A neighborhood that is up-and-coming is one where the rents are still low and the listing agent expects them not to stay that way. The phrase sells the future, which costs nothing, and declines to describe the present, which is where the people who already live there are.

Like “cozy,” this is a fully decoded euphemism; every buyer knows it means “cheap and changing.” What is interesting is what it does not decode to. “Up-and-coming” never says up from what. The families who will be priced out are not in the phrase. They are the “and” between “up” and “coming.”

Mamet argues that a euphemism hides the speaker from the thing, not the thing from the world. Nobody is fooled about what happens to a neighborhood that is up-and-coming. The phrase exists so that the people profiting from it do not have to say so.