What´s Gentrification Inoffensive?

In the constantly changing economy of cities, the growth of city housing is oftentimes neglected. In “Cities Mobilize to Help Those Threatened by Gentrification” Timothy Williams recounts how gentrification has evolved over the years. Mentioning how cities have changed in order to appease the younger professionals, Williams shows how the city itself is in jeopardy due to the tax increases. Slowly loosing their faithful residents as well as historic culture cities face a big deal. Williams gives quotes from faithful residents, “…long time homeowners are victims of the success story”, (Williams 346). In “Cities Mobilize to Help Those Threatened by Gentrification”, Williams uses his credible quotes and modern statistics to generate the reader’s emotions, with desire to change how city officials go about gentrification in culturally infused cities.

The purpose of gentrification is to take struggling neighborhoods and stabilize them by investing in the neighborhood. Gentrification is “the rehabilitation and settlement of decaying urban areas by middle- and high-income investors.” (The Columbia Encyclopedia). These investors raise the value of the neighborhood by improving facilities and making the neighborhood look better. This doesn’t always benefit everyone since some citizens get displaced. However, the number of people displaced is very minor in

First, let's start with what gentrification is. Google defines it as “the process of renovating and improving a house or district so that it conforms to middle-class taste”, but the image Gentrification usually evokes when brought into discussion is hipsters moving into a run-down but charming neighborhood and transforming it into something completely different. What is a hipster? Some may call them the fairy godmothers of the once neglected area, and others may refer to them as the monsters that are displacing families to make an artisan beard oil shop, but we’ll touch on that later.

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.

How would people feel if their place called home was taken away from them and turned into a new apartment building, grocery store, or gas station? Gentrification has changed large sections of D.C. in recent years, from Columbia Heights to H Street and to Georgetown. Most recently, change has been trickling into the city’s poorest area, Ward 8, a district in Southeast Washington.  Gentrification is the restoration of run-down urban areas by the middle class-resulting in the displacement of low-income residents. Gentrification signals change in a neighborhood. This means the value and cost of neighborhood housing is higher. For the reason of this change, many people invest in homes, condominiums, apartments and businesses, while people from low

Many of our ancestors have arrived to this nation with aspirations of living a life of success. Indeed this is the land of the free and the home of the brave but according to gentrification, which is the removal of lower class citizens through property renewal, the increase in cost of living and demographic shifts, it feels as if we are living in the exact opposite. Gentrification indeed has had some advantages but overall it has led to the increase of the homeless population, the loss of culture, and other social issues. Although in this day of age, gentrification maybe impossible to prevent since capitalism is what move us, regulations should be enforced to diminish this demon.(Watt)

Although a rapid phenomenon, the process of gentrification initially starts at a slow pace. According to Biro (2007), “When low income houses are renovated they reach a higher quality and therefore are marketable to buyers who can afford to pay a premium for homes with better quality characteristics.”(p. 42) The individuals who cannot cope with the gentrification process due to

(Lehrer et al., 2009). It is strongly recommended therefore that gentrification be recognized by the City as both a socio-spatial process that is highly unsustainable and socially unjust. Furthermore, we need to establish an understanding not just as an unfortunate by-product of market-led or state-facilitated development in Toronto's inner city (and beyond), but as an integral part of Toronto's planning as well as policy

Gentrification is the process of taking distressed inner city neighborhoods and upgrading them to be more attractive to upscale skilled workers, and major corporations; where the neighborhood is converted to more affluent residential use. Studies profile most gentrifiers to be affluent, young, single, urban professionals and young, married couples who are both wage earners and have no children or small families. Housing improvements, city service upgrades and expansion of the local economy is often attributed to these gentrifiers. There are many New York City neighborhoods in recent years that have gone through gentrification. Some of those neighborhoods include Williamsburg, Downtown Brooklyn and Harlem to name a few. Gentrification can be positive for all involved if the government is able to employ successful provisions where the negatives turn into positives and existing members of the community won’t become unable to afford to continue to live in their residences due to rising housing costs and thus be forced out to live elsewhere. Support mechanisms must be in place for the current community to be able to reside and blend into the newly redeveloped community.

According to the article Gentrification by Ajay Panicker, gentrification is the process in which urban communities “experience a reversal, reinvestment, and the in-migration of a relatively well-off middle- and upper middle-class population” (Hwang and Sampson, 2014, pg. 727). With this definition in mind, gentrification has affected my life. In recent years, New York City has been stricken down by gentrification, specifically in certain areas of Brooklyn and Manhattan. As viewed in the text, African-American and Latino communities are comparatively poorer and marginalized due to gentrification. The neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Manhattan were once predominately African-American and Latino. Presently, these neighborhoods have been overtaken

“Gentrification” captures class disparities and injustices created by capitalist urban land markets and policies. This in turn can cause an increasing house expense encumbrance for low-income and working-class households, and the associated personal catastrophes of displacement, removal, and homelessness, are symptoms of a set of institutional arrangements (private property rights and a free market) that support the creation of urban environments to serve the needs of capital accumulation at the expense of the social needs of home, community, family. Displacement from home and neighbourhood can be a shattering experience. At worst it leads to homelessness, at best it impairs a sense of community. Public policy should, by general agreement,

In comparison with John Dewey's quote “The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action, CA Johnson High School and its feeder schools embedded in the gentrified area would in all probability acknowledge that reconstruction of the Saxon Homes community did not harvest a ready-made school's capable of immediately producing proficient results on state standardized test. In alignment with the earlier integration schools highlighted in Jennifer Burns Stillman study entitled Tipping In: School Integration in Gentrifying Neighborhoods, the schools directly surrounding Celia Saxon, provided statistics on their demographics that also suggest that only one “racial group dominates the school’s culture.”

His second argument is that both Ley’s and Smith’s theory are important and valid to some extent but provides an incomplete picture of the complex process of gentrification. He argues that either theory were unable to explain why or how gentrification occurs despite identifying the demographics of gentrifies and some conditions of when and where it may occur. This leads to his final argument: that a cohesive explanation of gentrification must be one that integrates ideas from both theories, accounting for both when and where gentrification occurs and for the source and consumption patterns of the gentrifiers.

Gentrification has been a controversial issue both in urban planning and politics primarily due to the displacement of poor people by the rich folks (Shaw & Hagemans, 2015). Many individuals have viewed gentrification as an illegal act that should be avoided at all costs. On the other hand, another group of people believe that gentrification is the way forward to promoting growth and development. With such contrasting ideas, this paper is going to take a look at gentrification from a positive and negative perspective, its effects, and how it can be prevented or contained. Apart from this, the paper will also address the following questions.

Since the early 2000s, gentrification accelerated in various New York City neighborhoods. Data shown that about 29.8 percent of New York City has been affected by gentrification in low-income communities (Governing Data 1). This is over a 20 percent increased from the previous decade in New York City alone. Gentrification is a term used to describe displacement or renewal in urban neighborhoods as a result of increasing property values and rent prices. Gentrification has existed since the 1960s but has rapidly increased since then . Gentrification has now become a common and global controversial topic in many low-income neighborhood. Although, gentrification hasn’t always been bad from increasing job opportunities to lowering crime rates. Gentrification has impacted and transformed underprivileged districts in New York City. However, at the advantage of who ? Thus, gentrification has only increased average rates of poverty and infused neighborhoods with “white privilege”.