No city’s assets and liabilities are equally distributed. Every urban hub has its skid row or other such spots located on the “wrong side of the tracks”. Though these bad parts of town may be an eyesore and even a menace to the people living there or those only passing through, a number of city-dwellers always hope for and work towards a better future for their blighted districts. Sometimes these seedy neighborhoods end up receiving just the sort of cultural and financial turnaround that was prayed for in a process known as gentrification, often at a high cost to the pockets and the spirits of their residents.
Ruth Glass fashioned the term gentrification in the 1960’s, scornfully applying it to the sale of properties in working class London neighborhoods to upper middle class families. The Marxist urban geographer sought to describe the displacement of the poor that occurs when low-income areas are revamped by the wealthy (Roos). Although there is no strict definition of the term nor is there agreement on whether it is a positive or negative phenomenon, the gentrification process has a universally recognizable series of states that each neighborhood experiences on the proverbial road from rags to riches. While the first state occurs before the gentrification process starts, it is absolutely essential to address it here, for gentrification can happen only after a neighborhood has undergone a period of disinvestment (Freeman, 27).
Disinvestment refers to an area’s loss of livelihood, its fall from an ordinary neighborhood to one that is avoided. This happens for many reasons, all of them tied together in an unbreakable circuit, each leading to the others. Businesses move away for one reason or another, the residents’ incomes plummet, or the infrastructure is neglected (Roos). Sometimes the neighbors themselves will move away in droves, like the former residents of Detroit, MI after the automotive industry there began to crumble. Often what are left behind are ghost towns or urban deserts where signs of life are scarce. Alternately, the neighborhood may become a ghetto for an ethnic and economic minority, thriving culturally or socially while continuing its downward financial slide. This disinvested state primes the neighborhood for the seeding of “urban pioneers” and the start of gentrification (Roos).
Urban pioneers are the newcomers who see the potential of these centrally located neighborhoods, having grown tired of the suburban sprawl that was once seen as the answer to the “problem” of city life. Eager to make a home for themselves, these pioneers settle in for the long haul with their industrial lofts, galleries, coffee shops, and hip hangouts planted as flags for their newly claimed territory (Hampson). Typically they are college-educated, white, and of an artistic bent, happy to renovate cheap, aging properties left to rot (Roos). Slowly, the neighborhood is transformed into something new and suddenly diverse with the influx of bohemian whites, a seemingly happier place that thrives (Hampson). Businesses are drawn to the trendy new growth and the job market opens up again. With this outside investment taking the lead, cities take note and try to draw more permanent interest by adding and improving schools, parks, and other public assets with the aid of their strengthening tax base (Freeman, 25). For a while at least, the benefits are universal. Then progress begins to chip away at the original character of these revitalizing areas and their residents in a number of ways.
Just as small niche boutiques were first drawn to gentrifying areas, so too are “big box” stores, assorted retail chains, and the ubiquitous Starbucks eventually found on these recently iconoclastic city blocks (Roos). What began as a movement away from the cookie-cutter middle class suburban life transplants that very same thing into the heart of the city. Not only is the newly formed funkiness lost in the corporate haze, the “flavor” these neighborhoods started with is diluted to a degree that cannot be emphasized enough. In the drive to capitalize on the opportunity these dying areas represent, consumer and corporate culture grinds their last embers underfoot.
The death knell of these original marginalized neighborhoods may perhaps be the rapid rise of property values in gentrifying areas (Roos). In low income neighborhoods the great majority of residents do not own their homes, as home ownership requires both the steady income and good credit that is often out of the reach of a disenfranchised populace. When landlords see the profit they could be making, many raise the rent on their properties exponentially or simply send out eviction notices and set to renovating in pursuit of higher income residents (Newman, Wyly, 36). There are exceptions to the rule, of course, residents who have owned their homes since long before the area went into decline or those who purchased their individual apartments in a co-op, who now find themselves with a hot property and eager buyers (Freeman, 25). Some cities have rent-controlled buildings and other protections for the poor and those on fixed incomes, like seniors and the disabled (Newman, Wyly, 37). Still, some unscrupulous landlords resort to any underhanded and illegal means of persuasion at their disposal, such as threatening unlawful evictions, refusing to perform necessary repairs or pay for needed services, and the harassment of frivolous lawsuits filed in the hope of wearing down their tenants’ will to stay put (Newman, Wyly, 39).
Factor in the other costs of living in a trendy area, like absurdly priced coffee or organic groceries, and it is easy to see just how unaffordable life can rapidly become for residents. Slowly but surely, the original inhabitants of gentrified neighborhoods move to areas they can afford and are replaced with a largely white middle class population. This has in the past been characterized as the rich usurping an undervalued area and displacing the poor (Roos). Not surprisingly, many are uncomfortable with calling this last stage in gentrification “displacement” and have decided upon another less emotionally and politically charged term; succession (Roos). Though some recent studies find that the poor move away from gentrifying areas at near the same rate as they leave other neighborhoods, one wonders; if these low income ethnic citizens remain poor and are made to do so in another locale, is calling that “succession” simply whitewashing the issue?
Works Cited
Freeman, Lance. “There Goes the ‘Hood: Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up.” Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Urban Studies. Ed. Myron A. Levine. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2013. 24-31. Print.Hampson, Rick. “Studies: Gentrification a Boost for Everyone.” USA Today. USA Today, 19 Apr. 2005. Web. 10 Nov. 2012.
Newman, Kathe, and Elvin K. Wyly. “The Right to Stay Put, Revisited: Gentrification and Resistance to Displacement in New York City.” Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Urban Studies. Ed. Myron A. Levine. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2013. 32-43. Print.
Roos, Dave. “How Gentrification Works.” How Stuff Works. Discovery, n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2012.
