This week New York Magazine takes a view on gentrification that is, if not contrarian, at least a little controversial. (The article follows a similar one in the semi-annual magazine n+1). As will come as no surprise to most readers, gentrification these days is treated as something of a dirty word. Why’s that? Mostly because it conjures up associations of, as n+1 wrote, “the forced displacement of the urban working class by mobile, college-educated professionals.” This may be more myth that fact though: In his recent book There Goes the ‘Hood, Columbia urban planning prof Lance Freeman found that poor residents and those without a college education were actually less likely to move if they resided in gentrifying neighborhoods” and that “the discourse on gentrification has tended to overlook the possibility that some of the neighborhood changes associated with gentrification might be appreciated by the prior residents. In other words, the rehabilitation of an old house or the opening of an upscale bakery isn’t necessarily a zero-sum game in which the long-time residents are lose out. Not only that, claims the New York Magazine article, but gentrification is the only hope that many urban centers have of saving themselves: “The ailing cities that save themselves in the 21st century will do so by following Brooklyn’s blueprint,” the article says in closing. “They’ll gentrify as fast as they can.”
What’s Wrong With Gentrification? [New York Magazine]
Photo by kathyylchan