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Gentrification And Its Effects On Contemporary Urban Areas

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In this unit, we learned about gentrification and its effects on contemporary urban areas. Gentrification is “the buying and renovation of houses and stores in deteriorated urban neighborhoods by upper- or middle income families or individuals, raising property values but often displacing low-income families and small businesses,” (dictionary.com, n.d.). People who argues for gentrification reasoned that it will help the poor neighborhoods grow financially, allows for people of different racial, ethnic, and class background to come together to intermingle. However, the dark reality of gentrification is that it destroys the neighborhood, creates further division between people, and especially, they push to marginalize the working- and …show more content…

Retail Operations, in an interview with the Chicago Tribune (Elejalde-Ruiz, 2016). Realistically, how can a poor person afford a $5 cup of coffee every day? How can they afford the grocery price at Whole Foods? Is the profit from these businesses going back into the community or straight back to corporates? I think gentrification is utopian thinking and neoliberal, because it lacks the thorough examination of who is actually benefitting from this process. Additionally, we must look at how the government also pay a role in gentrification. Through public policies, like zoning restriction, more and more private sectors have been able to take over public properties. Parks, residential buildings and houses, schools, etc. have been privatized to make monetary profits. Furthermore, it does not help when a government official speaks out in a favor of gentrification that leads to the general public misunderstanding the real issues at hand. As Smith (2001, 73) wrote, Mayor Giuliani “… identified homeless people, panhandlers, prostitutes, squeegee cleaners, squatters, graffiti artists, ‘reckless bicyclists,’ and unruly youth as the major enemies of ‘public order and public decency” (as cited in Duneier, 2000, 224). Giuliani was only adding fuel to flame, because the media was already, and still is, portraying the inner city as dangerous, infested with crimes, and violence. If this is not a class war, then I

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