GENTRIFICATION AND THE GRASSROOTS: POPULAR SUPPORT IN THE REVANCHIST SUBURB

Abstract: Most existing research on neighborhoods facing gentrification has portrayed residents as resistant or politically quiescent. Drawing from a year of fieldwork in Dundalk, MD, I argue that developers and the neoliberal state will probably find popular support for gentrification as they reinvest in the politically divided industrial suburbs of the United States. Local homeowners and community associations have emerged as gentrification supporters for three interrelated reasons. First, many of them have drawn from a resurgent national conservatism to explain decline as an effect of government subsidies and “people from the city;” their desire to reclaim suburban space—a “suburban revanchism”—although avoiding accusations of racism makes gentrification‐induced displacement appealing. Second, the rebirth of urban neighborhoods and other industrial suburbs provides visual evidence of gentrification's success. Third, the neoliberal state's retreat from social programs and its emphasis on private‐sector redevelopment allay suspicion of government and enable collaboration between the local state, developers, and homeowners. The redevelopment efforts of two local organizations illustrate how residents have become indispensable partners in Dundalk's emergent pro‐gentrification coalition.     

“LISTENING THROUGH WHITE EARS”: CROSS‐RACIAL DIALOGUES AS A STRATEGY TO ADDRESS THE RACIAL EFFECTS OF GENTRIFICATION

ABSTRACT: Every month residents in a gentrifying Portland neighborhood gather for a cross‐racial dialogue in which the long‐term African American residents explain to the new white, middle‐class residents how neighborhood change, and their new neighbors’“white behaviors” are harmful. Through participant observations at these dialogues for over two years, as well as in‐depth interviews, I uncovered how the Restorative Listening Project (RLP) uses dialogue as a strategy for community formation and “antiracist place‐making” in Portland's Northeast neighborhoods. The RLP attempts to mitigate the relational effects of gentrification and construct “antiracist place” by (1) positioning people of color as knowledge producers about the institutional and interpersonal effects of racism in the neighborhood; (2) confronting the tactics of white denial; and (3) promoting consciousness about systemic racism. By doing so, the project promotes antiracist awareness that responds to—perhaps reduces—the racial‐relational effects of gentrification. However, it also reveals the limits of consciousness‐raising projects in the absence of action that resists structural inequalities.     

URBAN REGIMES AND NEIGHBORHOOD MOBILIZATION AGAINST URBAN REDEVELOPMENT: The Case of an Arab-Jewish Neighborhood in Israel

ABSTRACT: This study deals with the effects of an urban bureaucratic regime on urban development and neighborhood mobilization. It examines the sociospatial transformations in an Arab-Jewish neighborhood in a major city in Israel. During the period of 1948–1990, the neighborhood experienced population turnover, planned deterioration and decline, and subsequent renewal and gentrification. The paper deals with the factors which shaped those policies and processes. the author argues that the political economy of Israel contributed to the emergence of a bureaucratic urban regime which effectively drove off all private entrepreneurial involvement in the area's development process. It is also shown that the inherent features of the bureaucratic regime facilitated community mobilization opposing development plans and made the governing agencies vulnerable to citizens' protests and court rulings.     

GENTRIFICATION AND CRIME: IDENTIFICATION USING THE 1994 NORTHRIDGE EARTHQUAKE IN LOS ANGELES

ABSTRACT: Theory suggests that in the long term, gentrification—which I define as the phenomenon where wealthier individuals move into lower‐income areas—should decrease neighborhood crime. In the short term, however, anecdotal evidence indicates that gentrification actually increases crime, perhaps due to the relative difference in status between newcomers and existing residents, and to increased opportunities for criminal behavior. Further, consumers’ choice of residential location depends on crime rates, creating simultaneity that likely biases estimates that overlook this concern. I exploit the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles and subsequent short‐term government‐sponsored home financing incentives as an instrument to control for this endogeneity. The exogenous event induced middle‐ and upper‐income individuals to purchase homes in earthquake‐affected low and moderate‐income neighborhoods, which I argue is independent of the influence of crime. The results show that in the short term, gentrification increases assaults, robberies, automobile thefts, and thefts from automobiles.     

CASTLES IN TORONTO'S SKY: CONDO‐ISM AS URBAN TRANSFORMATION

This article analyzes the evolution and spatial dynamics of condominium development in Toronto, the largest housing market in Canada and the site of a rapid take‐up of condominium tenure and construction over the last 40 years. The article probes the most influential policies that fostered and regulated condominium growth, and explores the implications for the continued restructuring of the city. A host of factors, including neoliberal state policies, have played a decisive role in fostering what we term condo‐ism, referring to an emerging nexus of economic development, finance, and consumption sector interests that have coalesced around condominium construction and culture. Policies have redirected growth to the urban core, channeled capital investments and young residents, and promoted gentrification, ultimately transforming the character of Toronto's central business district. The article explores these changes, and discusses their implications for contemporary emerging forms of capitalist urbanization and restructuring of the city.     

What's Class Got to Do With It?Community Development and Racial Identity

Abstract: This research documents the importance of class and racial identities to urban community development activities. It explores the symbolic meanings of class and the nature of inter‐class relations within the black community. The research is based on three years of ethnographic fieldwork in a Philadelphia neighborhood with an active grassroots community development agenda. The author concludes that the residents most active in the neighborhood's redevelopment activities display a particular middle‐class identity (“multi‐class”) that links them to lower‐class blacks and structures their vision of the neighborhood as a micro‐level racial justice project. The community development activities in this neighborhood are a product of the multi‐class residents’ attempt to articulate and affirm their racial identity and ideology. However, the unacknowledged class bias of these residents prevents them from creating the type of inclusive Black community that they envision.     

Manufacturing Industrial Decline: The Politics of Economic Change in Chicago, 1955–1998

Contemporary urban political economy emphasizes the role of structural factors in explaining the deindustrialization of cities in the post‐World War II era. Urban economic restructuring, by most accounts, has left city officials with few choices other than to pursue corporate‐centered economic development strategies emphasizing downtown‐area commercial and residential growth. In Chicago, however, a corporate‐center redevelopment strategy advanced by a coalition of downtown business leaders competed with a production‐oriented strategy articulated by a coalition of neighborhood organizations, manufacturers, and labor. Centrally located industrial districts facing gentrification pressures became contested terrain, and manufacturers ultimately benefited from protective measures put in place by a sympathetic administration. This essay argues that urban economic restructuring is open‐ended and politically contested. It concludes that a fuller appreciation of the contingency of urban economic development would help uncover viable regime types featuring governing coalitions that include both community‐based organizations and neighborhood business establishments.     

Gentrification as Corporate Growth Strategy: The Strange Case of Charlotte,North Carolina and the Bank of America

Abstract: In keeping with calls for gentrification research to show greater sensitivity to contextuality, this article uses Charlotte, North Carolina as a case study to illustrate a geography of gentrification in which motivations to gentrify and stage trajectories do not quite fit traditional expectations. In this mid‐sized Southern city, gentrification was first introduced in the early 1970s when corporate leaders recognized the importance of revitalizing central city space in a manner that would enhance their corporate identity and advance their strategic goals. Early stage gentrification in Charlotte was characterized by the production of gentrifiable space in one of the city's most deteriorated districts, the absence of marginal gentrifiers and traditional urban pioneers, unconventional profit motives, and significant deviations from traditional stage theory. Beyond providing an analysis of gentrification at a level of the urban hierarchy (and in a region) that has long been overlooked, the article contributes a critical and contextual perspective to our understanding of gentrification's causality and process.     

An Uneasy Match: Neoliberalism, Gentrification and Heritage Conservation in Bo-Kaap, Cape Town, South Africa

It is increasingly argued that gentrification is incorporated into public policy and the by-product of a range of contemporary neoliberal urban development policies intent on attracting investment capital. However, gentrification can also be the unintended outcome of well-meaning urban policy frameworks, such as urban densification, inner-city regeneration and urban heritage conservation but with arguably negative consequences. Focusing on Cape Town, the argument of this paper is that one of the outcomes of a neoliberalist approach to urban regeneration in the city centre is the impact it has on conserving the living and built environment heritage of the historic Bo-Kaap district. The last remaining inner-city neighbourhood that has not yet gentrified appears to be succumbing to this process. The outcome is a neighbourhood which is in economic and social flux and challenging the coherence of this once “indigenous” community.     

NEIGHBORHOOD ATTACHMENT,SOCIAL CAPITAL BUILDING,AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION: A CASE STUDY OF LOW‐ AND MODERATE‐INCOME RESIDENTS OF WATERLOO,IOWA

ABSTRACT: This case study examines the importance of neighborhood identity and engagement in place‐based social networks within the neighborhood in fostering and stimulating neighborhood‐based participation in the urban political process. Scholars concerned with civic engagement have argued that there is a strong link between the informal ties known as “social capital” and citizen engagement in the larger community. If this linkage can be shown to exist in the neighborhood setting, then it can provide guidance to both scholars and practitioners in utilizing informal, place‐based networks to empower disadvantaged neighborhoods. Evidence presented in this essay, based on interviews with a representative sample of neighborhood residents in the small industrial city of Waterloo, Iowa, suggests that strong informal networks of social capital exist within neighborhoods, but that persons who are more strongly engaged in these networks are not necessarily more involved in the efforts of formal neighborhood associations. However, individuals who are involved in these formal associations are much more likely to be connected to the local and national political systems through voting and other forms of participation.     

THE NEW DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: WHAT POPULATION GROWTH AND DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE MEAN FOR THE CITY

The District of Columbia was a magnet for new residents in the first part of the twenty‐first century. Drawn by good jobs, new condos, and burgeoning entertainment districts, the city attracted thousands of young professionals who might have otherwise settled in the region's suburbs. At the same time, some of the District's longer‐term residents are leaving the city. The growing population provides a boon to the city, but is also leads to an increasing social, economic, and cultural divide. Between 2000 and 2010, the District of Columbia gained nearly 30,000 people. The 5.2% population growth in the last decade marks a turnaround for the city, which has lost residents in every decade since 1950. Population growth was fueled by an influx of white residents and an unprecedented loss of African Americans. This article explores the population and demographic trends in the District of Columbia between 2000 and 2010 by examining the socioeconomic characteristics of the city's in‐migrants, out‐migrants, and non‐movers to explore evidence of gentrification. Using microdata from the 2006–2010 American Community Survey, this research also uses logistic regression to analyze the factors associated with out‐migration from the city and movement within the city.     

Cultural entrepreneurs and urban regeneration in Itaewon,Seoul

The paradigm of urban development policy of Seoul has changed from wholesale redevelopment to cultural regeneration since the 2000s. While many cultural regeneration projects are led by the city government and supported by public funds, the presence of cultural entrepreneurs in Itaewon, a camp town in central Seoul, has led cultural regeneration of old neighborhoods through their artistic pursuits combined with entrepreneurial practices. Contrary to the social recognition that revitalization of Itaewon would be difficult without relocating military bases within the area, Itaewon is undergoing a rapid transformation from a camp town to a culturally vibrant neighborhood. In this paper, cultural entrepreneurs refer to artists who pursue not only cultural works but also entrepreneurial practices as business owners. Though many cultural entrepreneurs are regarded as symbolic precursors of gentrification displacing low-classes residents including themselves, cultural entrepreneurs in Itaewon led the revitalization of old neighborhood by reimagining its negative image into culturally vibrant space, identifying themselves as residents, and having self-awareness of becoming precursors of gentrification.     

ENVIRONMENTAL DIMENSIONS OF URBAN CHANGE: UNCOVERING RELICT INDUSTRIAL WASTE SITES AND SUBSEQUENT LAND USE CONVERSIONS IN PORTLAND AND NEW ORLEANS

ABSTRACT: Contemporary urbanization has brought well‐documented shifts in the social and economic foundations of U.S. cities through deindustrialization, gentrification, and residential segregation. To these widely recognized shifts, we add historical–environmental changes associated with “relict industrial waste” that accumulates and becomes hidden as cities change over time. This study advances a new analytical framework and data collection strategy for uncovering these relict industrial waste sites and the processes that influence their location, frequency, and conversion. Results affirm that hundreds of potentially hazardous sites exist in older cities and that the vast majority of these sites have converted to other uses, hiding potential relict waste from public, scholarly, and regulatory view. Results also indicate that the types of neighborhood settings in which these sites are found and likelihood of subsequent land‐use conversion vary significantly by the city in question. Implications for future research and broader conceptualizations of urbanization are discussed.     

DIVERSE IMAGERIES OF GENTRIFICATION: EVIDENCE FROM NEWSPAPER COVERAGE IN SEVEN U.S. CITIES, 1986–2006

ABSTRACT: This study indicates that newspaper coverage of gentrification is far more diverse than the gentrification literature predicts. Our analysis of 4,445 articles published between 1986 and 2006 in nine papers in seven U.S. cities with a population of one million or greater suggests that newspaper frames of gentrification range from those that are wholly supportive of gentrification to those that are strictly critical. Papers also regularly publish accounts of gentrification that reference both its perceived “costs” and “benefits.” We find that coverage changes over time and that newspaper frames vary in relation to depictions of place characteristics, gentrifiers, and long‐timers. As a result, this paper addresses questions in the gentrification literature about the content and tone of representations of gentrification, speaks to urban studies scholarship on culture's role in urban change processes, and reveals the mutability of the meaning and use of the term “gentrification.” Finally, it serves as a call for further studies of representations of gentrification, as well as future analyses of their influence.     

POVERTY,POLITICS, AND A “CIRCLE OF PROMISE”: HOLISTIC EDUCATION POLICY IN BOSTON AND THE CHALLENGE OF INSTITUTIONAL ENTRENCHMENT

ABSTRACT: Cash‐strapped municipalities throughout the United States are increasingly proposing innovative education policies linking school‐based reforms with neighborhood‐level interventions. Boston is one such city. In this paper, we describe, analyze, and critique the City of Boston's “Circle of Promise” initiative, a holistic education policy designed to coordinate school reforms with local community‐based organizational resources. We link our discussion of challenges and critiques with the term “institutional entrenchment,” referring to institutional barriers to successful urban policies and the defense of the status quo. We conclude with suggestions for future policy to overcome the impediments of institutional entrenchment, and by extension, improve educational opportunities for students in underperforming urban schools.     

Revenge Of The Property Owners: Community Development and the Politics of Property

ABSTRACT: This study examines the conflict between inner city property owners and lower income tenants for control of neighborhood development agendas and community-based organizations. Utilizing a case study of Minneapolis and St. Paul, the authors investigated neighborhood conflicts over community revitalization. In a number of neighborhoods in the two cities, the community organization has come to be dominated by property owners espousing an “ideology of property” hostile to affordable housing. This has led to tension and conflict between neighborhood organizations pursuing owner interests and community development corporations focusing on low income housing.     

IN BETWEEN SOCIAL ENGINEERING AND GENTRIFICATION: URBAN RESTRUCTURING,SOCIAL MOVEMENTS,AND THE PLACE POLITICS OF OPEN SPACE

ABSTRACT: The article examines the emergence of urban countercultures and social movements in Christiania, Copenhagen, and Haga, Gothenburg in the context of the Scandinavian welfare state, from the 1970s to the present. Specifically, it investigates the relations between urban governance, gentrification processes, and social movements in the urban restructuring of Scandinavian cities. While Christiania today remains a space for counterculture, the struggle to save Haga contributed to a gentrification of the district, as it became officially “re‐evaluated” and upgraded. The article examines the similarities and differences in the urban movement trajectories in these two cases, highlighting their “place politics of open space.”     

居民归属感、邻里交往和社区参与的机制分析*——以广州市城中村改造为例

当前各地城市出现大量城中村改造项目,城中村居民的社会融合问题备受关注。基于2010-2013年广州典型城中村和复建房社区的问卷数据,主要采用计量研究方法,探讨改造对居民归属感、邻里交往和社区参与的作用机制。实证表明,改造对居民社区情感有重要影响,正全面重塑其影响机制:复建房社区的归属感远高于城中村社区,其归属感主要受"居住满意度"影响;邻里熟悉度主要受"与未成年子女同住"、"教育程度"和"居住年限"等因素影响;邻里互助主要受"人均家庭收入"影响;而社区参与度则主要受"户籍"影响。此外,复建房社区中的社区归属感、邻里熟悉和邻里互助三者与社区参与的相互作用力有所减弱。本文指出,城中村改造的后续工作应把重点置于复建房社区内各群体的社区融合之上,着力培育社区情感。     

NEIGHBORHOOD‐BASED NETWORKS,SOCIAL RESOURCES,AND LABOR MARKET PARTICIPATION IN TWO DUTCH NEIGHBORHOODS

ABSTRACT: Numerous neighborhood effect studies have reported on the negative consequences of living in disadvantaged neighborhoods for various employment outcomes, such as the duration of welfare dependence and level of income. One hypothesis for explaining this relationship is the social isolation hypothesis, which assumes that low‐income residents in disadvantaged neighborhoods are worse off than their counterparts in mixed neighborhoods because they rely on other disadvantaged neighbors to find work. These ideas are addressed by comparing survey data on social resources in the social networks of residents in a low‐income neighborhood and a socioeconomically mixed neighborhood in the Dutch city of The Hague. Findings show that living in a low‐income neighborhood influences labor market participation indirectly by limiting residents' access to job information. However, differences in access to job information cannot be explained by the high degree of neighborhood orientation in the social networks of residents in the low‐income neighborhood.     

CITIES AS PEOPLE,CITIES AS PLACES: URBAN REVITALIZATION AND URBAN CONFLICT

Just as the decades of the 50s and 60s were the age of suburbia, the 70s brought, for many, a return to the city and to an increasingly urban way of life. Analysis of this phenomenon by social scientists has resulted in the production of a large number of displacement studies, virtually all of which demonstrate the same thing: young, middle-class, usually childless professionals move into an urban neighborhood and, while materially improving the neighborhood, typically displace the indigenous population. This paper argues that in the long run, this process of displacement, as important as it is, is but one of a large number of consequences ensuing from urban revitalization. Many of these are far more subtle and far more potentially troublesome, and, to the degree to which they leave legacies of intraurban conflict and result in the loss of a sense of community, are likely to be far more difficult problems with which urban areas shall have to deal.