ECO-GENTRIFICATION?

Check out the fine NY Times article published back in July 18, titled Going Up the Country, but Keeping All Your Toys. I have mixed feelings at best about what I call eco-gentrification. According to the article, rich yuppies from the Big Apple are doing the ecological thing and moving back to the land- in this case the land in Hudson Valley. When ecological sustainability becomes a pricey privilege, paradise spots (in NY state or anywhere) are overrun by an environmentally destructive growth and development boom and by socially regressive gentrification. No matter how eco-conscious and well intended the yuppie colonizers are, it's just another boom-and-bust cycle in which natural resources are privatized, exploited, destroyed and then abandoned.

This is just what is happening in Culebra, a Puerto Rican paradise island just north of Vieques. It is being developed to death by an invasion of realtors, speculators, tourism entrepreneurs and construction companies. These well-to-do "eco-tourists" are simply destroying the place, no matter how ecologically minded they are.