Finally

I live in DC (the District of Columbia).  It's known for many things (good and ill) but one of the things it is most known for recently is rapid and dramatic urban upscale renovation (a.k.a., "gentrification").

Now, a lot of things (good and ill) have been said about gentrification.  In my own life, I have been both its beneficiary (as a resident whose home value tripled) and its victim (as a business owner whose shops couldn't keep pace with changing costs).  But in either case it's mostly a natural economic phenomenon.  Just as scrub gives way to bushes and then trees in a biome, an economically poor neighborhood will sometimes be superseded by a wealthier resident/business profile.  This is particularly true if it possess some locational advantage (such as proximity to a transportation hub). There are quite a few neighborhoods in my city -- including my own -- where the opening of a subway station caused a complete rebirth.

And speaking of rebirth in DC....

We seem to be having one in DC (Comics, that is).  

In the real world of urbanism, gentrification happens where it's easiest: it neighborhoods where there are a lot or properties that are abandoned or deteriorating or unused or nonfunctional or dangerous or toxic or some such.  At least that's true in a big city where there is a ready supply of such areas.  

Anywhere where things are bad but not terrible, there are usually attempts (often by government entities) to stanch the bleed out of residents and businesses.  Usually those don't work and if anything just perpetuate the place's poverty.  Eventually, an area can 'hit bottom' enough that, with property values low and lot of opportunities for redevelop, it becomes a place that redevelopment naturally flows to, like water seeking its level.

In the DCU, those physical buildings and areas are instead intellectual properties. Flash. Green Lantern. Hawkman. The Justice Society.  Aquaman.  Those IPs were, essentially, abandoned by DC ...until Geoff Johns 'redeveloped' them (for the most part with great success).

Now, however, after several well-meant attempts by DC Editorial to prop up its neighborhood with patches and odd projects (which I like to picture as 'digital monorails'), DC has admitted that the DCU is broken down and (increasingly) abandoned. At least by readers, myself included.   Sufficiently decrepit, in fact, to be ripe for wholesale gentrification.

They have turned to the creative conscience that has guided their recent strong successes in other media, the same one that guided the earlier in-print renovation of many IPs deemed toxic and irreparably damaged. He is certainly not without his flaws as a writer (who is?)... but he "gets it".  Geoff Johns understands something that Dan Didio never has: why people like DC Comics.  Dan Didio has, on average, only been able to see what's not working in the DCU and to react against it; Geoff Johns is able to conceive of what could work and aim toward it.

You may be skeptical; you have every right to be, given DC's many 'reboots'.  And cynicism is certainly always in fashion.

But I for one finally have something I haven't had in the DCU for a while now:

hope.

Perhaps all may yet be well.