youth of today can’t respect the developers who are improving the neighborhood.  But I have a sneaking suspicion that the kids do it because they don’t necessarily want someone coming in and improving the neighborhood, especially when that improvement has been written off and delayed for the entire length of their short lifespan.  The lower income families that have probably lived here for two or more decades may not be able to afford the higher property values and higher taxes that come along with neighborhood improvement.  So sometimes I really wonder whose side I should be on.  The guy with the bulldozer or the kid with the spray paint can? 

 I can’t blame anyone for being adverse to improvement because even though I’ve walked these streets for more than a decade, I can’t seem to remember what used to be in the building before that coffee shop was there or which storefront the bookstore occupied before it moved across the street.  In my local neighborhood where construction is swift and the changes are rapid, I’m glad I probably still have a year or two left before someone buys out my apartment building from my landlord and I have to move.