Gentrification Backstory

http://mtheatlanticcities.com/job-and-economy/2014/02/why-gentrification-so-hard-to-stop/7708/


Hello Everyone:

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The definition of gentrification
housingworks.org

 Today we're going back to the subject of gentrification.  Rather, the inevitability of gentrification.  James Frank DY Zarsadiaz explains in his article for The Atlantic Cities, "Why Gentrification Is So Hard to Stop," that this process isn't a recent phenomena but something that's been around for a very long time.  It's a fact that cities are organic, they transform and that metamorphosis is palpable.  The modest coffee shop has given way to the Mexican vegan restaurant, followed closely by the gluten-free artisan bakery.  The corner barber shop is replaced by a chain salon.  These scenes, and many more like them, have become common occurrences in the daily life of the urban dweller from coast to coast.  The story always starts out the same way, educated middle-income (predominantly white) twenty- and thirty-somethings move into a working-class neighborhood in search of affordable housing.  Soon, the community becomes the backdrop for their preferences.  Property values go up, long-time residents are displaced, and whatever sense of uniqueness that drew the new residents in becomes this sea of boring blandness.  How did things get this way?

"The Plan"
zebraworldchampion.wordpress.com

Over the past ten years, there have been volumes of articles, books, and policy papers that issued the Siren's call about this "new" form of urbanization.  This "new" form of urbanization isn't so new, it's been part of the economic driving force of urban development since the fifties.  If we want to deal with the side effects, we need to understand the underpinning force.  Following decades of economic depression and war, the newly flush Americans began to subscribe to the economic philosophy of neo-liberalism.  Neo-liberalism gave Americans the license to freely exercise their right to consume beyond their limits.  This philosophy began flourishing in the seventies as deindustrialization, globalization, and international finance reconfigured to fit this paradigm.  Within the economic context of cities, this ideology encourages free enterprise, open competition, deregulation, and the dismantling of public goods.  Neo-liberalism relies on on the private sector for daily issues such as education, health care, housing, transportation, and entertainment.  In short, these daily matters become commodities for purchase rather than rights or services.

"A Map of Polk Street Gentrification"
radicalactivismvisualarchive.wordpress.com

  
Why does this matter to cities and what does it have to do with gentrification, you may ask.  James Frank DY Zarsadiaz explains, "In part because neo-liberalism hasn't only changed cities-it's changed city dwellers and their expectations.  When Boston, Chicago, and New York grew in stature during in the late nineteenth, early twentieth century, cities were seen as places of innovation, opportunity, and heterogeneity, where people and government worked together for the common good. Obviously, this was a myth.  However, these widely popular ideas have stayed in the greater civic imagination.

Yet, in the last thirty years, quotidian needs and resources, once considered the purview of government, have been given over to private entities whose scope, comprehension, and concern for day-to-day life in the city is limited, at best. Entertainment is confined to the malls, chain stores, sport venues, and money-making festivals.  In this environment, small-businesses must compete with the Targets and Gaps of the world.  The beer concession person at Staples Center cannot afford to live close to work, so he or she settles for a place in the outer rings of the city.

"Gentrification and You"
Sarah Morton
60625news.com

Meanwhile, those who can afford to live in the city have come to expect more a personalized lifestyle.  The for-profit companies curry to those urban dwellers with upscale residential developments, creative marketing campaign, making once blighted and working-class neighborhood (not that the two necessarily go hand-in-hand) into "livable" urban corners.  For some, the city has regained its reputation.  It's a great place to be, if you have the time and the money. However, for other, the city is quickly becoming a hostile environment.  The daily struggles of the concrete jungle are harsher than ever.  Consumer-driven solutions stimulate urban economies through shopping, tourism, and luxury by offering a seductive vision of urban development.  James Frank DY Zarsadiaz suggests, "...ultimately, this pattern of neo-liberal problem-solving reinforces gentrification."  Thus, by ignoring the role this ideology repeatedly plays in gentrification, and the related suburbanization and "Manhattanization" of cities, Americans will continue consciously or unconsciously continue to support this economic order.  

"Thans Gentrification"
griid.org