The Importance Of Freedom In America

The purpose for writing this essay is to demonstrate how gentrification is shaping the Culture and identity for Halrmites from the socio-economic perspective. Harlem has changed dramatically over the last two decades due to improvement in housing stock and outside investments into the community. However, in my essay, I articulated my ideas toward the economic aspect of gentrification because gentrification is driven by class, not race. My audience would be the lower income Harlem residents who have been displaced or on the verge of displacement because their wealth is not contributing to the economy. The people who have been preserving the cultural identity of Harlem for decades now forced to leave the community. I tried my best to connect a broader audience by explaining the deteriorated housing condition of Harlem and how it led to gentrification. This will help reader

The neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn is one of the best-known cases of recent gentrification. Prior to the gentrification taking place, Williamsburg was known for being a warehouse district that also doubled as an enclave for Hispanic and Hasidic Jews (Our Brooklyn: Williamsburg, Brooklyn Public Library). However, in 2005, zone changes were approved that allowed for more housing to be created in Williamsburg and made it so that only light manufacturing could take place in Williamsburg (Curran, 2004). and explores the challenges that gentrification has presented the neighborhood’s longtime residents. While one of the goals of the change in zoning was to create more affordable housing options in Brooklyn, the opposite has occurred.

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.

Over the last couple of decades, Buffalo has found itself in a grave housing crisis. The urban population is shrinking and the population in poverty is growing, leaving houses abandoned and left to fall apart. Although many cities in the Rust Belt are facing similar problems, about 15.7% of Buffalo housing was left vacant as of 2010, which places Buffalo as ninth in the nation for vacancy rate. As the masses abandon their homes, run down neighborhoods see an increase in crime and drug use, and a rapid decrease in property value (Armstrong et al. 1-2). Many see this deterioration, however, as an opportunity to renovate impoverished neighborhoods and make them more attractive to the upper and middle class. This process, known as gentrification, should increase the overall well being of residents by making neighborhoods safer,

Over the past twenty years, San Francisco’s Mission District has experienced a tremendous amount of change. Similar to many neighborhoods across the United States, it has been undergoing a gentrification process in which increases in housing prices, redevelopment in buildings, and a shortage of rental units have left many of its low-income population homeless or on the verge of becoming homeless. In order to understand the controversial issue revolving around the gentrification process taking place the Mission District, it is essential to know the history of the Mission District, San Francisco’s geography and housing laws, and the socioeconomic impacts of gentrification.

In “Is Gentrification All Bad” Davidson tries to convince the reader that there is a positive side to gentrification. Throughout the article davidson provides evidence and a personal example of how gentrification is a positive change for many neighborhoods by giving an example of gentrification and credible statistics.

For the past two decades, gentrification has become a widely-known phenomenon in the U.S. as more wealthy cohorts of population move to quiet and cheap suburban areas instead of bearing the busy and costly lives in a big city. Changes brought by the influx of affluent newcomers in the suburban areas are often praised for fostering urban renewal as well as animating the areas’ local economy. However, the impacts of gentrification cause several types of new problems which now afflict long-time, low-income residents in “gentrifying” neighborhoods. With the soaring prices of the real estate market, landlords’ harassment against low-income tenants, and rising living expenses, gentrification further augments the inequality and conflicts between the poor and rich inhabitants.

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.

There are many consequences that arise as a result of gentrification, such as increases in rent and property taxes, increased infrastructure costs, disinvestment into certain neighborhoods, and decrease in diversity. However, improvements in the cities that tend to be associated with the white, affluent, often leads to the transferring of poorer, black tenants. Schwartz argues, “What Sorkin calls the ‘pathology’ of gentrification is obliterating those elements of thriving urban life that Jacobs famously identified: diversity uses; the mom-and-pop stores; what Zukin calls the ‘cheeky-by-jowl checkerboard’ of rich, poor, and middle class; the distinctive identity of neighborhoods” (86). “Thus, one may argue that gentrification comes as a result

Throughout Austin’s history, minority populations were isolated through political acts such as “A City Plan” in 1928, which wanted to make Austin “beautiful” so that involved removing minorities from the area surrounding the capital. In addition, schools for minorities were restricted to just the East side to force minority populations to move there. By the 1990’s, Austin was branded with the title “Live Music Capital of the World.” This title gave rise to an economic and social boost to Austin, but by doing so, it diluted the native culture into a hipster culture.

As a result of gentrification, government and private investors began investing in the central cities to clear away slums to reinvest in properties. The process of “revitalizing through reinvestment” caused the lower-class population to move out of the downtown area and into the suburbs, while the upper-class population moved back into the city (Gentrification, Side 2). In addition, the growth of the developed cities led to a movement of industrial and manufacturing production to the developing cities. Consequently, manufacturing, industrial, and warehouses disappeared in downtown Austin, leaving luxury multifamily residences, hotels, restaurants, and parks. For example, the land uses between 2nd and 3rd street along San Antonio and Guadalupe are dominated by a massive parking garage and high-ended specialized goods such a Mexican restaurant, a sports retail, a movie theater, and an art gallery (Smith 2015 map). Because of suburbanization, single-family dwellings departed in central cities and towards the outskirts of the land and closer to the countryside. According to team ten, residential dwellings were “removed” and “replaced” with the rise of services, office spaces, businesses, and parking lots (Team 10 Report). In other words, globalization’s reconstructions altered Austin’s land uses from industrial and non-specialized goods to specialized services and white-collar residents in the developed world. For example, the buildings along Congress Avenue and Brazos Street between 4th and 5th Street (block 42) consisted mostly of non-specialized services such as auto repairs and grocery stores, to where now in 2015, the block is dominated by restaurants, a Mexic-Arte Museum, and a thirty-two story Frost Bank office building (Guevara 2015 map). Similarly, gentrification

Gentrification has become a common phenomenon throughout many major cities in the United States and it is impacting millions. Gentrification can be dated back to the urban renewal and slum clearance, and post war reconstruction programs implemented during the 1950s and 1960s Schaffer and Smith 1986). Although the main idea of gentrification is to, from an economic standpoint, rebuild the city and redevelop its urban core, some people are in fact negatively impacted. There seems to be a trend on the groups of people effected. Many families are being displaced from their homes due to the fact that the city is redeveloping the “urban core” and attracting many young, affluent people to live in areas surrounding it. Although, the benefits of gentrification are seemingly attractive to the governments and cities do they really outweigh the benefits of those being unable to afford the housing and being moved out of areas they have lived in for generations just to be displaced into just as impoverished of an area as before.

Gentrification began to garner a great deal of attention from scholars, politicians, and the media soon after the phenomenon was first identified by Ruth Glass in the 1964 (Glass, 1964). Politicians and academics have debated[[delete,] what constitutes gentrification, whether gentrification is a legitimate means of improving the economy of metropolitan neighborhoods, or if the influx of wealthier residents into a low income neighborhood is more akin to an “invasion,,” an invasion which could lead to conflict along class and racial/ethnic lines as once public spaces are appropriated by corporate interests.

There are huge number of residents who are being displaced because of the increase in rent, and the amount of wealthy and upper middle class people moving into a neighborhood like Logan Square. With the decrease in population, the area has been becoming less and less diverse and more whitewashed than anything. According to Nacho Gonzalez, a UIC professor, there are many aspects needed towards creating a gentrification situation, “One element is a "gentrification industry,"—realtors, developers, mortgage lenders, and construction companies eager to capitalize in the area. The second is a neighborhood with an attractive location preferably a disinvested area with run-down but attractive architecture ripe for rehabbing. The third necessity is a population of low-income people inhabiting the area with little political or economic power to fight for their territory. Closing the ring are people with disposable income looking to move into the area, usually young, childless professionals seeking location and action” (Gonzalez). Developers and landowners view the area as a potential investment and not a community or the idea that they might be commercializing the

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.