I grew up in Fort McMurray, home of the Canadian oilsands.
I remember this being a small place and the local newspaper running the story that the place moved from “town” to “City” status.
In the early 2000s this place boomed. Went from about 35000 population to 90000 (there was talk of about 140000 in the region, many people flying in and working out of campus).
During this time, we were getting lots of bad press… The media running stories of rampant drugs in the area and that sort of thing. They used footage from outside the seediest bar in town at 3 a.m. of you go to any town or city and hang out at the lowlife bar at 3 a.m. you can claim how horrible the place is. In reality, this place is filled with young working families. Sure, we have some problems but then any place in earth.
The 2008 financial crisis was kind of a break. By this, I mean that this place was so busy that this slightly impact to the region meant that, for the first time in about 5 years, I had an opportunity to hire some semi-qualified people. In the past 5 years, some of the interviews I had with people (this is for IT jobs) were just ridiculously bad.
2014 saw the price of oil crash. That definitely slowed things down here, moving it from a boom town to a normal place.
2016 brought the wildfires. You may have seen it on the news. 88000 people evacuated from the city.
In 2020, a flood struck our downtown area. Folks from that area were evacuated to other areas.
Currently, we have another wildfire in the region. About 6000 people are currently evacuated but as I understand it, the fire still a ways away and it has been raining a bit over the last couple of days, so I am not overly concerned for the homes of evacuees.
So, my home town has gone through lots of chance and challenges over the years. It was built on a real pioneering spirit and I’m proud of the that the people have demonstrated through the hard times.
It was kind of a dying former factory small city for a long time, only notable for producing a pair of famous serial killers of all things, and in the last ten years it got an arts centre and suddenly the downtown is thriving. I wouldn’t want to live there again but I’m glad for the city that it has some rejuvenation.
Well, they finally finished the shopping center they were building for like 15 years.
Some company bought some land and had it all setup for construction (giant mounds of red clay and everything). Then they ran out of money. And it sat there for years, visible to everyone who drove by. A few years back, some company bought the and created a shopping center.
Loads of renovated parks and buildings, parts that used to be sketchy have mostly improved, the town center has become richer, while a lot of people who grew up here have moved to the suburbs.
In a lot of ways not much. No zoning for mulit unit lots so population probably has stayed about the same. The area around has become a lot more developed with a biotech boom. There used to be a forest across the street and now it’s been turned into a whole foods and business park. The college town nearby has exploded and taken over every square inch in apartments. You can walk around town though and it looks mostly the same but hippies and college professors have been replaced by yuppy tech bro families that like their gardens much more manicured instead of lush and wild.
My hometown was in Canada’s top-ten communities in decline for years. These days, it’s got two-thirds the population it used to, the streets are full of deer, and quite a few farmers’ fields have turned into forests. Almost everyone my age that I knew moved away long ago. Going back is always shocking.
I’m currently living at home in Tangerang. It’s a commercial city in the local metropolitan area of Jakarta. My city went from rice fields and factories to modern office buildings for major international businesses.
They usually say that in Tangerang, everyday they build something new. It could be just about anything. It could be a shopping mall, an apartment building, or a place of recreation. I’ll never get bored in here.
We had a pretty cheap NFL stadium. Then, a new owner built a Biggie! With lots of retail and restaurants around it. The team went on to win 6 Super Bowls! It’s a great benefit to the town’s budget.
Luckily, that whole complex is away from the center/downtown area. It has stayed very New England village like. Really nice central park and plenty of small businesses. A community theater and a new brewpub that went into the old fire station.
There are countless people that have visited town for the football games and have never seen the town center. Of course, that’s a double edge sword, not inundated with people, but, lose out on more $$ for the small businesses.
*The population is 50 times what it was when I was a kid.
*All the cool places we used to hang out at school as kids are fenced off.
*The big tree that shaded half the yard of the house I grew up in was cut down. The property has been split into 3 separate “apartments” for rent. Everything was repainted and the yard looks nothing like it used to.
*Everything around town has been built up. Most of the empty fields have businesses or houses on them.
*The lake my grandfather and I used to fish at is no longer publically accessible. The lake was choked to death by algae caused by farm run off pollution.
*The main road is paved, has gutters, street lights etc. and isn’t a dirt road anymore like it was when I was little.
*Trains don’t go through the railroad going through town. They haven’t for years so no train watching.
Long before I was born, my town was a working class mill town, steel mill, tire factory, textile mills, etc. the steel mill is still there, but it’s not a big feature of the town like it once was.
Even up into my lifetime, it was still essentially a working class town, nothing wrong with it, perfectly safe town, walkable, convenient to pretty much every major highway, public transportation, major shopping areas, etc. but it just had a little bit of a reputation for being kind of a slightly lower class town compared to a lot of its neighbors.
Within the last decade or so it’s kind of exploded, property values have gone through the roof, lots of cool bars and restaurants, a whole bunch of new high rise apartment buildings, etc. It’s attracted a lot of yuppies and priced a lot of the old families out of the area. It’s also created some significant traffic and parking issues, with new apartments and such bringing in more people, and people wanting to come into town for the bars and restaurants and such the infrastructure just isn’t there for that many cars.
I can’t afford to live there anymore, but with my parents and relatives who still live there not getting any younger, sooner or later I should be able to snag up one of their houses, my sister already managed to snag my grandmother’s house for herself.
Like all cases of gentrification it has its plusses and minuses. The bars and restaurants and other new businesses are pretty great. Getting priced out of the town my family has lived in for over a century kind of blows, even if I have a roadmap laid out in front of me to get back. Some of my favorite cheap dive bars are no longer very cheap or divey, which is a bummer. The traffic can be a nightmare when you have to deal with it. The character of the town has definitely changed, there’s a definite difference in attitude between people who have deep roots there, own homes, and intend to spend the rest of their lives here and the newcomers, landlords, house flippers, renters, etc. who don’t have any real attachment to the town.
The biggest problem I have with the gentrification here is that if all the housing is expensive, the city will suck because the people who work here can’t live here. We still have all the little places for now, all the restaurants and coffee shops and the pay is not good here (for all jobs) compared to similar sized cities elsewhere. Like, do we really want cops to not live where they work? Do we expect people to commute to work at the fast food places and grocery stores, the bodegas and botanicas?
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