Globe & Mail // Thanks to gentrification, my slum is now on the leading edge of cool
"... flocking to what used to be called “inner-city” neighbourhoods, where they can walk to stores and schools, take transit instead of a car..."
"...From my own door step near Dundas and Dovercourt, I’ve had a front-row seat on this phenomenon. When I bought my house two decades ago, I told my father how much I’d paid. “A quarter of a million to live in a slum, eh?” he helpfully remarked.
In his eyes, sketchy downtown neighbourhoods like mine were something you escaped, as he himself had done when he moved away from his childhood home near Queen and Woodbine, across from the noisome race track, and settled in genteel Moore Park. Today, my generation, and even more so the generation after, are flocking to what used to be called “inner-city” neighbourhoods, where they can walk to stores and schools, take transit instead of a car to work and step out for a drink at Henhouse after dinner...."
