Why is it when someone mentions the word "gentrification" it produces a negative response? Is gentrification really that bad or is it a conditioned response? Playing the part of an anti-gentrification person for the moment, if the financial downturn of 2008 did one thing positive, it brought the process to a screeching halt. The main complaint about gentrification is that it displaces long-time, low-income residents. But is that always the case? Are there other factors at work? We can look at the example of what happened in Brooklyn, New York as a case study for whether or not gentrification is really so bad.
In the early part of the 2000s, Brooklyn began to experience a migration of creative types (i.e. actors, musicians, writers, painters, et cetera) seeking to find more affordable housing alternatives to Manhattan. In 2003, Lance Freeman, an associate professor of urban planning at Columbia University began a study to find out exactly how much displacement occurred in two predominantly African-American communities: Clinton Hill and Harlem that were rapidly gentrifying. Prof. Freeman discovered, his surprise, that there was no causal relationship between displacement and gentrification. How was that possible? Well, neighborhoods, like cities, are not static, they change over time. Prof. Freeman studied the late-twentieth century decline of Harlem with with conditions of the Lower East Side in previous decades. Early urban slums were bustling and overcrowded, thus able to sustain a wide range of services. Curious, if the slums of the Lower East Side were overcrowded how was sustaining services possible? I mean maintaining proper sanitation was a perpetual issue and fire was always a very real threat. In contrast, Harlem lost 30 percent of its population by the seventies. The result was these neighborhoods became places where no one dared to set foot in anytime of the day. Another interesting point, there's no mention about the demographic make up of the Lower East Side. Could that have played a part in the lack of displacement? The conclusion arrived by Prof. Freeman was since the neighborhoods were drained of services, displacement did not occur. Thus when gentrification arrived the long-time residents did not leave immediately and once the neighborhood improved, people opted to stay if they could.
Obviously not everyone stayed. As the gentrification process continued, buildings got sold, rents were raised, and people moved out. In a perfect world you would not have to wait for this to happen before the neighborhood improved or the police began making more routine patrols. The irony here is that a city's real hope was racial and economic reintegration and in parts of Brooklyn, it did really happen. The even greater irony is that the people (i.e. low to moderate-income Latino and African-Americans) who would provide that reintegration are leaving the cities because they no longer can afford there. Instead, urban areas are being populated by more affluent individuals and couples who will not necessarily got to the local mom and pop stores and restaurants.
What does this mean for Los Angeles? Returning to a subject I previously addressed, the Jordan Downs Housing complex in Historic South Central is slated to undergo major rehabilitation in the next few years. While the developers of this project and the City of Los Angeles are making every effort to provide very necessary social services, it remains to be seen whether or not Jordan Downs and the surrounding community will follow the pattern of attrition studied by Prof. Freeman. The same question holds for Downtown Los Angeles, especially as more affluent couples and individuals; creative types move in while developers tear down older buildings and put newer more expensive places. Logic would have it that yes, these places will fall in line with same patterns. However, I believe that Prof. Freeman's study needs to go a bit further and look at the residents who did stay, who they are, and why they didn't move.
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