Chip and Joanna Gaines' Fixer Upper is having a gentrifying effect on Waco, Texas

BuzzFeed News

The Gainses' success has brought a flood of money and tourists into the small city in Central Texas. Yet the restoration of the city that used to be known for the 1993 David Koresh/Branch Davidian standoff hasn't been completely welcomed, especially by those who are being excluded from the New Waco. "Waco has Chip and Jo, which is to say, they have the Magnolia effect: a small town made charming instead of claustrophobic, a haven for small businesses in place of never-ending big-box retail plazas," reports Anne Helen Peterson. "And for many who do come to Waco in a kind of pilgrimage to Magnolia, once they’ve spent time downtown, the experience morphs into something almost holy — an American civic ideal, remodeled for the 21st century." Peterson adds that Waco's old reputation was the "Old Waco, some might say — and this is the New, restored through hard work and time and grace and gleaming, freshly painted exteriors. But the thing about restoration is that the underlying structures — physical or institutional — remain intact. You can’t fix a broken foundation until you acknowledge what caused the cracks in the first place. You can’t rectify a history of exclusion without seeing the ways in which your hospitable city might still not be welcoming to all."