Currently, policymakers are mostly concerned with the economic impacts a policy will have. While economic factors are important when evaluating and analyzing policies, there needs to be more of an emphasis on the social impacts policies have, especially when it comes to community development policies. Although it is not the only issue with currently popular community development policies, gentrification is one of the most problematic and enlightening conflicts of our time. The core issue with gentrification is it does not benefit the people who are most marginalized in the city. One can argue it improves neighborhoods by bringing business development, improving housing, and increasing median incomes, but these benefits do nothing to help the …show more content…
Young (1990) emphasizes how corporations have considerable control over the city government currently, but the government should make it a goal and priority to listen to the voices of residents, too. This ties into prioritizing social impact, in addition to economic impact. Although partnering with corporations can economically benefit the city, it also comes at a social cost that oftentimes mostly impacts the most marginalized. Aronstein (1969) developed “a ladder of citizen participation,” which emphasizes the need for citizen power in citizen participation, and not just tokenization. Under tokenization, citizens may participate, but “they lack the power to insure that their views will be heeded by the powerful.” Instead, citizens should have actual power in policy decision-making. These levels of citizen power include partnerships, which “enables them to negotiate and engage in trade-offs with traditional power holders,” as well as delegated power and citizen control, which allow “have-not citizens [to] obtain the majority of decision-making seats, or full managerial power.” Full citizen control may be too radical and is most likely not necessary, but allowing citizens have more power than they do currently by working in partnership with them is a reasonable goal for the city government to aim for. This will …show more content…
The government cannot keep ignoring the disproportionately negative impact on marginalized groups and disadvantaged neighborhoods that the current strategy has had. Policies should aim to benefit the most disadvantaged, which will require the government to implement equity over equality. Policies will need to acknowledge differences between different groups and people. In addition, community development policies should increase citizen participation, which will make the city more a collective right for everyone, instead of just for the powerful and wealthy. These goals will help steer the community development strategy away from issues such as gentrification that ignore the needs of the marginalized, and will instead focus specifically on helping those who need help the most. This does not mean policymakers need to disregard economic impact entirely in policy analysis, but they should also recognize social impact and focus on the economic impact for the most disadvantaged communities in the
This article was a little depressing to read because it showed that the African American community is being torn left to right for the BART transportation system, or that they are being moved from one development place to another. The role of the government did not help their case either because the government spends so much rebuilding the homes or as a result the middle class and not the lower class could only afford the homes they build like they intended. To support her claims the authors use numbers and statistics that are available through some of the government programs. There were discriminations towards the African American because of their income status/skin color and a result their opinion did not matter. Then I started questioning the government and the planner roles in the city. The only people who are going to know what is best for their community is the people that live there. The government and the city planners think that they know what is going but in reality they don’t because they are not experienced in the community. So then is it not better to let the people voice their opinion on what they need and the government and city planners work around
In Evelyn Perry’s Live and Let Live, she addresses some of the many concerns in under-privileged communities that are facing gentrification today. As I was reading this novel, the term gentrification certainly became defined. Evelyn Perry presented a new way of thinking and understanding when it comes to diverse, low-income, integrated neighborhoods and how to simply not judge a book by its cover.
When evaluating urban renewal projects, Professor Steven Cord found that “By far most of the housing destroyed was low cost housing,” (184). The statistics in Kelo also showed that 56 percent of nonwhites and 38 percent of whites displaced by urban renewal were qualified to receive public housing due to their low incomes. Further, the destruction of housing forces individuals to seek relocation housing. Relocation housing is not guaranteed to be readily available or to be superior to the housing destroyed (Cord 185). Eminent domain has broken up neighborhoods and forced out longtime residents (Cord 184).
Ultimately, the impact of gentrification on the Downtown Eastside will be most felt by its current low-income residents. It is understood that the complexity of the issues found in the Downtown Eastside does not allow for an easy fix. The extent to which gentrification’s impacts have been and will be felt by those living in the area are and will be great, respectively. While gentrification may bring diversity to Vancouver, it is at the expense of the many disadvantaged residents of the Downtown Eastside who will be
voter turnout and machine politics. The author goes into depth on how the gentrification that is going on in the city is only fueling the great racial divisions between neighborhoods and that this is having a very negative effect on the city. This connects to my research question as I am looking into how the racial divisions that make up many of these urban areas in some of the United States’ biggest cities are only made worse and worse by the process of gentrification and that this will only lead to an increasingly negative impact on the
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,
During my interview, Dr. Owens let me know that the U.S. Census Bureau stopped collecting data on income, and referred me to the American Community survey. Furthermore, she gave me feedback on my index for gentrification, and made the suggestion to exclude race and ethnicity since affluent racial minorities can contribute to gentrification. By specifying the factors investigating and listing my assumptions, I give the a general idea of why I think that these factors are important to the operationalization of gentrification, and support my choices with what has been done in past studies. In the discussion section, I reason why this study is significant and how it could lead to subsequent policy changes. By outlining ways in which different audiences can benefit from this study, I show that in addition to extending the existing research, my study has the potential to make societal impacts across various fields. If this proposal were to become a dissertation, this section would be more extensive and would draw upon the results found after collecting all the
Gentrification is a major reason for the increase in rent prices throughout New York City. Harlem rent prices have gone up over the past years because of new condominiums and businesses that are being built in neighborhoods. The displacement of residents leads to an increase of people becoming homeless in the city. According to the author, Ivan Pereira, “Harlem saw a 9.4 % average rent price increase during that same period from $2,191 last year to $ 2,397 in January” (Pereira 1). The change causes longtime residents to move out because of a variety of factors including unaffordability, pressure from property owners, diminishing or lack of stores that cater to them and many more. The more condominiums and business’s being built makes living
It was activists from the wealthy and poor blocks that organized to reduce crime. These tenant activists involved city agencies and lending organizers to work to create a better a community (Snyder, 2015). The residences formed a relationship with their local police to implement social control that worked this its environment. They identified the need for formal social control as informal social control activism was not enough. The community began to bridge the gap between policy and the neighborhood. Through community activism, Washington Heights continued to see a decline in crime and the start of gentrification. Today, Washington Heights has one of the lowest crime rates in New York City and the borough of Manhattan (NYC Police, 2017). The community’s relationship with the New York City Police Department is not perfect. Areas that are predominantly people of color or lower socioeconomic status do face barriers in working with police. However, this is not an isolated issue as most of the country, especially people of color, have a negative relationship with police members. It seems to be a systemic problem within the police and how social control should be enforced. Washington Heights is an example of how communities and law enforcement can come together to change a neighborhood.
Now days walking down the streets of Atlanta, we see the new neighborhoods consisting of condos, Starbucks, yoga classes and Chipotle. Gentrification is a growing problem in urban areas as the influx of the riches have caused the displacement of lower class families due to higher economic demands and local politics. According to Diane K. Levy, Jennifer Comey and Sandra Padilla (2005), “We define gentrification as the process whereby higher-income households move into low income neighborhoods, escalating the area’s property values to the point that displacement occurs. In addition to changes in economic class, gentrification often involves a change in a neighborhood’s racial and ethnic composition…” (p.1). Though gentrification has lasting affects on the economic status of cities, there are also repercussions that not only effect working individuals but also the students that attend school in these gentrified areas. When areas are gentrified, schools are rezoned thus leading to long lasting consequences that students must face. Some believe that gentrification is beneficial to a growing economy in a growing city, but the realities of the its lasting effects on education are often left under the radar. The issues that lie within the education system as it pertains to gentrification include day segregation and unequal opportunities between affluent and low-income areas.
Many opponents to gentrification argue that it will cause property taxes to go up and cause many families to struggle. Rising property taxes could occur, and may result in more struggles in the lower class and families that are already struggling, but these struggles are still just something that may happen but is not a guaranteed repercussion. There are many families that are trying to stay afloat and are barely doing so. Living paycheck to paycheck, a tax increase can be detrimental for some families. It will help improve communities and promote new businesses. Author of “Cities Mobilize to Help Those Threatened by
My proposal will benefit only families of the local communities mentioned previously. These communities have been afflicted with a new interest for gentrification of more affluent residents. We need to protect the low income families from displacement of their neighborhoods. Data that must be collected to initiate the proposal is the family’s income, financial issues, and household size. We are also going to gather data regarding housing prices, rentals and the impact of gentrification within the
Low income people suffer a lot when it comes down to gentrification. Many people can be forced to move out of their homes if they are not financially stable enough to afford the drastic increase in property taxes and rent that are placed upon them. Some of these low-income residents have lived in these houses for generation, all for it to be swept from under their feet, for a new urban development plan. These people are forced to move to a new neighborhood which could be worse than the one that they previous left. Some also have to find new jobs now seeing travel may be more of a hassle, whether it has to do with more gas or a further distance to travel. Even children can be impacted by this, due to them moving to another school district that may not be as great as there former learning institute.
Viewing the complex matter of gentrification succinctly, it helps to uncover how multifaceted it is; in that gentrification involves the oppression, marginalization, displacement of vulnerable populations, particularly, the poor, and the black who are often already negatively impacted by the effects of classism, and racism. Gentrification threatens to erode the communities and livelihood maintained by these set of people because their displacement becomes a precondition for the total transformation of the area.
Washington, D.C. is rapidly changing in front of the citizen’s eyes. It is becoming a victim of “The Plan,” a theoretical conspiracy plan construed by whites to take over D.C.’s real estate, physical space, and politics. Gentrification in Washington, D.C. can essentially be defined as a shift in the community to attract and accommodate newcomers at the expense of the current inhabitants. In Washington, four neighborhoods are currently in the process of gentrification: Barry Farm, Lincoln Heights/Richardson Dwellings, Northwest One and Park Morton. These particular neighborhoods were specifically targeted by the government for their high crime rates, significant population of impoverished citizens, and inclusion of a certain economic class.