As old neighborhood landmarks such as historically black churches close, the neighborhood loses its history and its remaining long-time residents lose their sense of belonging and inclusion. As shops and services increasingly cater to the needs and traits of new residents, remaining long-time residents often feel like they have been dislocated despite still living in the neighborhood. Direct displacement happens when the effect of gentrification leaves current residents unable to pay increasing housing costs or when residents are driven out by government actions like forced sale by eminent domain to make way for new, higher-value development. Some existing housing may also become uninhabitable as the owners stop maintaining it while waiting for the best time to sell it for redevelopment. Social scientists suggest that the growing demand for central city housing is partially the result of a rise in anti-suburban attitudes. Many wealthy people now prefer the intrinsic “charm” and “character” of older homes and enjoy spending their leisure time—and money—restoring them.
There are other places where student housing has led to the displacement of underprivileged communities [68, 69]. Gentrification has become controversial because, historically, it has come with a significant component of discrimination against racial minorities, women and children, the poor, and older adults. Even as it may bring about a reversal in the decline of a city, displacement caused by gentrification can force prior residents into poorer and relatively unsafe areas, with limited access to affordable housing, healthy food choices, and social networks. Beginning in the late 1970s, the U.S. government passed the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Credit, which created an incentive for developers to invest in urban areas that had been all but abandoned by affluent white people. In 2000, the federal government enacted the New Markets Tax Credit, which made tens of billions of dollars in government money available for urban revitalization projects in low-income communities. The economic benefits to the city often came at the expense of existing residents of these areas, who were displaced.
- Using a case example, we hypothesize how distinct drivers of gentrification—specifically, retail gentrification, environmental gentrification, climate gentrification, studentification, tourism gentrification, and health care gentrification—may imply specific pathways toward reduced health equity.
- Unfortunately, the most disadvantaged in these areas tend to be renters, who find themselves confronted with rapidly rising housing costs.
- Most gentrification occurs because of a lack of policies that value community input, offer equitable rezoning policies, and provide intentional housing options.
- As low-income residents are displaced and lose more resources, it increases inequity.
- The number of poor persons living in “fallen star” neighborhoods—those that were not high poverty in 1970 but now exceed the poverty rate of 30 percent—has increased by 1.25 million, while the poor population in rebounding neighborhoods has decreased by only 67,000.
While there are very real harms that accompany gentrification, it’s important not to lose the forest for the trees. The other big issue with defining gentrification is attempting to quantify physical displacement. Widely viewed as the most pernicious byproduct of gentrification, the evidence that gentrification causes physical displacement is a mixed bag.
Economic Growth
None of this is to undermine the very real cultural conflict that gentrification brings. Even if you’re able to stay in your neighborhood and your home, watching store after store pop up that doesn’t serve your community or isn’t available to you at your income level can be deeply alienating. It’s no wonder that people who have faced centuries of disinvestment grow angry as public and private money flows into their neighborhoods only after high-income, college-educated people choose to move there.
Loss of Affordable Housing
Without policies that attempt to remedy the trends that cause forced displacement, gentrification will continue to dismantle and displace lower-income communities. To develop such policies, we must recognize the disproportionate and destructive effects of gentrification. Another exceptional example of resident-driven equitable development is the Melrose Commons project in the South Bronx. There, residents and business owners came together in response to a proposed market-rate condominium and apartment development project. They formed the organization “We Stay/Nos Quedamos” in February of 1993 and developed a proposal for a new plan that included affordable housing and space for locally-owned businesses.
Neighborhood revitalization is the alteration of a neighborhood in a way that improves the quality of life of its residents. By bringing in new shops and stores, neighborhoods that were previously afflicted with empty storefronts become filled with coffee shops, clothing stores or other brick-and-mortar outposts for critical goods and services. These new businesses can revitalize a neighborhood and infuse new life and resources into a declining or poor area. Gentrification usually leads to negative impacts such as forced displacement, a fostering of discriminatory behavior by people in power, and a focus on spaces that exclude low-income individuals and people of color.
Cons of Gentrification
But those amenities won’t do you much good if you’re forced to move because of skyrocketing housing costs. The issue of how gentrification affects different racial groups is particularly relevant right now in light of the increased instability people are facing due to the pandemic and incidents bringing attention to the unnecessary use of policing against people of color in the United States, Hwang said. Hwang and co-author Lei Ding of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia conducted one of the first studies to examine empirically where disadvantaged residents move as a result of gentrification and how a neighborhood’s racial context affects those moves. A right to counsel in housing proceedings, for example, would rebalance power between low-income tenants and property owners seeking to evict due to potential profits from selling or converting the property for higher-income use. It’s also important for cities to work to preserve existing affordable housing, especially as new housing gets built. Segregation and/or concentrated poverty, which have been constant companions to disadvantaged communities.
The reduction in urban pollution in rich countries in the latter decades of the 20th century, thanks to increasing regulation and the decline of dirty industries, is one reason. The River Thames, which runs through the heart of London, was long a source of revulsion for the city’s residents. In 1858, industrial, human and animal waste combined with hot weather to produce such a horrible smell that it was named “the Great Stink”. Despite subsequent efforts to improve the condition of the Thames, it remained abhorrently polluted, to the extent that it was declared “biologically dead” by the Natural History Museum in 1957. Thanks, however, to a multi-decade programme of cleaning and treatment, the river has made an impressive recovery.
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Many academics, too, have denounced gentrification as inherently harmful to low-income communities and robust economic development in general a threat to all but the wealthy. Demographics have shown that young, wealthy, childless people are increasingly drawn to gentrifying inner-city neighborhoods. In search of more leisure time, young, affluent workers are increasingly locating in central cities near their jobs.
Government Policy Factors
The journalist Alan Ehrenhalt has aptly described this process as “the great inversion”. But, as is becoming clear with everything to do with big data, while advances hold great promise for dealing with neighborhood change, they also hold significant peril. The great hope of urban advocates is to democratize data and its analysis tools, allowing residents and other stakeholders to see more clearly how a neighborhood is changing. Third, rezoning of wealthy white segregated neighborhoods could slow the speed at which gentrifying neighborhoods change, and help tackle segregation.
Unbounded by such constraints, these individuals head to the city and all the excitement it has to offer. These global metropolises have increasingly come to resemble ivory towers, with a highly concentrated core of prosperity served by a sprawling periphery of disadvantage. Urban centres have https://1investing.in/ seen increasing employment, falling crime and significant improvements in the performance of public services. Warehouses and factories from Kings Cross in London to Brooklyn in New York have been converted into upmarket apartments for well-educated (and typically white) professionals.
Gentrification is a clash between the power of private capital and government policy and the power of people in targeted communities to preserve their homes and heritage. In Quebec City, the Saint Roch neighbourhood in the city’s lower town was previously predominantly working class and had gone through a period of decline. However, since the early to mid 2000s, the area has seen the derelict buildings turned into condos and the opening of bars, restaurants and cafes, attracting young professionals into the area, but kicking out the residents from many generations back. Several software developers and gaming companies, such as Ubisoft and Beenox have also opened offices there. As of 2011[update], gentrification in Canada has proceeded quickly in older and denser cities such as Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton and Vancouver, but has barely begun in places such as Calgary, Edmonton, or Winnipeg, where suburban expansion is still the primary type of growth.
Recent research challenges some long-held views about the negative effects of gentrification. In a July 2019 paper, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and the U.S. Census Bureau found that gentrification can create some important benefits for original residents, and few observable harms. Notwithstanding these examples of the negative consequences of gentrification, it is likely that the process will continue apace. However, there have been increasing efforts to formulate public policy that addresses the legacy and persistence of segregated housing that have contributed to conditions that foster the development of gentrification.
