Last week’s New York Times has a somewhat dumb article by Thomas Chatterton Williams called “How Hipsters Ruined Paris,” which describes how Paris is changing:

Today, the neighborhood has been rechristened “South Pigalle” or, in a disheartening aping of New York, SoPi. Organic grocers, tasteful bistros and an influx of upscale American cocktail bars are quietly displacing the pharmacies, dry cleaners and scores of seedy bar à hôtesses that for decades have defined the neighborhood.

Elsewhere, the usual complaints appear: “Our neighborhood, though safe and well on its way to gentrification…” But demand to live in Paris is rising while the supply of housing remains constant, or close to constant—which means prices rise, and richer people move into once-poorer neighborhoods, and bring with them their predilections for high-end coffee and fancy bars and all the similar stuff I and my ilk like. If you want more diverse neighborhoods, you have to get lower rents, and the only effective way to accomplish that is through taller buildings—which, quelle horreur, destroy the character of the neighborhood!

Matt Yglesias wrote about this basic problem in The Rent is Too Damn High, which continues to go unread and uncited by people writing about neighborhoods, whose work would be improved by knowledge.