As I am sure most of you are all aware, London, because of high transport costs, lack of space on which to build any more suburbia and the sky-high cost of land, has been undergoing mass gentrification of its inner-city in the last 30 years or so.

Once down-at-heel areas such as Notting Hill and Islington were the first parts of the inner-city to experience this in the 80s and early 90s - now they are not only considered up and coming, but in some respects are now even smarter than traditionally rich areas to the west and southwest such Kensington and Chelsea.

Now the process is moving on to areas to the east and south - Shoreditch is now as expensive as any area in central London, and Bethnal Green, Bermondsey and Dalston are not far behind.

Does any other city have it just as extreme? What are the most transformed parts of your inner city?

Stockholm is also like that, the inner city is practically emptied of working class people. Old industrial areas close to the inner city are turned in to up market housing for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammarby_Sj%C3%B6stad. The main problem is housing shortage and that even though many new flats ae built it isnt enough.

Canberra - The inner-north. Use to be full of deros and potheads and the houses were old and crummy. Now it's where all the young professional types want to live and they're rapidly knocking down the old freestanders and replacing them with new apartments and town-houses.

Sydney - Inner-west and inner-south. Due to worsening traffic conditions, living closer to the city is the goal and once derelict inner-city suburbs (Redfern, Waterloo, Newtown and Surry Hills being prime examples) are becoming the most desired areas in the city. There's still pockets of the old roughage here and there, but they've become, and continue to get, more exclusive.

In Brussels the innercity district of Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, being +- 70% Muslim, mostly North Africans. Neighborhood is dangerous and housing looks like crap.

There is also an innercity city district in the south called Matongewijk. Most people that live here are central Affricans coming form Congo. Neigbourhood looks nice and save.

Then there is the European district which houses a lot of EU bureaucrats and people from the USA.

Typical examples of gentrification in Hamburg:
- the street "Lange Reihe"
- the district "Schanzenviertel" and the adjacent "Karoviertel"

One could say that these parts of Hamburg are just returning to their original state as most buildings in these areas are bourgeois-style and often ornamented buildings.

In NYC, I know that Long Island City is now a haven for artists. Abandoned and run down factories and buildings are now being bought and converted into studios and "hip" apartments

Does anyone know of an example of gentrified areas once-again becoming rough?

I could see it happening in London if the housing crisis continues and people stop investing in property and doing them up all the time.

I'm from London and it has to be the Docklands without a doubt.

For Toronto its got to be Cabbagetown. In the 1800s it was mostly working-class Irish immigrants. After that it turned into slums. It started getting gentrified in the early 1970s and has been one of the Toronto's richer areas ever since.

Don't know about neighbourhoods getting de-gentrified, but in Toronto (and many other cities) parts of the inner suburbs that were once middle-class have become increasingly poor.

In San Francisco I think it would have to be Noe Valley, which used to be a working class area but is almost all "yuppies" now. Beautiful neighborhood though

My homecity Stockholm has undergone an huge gentrification in the innercity.

There are no gentrified areas in Duluth. We're about 20-30 years behind the curve in this respect.

The Uptown neighborhood is probably the most gentrified in Minneapolis. It's not only gentrified, it's stereotypically gentrified, with hipsters and all. Summit (near the beautiful basilica) may be the most gentrified in St. Paul.

Where do people get the money to live in "upmarket housing" in Sweden? Taxes alone there occupy more than half of an average person's income, and salaries (in terms of purchasing power) are at about or even below U.S. levels...

In Mexico there are a lot of gentrified and de-gentrified areas, for example Santa Fé in Mexico City used to be a small town with slums and a big wasteland, and now it is the newest bussiness district, with a lot of nature, high class people universities and new constructions, also the Western Country Club was a complete slum, which turned into a lot of nice residential buildings.

Also in all the city you can see in the same street rich homes and a medium class or poor home right next to it, everything is combined. This is how urban areas develop here. They are first slums or a small town, the big city reaches it, and then medium class people come to habit there.

Santa Fé 1995 - 2003
http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd297/gabrielbabb/stafe800x610.jpg


Santa Fé 2010
http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd297/gabrielbabb/sta-fe.jpg
http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd297/gabrielbabb/sta-fe-2.jpg

Country Club 2010
http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd297/gabrielbabb/country.jpg

In Philadelphia, the most gentrified areas are without a doubt Manayunk, Fairmount, Queen Village, Bella Vista, University City, and Old City. The more interesting gentrifying areas are Northern Liberties, Fishtown, Southwest Center City, East Passyunk, East Falls, Francisville, and to some extent Brewerytown, Kensington, and Parkside. Roughly speaking.

An assessment of gentrification in Philadelphia is that it is radiating from the two cores of Center City proper and Chestnut Hill, and that the rate of neighborhood gentrification is happening quite fast, and interestingly enough, getting faster. Francisville, for instance, wasn't on anybody's radar till last year. Intensive gentrification of a neighborhood just west of Temple University, which is so new it hasn't got a name other than the "Templetown" appellation bestowed on every neighborhood ringing campus, just started gentrifying intensively this past summer!

for toronto it's cabbagetown.

In Sydney, the areas that have been gentrified are:

Potts Point, once a neighbourood filled with prostitutes and strip clubs is now a fashionable place to live, with many new luxury apartments being built.

Glebe, used to be filled with public housing and drugs, gentrified by students and young professionals, and partly helped by the construction of a new light rail line in the early 2000s.

Paddington, was a working class neighbourhood, now you will struggle to find a terrace house for less than a million dollars.

I can only think of one place that is being gentrified at the moment:

Redfern and Waterloo, still has lots of 1960s public housing complexes that house plenty of junkies, gang members and other undesirables, but new developments are slowly making Redfern and Waterloo much nicer places to live. Students are also moving into the area due to the cheap housing.

For Houston I would have to say either Montrose or Midtown.

For Buenos Aires I would have to say Puerto Madero.

Puerto Madero or Palermo SoHo in Buenos Aires.