A large corporate shopping mall settles in a nice neighborhood with small local run shops and community centers. The new shopping mall says ‘if we settle here, more people will come, and you all will benefit’. A few years later all small shops are bankrupt and the community is destroyed. What remains is a barren corporate landscape.
That’s much better and more succinct than the similar-but-awkward-and-meandering I posted the other day. I don’t know if “gentrify” is necessarily the most accurate word, but i think the broader theme of the death of downtown definitely is apt.