Gentrification Is The Process Of Taking Distressed Inner City Neighborhoods

There has been a recent phenomenon throughout the United States of gentrification. As older parts of neighborhoods are occupied by new tenants with money, the neighborhood changes and loses its old character. Those who might have lived in those neighborhoods their entire lives are pushed out as rents begin to skyrocket and the surroundings begin to change. This has happened in many neighborhoods. One of the most well known is San Francisco, where technology companies have brought in new software engineers that have caused local rents to skyrocket and people to move out of the area. However, just as importantly has been the influx of new money to Brooklyn, where local neighborhood changes have forced people from their homes, traditional music to be replaced, and old businesses to go bankrupt.

Growing up in East Austin, one would be accustomed to seeing rundown neighborhoods inhabited mostly by African American and Hispanic working-class families. In the past few years though, the view has drastically changed. Now brightly colored two-story homes housing affluent Caucasian families occupy the once dilapidated areas. The previously desolated lots are now the future sites of lofts and condominiums. The recent changes in East Austin are a clear sign of gentrification. Gentrification is the extremely evident process of displacement. Revitalizing a derelict neighborhood favors the entire community, not just the ones with money. However, revitalization and gentrification

The neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn is one of the best-known cases of recent gentrification. Prior to the gentrification taking place, Williamsburg was known for being a warehouse district that also doubled as an enclave for Hispanic and Hasidic Jews (Our Brooklyn: Williamsburg, Brooklyn Public Library). However, in 2005, zone changes were approved that allowed for more housing to be created in Williamsburg and made it so that only light manufacturing could take place in Williamsburg (Curran, 2004). and explores the challenges that gentrification has presented the neighborhood’s longtime residents. While one of the goals of the change in zoning was to create more affordable housing options in Brooklyn, the opposite has occurred.

First, let's start with what gentrification is. Google defines it as “the process of renovating and improving a house or district so that it conforms to middle-class taste”, but the image Gentrification usually evokes when brought into discussion is hipsters moving into a run-down but charming neighborhood and transforming it into something completely different. What is a hipster? Some may call them the fairy godmothers of the once neglected area, and others may refer to them as the monsters that are displacing families to make an artisan beard oil shop, but we’ll touch on that later.

In York and Fig, reporters are analyzing the process of gentrification in Highland Park and getting the opinions of those living through it. Gentrification is the process of renovating a city so that it conforms a higher class. Gentrification has been a controversial topic because in some ways it is helpful but it is also hurting the people who have been in the gentrified city for years.

Gentrification in Chicago is kicking thousands of low income people out of their homes, but can it be a good thing? “Gentrification is the process of renewing and renovating urban, low-income neighborhoods, usually to help accommodate middle and upper class citizens causing an increase in property values. This often leads to many lower class residents abandoning the community and the foot print they may have left there. The nice part of this act is that it can put a good impact on the city and its economy. But who is this affected the most and how can we help? I know that this act can hurt a lot of people, but I do believe it has more positive effects than negative.

Gentrification is generally usually picked implies, or possibly endeavored means, of reviving focal urban areas that have fallen on harsh circumstances. Gentrification is the way toward supplanting the poor populace of an area with the rich and reorienting the region along upscale lines. Gentrification grant has concentrated on characterizing the term and its starting points, understanding its results and perceiving gentrifiers ' identity and why and how they gentrify neighborhoods. The dislodging impacts of gentrification have been a focal concentration, despite the fact that in the previous decade researchers have likewise inspected gentrifiers including their inspirations and encounters and how gentrification mirrors their tastes and

The gentrification process is a trend in urban neighborhoods, which results in increased property values and the displacing of lower-income families and small businesses(Sims1994-1999). Many cities around the world have begun to adapt in order to bring in new revenue. This process is being done blindly, because the apparent change is not quite noticeable but the damage is being done. The fact that there is damage being done speaks volumes at the fact that this process is being done in a way that harms many children and schools. The toll that this process is taking on public education and minority families is rather clear. Families are being displaced from their homes and relocated to god knows where.

Gentrification is the process of renovating an area so that it conforms to middle-class tastes. Low-income minority neighborhoods are often the targets of gentrification, which makes this subject rather controversial, and rightly so. Gentrification often has the effect of pushing the native low-income residents out of their neighborhoods due to rising rent costs and increased cost of living. The process typically starts with young, educated, artistic, mostly white people beginning to move into predominately low-income minority neighborhoods, because they are attracted by the low housing costs and low property values compared to the rest of the city. Lofts are built and music venues are opened along with new bars and restaurants. These new developments begin to attract more traditional middle and upper-class people, they too are drawn in by the relatively low property values and begin to buy homes and renovate them. This new influx of people has caused developers to begin buying and renovating houses in the area to attract more middle and upper-class people. All the while, the native residents have been having their rents raised to the point that they can no longer afford to live in their neighborhood anymore. They are forced to relocate and attempt to find more affordable housing elsewhere. This sad cycle has been repeated countless times in cities across America. As a student at Temple University, I see this process firsthand each day in North Philadelphia as our campus

The term Gentrification was coined by a British Sociologist Ruth Glass to describe the movement of middle class families in urban areas causing the property value to increase and displacing the older settlers. Over the past decades, gentrification has been refined depending on the neighborhood 's economic, social and political context. According to Davidson and Less’ definition, a gentrified area should include investment in capital, social upgrading, displacement of older settlers and change in the landscape (Davidson and Lees, 2005).Gentrification was perceived to be a residential process, however in the recent years, it has become a broader topic, involving the restructuring of inner cities, commercial development and improvement of facilities in the inner city neighborhoods. Many urban cities like Chicago, Michigan and Boston have experienced gentrification, however, it is affecting the Harlem residents more profoundly, uprooting the people who have been living there for decades, thus destroying the cultural identity of the historic neighborhood.

Gentrification was previously supported by those with “cultural capital” in the arts; people like “artists, writers, teachers, professors.” These people specifically were the main reason that the mainstream middle class was being pushed out of their neighborhoods. Gentrification originally had been used to describe the improvements and modernization of close-to-demolished buildings. With "an increasing desire for the kind of cultural and intellectual pursuits”, it is argued that gentrifiers have been “establishing a new investment climate” that serves to create homes for middle-class caucasians, which pushes out the minorities of the surrounding area. However, this soon evolved with time, as more and more ethnic minorities and wealthy moved

Viewing the complex matter of gentrification succinctly, it helps to uncover how multifaceted it is; in that gentrification involves the oppression, marginalization, displacement of vulnerable populations, particularly, the poor, and the black who are often already negatively impacted by the effects of classism, and racism. Gentrification threatens to erode the communities and livelihood maintained by these set of people because their displacement becomes a precondition for the total transformation of the area.

Gentrification is characterized as a struggle of power through the process of neighborhood change taking place in three stages; entry, exit, and restoration. Gentrification is driven by private developers, landlords, businesses, and corporations, and supported by the government through policies. (Hang) The “rehabilitation” of depressed urban areas leads to the inevitable exile of it’s lifelong residents. As wealthy interest in less affluent neighborhoods increases, it causes a sociocultural change to occur in those communities. These changes send a shock wave of economic effects. The average income increases and the average family size decreases. The economic eviction of lower income families will result because of increased rent, property

East Los Angeles (Boyle Heights) is undergoing the process of Gentrification. Gentrification is defined as the process of renovating and improving a house or district so that it conforms to middle-class taste. Some scholars define gentrification as private sector-initiated residential and commercial investment in urban neighborhoods accompanied by inflows of households with higher socioeconomic status than the neighborhood’s initial residents. (Vigdor, Massey and Rivlin, 2002, P. 135). One of the problems with gentrification in Boyle Heights is that the community members that are currently residing and working in Boyle Heights are not middle class and thus, the gentrification does not apply to them. The nature of the problem stems from the unintended consequences of revitalizing a district or a home and history. On the surface, the word revitalization/gentrification appears to be a good thing. However, when revitalization’s sole purpose is to target a specific social economic group, it creates a wave of problems. Some of those problems or unintended consequences, include but are not limited to, displacing families that have lived in a community for decades or even centuries, driving businesses out, create tensions in communities that insight protest and/or unrest. According to research, some potential negative outcomes of gentrification-most importantly, the displacement of previous occupants of urban

One of the most important concepts to understand about cities and neighborhoods is that they are ever changing. Economics and demographic trends tend to shift dramatically over the decades. In coastal cities, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Washington, DC, as well as many Sunbelt cities this has led to the rapid gentrification of poor urban communities. Other cities throughout the nation 's interior also experience gentrification, but typically at a slower rate. While many argue that gentrification is detrimental, as it often displaces residences who live in the upcoming communities, due to rising rents and house prices, the reality is much less clear cut. On one hand residents may unfortunately be displaced, but on the other hand much needed improvements often make their way to the neighborhood. In the next ten years, I believe