"It's gentrification, but you could also almost call it apartheid by both race and class."
David Aragon
Shame of the Cities: Gentrification in the New Urban America

Gentrification

A noun pronounced 'jen-trê-fê-key-shên it means urban renewal that results in an influx of middle-class residents into an economically deprived area. The upgrading or reclaiming of deteriorated urban areas by the middle and upper classes and refers to changes in a neighborhood that reflect an inflow of capital. Oftentimes the influx of capital coincides with increasing numbers of the professional and managerial classes or the so called gentry living in an area. New condominiums are built, prices of real estate are bid up, old houses are rehabilitated.

The word is of English in origin stemming from gentry; people of high social position.The root is gens, gent- clan from gen- give birth, as in Greek gignomai be born related to genos race, stock. Gentry originally referred to landowners immediately below the nobility but still of genteel breeding. Other words based on the same root are gentile, genteel, gentle, and gentleman. To gentrify is the verb meaning to convert a working-class or inner-city district into an area of middle-class residence. It was coined by the sociologist Ruth Glass in London in 1964, however inner city gentrification is widely recognized as an international phenomenon and tends to unfold in stages:

• a high proportion of renters
• ease of access to jobs centers (freeways, public transit, reverse commutes, new subway stations or ferry routes)
• location in a region with increasing levels of metropolitan congestion and
• comparatively low housing values, particularly for housing stock with architectural merit.

By todays standards gentrification is used in a slightly pejorative way since the gentrification of a previously neglected district often displaces the poorer current residents. You could say when Starbucks hits the area "Here comes the neighborhood!" Original residents move out as leases fall in, homes are sold and landlords harass tenants into leaving. Moved along by government monies in the form of grants for urban renewal programs and are paid off by income taxes or increased rates along with a change of tenure from renting to home ownership. This phenomenon is referred to as a rent gap. In London, Islington is a classic example of a gentrified area; in Paris, gentrification has extended from the Marais eastwards. Sometimes a market-led gentrification happens due to a bandwagon effect of numerous uncoordinated decisions by investors who buy property solely for the purposes of making money when they sell off the properties as values increase.

William Alonso (1964) explains in his Alonso model that:

"higher-income groups, who are less constrained than lower-income groups in their choice of residential location, may prefer the accessibility to the CBD offered by the inner city to the space, quiet, and cheaper land of the suburbs, so that gentrification may result.

The assumptions on which this theory rests range from all land being of equal quality to lack of planning constraints. This means that the theory is a long way from reality, although it does reflect some aspects of urban morphology."

Sometimes, but not always it is the reverse process of filtering down. Gentrification has a long history. In the mid and late 1800s, power brokers in many European cities tried their hands at urban planning. In Paris, Baron Georges Eugene Haussmann, a court crony of Napoleon III's, gutted the residential areas where poor people lived throughout central Paris and installed the city's famous grand boulevards. Thousands of poor Parisians were displaced to make room for the sweeping tree-lined boulevards which show-cased the city's famous monuments. Strict guidelines applied to new building along the boulevards, and the residences there became the most exclusive in the city.

This process became part of the American public consciousness in the late `70s and early `80s , when artists and bohemians started moving into inner city buildings which had previously been warehouses and factories. Gentrification has a lot of connotations. For some, it's just economic revitalization of neighborhoods. For others, it's tantamount to a domestic class war. For most, gentrification is both good and bad, an extremely complex issue difficult to manage at a governmental level. A difficult balancing act at best; historic preservation and community preservation with revitalization and redevelopment as a goal of both historic preservation alongside community programs as counter balance. The hope is that mixed-income neighborhoods can flourish, local businesses can coexist with national chains and that well-designed higher density will improve, not harm, a neighborhood's value.

Sources:

AllWords.com - Dictionary, Guide, Community and More:
adams.allwords.com/word-gentrification.html

ArtEdNU b:
www.culturaleconomics.atfreeweb.com/artedni_b.htm

Other London Projects:
www.lse.ac.uk/Depts/london/econcomp/otherlon.htm

A Rural Studies Bibliography:
www.nal.usda.gov/ric/ricpubs/ruralbib.html

LiP | Feature | Shame of the Cities: Gentrification in the New Urban America:
http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/featlydersen_7.shtml

Social Science Dictionary:
http://socialsciencedictionary.org/index.php?title=Gentrification

It's a strange process. I lived in the Mission District of San Francisco which is the poster neighborhood for gentrification. It is a very real effect and observing that is one of the reasons that after nearly seven years there I decided it was time to leave.

I have no idea how to stop the process. It's going to happen no matter how many of us (meaning hipster kids) take Spanish or get to know our neighbors.

I think economic darwinism is a cause. People like me move into a neighborhood with cheap rent. We could afford to live elsewhere but can buy more toys with cheaper rent. Pretty soon the landlords get wise and start warehousing vacant apartments or just raising rents regularly. Businesses start moving to that neighborhood to suck up the disposable income of the new residents. Before long there are no grocery stores or laundromats just coffee houses and galleries. Where do the people who lived here because they literally couldn't afford to live anywhere else go?

So I chose the easy solution and moved away. The irony is that I had the option to do that in the first place. I wonder where all of my old neighbors live now.

In New Orleans, where I live, poverty and wealth live side by side. But there are still bad neighborhoods, really really bad neighborhoods. Places most people would call ghettos are called wards, where blocks of brown, dilapidated government housing looms in the dim street lights at night. 9th Ward is among the worst. A friend of mine once worked as a member of the maintenance crew and said that on the average, one person on the grounds died per night (not necessarily residents). I have fixed cars whose owners live in these wards that have been riddled with bullet holes from getting caught in the crossfire. Once my boss lent me his car and when I forgot the street where I parked it, I reported it stolen (only to find it nights later on a different block, duh), he went looking for it in the 9th Ward. It's where people often find their stolen cars that were taken for a joy ride rather than stripped for parts or sold. The 9th Ward is not very far from where I live, but far enough to seem like it doesn't even exist. Once, I was riding my bike during the day and accidentally happened upon a street which bisected the 9th Ward. A group of black kids younger than me screamed, "HEY, WHITE GIRL!!!" I had my Walkman on, so I pretended not to hear them.

When looking for apartments in the Garden District or Uptown, the advice I was given was to stay between Magazine and Carondelet, two parallel streets with St. Charles in between them where the neighborhoods were relatively safe. Anywhere past Magazine and you get too close to the River, in less palatable neighborhoods where one of the items in the real estate section of the paper is "unfurnished kitchen," which means there's no stove or fridge; you have to buy those yourself. Once I lived in what I called a crack shack, one block past Magazine near the river that had an unfurnished kitchen. I paid $350 a month for a 2 bedroom shotgun apartment with no insulation, no heat or air conditioning, no stove or fridge. It was a rough ride. Once while living there, I was walking home from the grocery store on Magazine, which is such a nice, normal street that it's hard to believe one block over can be so different. I passed two black men sitting on their front stoop who began hissing at me, that pssst pssst noise, like a catcall of sorts. I ignored it, and they yelled after me, "That's right, go ahead and ignore us. Then you wonder why we black people don't talk to you fucking people." If I wasn't alone on a dark street, I would have liked to have said something.

Maybe they saw me as a threat because I lived in their neighborhood. But I was paying the same low rent for the same shitty conditions as they were. If they saw my apartment and the dorm fridge and hot plate I used to prepare food, if they saw my breath in the cold bathroom as I saw it every morning when I tried to take a bath to get ready for one of the two jobs I held in an effort to pay the bills, they might have thought differently. Maybe not.

Other neighborhoods are becoming far more gentrified than any place I've ever lived, I'm sure, but I have no clue where they are or what their borders are. While I am currently looking for an apartment, I'm not increasing what I am willing to pay enough that it will change much the quality of the neighborhood I likely end up in. There will still be nice buildings next to hovels, pristine gated lawns next to vacant lots. I am the minority here, and this is the South. Those white young people who happen here either do it for college or for a change of scenery, both of which allow for a population that doesn't really increase or decrease but undulates. I am not part of the gentrification process. I am just as broke or stubborn as anyone else, and for that I pay the price of mockery, or rudeness due to the color of my skin.

As far as I can see it, the places moving up in value are the suburban areas outside the city, where white people go to raise families and to leave the city to its own demise. Which is where younger, unmarried people like me take advantage. Cheap rents are no secret here, and people put up with a lot to live cheaply. You want your run down neighborhoods, your high death rate, your poor education and miserable living conditions, you can fucking have them. You can trust that this white person doesn't have the money to take over your street, though sometimes I wish I did so that you could see what living better was like. Shit, I would like to live better too, you know. What it would mean to your kids and their kids. And how no advancement is bought without a price.

In New Orleans, not many places outside the Quarter are hiking their rents where they haven't always been high, like the Warehouse District or Uptown. Some people try, buying run down homes and sprucing them up, but they're often not backed by any corporations. They just love this city and want to improve it in their small way. The real problem, I think, are those tenacious landlords who will not spend the money needed to make their rentals the least bit more appealing. They expect everyone to be slovenly, irresponsible losers, so they often get what they expect and deserve in my opinion. If they get a renter like me, who takes care of what she has, they chalk it up as coincidence, luck, and wait for me to get tired of it and leave.

Everything needs a balance, but humans seldom understand that. They overdo it, sending out skyrocketing rents and sales to usher in corporations instead of working with the community, instead of realizing that there is one and that it may need a little organization, since why should the community care now when the people who have charged them cheap rent for the last 20 years don't care about them? White people and corporations just amaze me most of the time how clueless we can be.

OK, since many have asked, this is why I have noded this: some people might one day need this information. When i was doing the project I certainly did. Secondly, it is concise, possibly useful information - you will not find anything like it on the web. It comprised part of my GCSE Geography coursework, and consisted of analysing bucketloads of data to try and prove whether gentrification had indeed taken place.

Although I give you some facts about Barnsbury below, a quick introduction: Barnsbury is in Islington, which is in North London, which is obviously in the UK. Islington in general has quite clearly seen gentrification taking place, with a massive rise in house prices and a change in the types of residents (go see node on Barnsbury).

Gentrification in Barnsbury

Why was Barnsbury an attractive area for gentrifiers?

Islington was originally built for the middle classes, and the first housing developers were mainly aristocrats. By 1800, it was popular to build for the middle classes, and so the current homes are built to that standard..

• Barnsbury was built on higher ground and so the air was cleaner and healthier.
• The houses were considered stylish, and principally they had a large potential for refurbishment and development. James Pitt, in his book `Gentrification in Islington' says, "It was stylish but not ostentatious".
• After the initial influx, it was considered fashionable to live in the area.
• The prices were affordable, with an 8 roomed unconverted house being sold for £3000 - £4000.
• Since the area had originally been middle class, the street layout and houses were considered attractive.
• The area was near to the CBD, and so people could commute easily - a big factor in peoples' decisions was that transport links had been greatly improved and so commuting was made possible, and the advantages mentioned above could be gained with no time lost travelling to work.
• A magazine described Canonbury with "well proportioned windows, pretty balconies and handsome doors".

When did it begin?

By the 1980s, Islington remained solidly middle class but by the 1960s, car ownership and transport links (such as the railway) had increased greatly allowing the middle class to live in the suburbs and commute. From the 1960s, Barnsbury became fashionable. The process was clearly visible: the percentage of economically active males in the professional/managerial classes rose from 3.3% in 1961, to 15.8% in 1971.

Gentrification, however, occurred earlier in Canonbury when the rise of house prices and vacancy of houses (with the intent to sell) became apparent in the 1950s. This, although not the major influx of the middle class, was a first sign. The main movement all over Islington was during the periods from 1960 onwards.

How did it happen?

Barnsbury and Canonbury were promoted as up and coming places that were fashionable, but in order to allow the artistic middle class to move in, and a profit to be made, the houses had to be vacated of tenants so they could be sold. Landlords realised that it was more profitable to sell the houses rather than rent them out and so They sold out to speculators (developers) who, acting as agents for the landlords, attempted to clear the houses. Demand was high and the developers were using any means to provide a supply. The high demand was caused by the reasons mentioned in the first question.

What was done to try and stop it?

Gentrification was a profitable process for property developers, but it was occurring at the expense of the working class, who were being forced to move out of their homes so that they the homes could be sold for a high profit. Soon, the local residents began to find this unacceptable and started protesting. However, even their protest was difficult: one estate agent called `Prebble & Co." was awarded an injunction to stop the tenants picketing.

Local authorities were being pressed from central government to municipalise and rehabilitate old houses so that the tenants could live without fear of being evicted or pressure from the speculators. Municipalisation was seen as the answer to tenants, and over time, Islington council have bought over 4000 houses to stop them from being under threat from developers.

In addition to this, many residents and even an MP would protest against the movement, and petition the government and council for help.

How successful was this?

The actions mentioned above played a significant part in slowing gentrification, but the main blows were not from municipalisation, but from the rise of interest rates and the lack of rising in property values. Although perhaps the above actions did stem the tide, the `damage' had been done and now the area is clearly gentrified, with the council perhaps having acted too slowly, allowed the flow of middle class residents to continue for too long. However, without any action from the council the influx of immigrants would have been larger, and continued for longer.

More information on gentrification, and its variations (esp. those concerning Barnsbury and North London)

One of the main models of urban structure was presented by Burgess in the 1920s. The sociologist was working in Chicago at the time, and he proposed a pattern of concentric rings.

Chicago was unusual in that it was growing rapidly owing to the increasing amounts of immigrants entering the city, from Europe and the South. Burgess noted that the city was growing in a pattern of concentric rings: The newcomers to the city would enter the CBD, because of the cheap accommodation.

After accumulating some money, the immigrant would move into the next ring where they would have slightly better quality housing that they could now afford. This process of moving into a ring was called invasion and if this were another social group (e.g. African-Americans) then more of that group would invade. Eventually, that group would take over the ring completely, a process known as succession. Burgess had developed these ideas from plant ecology.

The ring that the group had moved from would have declined in status: the area in technical terms would have filtered down in the social hierarchy: this is the movement of progressively less affluent individuals into housing stock.

It was suggested that the rich move away from the city to newly built houses because their old houses are out of date, difficult to maintain, or surrounded by types of land use which are not appealing. The next social and occupational class moves into the houses vacated by the rich. Homes are subdivided and passed on to successively poorer groups and over time this process clearly took place, confirming Burgess' ideas. The expansion would only cease when:

• There was a slow-down in the rate of immigration.
• A green belt policy was introduced (e.g. in the UK) which would contain the urban areas.

However, a variation in this process began to emerge, mainly in the 1960s: this change took place in London's largest cities in the 1960s. A process almost opposite to Burgess' model emanated: the rebuilding, renewing, and rehabilitation of depressed areas of the inner city as more affluent families sought to locate close to the CBD, willing to give up more space and quiet for better access to the goods and services of the city centre. For example, middle class people began to move into working class areas such as Canonbury in Islington.

Many local authorities, by providing home improvement grants as part of an urban renewal programme had facilitated the process. An increased rate or council tax income repays them, and this was where the problems arose: the original inhabitants would move out as leases fell in, houses were sold, or proprietors harassed their tenants into moving.