Gentrification is good for the poor

In an old bar on U Street in Washington, DC--a place that was once a centre of black life and is now an inferno of hipsterdom--Jay, the bartender, is talking about how the area has changed over the past decade or so. "They ain't got barmen any more," he says, with a grin. "They got mixologists." What happens in Washington, he explains, is that young white professionals move in, bars open, "and then you know that all the bodegas and liquor stores on every corner, they ain't got long either." Such...