Happy to have a new Apple Store two blocks from my home, but is it good for the city?

Credit Ehsan Zaffar

The newest Apple Store is opening up in a historic Washington D.C. library. It looks great and it’s only a few minutes walk from my home, so as an Apple customer for decades I’m super excited. But as someone who thinks about resilient communities and civil rights, I’m also concerned and dissapointed.

The opening of this store in a historic space is another example of rampant gentrification, without any thought being given to the original, and generally less well-off inhabitants of the community in which this store opens. Apple will profit tremendously from this store, which is across the street from the DC Convention Center. Yet far as I can tell, nothing was done to engage and assist the community members that used to thrive here, and some of whom still live only one block away. None of them can afford the Apple iPhones that will now be sold in one of their former public library buildings.

Apple could have done a lot to be a good neighbor. For instance, Apple could h…