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Gentrification Is Masqueraded as Revitalization

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Gentrification is Masqueraded as Revitalization According to The Oxford English Dictionary, gentrification is defined as the renovation and improvement of a house or district so that it conforms to middle-class taste (Oxford English Dictionary). This definition absolutely fits the description of the current transformation of the inner City of Baltimore. When we look at neighborhoods such as Westport, Federal Hill, and Canton, it is evident that gentrification is on the City of Baltimore’s agenda. During the last two terms that Mayor Martin O’Mally has presided over the city, there have been many changes in administration and the population that are causing devastating effects on the city’s blue collar residents. The Baltimore City …show more content…

“Some people will take that, thinking that’s a lot of money,” said Linda Towe, executive director of Project Tour (Teaching Our Own Understanding and Responsibility), an umbrella group that includes Westport and neighboring Lakeland and Mount Winans (“Developing revival of Westport has profit, pitfalls”). The process through which gentrification is carried out is very intricately planned. Drugs, prostitution, and violence usually play the most important role in the process of gentrification. When neighborhoods are infested by crime of any sort, the first thing that happens is the immediate decline in property value in areas like Guilford and Park Heights (“The Mortgage Bubble Invades Baltimore”). The home owning taxpayers in Baltimore City are usually blue collar workers who are just trying to make ends meet, and because of their income restrictions many of these citizens are forced to live in areas of high crime. Generally people only live in these areas if they have to, so when a developer comes along and offers to buy citizens homes at a price that the citizens at the time considers to be extremely profitable in their neighborhood, they usually take the money and run without carefully considering that the offer that they have accepted is much less profitable than what the developers have planned (“City’s East side Renaissance Spreads”). We

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