my research shows that longtime residents aren’t more likely to move when their neighborhood gentrifies; sometimes they’re actually less likely to leave [...]
In a 2009 study, I found that gentrifying neighborhoods are more racially diverse than non-gentrifying ones. [...]
To be sure, market forces help change commerce in gentrifying neighborhoods. But often lurking behind the “invisible hand” are activists and policymakers who wish to nudge the market to produce certain outcomes.
— washingtonpost.com
Lance Freeman's research at GSAPP focuses on issues related to gentrification, affordable housing, and race. Watch the Washington Post's video below, summing up the myths:
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11 Comments
Bottom up gentrification is not really the problem...it's the top down gentrification that's the problem because it's abrupt, politically connected, greed driven, and artificial (tabula rasa-ish). Developer driven gentrification is the real problem.
That video is awful. It's so nebulous. Here's my parallel example:
Myth: architects have to be good at math.
(groovy funky jazz) Architects call structural engineers to do most of the math. Cool!
Actual reality: architects don't need to do structural calcs but we do need to understand square footage, and costs, and ratios, and PSF loads, and dimensional scale, and a huge host of things involving numbers. But that longer descriptive sentence isn't set to cool music because it's more complex.
The video was so dumb
Given the level in which architects/urban planners research a topic - I call total BS on all of those "facts", they probably went and polled 5 white people in front of the Columbia library went back to their studio and started jamming out on garage band and adobe premier only to make some lame ass video with no basis in research method.
Video is terrible.
That said, I think I might be pro-gentrification. At least when it is an organic process. As jla-x points out, the tabula rasa "urban rebuilding" is almost always a bad thing... but slowly increasing amenities, property values, and investment in neighborhoods is almost invariably good.
I live in a currently gentrifying neighborhood and generally the families and businesses i have talked to like it. It's the assholes smashing bottles on the curb and tagging up business storefronts that are the most vocal complainers.
Gentrification is like Brutalism--a meaningless word focused exclusively on NYC (and SF!). I don't really see how things are changing much at all... Seems the same debates that have been going on forever, where the media pits groups against each other. Are you PRO or ANTI. Corporate bosses used to pit whites and blacks against each other to lower wages, causing race wars. No different today.
What's even more suspect is the ShittyLab Urbanists that use the G Debate to propose garbage housing developments everywhere instead of building cities that value architecture and craft and culture, which is at heart what is in short supply.
not going to watch video but I could easily contrue data to make it look like a good thing. for instance - the poor rent from slum lords. so if things get better the poor leave or stay with rent stabilized until slumords let the building go to shit and then the poor tenants get kicked out for health and safety reasons. at that moment the non neighborhood people begin to move in. at that moment as well the neighborhood is still predominately what it was. now those who owned from the neighborhood will stay or sell and retire in North Carolina or something if prices are right. Eventually though the poor are gone unless its social housing and only those who can afford to move in do - more affluent. the data should be set at least 20 years apart.......when I moved to NYC - Harlem was still Harlem more or less although as a white guy you could walk down 125th without too much heckling. actually had a 5 year old with fists pumping say "whitey get out of here", thats after a nice Oprah looking lady said "honey, you dont want to be looking for rent in that area and dont cross through the park, take the subway." it was mid day........now I go up there for potential jobs and see white girls walking around. over a decade ago i dated a white girl who would be told to go home and get of the neighborhood. one night, while trying to hook up I had to run to the deli to get some hats, in my halloween costume, wife beater tshirt and a plad jacket and gold chain i had to pay for the hats through a bullet proof bank teller window. a 12 year old black on his bike rode up to me and said "be careful!"....just getting some hats man, he laid off.
and i wish i had taken this photo. around 3 months ago i went the wrong way and walked past a church in Harlem, one of those radical black churches sons of Isreal kind of place....the church sign said something to the equivalent "sodomnites and sinners get out of our neighborhood and you are going to get what is coming to you." i was in a hurry, but man I stopped and looked at the sign and thought - thats awesome and hilarious....wad going to Bill Clintons building
Gentrify deez nuts
I agree that gentrifying neighborhoods get more diverse by becoming more white!
In Chicago Gentrification is often confined to places along the EL and in neighborhoods that are about 40% minority, over 40% and gentrification, or the signs of gentrification, don't seem to take hold.
Basically if a Whole foods opens up everything within 5 blocks will have a 10-50% increase in rent within 2 years. Eventually people on disability and fixed income like pensions or retirement get priced out.
The other more thorny aspect of this is when gentrifying neighborhoods become the setting for a clash of cultures and class, then things get nasty.
I am not surprised that folks at Columbia would want to justify their intentional impact on the urban community and to try to create a narrative emphasizing that their role in gentrification is helping not hurting. The thing is most of the changes in the city will produce many winners and losers, not a convenient thing to think about when waiting in line for Starbucks or when looking for your new loft apartment in what used to be an artist collective.
Over and OUT
Peter N
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