Gentrification Case Study

When a neighborhood is gentrified it will not only change the image of it, but also the services available there (Al-Kodmany 2011, 62-63). In other words, gentrification does not only have an impact on the physical aspect of the land, but also the resources that lie there. During the 90s, the Near West Side neighborhood located near Loop, an up-scale neighborhood, sought drastic changes within the area. The changes in racial demographics in the Near West Side indicated that the health risks that affected minorities dropped in the past decade (1992-2002) (Al-Kodmany 2011,

For example, many cities that are rich in culture, diversity, and vitality are beacons for white people interested in the “upcoming scene.” This brings more and more whites who displace and marginalize the original residents through increasing prices. Cities such as New York, Boston, and San Francisco all have neighborhoods that originally had mostly poor, uneducated African Americans, and now are swelling with young, educated whites that have greatly increased the price of living. In Boston, Charlestown, Jamaica Plains, and Beacon Hill have all experienced intense characteristics of gentrification from the 1970s up until the present, showcasing an increase in the population with at least a bachelor’s degree, as well as a large increase in new and renovated buildings. In New York, the most famous example of gentrification is in Harlem, has undergone a process of gentrification after becoming known as the national, and even international symbol for black culture with a vibrancy that is not seen in the suburbs. Finally, in San Francisco, in the bay area, there has been a massive influx of affluent companies that have completely devastated the middle class due to a high rise in wealthy, educated, employees. These employees have taken residence up in the bay area, causing the entirety of the already previously gentrified neighborhood to skyrocket to unobtainable prices, even for the

The Third Ward of Houston Texas is a historic district known mainly for two things being rich in African American history and its exceedingly high crime rates. While this part of town has always been a solid representation of African American culture when desegregation occurred all families that could afford to quickly moved to the wealthy parts of the city leaving the district nearly abandoned. Naturally following the abandonment of the district most businesses followed leaving low income residents with little to no job opportunities. A popular phenomenon that has arose recently in urban cities such as these (due to its raving success in cities such as Chicago) is gentrification. Gentrification is the renovation of these high crime low income areas in the hopes of creating a better neighborhood. However, one of the unforeseen side effects of gentrification is the displacement of the low income residents who can no longer afford to live in this nicer neighborhood. Gentrification specifically in Houston Texas is a tool that is may seem valuable however it often disrupts lives, displaces families, and destroys cultures.

East Los Angeles (Boyle Heights) is undergoing the process of Gentrification. Gentrification is defined as the process of renovating and improving a house or district so that it conforms to middle-class taste. Some scholars define gentrification as private sector-initiated residential and commercial investment in urban neighborhoods accompanied by inflows of households with higher socioeconomic status than the neighborhood’s initial residents. (Vigdor, Massey and Rivlin, 2002, P. 135). One of the problems with gentrification in Boyle Heights is that the community members that are currently residing and working in Boyle Heights are not middle class and thus, the gentrification does not apply to them. The nature of the problem stems from the unintended consequences of revitalizing a district or a home and history. On the surface, the word revitalization/gentrification appears to be a good thing. However, when revitalization’s sole purpose is to target a specific social economic group, it creates a wave of problems. Some of those problems or unintended consequences, include but are not limited to, displacing families that have lived in a community for decades or even centuries, driving businesses out, create tensions in communities that insight protest and/or unrest. According to research, some potential negative outcomes of gentrification-most importantly, the displacement of previous occupants of urban

Gentrification, upgrading of deteriorated urban communities by affluent people, is a hot topic, with a variety of different opinionated people. Some believe it is quite effective and helpful to society while others discard it as a disease that effects parts of society. There are many perspectives one can use to find positives and negatives in gentrification. Gentrification has an impact on the economy as well as the socio-cultural. Socio-culturally, it forces the lower class to move out due to the increased prices because of the higher purchasing power of the new settlers. In the article Rhetoric and Realities of Gentrification: Reply to Powell and Spencer by Peter Byrne, Byrne expresses “gentrification consists of rich people using their class and race-based power to expel poor people of color from authentic and supportive communities with the help of corrupt or befuddled city governments.” (491) However, viewing gentrification through an economical perspective helps its case. Gentrification improves the place by bringing in companies to create store in the gentrified community. Companies follow the people with buying power, therefore, as the people move so do the company stores. Gentrification is a double edged sword with more drawbacks than benefits and therefore should be ended.

Gentrification is a generalized term for the influx of wealthy people into a poor area whom transform its culture and character. The rise in wealth correlates to the increased property values and rent which end up driving the less wealthy population out of the city. Often times the term is used to explain the displacement of poor communities by rich outsiders, which assigns a negative connotation to gentrification. However, the process by which a community becomes “gentrified” is intricate and has its pros and cons. Experts agree that before an area can be gentrified it must go through a period of disinvestment, where older buildings are unkempt and start to deteriorate, business start moving out, and the average income levels fall. While some neighborhoods develop a strong sense of community others turn to urban despair.

Gentrification, a very controversial topic that has just recently been brought to the surface in the past few years, is “the process of renovating and improving a house or district so that it conforms to middle-class taste” (“Gentrification”). The two central arguments behind gentrification reflect its deeply political controversy. One side of the political spectrum argues that gentrification decreases the rate of crime and increases a neighborhood’s value, while the other side argues that gentrification is a form of institutionalized racism that replaces low-income families and dramatically increases rates of homelessness.

Furthermore, as Austin grows, gentrifiers are heavily displacing the local residents that have contributed greatly to the Austin culture, particularly African-American and Hispanic residents on the eastside. As the gentrification process rapidly changes Austin’s demographic, the cultural climate also changes, but incoming businesses are often seeking to commodify and profit from the culture of the displaced, while new occupants are attempting to imitate it.

In 2012, the Whittier Alliance released a strategic plan for the next five years that pinpointed critical steps towards increasing commercial activity and housing investments, raising environmental standards, and improving the Alliance’s organizational structure. Could the adoption of a Private Neighborhood Association (PNA), as presented by the Mercatus Policy Series , support these steps? In my opinion, a full PNA will not move the Alliance forward. However, the Whittier Alliance could benefit and advance these goals if they adopted certain principles introduced by PNAs, specifically: growing community participation, empowering local knowledge in the Whittier neighborhood, and working to devolve some planning authority from the city and regional governments into the neighborhood’s hands.

Gentrification shows that people can be viewed just as human beings. He talks about his neighbors and how they are all african american, and he said, “They are people, not black people; and I am a person, not a white person” (Alexie 616). He understands that people are all equal. But racism does creap into people’s thoughts. He talked about how he was the only white person in his neighborhood. When he was talking about his neighbors he said, “It’s something ornately African-sounding that I hadn’t quite understood when I’d first met him, and it was too late, a year later, to ask for the proper pronunciation. And that made me feel racist” (Alexie 617). Being racist

Today, in Society, especially in the urban communities is vulnerable to the growing impact of gentrification. With the process of gentrification, which emerges under the impact of multiple factors, including economic and social ones and also global, which stimulate consistent changes in urban communities. However, the effects of gentrification can lead to either positive or negative effect throughout the community, I believe the effects of gentrification are more negative than positives. These negatives effects can be a plethora of things, which one of them is the risk of widening gaps between different social classes, namely rich and the poor. Many Homeowners or people who lives in the area loses their house because it becomes too expensive, or store owners no longer can pay rent and they have to sell their stores.

The root meaning behind the word gentrification comes from the Old French word “genterise” meaning “people of gentle birth”. However, in the modern day, gentrification can be defined in multiple ways such as “the process of renovating and improving a house or district so that it conforms to middle-class taste” or “the process of wealthier residents moving to an area, and the changes that occur due to the influx of wealth”. In simple terms, the concept behind gentrification refer to the change which a community goes from low value to high value, however the effects of gentrification are far more complex. The positive impacts of gentrification includes higher wages due to the boost of economy in the given area, more tax revenues, and lower crime rates. The other end of the impacts of gentrification spectrum include the displacement of long term residents and businesses due to higher rents, property values, mortgages, and property taxes, as well as shifting of the community’s culture and characteristics. Gentrification has been a controversial topic and it has a significant impact on the social, economic and demographic changes in the communities specifically in the modern day today. This raises the question of, is gentrification good or a bad?

Pictures like Figure 1 provide an inside perspective of what it is like to live in an area that is facing the threat of gentrification. These people have congregated to protest the construction of two new apartment buildings in their northern Chicago suburb. The main reason that people are against this new building is that only about 10% of living space is slated to be priced at an affordable rate for the average Logan Square resident (2016). In a way, this photograph exhibits the first step of the

Stigmas have been an essential tool to navigate the complexities of the cultural world. Often, stigmas are associated with “an attribute that is deeply discrediting” towards a group of people, but stigmas are not exclusively attributed to social groups (Goffman 13). Certain words hold stigmas that warp our understanding of that word. The negative stigma associated with the word ‘gentrification’ has created many misunderstandings of what gentrificationㅡand its natureㅡis. Gentrification is the process of restoring and reconstructing deteriorating communities and can be paired with the movement of wealthy individuals from the surrounding community to the gentrified one. People attributed a stigma with gentrification because many people see gentrification as a one-sided topic. Availability biases portray gentrification as something communities should avoid. However, gentrification is a multifaceted and a controversial topic with positive, negative, neutral, and even unknown consequences. When looking beyond the stigmas associated with gentrification, there are some positive consequences that society often overlooks. Negative consequences often overshadow the positive consequences, which perpetuate the notion that gentrification is bad and is a one-sided issue. In reality, gentrification is misunderstood; gentrification is neither good nor bad because there are too many contrasting factors and consequences that can arise from gentrification. Instead of labelling gentrification as

Gentrification is the process of renovating and revitalizing undervalued and dilapidated residential and commercial areas by the middle or upper class. It is driven by the notion called the “rent gap”. The “rent gap” is the difference between current rent and potential rental income. People will invest in these deteriorated urban areas to obtain potential rent in the future. Consequently, once new money flows in these areas, it forces rent to surge. High rents force low income residents to relocate from the area. This is one of the key characteristics of gentrification, the displacement of local residents. Gentrification is driven by both private investment and government policies.