The gentrification of St. Paul’s Ramsey Hill — now fictionalized in the New Yorker!

by Staff
Published: June 8,2009
Time posted: 1:00 am
Tags: fiction, gentrification, St. Paul, urban development

Noted fiction writer Jonathan Franzen wrote “Good Neighbors,” a fiction piece in the June 8th issue of New Yorker magazine focused on the adventures of new homeowners in St. Paul’s gentrifying Ramsey Hill neighborhood. From the Volvos to the neuroses, this slice of the St. Paul experience rings true — and it certainly addresses the political anxieties and contradictions involved with gentrification and development.

Franzen’s 2001 novel, The Corrections, was a top-selling account of the pitfalls of Midwestern middle-class life; this new piece focuses on the earlier phase of gentrification (before the wine bars arrived, one could say). Sure, it’s fiction, but its apt enough to nearly qualify as journalism, too! A brief excerpt:

From her first day in the neighborhood, she was helplessly conspicuous. Tall, ponytailed, absurdly young, pushing a stroller past stripped cars and broken beer bottles and barfed-upon old snow, she might have been carrying all the hours of her day in the string bags that hung from her stroller. Behind her you could see the baby-encumbered preparations for a morning of baby-encumbered errands; ahead of her, an afternoon of public radio,

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