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.     

Neo–Bohemia: Art and Neighborhood Redevelopment in Chicago

Drawing on an extended case study of Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood, this article develops the concept of neo–bohemia. Neo–bohemia suggests that traditions of cultural innovation in older city neighborhoods persist, but that these bohemian traditions intersect with economic development in new ways in the post–Fordist city. Neo–bohemia supports both residential gentrification and the concentration of entertainment and new media enterprises, creating the context for the redevelopment of former industrial spaces in Chicago. Neo–bohemia complicates contemporary urban theories that stress deconcentration, and theories of urban tourism that overstate the regulated and hermetic nature of consumption spaces.     

Alternative strategies for urban redevelopment: A case study in a squatter housing neighborhood of Ankara

Since the 1980s, the redevelopment of squatter housing settlements has been a primary policy focus of the local and central authorities in Turkey. Their strategies have adopted two different models: one approach was not effective at generating redevelopment activity and produced low quality living environments, and the other approach resulted in dislocation and gentrification. The literature stresses three issues. First, redevelopment sites are areas where market forces failed; thus, they are perceived as high risk, low-demand, and low-return investments with high transaction costs. Second, institutions that lower transaction costs boost market forces and increase economic performance in property development. Third, local authorities remain active in urban redevelopment; despite having no direct tools for local economic development, they do have tools for urban development. This study reformulates the basic transaction cost thesis and hypothesizes that local authorities can boost urban redevelopment by making changes to institutions or ‘the rules of the game’ by increasing information flow, positive externalities and perceived returns and by decreasing transaction costs, negative externalities and risks, all of which motivate land owners and house-builders. To test this hypothesis, I have conducted household surveys and semi-structured interviews with house-builders in a squatter housing neighborhood undergoing a gradual transformation. The goal of this study was to search for the impacts of the local authority’s strategies on homeowner inertia, private sector disinvestment and the implications of urban redevelopment. My findings revealed that the local authorities can produce desirable results for less attractive neighborhoods with the help of marketing, institutional strategies and effective land use planning without leading to dislocation and gentrification. Overall, this study suggests that ‘institutional’ strategies are crucial for urban policies and future urban redevelopment activities.     

One step ahead of the bulldozer: historic preservation in Houston,Texas

Community development corporations (CDCs) are often at the forefront of providing affordable housing and social services, restoring disinvested communities, and rebuilding neighborhoods. Most CDCs work in older, inner-city communities that, given their age and location, likely contain older and historic buildings. Thus, there is a seemingly logical overlap between community developers’ target neighborhoods and the tools, strategies, and resources associated with historic preservation. This article uses a qualitative case study of Houston’s Avenue CDC to explore how and why community developers use preservation within the context of a high-growth city. For more than two decades, Avenue has worked in three core neighborhoods in an effort to stave off gentrification via teardowns and townhome redevelopment. The findings show that, for community developers in growing cities, carefully crafted preservation strategies may be a way to challenge the forces of gentrification, displacement, and wholesale physical destruction.     

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.     

Philadelphia

During the post-war period, Philadelphia has been through three periods of redevelopment activity. In the first, local public awareness of decline coupled with political reform led to numerous plans for major redevelopment projects. By the early 1950s, those projects were well underway, but population and business were declining. Beginning in the late 1970s public reinvestment waned to be replaced by privately-driven office development and gentrification. As the demographic economic context has stabilized, federal and state assistance has diminished. One result has been a shift towards project-centred economic development and away from comprehensive planning.     

Land Redevelopment and the Built Environment in Third-Wave Cities: Review and Synthesis

I seek to synthesize several different approaches to issues of urban land redevelopment and the built environment. The essay focuses on developments in the third and current historical wave of capitalist development. I describe the economic logic of land-use change with reference to both commercial and residential property. This logic has become intimately intertwined with global finance and this state of affairs has introduced new elements of fluidity and risk into the built environment. Issues of urban policy and the role of municipal authorities in shaping urban land markets are then considered. I describe how local government agencies increasingly pursue development projects in complex partnerships with representatives of the real-estate industry. In the second half of the paper, the overall argument is recast by reference to three important trends in regard to land-redevelopment and the built environment in third-wave cities, namely, the economic and architectural renaissance of central business districts, the widespread gentrification of inner-city neighborhoods, and the emergence of a new post-suburban phase of peripheral urban expansion.     

西方绅士化研究进展

从绅士化概念的提出与发展入手,回顾了西方绅士化现象的阶段特征与趋势、西方绅士化研究的四个重要阶段,从绅士化的类型衍化、绅士化概念工具的再发展、绅士化效应与抵抗、新自由城市主义与绅士化、尺度转向与星球绅士化等方面分析当代西方绅士化研究的新特点。在展望西方绅士化实证研究、理论建构、后效应对与研究方法的基础上,认为中国绅士化的研究应当重点关注本体论与认识论、前置条件、结构动力与制度条件的独特性。     

Information sharing and human capital efficiency in poor neighborhoods: some graph theoretic applications

This paper develops an analysis of human capital development that explores the relationships between information sharing and human capital efficiency in poor neighborhoods. In deriving the results, a relative connectivity (gamma) index, borrowed from the geography literature, is integrated into a model of neighborhood human capital growth. It is argued in this paper that increases in the sharing efficiency of economic information among individuals in a given neighborhood may have positive impacts on neighborhood human capital efficiency rates. These positive impacts on neighborhood human capital efficiency may likewise help to reduce the poverty rate in that neighborhood. The results established in this paper indicate that not only is the sharing of economic information in urban neighborhoods important for neighborhood human capital development but also that neighborhood income sharing, the sharing of neighborhood social capital, and the diversity of neighborhood social capital may all have a beneficial influence on both the human capital efficiency rate and the rates of neighborhood poverty.     

Place-making or place-masking? The everyday political economy of “making place”

As redevelopment and gentrification strategies globally continue to be aimed at attracting wealthier residents and consumers in an effort to drive economic growth, concerns for and interventions in the interests of social equity appear decreasingly relevant. Government, private sector and community organisations have of course worked together in different times and places to implement programs that are more rather than less inclusive – the variations always depending on the spatial politics of the context. This paper examines contemporary discourses and practices of place-making in Melbourne, and asks whether ways of thinking about urban redevelopment as place-making in this time and place are likely to enable the inclusion of social equity in these urban “improvements”.     

GENTRIFICATION,REINVESTMENT, AND DISPLACEMENT IN BALTIMORE

ABSTRACT: This study examined the recent literature on gentrification and analyzed four census tracts in a gentrifying area in the City of Baltimore. The author employed data from the 1980 and 1990 censuses to compare changes in population, residential sales, property values, and housing densities. Evidence was found that mixed reinvestment by the government and private sector altered the economic and racial characteristics of the area in ways somewhat inconsistent with earlier findings. Typical characteristics of gentrification, such as new construction, steeply rising property values, and reduced housing densities, occurred side by side with increases in the number of minority residents and in the availability of subsidized housing. The study points to the need to look closely at specific areas within gentrifying neighborhoods to discover important variations hidden in summary data.     

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.     

RELOCATING THE POOR: SOCIAL CAPITAL AND NEIGHBORHOOD RESOURCES

ABSTRACT:  This article examines the social capital available to low-income households which were relocated to different types of neighborhoods with the HOPE VI program, an initiative aimed at redeveloping U.S. public housing developments into mixed-income communities. Along with improving the living environment, HOPE VI is thought to improve residents' access to social capital by changing the economic mix of their neighborhoods. This article contributes evidence from multivariate analyses of survey data of Boston HOPE VI residents in their post-HOPE VI neighborhoods. Findings indicate that rather than neighborhood socioeconomic mix, neighborhood resources, such as libraries, recreation facilities, parks, grocery stores, and social services, followed by place attachment and feelings of safety, were the strongest predictors of social capital. A discussion of why neighborhood resources may be so important for social capital is presented, and implications for policies aimed at improving poverty neighborhoods and low-income people's access to social capital are considered .     

绥芬河俄罗斯风情园商业区概念设计

俄罗斯风情园是绥芬河市的旧城改造项目,其商业中心区位于整个园区的西部.该设计方案集餐饮、娱乐、商业、办公为一体,强调活动的多元性、土地的复合性和街区开发的完整性,力求集聚人气,并带动整个地区的经济复兴.     

Housing Market Renewal in Liverpool: Locating the Gentrification Debate in History,Context and Evidence

This paper places the Housing Market Renewal programme in Liverpool in its historical context, highlighting a mismatch between the supply and demand for housing which has existed for four decades. This disequilibrium produced an environment where successive waves of neighbourhood abandonment occurred from the late 1970s despite significant public policy interventions. The implementation of the Housing Market Renewal programme has stimulated a debate about the extent to which the public sector interventions are leading to the gentrification of poor neighbourhoods. The paper finds that there is no evidence of gentrification in older neighbourhoods, however, inflows of capital rather than middle-class residents have altered the physical development of the city to an extent that the housing choices of all income groups have been affected. The paper concludes that critical gentrification research should take account of historical development and wider housing market change to remain relevant to the debate about the changing social and economic structure of cities.     

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 in new-build and old-build transit-oriented developments: the case of Bengaluru

Indian cities have seen substantial investment in building metro systems, with a few cities operating full-fledged metro. In the case of city of Bengaluru, the influx of public investment on transit and favourable zoning incentives are attracting around 26% of housing investment in transit-oriented developments (TODs). This paper examines whether such a large-scale influx of public and private capital is leading to gentrification in TODs. The findings indicate that the new housing projects in TODs are causing new-build gentrification, but the old build existing housing remains ungentrified. Towards mitigating gentrification issues, the paper recommends inclusive and equitable TOD strategies.     

Privatizing public housing redevelopment: Grassroots resistance,co-operation and devastation in three Dublin neighbourhoods

This article examines variations in residents' responses to proposals to redevelop three public housing neighbourhoods in Dublin using Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) and the outcomes their resistance achieved. It investigates the important role that structures of participation and representation and local social cohesion play in developing effective resident resistance to displacement and gentrification through regeneration. In two of these neighbourhoods community representative structures were strong and although one community co-operated with the PPP plans and the other opposed them, both were broadly successful in achieving their campaign objectives. Community structures in the third neighbourhood were weak however and the imposition of PPP redevelopment devastated this community which is now almost entirely vacant. This article provides some important insights for the literature on grassroots resistance to urban redevelopment, welfare state restructuring and public housing redevelopment. It reveals that, despite their lack of power, residents' resistance can significantly influence public housing redevelopment strategies particularly where community representative structures are strong. However for vulnerable communities, where representative structures are weak, the over emphasis on poverty de-concentration and refurbishing the built environment in public housing redevelopment policy can have devastating consequences. Thus, it concludes that the rationale for grass roots resistance to redevelopment is centred upon a strong place attachment, but also opposition to the privatization of public housing and the desire for poverty to be addressed in an holistic manner.     

The impact of gentrification on ethnic neighbourhoods in Toronto: a case study of little Portugal

Despite extensive literature on the nature and impact of gentrification, there has been little consideration of the effects of gentrification on ethnic neighbourhoods. This study evaluates the negative and positive effects of gentrification on the Portuguese in west central Toronto. Details concerning the settlement patterns of the Portuguese, the characteristics of Portuguese residents and patterns of gentrification in inner-city Toronto were obtained from census data. Evaluations of neighbourhood change and attitudes of the residents towards gentrification were obtained from key informant and focus group interviews. The results suggest considerable ambivalence among the respondents, but most agreed that the long-term viability of Little Portugal as an immigrant reception area with a good supply of low-cost housing is in doubt.     

DOWNTOWN REDEVELOPMENT AS AN URBAN GROWTH STRATEGY: A Critical Appraisal of the Baltimore Renaissance

ABSTRACT: Since the early 1970s, Baltimore has been heralded as a model of how declining, older U.S. cities can be revitalized Baltimore's economic development strategy has hinged on the creation of a “good business climate”; the linchpin of the strategy has been the redevelopment of downtown into the “corporate center” of a new Baltimore economy based on advanced services and tourism. Despite the favorable publicity accorded Baltimore's transformation, systematic analysis of social and economic trends suggests that corporate center-business climate redevelopment has done little to boost aggregate levels of prosperity in the city. Moreover, the Baltimore strategy has generated uneven patterns of growth and exacerbated urban dualism Baltimore has become “two cities”: a city of developers, suburban professionals, and “back-to-the-city gentry who have ridden the downtown revival to handsome profits, good jobs, and conspicuous consumption; and a city of impoverished blacks and displaced manufacturing workers, who continue to suffer from shrinking economic opportunities, declining public services, and neighborhood distress. The article explores three main reasons for these results: (1) business domination of Baltimore's public-private “partnership,” (2) the absence of explicit mechanisms linking downtown redevelopment to the revitalization of low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, and (3) the inherent pitfalls of building an urban economy on downtown-centered corporate services and tourism. The article concludes by briefly examining the implications of the Baltimore case for the general problem of how to generate equitable, sustainable economic development in older U.S. cities.