"try to become at least acquainted with your neighbors, observe and see how things are done and kind of try to fit in...I think with gentrification it doesn't necessarily work that way because we are talking about by definition, people from a different background coming into the neighborhood" — Marketplace - Money
Lizzie O'Leary asks Lance Freeman, Associate Professor in the Urban Planning program, author of There Goes the Hood: Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up, "Do you think there is a way to be an ethical gentrifier"? Related Happy Fifty Years, Gentrification!
21 Comments
@Tyler520
We have to respect and preserve neighborhoods because we are dealing with communities of people, all of whom deserve respect. Notwithstanding the point that remedies for poor education, high unemployment and crime exist beyond gentrification.
An out with the old(lower class) in with the new(slightly higher class) model of development is in fact societal entropy. Let's not pretend that shuffling the same deck of cards is an adequate alternative to substantive progress on these issues.
Tyler, there is so much wrong with your post that I don't know where to start. First lets talk about entropy. All systems tend towards entropy. Entropy is necessary for a healthy system. Order and sterility create a vulnerable system not capable of withstanding changes. Entropy is the basis of the universe and all natural systems. See the second law of thermodynamics. In urban ecologies as in "natural" ecologies entropy provides resilience which is a fundamental trait for stability. Much of our problems are rooted in the fact that we ordered out society in a way that reduces natural entropic order. Our centralized system of goods for instance is so vulnerable that if the oil stops flowing we don't eat. That's not good. The amazon is far more stable due to its superior entropy via biodiversity than a temperate forest with lower entropy. One nasty pine beetle outbreak and the entire system can collapse.
Gentrification reduces entropy by sterilizing the community and opening it up to centralized corporations.
Aside from that, poor people have to live somewhere. Displacing them through gentrification destroys their community which in turn destroys any informal community based systems of support that they may have had. For instance, a poor Hispanic community provides a support network for newly arriving immigrants. It acts as a way station. Little Italy circa 1920, china town, etc. when immigrants and poor people are displaced they lose that support system that the community provided
Also, gentrification is fuckin boring. I'll take the Brooklyn of the 80s over the hipster hellhole it's become anyday.
Gentrification is a partial rejection of the post war suburban life style. I say partial because the indigenous culture of an urban place is also maligned and instead supplanted with chains and familiar brands Starbucks being the most obvious but look carefully and all of the mall rat stores are showing up in urban streets either directly or as re-branded versions. Pearl Vision, Levis,your favorite mega bank all have found a foot hold in the city in vibrant neighborhoods.
The problem I see with gentrification is the degree and speed of it's success causes the unique and interesting aspects of a neighborhood to vanish. Take used and independent book shops, they require lots of space and relatively low rent for their low margins, book shops tend to cluster with each other and places that sell zines and coffee shops of the type that you can hold a meeting do something politically risky like community organizing. Try holding a meeting at a Starbucks, the spaces are designed to discourage large groups.
The development in a city depends on a critical mass, you need so many bars and restaurants to make a block the place to go to for a night out, you need so many art galleries to have an informal art's district but when your successes attracts people who are able to pay higher rent the very artist and the people whose culture initially created the attraction for Hipsters Yuppies or the next step up on the class ladder get priced out bit by bit until the critical mass is suddenly gone and the artist colony collapses, the gay neighborhood moves elsewhere or the ethnic minorities retreat further out towards the edges of the city.
Money destroys part of what it is the new urban upper classes are looking for and instead an artificial urban culture carefully controlled and manipulated is springing up. The one antidote however is to bolster programs that promote home ownership in the cities, for a long time up until the 70s Fannie Mae and Ferdie Mack red-lined inner cities and cheap federally subsidized mortgages were not made available to folks in the inner cities, we need an aggressive effort to correct this and promote more home ownership in neighborhoods before they gentrify, we also need to look at business ownership in the same way as home ownership. How many places you see with "Closing Lost our Lease" sign up, rising rents push businesses out too and a property ownership program similar in structure to home ownership for business can help retain those shops and restaurants that have been there serving the community as it went through the changes over the years.
Over and OUT
Peter N
Gentrification is a partial rejection of the post war suburban life style
Post war suburbanization was gentrification, they just didn't have a name for it.
Money destroys part of what it is the new urban upper classes are looking for
What the new "upper" classes are looking for is safe conformity and peer-approved consumption.
The one antidote however is to bolster programs that promote home ownership in the cities
What programs?
The city is now a commodity like a beach front view. It's being sold as lifestyle. Historically the city was necessity. People lived there because the structure supported their specific vocation in a functional way. The city no longer provides a necessary economic infrastructure just softer things like convenience, play date groups, trendy coffee shops, networking communities etc. The city once relied on a demographic makeup that reflected the division of labor. The labor has been outsourced or moved to suburbia where land is cheaper. The poor left in cities are now part of the service industry for the most part. The communitarian culture of cities is now much softer as well. It's a sort of relationship built upon not much more than occupying the same space or enjoying the same things. Like passengers on a cruise ship. The strength of community is dependent on the intricacy of relationships as in nature. The intricate bonds created through functional dependency, altruistic cooperation, access to a diverse demographic, and access to a more common demographic.
Miles-Jaffe I don't disagree with your comments as a whole but in the details, Suburbia for the most part was converting farmland or wilderness into suburban development so there was with, few exceptions, no existing community to displace apart from the agricultural workers and farmers who represent a small number of people compared to the numbers that moved in to new development. Gentrification displaces people within an existing community.
Peer approved consumption is entirely driven by trends and trends right now for the consumer class with disposable income is trending towards an "Urban" life but with out the messy issues of poverty crime and pollution which are either shifted out forced out or avoided.
As for programs we still subsidize home loans for first time home buyers, we also have a variety of programs from the small business administration, hope Six Grants, tons of publicly held land that could be sold leased or given away, there are lots of programs but they are all geared towards the safe suburban model of development.
jla-x I think your off in the notion that cities are no-longer necessary, they remain essential to industries that deal in creative interactions, information, personal connections and money, as all those elements are concentrated in cities. Transportation dependent industries and institutions are hard wired to their existing locations and can not easily be moved. There is a lot of manufacturing in cities especially in South America and Asia and in the US the less expensive cities like Chicago, Saint Louis, or Austin are seeing a new boutique industrial revolution, Think craft beer,furniture and clothing. Proximity to products services and people with skills and ideas is what is making mega cities thrive and small towns and smaller cities dwindle.
current tactic in my neighborhood by a couple of "anti-gentrification" people is to attempt to block any effort to make streets and intersections safer for pedestrians and cyclists - because, and this is an actual quote, then there would be a "tidal wave of development."
"Money destroys part of what it is the new urban upper classes are looking for and instead an artificial urban culture carefully controlled and manipulated is springing up."
That's a little deep. Some "upper class" person decides they'd rather walk around a historic neighborhood rather than some suburban hell scape with manicured lawns and the whole planet goes off axis. Maybe it's something to do with neo-liberalism because making money and buying real estate "is in fact societal entropy". I spent the whole 1980's wondering why suburbanites didn't want to live in urban neighborhoods, and when they finally do, it's like ethnic cleansing. Running a highway through a dense urban neighborhood used to be called progress by the "upper class", but moving in and renovating your house is "displacing people within an existing community."
Oh yeah, and cities are no longer necessary? Really?
Thayer, I prefer the city over the suburbs too but preference differs greatly from functional necessity. The suburbs came into existence because of preference, the city originally came into existence because of functional necessity. Now, the city is a luxury rather than a need. That's a big difference.
The city is a luxury to some people but if you want a carer in theater, it is not a luxury but a necessity, if you are an innovator in almost any field cities are where your most sought after talent is lurking, Google's big move to Chicago was to West Town not the western suburbs precisely because the talented folks they seek wold not be attracted to a company in the far western suburbs. People and their skills and ideas are a huge resource that cities have to offer and when those people choose to reject suburban life choose not to own or be daily dependent on a car and choose to have more leisure time spent doing things rather than sitting in traffic you create a necessity to be in a city. It is all about critical mass, Toledo will never be host to a booming tek or financial industry because it can not attract the needed mix of people to make it work.
As for suburbs coming into existence they were born out of a genuine housing shortage and fear when schools and public safety took a turn for the worse in major cities after the war. people fled (white flight and middle class flight) because they feared people of different races they feared crime and the schools were terrible and getting worse, if you have kids and you are in the middle class your options are to move to a suburb or pay for private school or hope you win the lottery to get into a magnet or decent school.
So it is true some folks choose to live in a city but could choose to live in a suburb too. But if your business in in innovation and you are dependent on having access to a wide range of people skills and ideas you need to be in a city, despite the advancement of remote conferencing with skipe and other communications there is still a need for people to be together in the same space and that is not possible when you are located on the fringes of a metropolitan area.
the umbrella title "gentrification" holds within it a paradoxical duality because it holds two associated meanings: ameliorating the physical environs and profiting from this amelioration.
while the pro-gentrification people favour the former and use it as the foundation of their argument, anti-gentrification people note the consequences of the latter and use that as their argument.
however, its odd because it implicitly , and really quite insiduously and perversely, relates poorer folk to a poorer environment. within a true welfare system or one based on social equity or one where poor people have an equal right to determine their environment as rich people do , this would not be the case because the public sector would not seen then be seen as a source of private profit making or as the reserve of the rich and powerful.
gentrification, like any other tool in the capitalist toolbox, therefore transforms something that is meant to be positive in ensuring stability (maintaining the built environment to habitable standards) to something negative that generates instability and the dynamic thrust towards imbalance between classes, between the rich and the poor.
i disagree that the key to comprehending gentrification lies in discimination between necessity and luxury - cultural activities ,music and art, in the Soviet Union were a necessity not a luxury irrespective of what we may think of the downfalls and the faults perpetrated and schools of thoughts encouraged or discouraged. These were deemed part of institutional state building. It is within a rabidly capitalist system only that instates this pseudo-science of exclusion (for instance, excluding musical education from schools owing to budget cuts in order to avoid cuts from the maths department) and of discrimination between luxury and necessity. The dialectic between austerity and commercialism falls within the terrain of a split personality unsustainable economy.
One does not blame a weed for possessing its detrimental qualities as a weed owing to its physical properties because both, physical and behavioral qualities, are ensuing results of its genetics.
tammuz, have you been talking adderall?
Your last couple of posts have been surprisingly astute and coherent.
When the city becomes gentrified the poor people move to the suburbs. Rich urbanites take up more space and consume more resources. I can't see how this is a sustainable positive thing. The city is being sold as an amenity. I should have said necessity vs lifestyle instead of necessity vs luxury. When the city is reduced to a lifestyle or an amenity, the city tends towards sterility. The gritty things that keep the lights on get hidden from view. The workers are imported in to clean the toilets. They are hidden from view. Operational functions get pushed behind the scenes. american gentrified cities like manhattan are starting to resemble a sort of plantation house with the servants quarters out of sight and mind. The rich living in the house with all services pushed behind the scenes or outsourced to some centralized industry.
Since the rich poor gap continues to deepen its pretty logical to conclude that a larger portion of the population will be forced to live outside the gentrified city which will further sprawl. The small top 1-5% of the population may be able to live in a city based on lifestyle. Those who can pay the premium for the amenities the city offers. Those who work in the innovative industries. Someone has to mop the floors though. If the city is too out if reach for a janitor with 3 kids, then all we are doing is reversing the model of suburbanization by switching rich commuters with poor commuters. There are far more poor people than rich so my guess would be that the commuter class will grow exponentially.
This is the opposite of what we should be doing. We need to localize life and work to combat our unaustainable energy consumption. To do so cities need to be more heterogeneous so all classes can live and work in the same area. This is impossible if the city is reduced to an amenity because to increase the value of this amenity developers and city officials will tend towards sterility. A nimby attitude will eventually take hold to maintain property value and the city becomes an image of a city. A cartoon version of "urban living" painted over the shell of its original self. More simulacra. Not too different from the real farm town that was razed to make way for the suburban development "sunny farms."
Any thing that threatens the image of this picturesque urban oasis will be destroyed, hidden, relocated.
Sunny farms, enjoy your beef without the smell of the cows.
jla-x,
" Now, the city is a luxury rather than a need" We'll have to agree to disagree. I think the social nature of humans make living together in cities a need, beyond the convenience of trading services, which the internet will still never be able to deliver like real live 3-d extra virtual reality. We simply won't evolve to the point where we'll be able to live apart. Afterall, they're about to recognize prisoners in isolation as cruel and inhumane treatment, despite their crimes. If that dosen't tell you something about our need to congregate (in beautiful sun-dappled cities) then I don't know what will. And whatever culture they happen to spawn, one thing's for sure, it will be constantly changing, so get used to it.
tammuz,
"while the pro-gentrification people favour the former and use it as the foundation of their argument," Who's "pro-gentrification"? And why would they need an argument? Being pro-gentrificaiton sounds like the name brands pro-life as if some where anti-life. I don't think anyone thinks about gentrification as a thing beyond in an abstract way becasue, boiled down, it's individuals making individual choices. I've been forced out of some neighborhoods due to my financial straights, but I don't know that groups who slowly get forced out of changing neighborhoods need to be thought of any differently. If I complain about missing the past, it's called nostalgia. So much for all men are created equal!
Instead of getting angry at a mass of smart and arguably progressive people moving into pedestrian environments, it might be more useful to lobby your local government to build more transit friendly, humane, and mixed use infill. That would allow for more people to live in what's clearly a growing trend, walkable human scaled environments. Whether it be in the suburbs or the older cores where gentrification's worst aspects tend to happen, we need more places like old cities, becasue people are sick of the banality of post war suburbia and it's architecture. At least enough of them to make this housing imbalance a real issues.(although, when the white working class inner-suburb goes upscale, I never hear about the destruction of a 2-3rd generation irish, jewish, italian culture...just kidding!)
As for the lack of affordable housing and the increased gap between the haves and the have nots, that has more to do with government policies and squeezing the public sector with the mistaken beliefe that large middle classes simply happen magically in an unregulated market place, but that's a job for government, not architects. There've been many people working on this imbalance in the built environment though, not the least of which have been New Urbanists. But as was recently shown on sites like this, they are considered "a joke" by the establishment, meanwhile some young architects use the word "bitches" and everybody has something to say. We continue to debate the appropriatness of certain aesthetic languages (aka-styles) while the forrests burn.
" A cartoon version of "urban living" painted over the shell of its original self. More simulacra. " Call it a cartoon, or a shell or whatever, it's no different than the designs of Venice California, Forrest Hills, NYC, or many other beloved communities. The problem isn't what some pedestrian developments looks like, it's that there aren't enough to go around, so the rich keep snagging them up.
Thayer, you are missing the point entirely. A city is more than just urban form. As an analogy, You are confusing the term house and home. A house is a physical object, a home is more than that. A home embodies life's. a home is more intimate. A home is not picturesque its real life. The physicality of the city is only one layer. If we want to get deeper we need to look at the social, cultural, and economic layers of the city. We need to look at the city as home and not house. An architect can build a house but only the inhabitants can build a home. That said, a gentrified city will always prove Ken Framptons critique of DSB true. "The city is for the people not by the people." A city built/renewed to accommodate a certain narrow lifestyle will always come in a shiny box with a bow. It will always be controlled. The city will essentially become no different than the manicured lawn of suburbia. It will be made into fantasy, sterilized and ridden of all "undesirable" traits. An image of the "perfect urban life". Only, the idiosyncrasies are the things that make the city interesting in the first place. To paraphrase myself...."the city will begin to resemble a plastic surgery victim...one who removed all her beautiful idiosyncrasies to achieve some false image of perfection." I personally think cities like manhattan are losing their unique character. We may be maintaining space but we are destroying place.
The beef is also not with the rich guy who buy an apartment and fixes it up. The beef is with the intentional cleansing of entire areas to make way for developments that serve a tiny demographic. I think mixing people of different socioeconomic demographics is a great thing. Unfortunately, the rich usually don't want to live near the poor. They come in with a Nimby attitude and overnight change things that took generations to evolve.
One of the problems with being rich is the kind of neighbors you have.
Who is pro-gentrification? Duh. Follow the money.
I hear you jla-x, I just think culture is more resilient than that.
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