The gentrification of East Boston is happening even more quickly than expected.

It was only in May of this year that an editorial entitled “Time To Find The City’s Next Hot Neighborhood” ran in this space. We noted then that the Seaport had jumped the shark with the installation of not one but two Starbucks – which, as we all know, is the harbinger of hipster doom – and called Eastie the next hotspot.

Eastie’s time has come. Luxury condominium and apartment developments are coming online in the neighborhood’s formerly affordable streets. Rents are spiking. Parking spaces are disappearing. No Starbucks yet, though.

Revere is seeing a similar spurt of luxury development. Steve Adams reported early last month on the development of two luxury apartment complexes with more than 400 total units, the first phase of the 1.4-million-square-foot Waterfront Square. The development will fill nearly 9 acres of parking lot next Wonderland Station; up to 900 market-rate housing units could be built, along with ground-floor retail space.

Even Chelsea is starting to causing a stir. Luxury in Chelsea – will wonders never cease? The former embarrassment to the commonwealth is drawing daring developers betting on a complete turnaround in the tiny city to the north. Almost every condo on the market has been gut-rehabbed and foreclosures are snapped up in a matter of days.

Of course it was only a matter of time until developers looked beyond Boston’s borders for feasible opportunities, and the financial reasons for the creation of luxury developments are well documented. Gentrification is a tale as old as time – or at least as old as Boston, where minorities and immigrants have long been pushed to the fringes of the city’s neighborhoods. It happened in Brighton and Allston, in the Fenway and the North End, and most recently in South Boston. Outside the city it’s happening in Medford and Somerville.

Now it will happen in East Boston. Then Revere. Then Chelsea. Probably Dorchester too. Before too long the outlying neighborhoods and cities, once the home of lower-income residents, will teem with students, young professionals and down-sizers. The grand luxury towns and penthouses, new and old, will likely be empty more often than not, as foreign investors safely park their cash in Boston’s red-hot housing.

But if we do not make room for our neighbors in this bright future, we risk losing what has made our city great.

Pushed to the fringes and then to the suburbs, the current affordable housing problem is set to become an affordable housing crisis. Home prices in inner-ring suburbs will continue to skyrocket, followed by the outer ring – and then, heaven forbid, beyond that, past 495 and into the area marked “here there be dragons” on Boston-centric maps. If apartments in Chelsea can command luxury rents, anything is possible.

Anything is possible. It’s possible we’ll anticipate and mitigate the wreckage unbridled growth will leave in its wake – but it’s a lot more likely we’ll stumble blindly off that cliff.