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BEYOND GENTRIFICATION

Who says gentri cation is a myth?

By Brentin Mock (https://grist.org/author/brentin-mock/) on Feb 5, 2015

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In my last piece (https://grist.org/cities/urban-planners-may-have- nally-

found-how-to-get-to-sesame-street/), I teased that I would next write about how
the urban planning model called equitable development could possibly x

/
 gentri cation. But I guess before that we should explore if gentri cation is even a
thing. Word on the spreadsheets is that it’s not.NEWSLETTERS (HTTPS://GRIST.ORG/SUBSCRIBE/)
(HTTPS://GRIST.ORG/SEARCH/) D

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John Buntin wrote in Slate
(http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/01/the_gentri cation_
last month that gentri cation is a “myth,” and contributed to a series of stories in
this month’s Governing magazine that sought to further unpack the myth. In
December, Emily Badger called for getting rid of the term
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/17/its-time-to-
give-up-the-emptiest-word-in-urban-policy-gentri cation/) altogether in The
Washington Post. Our own Ben Adler jabbed at this
(https://grist.org/cities/american-cities-have-bigger-things-to-worry-about-
than-gentri cation/) as well.

“Whatever point you’re making about ‘gentri cation’ is undermined by the fact
that the word has no clear, singular meaning,” wrote Badger.

Article continues below

More in this series (https://grist.org/series/beyond-gentri cation/)

Urban planners may have nally found how to get to Sesame Street (https://grist.org/cities/urban-
planners-may-have- nally-found-how-to-get-to-sesame-street/)

Why living in Detroit doesn’t come cheap (https://grist.org/cities/why-living-in-detroit-doesnt-come-

cheap/)

Can we green the hood without gentrifying it? (https://grist.org/cities/can-we-green-the-hood-

without-gentrifying-it/)

And so, OK. Fine. I get it. Gentri cation is a stupid name that doesn’t really mean
anything, or at least academics and journalists can’t agree
(http://www.citylab.com/housing/2014/12/no-ones-very-good-at-correctly-
identifying-gentri cation/383724/) on what it means. But noodling around what
gentri cation is, is like Naughty by Nature asking, “Who’s down with O.P.P.?”:
There’s no single de nition for either, but everybody understands that both have to
do with other people’s property.

/
 Myth or not, the fear of [redacted for lack of clarity] is real for those living under
the legacy of white supremacy — that is, racial NEWSLETTERS
(HTTPS://GRIST.ORG/SEARCH/) discrimination and economic
(HTTPS://GRIST.ORG/SUBSCRIBE/) D
insecurity. Perhaps that’s because throughout history, our nation has not allowed
(https://grist.org)
Native Americans, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans the freedoms
to live where they want. On that measure, the history has been more about those
populations living where they’ve been put, and then told to bounce when America
has decided to repurpose the land they occupied.

Exhibits: the Trail of Tears, which forced tens of thousands of Native Americans to
relocate under the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Or the hundreds of towns and farms
built by African Americans freed from slavery during Reconstruction that were
destroyed by white racist terrorists
(http://america.aljazeera.com/features/2014/4/missouri-black-towns.html) — a
subject I look forward to hearing more about in the upcoming Smithsonian
documentary (http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/mississippi-inferno-
reveals-role-black-landowners-farmers-played-in-1965-voting-rights-act-
passage-20150204) “Mississippi Inferno: Deeds of De ance.”

Maybe those aren’t considered examples of [redacted], as de ned by British

sociologist Ruth Glass, who coined the term in 1963 in reference to working-class
neighborhoods in London. That might be where sociologists rst encountered the
word, but I rst heard it in Spike Lee’s 1989 movie Do the Right Thing
(https://grist.org/climate-energy/the-not-so-hidden-climate-messages-in-spike-
lees-do-the-right-thing/):

Do the Right Thing (4/10) Movie CLIP - Your Jordans Are F***ed Up! (19…
(19…

/
 I heard it again, in more serious terms, in John Singleton’s 1991 movie Boyz n the
Hood: (HTTPS://GRIST.ORG/SEARCH/) NEWSLETTERS (HTTPS://GRIST.ORG/SUBSCRIBE/) D

(https://grist.org)

"It's called gentri cation" (HQ)

Pointing to a billboard in Compton, Calif., advertising a real estate company called

“Seoul to Seoul” o ering “Cash for your home,” Laurence Fishburne’s character,
Furious Styles, explains, this “is what happens when the property values of a
certain area is brought down [so] they can buy your land at a lower price, to move
all of the people out, raise the property value, and then sell it at a pro t.”

Compton, today, barely resembles the black community captured in Boyz n the
Hood, with its population having shifted to majority Latino
(http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/10/24/as-demographics-
shiftanewgenerationo eaderstakechargeincompton.html). Researchers studying
[redacted] admit that when displacement happens, it’s often Latino populations
overtaking historically black neighborhoods. But this displacement happens to
Latinos, too. My colleague at Colorlines, Aura Bogado, recently visited her old Los
Angeles neighborhood Highland Park and found that it was mostly occupied by
white residents and retailers
(http://colorlines.com/archives/2015/01/highland_parks_gentri cation_pushes_immig
much wealthier than those she grew up with. This interactive map
(http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/places/maps-a-quick-look-at-the-
changing-demographics-of-la-1940-to-the-present.html) created by KCET TV in
Los Angeles shows the shifting racial demographics of Los Angeles since the 1940s.

/
 Now, I should acknowledge that neighborhoods change demographics for lots of
reasons — not all(HTTPS://GRIST.ORG/SEARCH/)
of them racist, and it hasn’t just happened
NEWSLETTERS to people of color.
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Many neighborhoods that are majority black or Latino today were once
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predominantly white. Compton might’ve once been the home of Niggas With
Attitude (http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/news/id.32186/title.jerry-heller-calls-
n-w-a-the-beatles-the-two-most-important-musical-acts-in-history), but
before that, it was the home of President George H. W. Bush and many others of his
race.

But whites rarely leave a neighborhood en masse because of a devaluation of

property or lack of investment. Upward mobility and “white ight” shouldn’t be
confused for displacement, which happens when forces beyond one’s control cause
you to move.

African Americans have historically moved more slowly up the social mobility
ladder (http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-
memos/posts/2013/08/28-social-mobility-race-opportunity-reeves) than whites.
That’s why when you think of a city neighborhood changing from white to black,
you might be thinking sprawl, with whites moving to the suburbs, probably
starting around some time in the 1960s. But when you think of a city neighborhood
changing from black to white, you think of some urban “revitalization” initiative
(which I’ll get to in my next piece), with whites moving back from the suburbs — or
maybe it’s their kids — probably some time in the last ten years.

Source: “Pursuing the American Dream: Economic Mobility Across Generations,” — The Pew Charitable Trusts, July
2012

So we know that race matters in these “place matter” discussions. Governing

reports that (http://www.governing.com/gov-data/gentri cation-in-cities-
governing-report.html), “Neighborhoods [redacted]ing since 2000 recorded
population increases and became whiter, with the share of non-Hispanic white
residents increasing an average of 4.3 percentage points.”

/
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According to Governing’s analysis (http://www.governing.com/gov-

data/gentri cation-in-cities-governing-report.html), “[Redacted] still remains
rare nationally, with only 8 percent of all neighborhoods reviewed experiencing
[redacted] since the 2000 Census.” Harvard sociologists Robert Sampson and
Jackelyn Hwang found that neighborhoods with 40 percent-plus black populations
have [redacted] much more slowly than other neighborhoods, and suggested that
that itself “perpetuates segregation and inequality.”

And while senior editor Alan Ehrenhalt berated

(http://www.governing.com/topics/urban/gov-gentri cation-de nition-
series.html) “critics of [redacted] [who] decry a process that is largely imaginary,”
because the more serious problem is extreme poverty, it’s di cult
to imagine poverty in America without discussing its inextricable links to racism
and displacement. You have to discuss uncomfortable history like World War II
internment for Japanese Americans, the aforementioned Trail of Tears, racially
restrictive zoning and housing covenants, Jim Crow laws, Sundown Towns
(http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/sundowntowns.php), redlining, white ight,
subprime mortgage loan exploitation, foreclosure disparities, and disproportionate
environmental burdens.

Maybe [redacted] — ah, fuck it — gentri cation is a poor word to implicate in all of
that, but we can’t act like the underlying issue of racism has not been part of the
poverty acts of America. The clearing out of Native Americans was essentially the
gentrifying of a place that would later be named America. Yeah, this yielded some
great economic development, for both the nation and the world. But it happened
through the dispossession of indigenous populations, the forced labor of the
enslaved, and the reckless exploitation of land and property
/
 (https://grist.org/living/thoughts-on-slavery-environmental-destruction-and-
the-will-to-survive/). That’s not mythology. That’s
(HTTPS://GRIST.ORG/SEARCH/) the kind
NEWSLETTERS of history that
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informs the distrust that surfaces when the signs of gentri cation pop up.
(https://grist.org)

“The ‘myth’ of gentri cation is as intriguing as the ‘myth’ about climate change,”
Carlton Eley, a senior urban planning specialist at EPA, told me recently. “Skeptics
and cynics trivialize gentri cation because they don’t want to come to grips with it.
I take the same position as Al Gore on [climate change]: Inconvenient truths must
be acknowledged in order to have wise governance.”

That means naming it for what it is. And that doesn’t necessarily have to mean
something negative, said Vernice Miller-Travis, senior associate at Skeo Solutions
and long-entrenched environmental justice researcher and activist
(https://grist.org/cities/ ght-the-funk-this-womans- ght-against-garbage-
fumes-became-a-national-crusade/), at the smart growth conference
(https://grist.org/cities/urban-planners-may-have- nally-found-how-to-get-
to-sesame-street/) I attended last week in Baltimore. “I argue that gentri cation
can happen,” Miller-Travis said, “but there’s a whole lot of work that needs to be
done to extrapolate the things that are baked into public policy that perpetuate
inequality and segregation, even in 2015.”

Miller-Travis has worked with communities experiencing this in both New York
City and D.C. — two cities where researchers admit that gentri cation does actually
occur (http://www.governing.com/gov-data/gentri cation-in-cities-governing-
report.html) — so I’d say her voice counts on this. The question is not whether
gentri cation is poorly de ned, but rather who gets to de ne it.

In my next piece, we’ll examine the role of environmental remediation in helping

give gentri cation a bad name.

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Show comments

More In This Series: See All (https://grist.org/series/beyond-gentri cation/)

(https://grist.org/cities/urban-planners-may-have- nally-found-how-to-get-to-
sesame-street/)
BEYOND GENTRIFICATION

/
 Urban planners may have nally found how to get to Sesame Street
(https://grist.org/cities/urban-planners-may-have- nally-found-how-to-get-to-
(HTTPS://GRIST.ORG/SEARCH/) NEWSLETTERS (HTTPS://GRIST.ORG/SUBSCRIBE/) D
sesame-street/)
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With "equitable development," planners say they've nally gured out how to make sustainable, healthy
neighborhoods accessible to everyone.

(https://grist.org/cities/why-living-in-detroit-doesnt-come-cheap/)
BEYOND GENTRIFICATION

Why living in Detroit doesn’t come cheap (https://grist.org/cities/why-living-in-

detroit-doesnt-come-cheap/)
Detroit's housing market may look accessible, but once you do the math imposed by the city's
sometimes tough conditions, it's hardly a bargain.

/
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(https://grist.org/cities/can-we-green-the-hood-without-gentrifying-it/)
BEYOND GENTRIFICATION

Can we green the hood without gentrifying it? (https://grist.org/cities/can-we-

green-the-hood-without-gentrifying-it/)
How gentri cation dirties up environmental cleanups.

See All Articles In This Series (Https://Grist.Org/Series/Beyond-Gentri cation/)

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