Gentrification?

[Broletariat]

What exactly is the process of gentrification, what are its consequences, how does it get started, and what are some good examples?

Thanks in advance.

[syndicat]

you can read Neil Smith, "The New Urban Frontier", or for the short course, the article "What is gentification?":
http://www.uncanny.net/~wetzel/gentry.htm

gentrification is a process of displacement of working class people from a neighborhood which happens when there is a major influx of capital into an area...speculators buying up properties, landlords fixing up buildings to rent to higher income people, professional people buying up old houses and putting money into fixing them up, bankers turning on the spigot for real estate loans in an area, developers building expensive condos there.

in his book Neil Smith introduces a concept that he calls the "rent gap." if you have a working class area that that has a good location or other features that might make it potentially desireable for higher income people (professionals, managers...the urban gentry), there may emerge a gap between the currrent rents and market values and the potentially much hgiher rents and values if people with higher incomes were to start moving into the area. people with higher incomes moving into an area will cause rents and house values to rise because they can outbid working class people for the space. that is, they can afford to pay more. when the rent gap is particularly high, speculators begin making "bets" on that area by buying up properties, some landlords begin renovating etc.

there is an opposite process called "filtering." This happens when an area originally developed for higher income or "middle class" people goes out of fashion and the residents there start moving to some newer area or area more in fashion, and they fail to upgrade their houses or start renting them as absentee landlords, or they cut them up into apartments, etc, then rents and values start declining and working class people start moving in there. the residences "filter down" to the working class.

since you live in L.A., i'll point out that Hollywood was originally developed as a high income suburb. I'm talking about the flat part south of Franklin. by the '30s and '40s "filtering" had begun in this area and it came to be pretty much a working class area after World War 2. it pretty much reached rock bottom in the '80s with drug problems, landlord abandonment in some cases. but after the subway opened in 1998, landlords began flipping their buildings, they were able to double or triple their rents. nightclubs moved back in.

similarly the Westlake area was originally developed as a professional class rental area in the '10s and '20s. as with Hollywood, it began to undergo filtering in the '30s, '40s, '50s. by the '60s it was thorioughly a working class area. part of the decline was due to the decline of the nearby downtown, with the loss of office jobs.

by the way, not all the neighborhoods around L.A. that are now working class areas were developed for the middle class. there were some areas that were developed originally for the working class, such as East L.A., Montebello, the southern part of Boyle Heights, south central L.A., and the southeast blue collar suburbs (Maywood, Bell, Huntington Park).

[Broletariat]

since you live in L.A.
Thanks a lot for all the information, but where do you get this impression from?

[syndicat]

i think i'm confusing you with someone else.

[Widerstand]

Check out David Harvey's Right To The City, or books by Andrej Holm (Wir Bleiben Alle!) or Christoph Twickel (Gentrifidingsbumbs), if you can get the latter two in your language somehow.

Also check out this thread: http://www.revleft.com/vb/not-our-name-t146097/index.html?t=146097

And this is a good English speaking blog (also) about Gentrification: http://housingstruggles.wordpress.com/

If you want to read the Capitalist side of it, check out Florida's book The Rise Of The Creative Class.

edit:

As for examples, there are a lot. It's basically happening in any major city (NYC, London, Berlin, etc.)

[Die Neue Zeit]

Policy-wise, I have commentary that addresses immediate solutions rather than problems:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/right-city-t130974/index.html

[ed miliband]

This article offers an easy introduction to Henri Lefebvre's ideas on capitalism and cities:

http://thecommune.co.uk/2010/02/09/what-is-a-city-cycles-structure-strategy/

[syndicat]

one thing to keep in mind is that gentrification is ramped up during periods of speculative boom, such as the housing bubble of 1996-2007. during that period finance capital had the spigots turned on for loans to speculators and developers. but in the current depression, gentfication is going to be less of a threat, because the banks have cut back on availability of capital. they are hoarding cash to prevent collapse. so it is harder for home buyers or small busineses or developers to get loans. this means there will be less market-based gentrification during the current period. during this current period the opposite tendency, of disinvestment and deterioration, is going to be a stronger trend.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

A big part of how gentrification is happening is through the destruction of public schools. The "No Child Left Behind" law and the other one that Obama passed, I can't remember what it's called; basically they allocate funding to schools that do well on culturally biased state tests while schools where students are struggling to pass the tests get less funding, more budget cuts, even though these are the schools that need resources the most. Then they deem the schools "failing" in poor communities because they do worse on tests, ignoring the fact that these schools are in communities where kids and the schools can hardly afford books, parents can't afford to pay for tutors, police are there intimidating students with metal detectors, invasive drug dog searches, etc. Once the school is deemed "failing" they close it and the students are forced into suburban schools, less working class people will move there because there are no schools to send their kids to, diminishing the value of the neighborhood so that big realtors can buy it up. Then they open up more private schools, and charter schools (which are essentially privately-run, publicly-funded schools: i.e. no teachers' unions, higher turnover, more profits, more fees, more discipline, less rights, more "consumer choice").

I recommend reading the works of Jonathan Kozol (http://www.learntoquestion.com/seevak/groups/2002/sites/kozol/Seevak02/ineedtogoHOMEPAGE/homepage.htm)on this topic.

Also, my organization has this pretty good pamphlet out called "Save our schools: The Fight to Defeat the Corporate Attack on Public Education" which is available online here. (http://www.socialistalternative.org/publications/education/)

[timbaly]

For good examples of gentrification in the United States you can search for information on Williamsburg, Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Caroll Gardens (BoCoCa), DUMBO. These areas are all in Brooklyn and have experienced tremendous gentrification during the second half of the 1990s to the present. Hunters Point in Queens, Harlem and Morningside Heights in Manhattan have also experienced gentrification during the same period. Williamsburg is particularly interesting because it's essentially ground zero for Hipster Culture. In Philadelphia there are good examples of gentrification in Northern Liberties, Queen Village, Italian Market/Bella Vista, and Manayunk. In Baltimore look for Canton, Fells Point, and Federal Hill. In Boston check out the North End, Jamaica Plain and South Boston. If you look into them all you'll see that no case is identical. The reasons they have become gentrified differ, though all locations are seen as attractive for their proximity and easy commute to downtown areas and business districts.

What has happened in many of these cities is the governments trying to make certain areas attractive for new development. Many of these cities have had crumbling tax bases and in order to improve their tax revenues they have invested in making these areas attractive to real estate speculators. Condemning old housing, destroying large public housing projects and relocating residents to areas far from the city's core, improving transit options (more frequent service, new routes), giving tax breaks to companies willing to build many new units, re-zoning areas for higher density, and fixing up roads and sidewalks are just some of the ways New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston and other cities have acted in order to promote gentrification. The newer residents who move into the newly constructed buildings are always more wealthy, more educated, and have more social capital than those who are native to the neighborhood. The real estate developers only market to these people (mostly white, and not originally from the city, or any city) because they are willing and able to pay for the luxury style housing that tends to be built in gentrified areas. The cities are then able to collect more money through taxes because the gentrification increases property value and density (though not always). The native residents who rent are often forced to leave their neighborhood once rents become too high. The newer residents are always willing to pay more for housing than the natives. The natives who own property are faced with rising real estate taxes due to the increasing property values and are essentially forced to increase their tenants rent. Some owners are able to sell their properties to real estate developers for a hefty prophet, since many bought the property when prices were low.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

The Tory's are looking to do this exact thing in London on a larger scale than what has already been done. Their agenda is to raise the rates of rent on social housing, replace current council housing with expensive flats

[timbaly]

The Tory's are looking to do this exact thing in London on a larger scale than what has already been done. Their agenda is to raise the rates of rent on social housing, replace current council housing with expensive flats


Seems like the areas around the new Olympic sites will be amongst the newest victims of gentrification.