flâneur

Crawling the City

logicmag.io · 1,915 words · saved by 1 readers

Apps like Yelp and Foursquare don’t just map the city. They gentrify it.

Crawling the City Will Payne By enlisting millions of smartphone users to make cities more legible for consumption, apps like Foursquare and Yelp are also helping gentrify them. Everyone knows what gentrification looks like. Community gathering places are replaced by boutiques and bank branches. Corner stores are made obsolete by VC-funded vending machine startups . Blocks that spent decades in a state of disrepair sprout Michelin-starred bistros and cocktail bars—some even trading on the allure of formerly stigmatized neighborhoods with Instagram-ready touches like fake bullet holes and 40-ou

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