Booked on Planning

Gentrification Explored: Myths, Trends, and Realities

• Booked on Planning • Season 3 • Episode 16

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Ever wondered why some neighborhoods transform seemingly overnight while others remain unchanged? This episode looks into the complex web of gentrification through three articles published in the last few years. We kick off with a deep dive into the term's origins and its multifaceted meanings, drawing from an insightful article by Planetizen. Along the way, we tackle the often misunderstood triggers of gentrification and challenge the conventional wisdom that luxury condos are the main culprits, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, as discussed in a compelling piece from The Atlantic.

We then shift gears to explore recurring trends, comparing shifts from the early 20th century with those from the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing on Leslie Kern's book, "Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies," we unravel how remote work is shaping smaller cities and the varied pressures behind gentrification across regions. Our discussion underscores the necessity of involving local residents in community development to ensure new amenities benefit existing communities, not just newcomers. We also highlight the limitations of market-rate housing and call for improved public engagement in urban planning. This episode is packed with nuanced insights and actionable ideas to better understand and address the complexities of gentrification.

Show Notes:

Episode artwork by Georgia de Lotz on Unsplash

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Stephanie Rouse:

This episode is brought to you by Marvin Planning Consultants. Marvin Planning Consultants, established in 2009, is committed to their clients and professional organizations. Their team of planners has served on chapter division and national committees, including as the Nebraska Chapter President. In addition, they are committed to supporting their chapter in various APA divisions. You're listening to the Booked On Planning podcast, a project of the Nebraska chapter of the American Planning Association. In each episode we dive into how cities function by talking with authors on housing, transportation and everything in between. Join us as we get Booked on Planning.

Stephanie Rouse:

Welcome back, bookworms, to another episode of Booked on Planning. This month's article episode continues our conversation on gentrification, following our talk with Dennis Gale on the misunderstood history of gentrification, released two weeks ago. If you haven't listened to that episode, make sure to add that to your podcast queue to listen to next. For today's episode, jennifer and I read three articles from the past few years that get into the more recent trends on gentrification. The first article what is gentrification from plan Edison, attempts to define the complicated term itself. The first article what is Gentrification from Plan Edison attempts to define the complicated term itself. The article starts by stating the meaning of the term can vary greatly depending on context, like in the most commonly discussed US example, when relatively wealthy white residents move into neighborhoods previously populated by lower-income individuals and communities of color.

Jennifer Hiatt:

As we discussed with Dennis, this is what we struggle with the most. When we're talking about gentrification. It often gets thrown at redevelopment projects, in my experience, without any genuine thought given to the individual project. I was not entirely sure how a redevelopment project that revitalized an area that was once a palmed out industrial brownfield and is now a vibrant mixed use area with an affordable housing requirement built into it was gentrification. But we've certainly had that term thrown at us before. But after reading this article I can understand the origins of the term and can understand again what people are meaning. But I always felt like there needed to be an actual displacement for true gentrification to occur.

Stephanie Rouse:

And I never really sat down and thought about where the term came from or what it truly meant beyond the basic results of it, but came to understand after reading the Misunderstood History of Gentrification that it first appeared in 1964 in a collection of essays by Ruth Glass discussing change in London. In Gale's book he points out the term is connected to the label of wealthy upper-class English, the gentry, hence gentrification. When they started taking over modest neighborhoods and upgrading them to fit their status, they were then gentrifying the area.

Jennifer Hiatt:

I appreciated the art, the cover art that this article uses. It's a photo of a sign that says gentrification in progress. There will be cupcakes, and I feel like this is very appropriate for the context that it is portraying, ie the social, cultural and economic changes that occur when a large number of relatively wealthy residents move into the neighborhood. The threat of a cupcake shop coming into a neighborhood is sort of the let them eat cake of our modern day. I do appreciate that this article points out that it is important to distinguish the general discussion around gentrification that occurs in everyday conversation and typically has a political tilt to it versus the academic conversations, Although the article also points out how difficult it can be to try to use data and metrics to quantify the impacts of gentrification. So it's really a nebulous topic that doesn't really lend itself to quantification very well.

Stephanie Rouse:

Yeah, it's not only hard to track why people move from a neighborhood, whether it's by choice or by need. The way you measure it can also make it seem like no issue is present. Or a major issue is present is more likely in neighborhoods with a significant population of white residents, as a study for the city of Chicago revealed, or whether it's higher in neighborhoods with a higher percentage of minority residents.

Jennifer Hiatt:

Exactly, People move for all kinds of reasons, and the way people answer the question to like why did you move, can change over time as you settle into a new neighborhood or whatever, and there often isn't just one defining reason why people move. So identifying the root cause of gentrification- can be tricky.

Stephanie Rouse:

Someone in our office, kurt, has played around with this idea and trying to get addresses and phone numbers based on, I think, voting information, and to call those people up and ask why they moved would just be a huge undertaking to be able to track any of this.

Jennifer Hiatt:

That's very fair if they even answer the phone.

Stephanie Rouse:

Yes, so the confusion with the term is rooted in the fact that no one agrees on what exactly causes it. Gentrification at its basic level is a lack of affordable housing resulting in displacement of individuals and culture that previously resided in the neighborhood. Whether that's caused by new housing investment or lack of new development is less defined. Most tend to think it's because of too much high-end development, but our second article shows evidence from the pandemic that may undermine that theory. I also watched this Planet Money Reel on Instagram last month. That goes into all the quote causes of gentrification that get thrown around like the fancy coffee shops. Or is it the bike lanes or the renovated brownstones? Or is it that brand new skyscraper development that causes gentrification?

Jennifer Hiatt:

I really appreciate what our for you pages on Instagram must look like.

Stephanie Rouse:

Probably not a lot like other people's.

Jennifer Hiatt:

Nope, it does seem like any kind of development gets labeled as gentrification these days, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but again, it creates an interesting conversation topic. As Dennis pointed out in our last episode, planners and policymakers really need to create some kind of firm definition of what gentrification is before we will be able to move forward with good policies and procedures to combat its effects.

Stephanie Rouse:

The second article we read was published in the Atlantic in 2021 by Jaco and Binder, on how the pandemic disproved the common theories around gentrification, which placed the blame on luxury condo development. The article discusses heavily liberal mayoral races that were taking place in 2021 in cities like New York and Boston, with nearly all candidates focusing on the topic of gentrification and their plan to attack it head-on by halting zoning, exceptions for developers and unrestrained growth. The two quoted candidates from the article are now holding those offices which may speak to the importance of action on the topic to the voting public.

Jennifer Hiatt:

The campaign that I thought was most interesting was Scott Stringer's as he campaigned to be mayor for New York City. It was interesting to see a career politician campaign on being like a revolutionary platform and even more interesting to me Stringer was the New York City's comptroller, so he was very aware of the city's financial status and should have known. What was happening in the city was multifaceted, not just an issue of developer incentives and the quote unquote his words gentrification, industrial complex. But even more interesting I think in general, though I thought Scott's was most was Michelle Woos, who is Boston's current mayor. She called to eliminate Boston's planning and development agency. As of this recording she has not acted on the total elimination of Boston's planning department, but she is responsible for Boston's city council asking for two new home rule petitions from the Massachusetts State Assembly, and one of those would significantly restructure the planning department and limit some of their authority.

Stephanie Rouse:

The article goes into the history of the earlier growth revolt movement of the 70s, when most people think of the first instance of gentrification surfaced. If you listen to our last episode, though, you'll learn that gentrification was actually underway in several major cities 50 years earlier. The discussion is around the range of political backgrounds that all came out against unrestrained growth in their communities, from historic preservationists and conservationists to tenants. My favorite quote was from a 1973 planning journal article that said At a local zoning hearing you might find on one side an elderly dowager who's voted straight Republican since McKinley and her granddaughter from a commune where they live on nuts and berries. Both are seeking to stop new development.

Jennifer Hiatt:

The author linked the relatively harmonious activism of this time to the economic stability that was occurring. As long as it was relatively inexpensive to rent in a city and homeownership wasn't really predicated on profitability like it is these days, these different groups of people were able to advocate for slow growth without any real conflict.

Stephanie Rouse:

The article describes the same trend that took place in embryonic gentrification of the early 20th century as occurring in the 1980s and 1990s, as downtowns became popular again. It wasn't massive new condo construction that displaced residents, but instead employees of the firms moving back downtown that were buying old homes in marginalized areas and upgrading them to suit their needs. This pushed out lower income households into the suburbs, creating the very well-known drive-until-you-qualify situation in major metro areas.

Jennifer Hiatt:

This article actually takes a stab at defining gentrification, stating but if gentrification is defined as demographic transition toward wealthier, wider residents, this approach meaning limiting new growth makes for a poor policy approach. As Stephanie was saying, it wasn't the massive high-rise apartments or complexes that were pushing people out of their neighborhoods. It was actually the influx of new middle-class flipping already existing housing units. So my favorite quote from this article was the telltale sign of a neighborhood in transition isn't actually a yoga studio or a high-rise apartment building. It's an old row house that is meticulously renovated, painted the avant-garde yet inoffensive shade that Amanda Colson Hurley memorably called flip house gray which you find all over HGTV.

Stephanie Rouse:

Yes, you do. It's such an ugly color. Our last article was an interview with author Leslie Kern on her book Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies. The interview begins by addressing the wave of remote work and its impact on gentrification. Kern mentioned this is bringing the issue to smaller cities that weren't seeing high rates before, but with the ability to live anywhere, people are moving to smaller, more affordable cities. Investors are now buying up buildings and renovating them for higher rents.

Jennifer Hiatt:

Kern also notes that different cities have different pressures that are leading to gentrification, and I sometimes think that we miss that in our conversation. She talks about how tourist gentrification and issues around short-term rentals are creating problems in cities like Barcelona, but equally how disaster-related gentrification, like in New Orleans, is starting to have an impact on certain cities. This makes sense, as we are seeing more and worse disaster strike and new development comes in to replace what was lost, but there's little or no effort impact on certain cities. This makes sense, as we are seeing more and worse disaster strike and new development comes in to replace what was lost, but there's little or no effort to protect the former residents or ensure affordability of a newly developed area or oftentimes even ensure that that new development respects and pays homage to the area that was once destroyed.

Stephanie Rouse:

One point Kearns makes that I think is so important for anyone working in communities is that we should be adding amenities to neighborhoods to make them better. But the difference between gentrifying amenities and those that actually help local residents is whether they were part of the process to add the amenities in the first place. If we had to park to a neighborhood without asking, we're in essence doing it to attract others to the area, to show how nice it is. But if we ask the neighborhood what they need, it gives them a sense of ownership over it.

Jennifer Hiatt:

The article also touches on the argument that one of the ways to reduce housing costs is to just build more housing, more market rate housing. We hear this all the time, and while it does generally make sense that more housing should lower the demand, there is no economic incentive for a developer to do this. So leaving this solution to private development is not likely to occur. And Kearns points out that in Toronto, developers actually have been putting in 1000s and 1000s of new condominiums over the last 20 to 25 years, but those prices haven't actually gone down. Of course, she doesn't mention what the population increase has been over that same timeframe and if these thousands and thousands of condos have met the housing demand.

Stephanie Rouse:

But assuming that it is meeting housing demand, this seems to indicate that just building market rate without any kind of an affordability subsidy isn't going to help the housing crisis, or gentrification, and she also mentions that our community development process is flawed, that we rely on whomever can attend the public hearings to make decisions about new developments, and we should be thinking of other processes for ensuring we don't just hear from residents that have the time, the energy and the social networks and those that will be impacted the most in making our meetings more accessible and our public engagement processes, which, in long-range planning, we do a really good job of going out and asking the public and involving them in our long range visions. But it's just so hard with development projects and the high turnover of getting projects through and meeting your legal time limits on things that it's hard to get the community engaged on these individual developer led projects.

Jennifer Hiatt:

Yeah, and since we have that short time turnover, it's often so much extra work. It's worth it. We understand, but Stephanie and I are working on a housing project here in the city of Lincoln and trying to put good, conscious effort into who's in the neighborhood. What times could we meet with them? What would that look like? How can we meet them on their level instead of asking them to come to city? Council has been rewarding, but a lot of effort and energy. Yeah, we hope you enjoyed this conversation on the topic of gentrification, as discussed in three recent articles. You can find links to those articles in the show notes below. Remember to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts and please rate, review and share the show. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time on Booked on Planning. Thank you.

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Jennifer Hiatt

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Stephanie Rouse, AICP

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