gentrification

How to Kill a City: The Real Story of Gentrification

by Peter Moskowitz  · 7 Mar 2017  · 288pp  · 83,690 words

. markets@perseusbooks.com. Designed by Jack Lenzo Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Moskowitz, Peter, 1988–author. Title: How to kill a city : gentrification, inequality, and the fight for the neighborhood / Peter Moskowitz. Description: New York : Nation Books, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016042410 (print) |

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LCCN 2016048855 (ebook)| ISBN 9781568585239 (hbk) | ISBN 9781568585246 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Gentrification—United States. | Equality—United States. | Urban poor—United States. | Middle class—United States. Classification: LCC HT175 .M67 2017 (print) | LCC HT175 (ebook) | DDC 307.3

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economies, demographics, and geographies—Nashville and Miami, Portland and Louisville, Austin and Cleveland, Philadelphia and Los Angeles—are all simultaneously undergoing the same process. Gentrification is not about individual acts; it’s about systemic violence based on decades of racist housing policy in the United States that has denied people

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It’s not that corporations are necessarily conspiring to overpower the pioneers, but because corporate buying power is so much greater than that of individuals, gentrification inevitably leads to corporate control of neighborhoods. Finally, in Clay’s stages, the process becomes completely top-down, wherein the only entities powerful enough

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Uptown, and Carrollton were the places where most New Orleanians lived: the musicians, the second-liners, the undervalued laborers scrubbing the banisters of hotels. But gentrification has challenged those geographic maxims. The rich crests of the city can no longer hold the rich, who are venturing beyond their traditional redoubts. Nearly

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increasing the share of wealth owned by the upper class. Jason Hackworth, a professor of planning and geography at the University of Toronto, writes: “Gentrification is much more than the physical renovation of residential and commercial spaces. It marks the replacement of the publicly regulated Keynesian inner city—replete with

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across the country, were instrumental in crafting the narrative of good-hearted pioneers the media still cling to today. Yet Ortner’s story proves that gentrification was never really about individual pioneers, but rather about a confluence of policies pushed by wealthy individuals, politicians, and the companies that stood to

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attention, and any increase in the concentration of gentrifiers comes largely from word of mouth. There’s some evidence that historically this phase of gentrification was often spearheaded by gays and lesbians in search of safe spaces outside homogenized suburbia where they could congregate. San Francisco experienced an influx of

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Managerial-class professionals replace the artists and punks. Properties that were held vacant by developers are turned into high-cost condos. Displacement is rampant. And gentrification begins spilling over into other, less gentrified neighborhoods. In 1979, these phases provided a near-complete and prescient description of the process. But several researchers

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have to be willing to allow for it. There’s still debate in academic circles about what forces convince lawmakers to welcome or encourage gentrification. Some view gentrification as a production-driven process: real estate developers who see profit potential in inner cities are luring in the young and moneyed, displacing

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city as a space for personal liberation and economic possibility, and therefore create spaces within cities that conform to their needs. The negative effects of gentrification (displacement, cultural loss, etc.), in this view, are just unfortunate ancillary consequences of the compounded individual decisions of millions of former suburbanites who believe

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and/or to liberate themselves from the familial expectations of the suburbs—to be single, gay, queer, or just different. Others have posited that gentrification represents a more nefarious kind of individualistic expression: that of colonial power. In the same way that people of European descent colonized the Americas, some

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people.” Most cities in the US experienced slow bleeds of capital thanks to deindustrialization and white flight, which eventually made their inner cities ripe for gentrification. But New Orleans’s economic devalorization was instant, thanks to Katrina. The city’s real estate was already relatively inexpensive before the storm, but

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city high, the rent gap was bigger than ever, and so it made economic sense to gentrify New Orleans. Private profit only partially explains gentrification, though. Gentrification may not happen without the confluence of shifting cultural desires and newly focused real estate capital, but its pervasiveness—its existence not only in

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, and billionaires, to provide the bulk of their tax revenue. In 1960, economist Friedrich Hayek, one of the fathers of neoliberalism, laid out this gentrification strategy: “Though the majority of residents may never contemplate a change of residence, there will usually be enough people, especially among the young and more

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sense of authenticity that gentrifiers seek. As Jane Jacobs wrote, “We must understand that self-destruction of diversity is caused by success, not failure.” Gentrification brings money, new people, and renovated real estate to cities, but it also kills them. It takes away the affordability and diversity that are required

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neighborhoods near already gentrified areas gentrified much faster than adjacent middle-class areas. As Smith’s rent gap theory suggests, this makes economic sense: gentrification is more profitable if the area being gentrified is initially cheaper. So the question is, how did those areas become cheaper? The United States

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, demonstrators filled the park to protest an increased police presence there and the upgrading of buildings surrounding Tompkins Square into fancy condos and rentals. “Gentrification Is Class War,” one banner read. Police attempted to corral the crowds with netting and batons, and eventually the park erupted into a mini-

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Gentrified thinking is like the bourgeois version of Christian fundamentalism, a huge, unconscious conspiracy of homogenous patterns with no awareness about its own freakishness. The gentrification mentality is rooted in the belief that obedience to consumer identity over recognition of lived experience is actually normal, neutral, and value free.” I see

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monetarily because of a lack of reliable transportation) to turn the neighborhood into a Miami Beach–esque bonanza of consumerism. The city repeated this successful gentrification-promoting rezoning in many other Brooklyn neighborhoods. In total, under the Bloomberg administration, more than 40 percent of the city was rezoned. “The Bloomberg

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show where populations were most affected: the South Bronx, East Harlem, Greenpoint, Bushwick, and the Lower East Side—all areas that today are targets for gentrification. In all, between 1972 and 1980, according to an analysis by epidemiologist Rodrick Wallace, 2 million New Yorkers were displaced from now-gentrifying neighborhoods,

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, Park Slope, and Windsor Terrace, respectively). Prospect Lefferts Gardens is the logical next step for developers. And the neighborhood is a good candidate for gentrification: it’s filled with stately old townhouses and large prewar apartments. In 1990, Prospect Lefferts Gardens was about 80 percent black. By 2010, it

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neighborhoods and the displacement of New Yorkers, it means that something bigger, more fundamentally transformative is needed. Municipal politics are a good start, but gentrification is a global problem that must be challenged on a global level. Mayors focused on attracting capital and jobs and focused less on providing for

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brutality. The meeting room, a normal office in Midtown Manhattan, was packed with about a hundred people who politely discussed their strategy for fighting gentrification. For a room filled with so many people representing so many different interests and backgrounds, the conversation was remarkably level-headed and productive—a rarity

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and New York Times Styles section pieces use such precise language about “frontier” neighborhoods and “pioneering” residents, it’s hard not to draw parallels. Gentrification is obviously very different from colonization, but they stem from the same mentality, which tells people that one person’s space is more valuable than

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“Micropolis: A Look at the Least Diverse Neighborhood in the City,” WNYC, May 8, 2012. Between 2000 and 2010, the black population: Richard Campanella, “Gentrification and Its Discontents: Notes from New Orleans,” New Geography, March 1, 2013. Rents in these three areas have increased: J. C. Reindl, “Rents Keep Going

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live below the poverty line: US Census Bureau, Poverty Data, 2013, http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/14_5YR/S1701/8600000US70113. “Gentrification is much more”: Jason Hackworth, The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 120. Usually those

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policies come in the form: Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (New York: Routledge, 1996), 37. the median area income at the 2000 census: “Lower 9th Ward Statistical Area,” Data Center, March

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native-born population going to college. See Data Center, “Who Lives in New Orleans Now?” about 5,000 new nonprofit workers showed up: Campanella, “Gentrification and Its Discontents.” the Housing Authority of New Orleans was forced to revoke: Richard Webster, “HANO Recalls 700 Section 8 Vouchers, Blames Sequester,” Times-Picayune

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). San Francisco experienced an influx of gays: “The History of the Castro,” KQED, 2009. there is evidence that the white LGBT community: Carolyn Senn, “Gentrification, Social Capital, and the Emergence of a Lesbian Neighborhood: A Case Study of Park Slope, Brooklyn,” master’s thesis, Fordham University, 2013. “the reach of

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global capital”: Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (New York: Routledge, 1996), 100. a New York Times investigation found that 50 percent: Julie Satow, “Pied-à-Neighborhood,” New York

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socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/eras/great-depression/wpa-the-works-progress-administration. Between 1977 and 1984, there were 130 such conversions: Lees, Slater, and Wyly, Gentrification, 29. “gentrification is a back-to-the-city movement”: Smith, New Urban Frontier, 70. “Though the majority of residents may never contemplate”: Quoted in Jason Hackworth

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/priorities, accessed September 4, 2016. It sold off properties (many abandoned since Katrina): Robert McClendon, “Where Will Working Poor Live in Future New Orleans, if Gentrification Continues?” Times-Picayune, July 30, 2015. It began marketing residential neighborhoods: Lauren Laborde, “GoNOLA TV: Discover New Orleans’ Bywater,” hosted by C. J. Hunt,

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“How One of Katrina’s Feel-Good Stories Turned Bad,” Buzz-Feed, August 22, 2015. Home prices in Bywater… doubled post-Katrina: Richard Campanella, “Gentrification and Its Discontents: Notes from New Orleans,” New Geography, March 1, 2013. one black New Orleanian named Henry Glover: Elahe Izadi, “Post-Katrina Police Shooting

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through foundationcenter.org. Chapter 5: The 7.2 In fact, one-half of all people who attempted to enter that program: Patrick Sheehan, “Revitalization by Gentrification,” Jacobin, May 11, 2015. Meanwhile, the 7.2 is booming: Kate Abbey-Lambertz, “These Are the American Cities with the Most Abandoned Houses,” Huffington

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Chapter 6: How the Slate Got Blank One 2014 study from the University of Chicago Booth School: Veronica Guerrieri, Daniel Hartley, and Erik Hurst, “Endogenous Gentrification and Housing Price Dynamics,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 16237, July 2010. Massey and Denton measure the racial dissimilarity: Douglas Massey and

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Crisis, 128, 140. “handy device for razing the slums”: Ibid., 47–48. Cobo called urban renewal the “price of progress”: Patrick Sheehan, “Revitalization by Gentrification,” Jacobin, May 11, 2015. New York University sociologist Patrick Sharkey: Patrick Sharkey, Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress Toward Racial Equality

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Anti-Displacement Coalition, 2015. The nonprofit San Francisco Tenants Union estimates: Ibid. the number of Latino households fell by 1,400: “Development Without Displacement: Resisting Gentrification in the Bay Area,” Causa Justa/Just Cause, 2014. 4 percent of one-bedrooms in the neighborhood cost below $2,500: Emmanuel Hapsis, “Map:

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conservative values: David Harvey, “The Right to the City,” New Left Review 53 (September–October 2008). The suburbanization of the United States pushed whites: Schulman, Gentrification of the Mind, 24–25. Some ads were placed by homebuilders: Hayden, Building Suburbia, 97. “The person sitting in the living room window”: Ibid.,

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, “Militarized Policing, Gentrifying City: Doubting NYPD Reforms,” City Limits, June 3, 2014. gentrifiers “look in the mirror and think it’s a window”: Schulman, Gentrification of the Mind, 28. “There is something inherently stupid about gentrified thinking”: Ibid., 51. in 2005, the city rezoned 170 blocks of Williamsburg and Greenpoint

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the city was rezoned: Andrea Bernstein, “Rezoning Williamsburg,” WNYC, April 26, 2005. “The Bloomberg administration was kind enough to rezone”: Aaron Miguel Cantú, “Anti-Gentrification Protesters vs. Brooklyn Real Estate Summit,” Gothamist, June 17, 2015. parts of Brooklyn have become more expensive: Michelle Higgins, “Priced Out of Brooklyn? Try Manhattan

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Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 38. the 1929 Regional Plan suggested: Fitch, Assassination. The plan explicitly recommended removing people: Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (New York: Routledge, 1996), 21. That explains why whereas industrialization peaked in 1956: Zukin, Loft Living, 24. It also explains why

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Inclusionary Housing and the East New York Rezoning,” December 2, 2015. The building received a $72 million loan from the state: Aaron Miguel Cantú, “Progressive Gentrification: One Community’s Struggle Against Affordable Housing,” Truthout, February 5, 2015. $98 per vote he received in the general election: David Chalian and Rogene

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Governance in the Luxury City (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011), 128. As one Bushwick activist group called Mayday says: Rebecca Fishbein, “Bushwick Woman Fights Gentrification with Christmas Lights: ‘Your Luxury Is Our Displacement,’” Gothamist, December 29, 2015. But as author and activist Samuel Delany points out: Ibid., 111. rental

City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America's Highways

by Megan Kimble  · 2 Apr 2024  · 430pp  · 117,211 words

says. It wasn’t enough to start over, to build another house on a similar piece of land. Since Modesti bought her property in 2015, gentrification had swept through the southernmost stretch of the Fifth Ward, the neighborhood sandwiched between Interstate 10 and Buffalo Bayou, known as the Bottom. When Modesti

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. Only 25 percent of residents of South Dallas owned their own homes. The median income hovered around $25,000. And yet after decades of disinvestment, gentrification had started to creep into South Dallas. When the city announced a plan to redevelop Fair Park, the site of the state fair, real estate

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North. “It’s more like, ‘Of course it needs to go. But what comes next? What are you going to do to protect us from gentrification and displacement? What are you going to build in its place, and how is that going to benefit us?’ It’s more an equity conversation

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2017 study found that, globally, rising land prices account for 80 percent of the increase in home prices since World War II. This is why gentrification has such inertia. Once the engine of capital revs up and investors begin to speculate on a plot of land’s future value, the machine

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here.” Eventually, the mall proposal withered, but the city never reversed its zoning change. So in the early years of the twenty-first century, as gentrification finally crested the barrier of the highway, developers started building eleven- and twelve-story apartment buildings around the Lopez house, which started to look like

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. Today, the Fifth Ward consists of mostly older homes interspersed with vacant lots. And then there are the town houses; O’Nari calls these “the gentrification people homes.” New, boxy structures tower in stark angles over faded bungalows and sagging row homes. They are fortresses, without porches to look out on

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REFERENCE IN TEXT city council wrote: “Our Story,” Escuelita del Alma. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Chapter 8: Pause gentrification had swept: Monique Welch, “These Houston Neighborhoods Are Changing Through Gentrification. Here’s a Look at Their Past and Present,” Houston Chronicle, Sept. 17, 2021, www.houstonchronicle.com/​projects/​2021/​visuals

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/​houston-evolving-neighborhoods-gentrification-census/. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT giant swath of land: Mike Snyder, “Moving Up or Pushing Out? How One Massive Project Could Reshape a

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Community,” Houstonia Magazine, May 26, 2021, www.houstoniamag.com/​news-and-city-life/​2021/​05/​east-river-project-houston-fifth-ward-gentrification. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Sean Jefferson lived: “Community Voices Along the I-45 Corridor,” LINK Houston, i45expansionimpacts.org/​sean-jefferson.html. GO TO

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the city: Megan Kimble, “Desperate for Housing, Austin Seeks Relief in Rezoning,” Bloomberg, April 29, 2022, www.bloomberg.com/​news/​features/​2022-04-29/​as-gentrification-sweeps-austin-zoning-reform-remain-elusive. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Dewitt C. Greer State Highway Building: “1918 State Office Building and 1933 State

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, 223–25 caps and stitches over I-35 to reconnect West Austin with, 224–25, 260 effect of I-35 expansion on, 73, 218, 260 gentrification of, 223 Guadalupe Neighborhood Development Corporation (GNDC), 218, 219, 220–22, 223–25, 278–79 as Hispanic neighborhood, 218 Huston-Tillotson University, 37 increase in

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due to interstate highway system, 43 demolished for expansion of I-45, 238 density and greenhouse gas emissions, 146, 273 gentrification of East Austin, 223 gentrification of Houston’s Fifth Ward, 87, 229 gentrification of South Dallas, 124 HOLC and, 42–43, 204 homes close to interstates 34, 45, and 345, xiv–xv

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Highway Improvement Project (NHHIP) affordable housing in, 236–38 beginning date for construction of NHHIP in, 283 characteristics, 3–4, 88, 229–30, 230–31 gentrification of, 87, 229 I-10 and, 36–37, 38, 39–40, 43–44, 227 I-10 and I-69 interchange and, 6, 138, 230 NHHIP

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in then white, 116 characteristics, 244 effect of South Central Expressway, 46–47, 120–21 Forest Theater, xv (map), 121, 122, 123–25, 244, 246 gentrification of, 124 living conditions in, compared to North Dallas, 116–17 Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade, 245–47, 248 TxDOT community meeting for I

Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy

by Quinn Slobodian  · 4 Apr 2023  · 360pp  · 107,124 words

given to developers outright, on the model of what some call “incentivized urbanization” and others call “geobribery.”126 As geographers have shown time and again, gentrification is not what happens when the market is set free. It happens when the state leads it by the hand.127 Canary Wharf is the

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.  Boris Johnson, “We Should Be Humbly Thanking the Super-Rich, Not Bashing Them,” Daily Telegraph (UK), November 18, 2013, Westlaw. 100.  Samuel Stein, Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State (New York: Verso, 2019), 150. 101.  Thomas J. Sugrue, “America’s Real Estate Developer in Chief,” Public Books, November 27

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, 2017, https://www.publicbooks.org/the-big-picture-americas-real-estate-developer-in-chief/. 102.  See Stein, Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State, 137. 103.  Charles V. Bagli, “A Trump Empire Built on Inside Connections and $885 Million in Tax Breaks,” New York

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.” 126.  Alan Wiig, “Incentivized Urbanization in Philadelphia: The Local Politics of Globalized Zones,” Journal of Urban Technology 26, no. 3 (2019); and Stein, Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State, 57. 127.  Paul Watt, “‘It’s Not for Us’: Regeneration, the 2012 Olympics and the

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East London,” City 17, no. 1 (2013): 101. For a pioneering analysis, see Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (New York: Routledge, 1996). 128.  Wiig, “Incentivized Urbanization in Philadelphia,” 112. 129.  Jack Brown, “If You Build It, They Will Come:

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locations sold as models of sustainability as template for future in United States as zones for experimentation General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Genocyber gentrification “geobribery” Germany. See also Nazi Germany German Confederation reunification of Getty Oil Gibson, William Giger, H. R. Global Cities global financial crisis of 2008 globalism

Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century

by W. David Marx  · 18 Nov 2025  · 642pp  · 142,332 words

, a mythos increasingly detached from reality. New York underwent an economic boom in the 1990s. Crime rates plummeted, graffiti was removed from subway cars, and gentrification yuppified Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. Three years after Kids, HBO’s Sex and the City would showcase the same city as a playground of aspiration

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April 15, 2012, on HBO. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT gentrified Greenpoint: Matthew Schuerman, “Books: When Gentrification Came to Greenpoint,” CityLimits, November 8, 2019, https://citylimits.org/2019/11/08/books-when-gentrification-came-to-greenpoint. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “that would be Facebook”: Scott Stinson, “From Girls’ Twentysomethings

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TEXT dubbed “AirSpace”: Kyle Chayka, “Welcome to AirSpace,” Verge, August 3, 2016, https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325104/airbnb-aesthetic-global-minimalism-startup-gentrification. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT phrase “Instagram face”: Jia Tolentino, “The Age of Instagram Face,” New Yorker, December 12, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com

The Impossible City: A Hong Kong Memoir

by Karen Cheung  · 15 Feb 2022  · 297pp  · 96,945 words

white minimalist décor. Bars and bougie restaurants moved in along with the expats, multiplying the late-night noise complaints in the district and hastening the gentrification. Families who had lived in the area for decades suddenly found their weekend dinner spot taken over by coffee shops selling matcha egg tarts, the

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(2013) based its story around street dancers in the city, while its sequel (2021) turned the focus to tensions between the industrial building subculture and gentrification in Hong Kong. My Prince Edward (2019) critiques the patriarchal culture and societal values surrounding the institution of weddings and marriage in Hong Kong, and

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failed to comply and submit to what our adults and law officers and government leaders told us. The closing of Hidden Agenda and the rapid gentrification of East Kowloon marked the end of an era. After the raids, many warehouse shows were driven further underground, and became private gigs altogether: Sai

Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves From the Tyranny of the Automobile

by Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon and Aaron Naparstek  · 21 Oct 2025  · 330pp  · 85,349 words

show up. Which meant that suburbs like the one where Raquel Nelson endured the horrifying loss of her child became a refuge for those fleeing gentrification—a refuge that was never designed for anything other than cars passing through in huge numbers at high speeds. Raquel Nelson’s intersectional identity as

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planning that local residents are sometimes very skeptical of teardown projects, seeing them as another possible engine of displacement, with rising property values and potential gentrification the threat this time, rather than wrecking balls and bulldozers. That leads many to reject participation and resist change. “See, this community has been hurt

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 air pollution G Gainesville, FL, 229 Garcia, Anthony, 205 Gehl, Jan, 34, 157, 233 gender, 149–54 General Motors, 18, 22 genetic diversity, 85–88 gentrification, 148–49 Germany, 98, 126, 128 See also Europe Ghent, BE, 180–91, 188 See also Europe Ghent University, 190 Glaser, Meredith, 190–91 Goldberg

Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places

by Sharon Zukin  · 1 Dec 2009  · 415pp  · 119,277 words

flow of origins and new beginnings that continually wash over the city’s shores—the ebb and flow of economic growth, immigration, and, most recently, gentrification. Just before the crisis broke, New Yorkers were complaining about their disenchantment with the city. Too many favorite landmarks had disappeared, replaced by faceless towers

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every wild inspiration and kept our work on track; of the informal research group of graduate students who worked faithfully with me on boutiques and gentrification in Harlem and Williamsburg, including, besides Valerie, Peter Frase, Danielle Jackson, Tim Recuber, and Abraham Walker; and of Kathleen Dunn, who carried out insightful

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Bowery transformed from Skid Row to a boulevard of boutique hotels, Harlem with cafés, Williamsburg with condos on the waterfront. We often call these changes gentrification because of the movement of rich, well-educated folks, the gentry, into lower-class neighborhoods, and the higher property values that follow them, transforming

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the merely affluent upper middle class sell their nicely restored houses and apartments to the superrich. The British geographer Loretta Lees calls this process “super-gentrification.” But when one neighborhood after another goes upscale and new residents are not just fixing up old houses and lofts but also moving into newly

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minimized their potential as both physical and symbolic barriers to upscaling, while reducing the potential power of the poor—in terms of numbers—to oppose gentrification. A third change concerned gentrifiers such as Jane Jacobs herself. While they increased in numbers, they developed into an influential political force and, less

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of origins—by loosening the authentic self and bonding with the poor and underprivileged—opened a new beginning for urban redevelopment in the 1970s, alongside gentrification and gay and lesbian communities.19 The allure of newly hip neighborhoods spread through the power of alternative media. Years before “edgy” became another

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organic, … unique.” To the use-values of longtime residents and the exchange-values of real estate developers, bohemians and gentrifiers add aesthetic values.28 Although gentrification was just beginning in the United States and England when Jacobs wrote Death and Life and still lacked an American name, Herbert Gans had some

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because city dwellers are increasingly concerned with making their way between the promise of creation and the threat of annihilation, whether by urban renewal or gentrification, by warfare or ecological disaster. In the following chapters I show how origins and new beginnings create a sense of authenticity in both “uncommon”

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a residential influx of people with money, and, finally, the building of new luxury apartments with extravagant rents. It sounds like a typical process of gentrification. In this case, though, down and dirty hipster culture, rather than a sanitized version of entertainment, has produced a new kind of authenticity. Like most

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economic capital of Williamsburg’s new entrepreneurs reinvented the community as a new terroir for indie music, alternative art, and trendy restaurant cuisine. Together with gentrification in other neighborhoods, this remade Brooklyn’s image as well. Cool cultural production created a new, ethnically white, cosmopolitan image of Brooklyn centered on the

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three creative neighborhoods—Williamsburg, Park Slope, and Dumbo—that represent a new, more affluent, and more aesthetically attuned “urban village.”36 Most people call this gentrification. But that is too narrow a term to describe the demographic and economic changes that have reshaped both Brooklyn’s physical fabric and its reputation

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neighborhoods where they had never gone before. Race used to be considered a barrier to these changes. The recent whitening of Brooklyn, though, has expanded gentrification into working-class black neighborhoods while new immigrants as well as white gentrifiers have made other areas into an ethnic mosaic. If racial barriers still

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hold back gentrification anywhere, however, we would surely see their effects in Harlem, “the capital of black America.” The historical connection between race and place should be

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through the streets became a risky matter for visitors and residents alike.19 For all these reasons experts believed that Harlem would prove immune to gentrification. White homeowners, who made up the largest portion of “urban pioneers” in all American cities, were reluctant to settle in poor black neighborhoods. Most

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affluent black middle class, a potentially significant agent of change that would be attracted to Harlem’s stately townhouses and cultural authenticity and could anchor gentrification. Little by little, though, a new black middle class holding professional, financial, and media jobs began to buy the cheap, dilapidated, but still stately houses

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was cosponsored by a powerful insider as well: the Abyssinian Development Corporation.32 Though most residents welcomed new shopping opportunities, some expressed discontent that commercial gentrification was destroying Harlem’s authenticity as a place for low-income black residents. “At a June [2002] town hall meeting at the Schomberg Center for

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screamed: ‘Where the hell are the politicians?’” The changing face of 125th Street, in these residents’ view, was unmistakably connected with higher rents and residential gentrification. They sensed that upscale stores would bring about their own displacement.33 But UMEZ continued trying to reshape the retail landscape. In 1995 only 3

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real estate promotion, articles in the black-oriented Amsterdam News expose dramatically rising property taxes, difficulties in selling dilapidated homes, and rapid residential and commercial gentrification, with black tenants and shopkeepers being displaced by speculators, both black and white. The Amsterdam News expresses both the community’s pride in members of

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“Sweetz” recommends Harlem, though, others jump in, strongly denying that Harlem is “middle class.” According to Sweetz, Harlem “is getting pricey and a lot of gentrification [is] taking place!” But “Hustla718” (718 is the telephone area code for Brooklyn and Queens) immediately contradicts him: “Hahaha! Please tell me your kidding. [Stuyvesant

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expressing appreciation for African-American heritage, they usually prefer Settepani to a chicken shack. These consumption preferences point to a significant black constituency for more gentrification.49 Blacks’ ambivalence about Harlem resonates with larger social questions about black cultural diversity. In a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, more than

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revival. Despite the influx of young people, or “studentification,” longtime residents felt they benefited from this kind of upscaling. Neither did residents complain about residential gentrification. Because new apartment houses took the place of factories and other commercial buildings, some of which were already partly empty, few residents were displaced. Moreover

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the bright lights of either commercial or residential redevelopment.1 The city government has never seriously pursued new, green manufacturers that could locate here, and gentrification has been limited. The homes are too small, the area is too far from mass transit, there are environmental nasty spots like a waste transfer

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Health Department inspection and returned to their location at the ball fields.17 Some vendors think the growing number of white customers reflects the expanding gentrification of Brooklyn neighborhoods, including Red Hook. But it also reflects the vendors’ growing media presence, especially in the food blogs and wikis that began

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1970s landlords, banks, and the city government had not walked away from working-class and lower-middle-class neighborhoods. During the 1990s, when prospects of gentrification made these neighborhoods more interesting to investors, the Giuliani administration pushed to replace the gardens with new housing development. Developers were coming up with new

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auctions provided a target for attacking Giuliani, who was already disliked for his rough approach to civil liberties, confrontations with liberal opponents, and support of gentrification.11 College-educated social and environmental activists used the creative tactics of street theater to dramatize their defense of the gardens. In 1997 two hundred

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symbols of Gaia, the earth mother, represented nostalgia for a different utopia, one not tied to a specific homeland. As time went by, though, and gentrification expanded, the numbers of Puerto Rican gardeners declined. Gentrifiers’ social and aesthetic values gradually became more pronounced in the gardens’ use and design; casitas disappeared

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or several neighbors living in the same building nearby, they cannot claim to represent an entire community. Changing demographics also create problems, not just with gentrification but with new immigrants arriving from other regions of the world with different traditions. In East New York African American and Caribbean community gardeners now

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city’s chronic need for funds drove New York’s elected officials to embrace an entrepreneurial approach. Not only did Mayors Koch and Giuliani welcome gentrification as an important step toward private sector reinvestment in formerly “blighted” neighborhoods, but they also offered up the public space of streets and parks

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of the gardeners’ common origins gave their gardens life and opened the way to using public space to express ethnic identity. But with immigration and gentrification continuing to change local demographics, this form of authenticity is hard to maintain. Community gardens need to create roots for all newcomers and develop an

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to the dark ghetto, from one point of view, and forced removal of the poor or ethnic succession in reverse, from another. Calling these changes “gentrification” minimizes and oversimplifies the collective investment that is at stake. A lot of organized effort has gone into shaping the transformations we see. Real estate

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. For the past thirty years many big-city mayors have taken their cue from market-oriented administrations in national government and the unanticipated success of gentrification. Their priority was “making markets,” as the entrepreneurial slogan puts it, rather than helping poor people and small businesses to stay in place or

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, 1962); Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961). 13. Suleiman Osman, “The Birth of Postmodern New York: Gentrification, Postindustrialization and Race in South Brooklyn, 1950–1980,” PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2006; Walter Firey, “Sentiment and Symbolism as Ecological Variables,” American Sociological Review 10

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preservationists. “Social Preservationists and the Quest for Authentic Community,” City and Community 3, no. 2 (2004): 125–56. 14. The aesthetic and political complexity of gentrification in London in the 1970s is beautifully evoked by Patrick Wright in On Living in an Old Country (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Richard Florida

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David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), p. 83, emphasis added. Also see David Ley, “Artists, Aestheticization and the Field of Gentrification,” Urban Studies 40 (2003): 2527–44; Mike Featherstone, “The Aestheticization of Everyday Life,” in Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (London: Sage, 1991), pp. 65–82. 29

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. James Agee, Brooklyn Is: Southeast of the Island: Travel Notes (1939; New York: Fordham University Press, 2005); Suleiman Osman, “The Birth of Postmodern New York: Gentrification, Postindustrialization, and Race in South Brooklyn, 1950–1980,” PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2006. 4. Betty Smith, “Why Brooklyn Is That Way,” New York Times, December

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12, 1943. 5. Rexer, “Brooklyn, Borough of Writers.” This 1983 interview with Paula Fox suggests a much more settled, optimistic view of gentrification than she depicted in her novel Desperate Characters (New York: Norton, 1970). See Osman, “Birth of Postmodern New York.” By the 1980s Brooklyn Heights and

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mainly white; Bedford-Stuyvesant and Fort Greene were declining and mainly black. On nearby Clinton Hill, see Lance Freeman, There Goes the ‘Hood: Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006); on Boerum Hill, Jonathon Lethem, The Fortress of Solitude (New York: Doubleday, 2003). 6. Interview

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Susser, Norman Street: Poverty and Politics in an Urban Neighborhood (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982); Winifred Curran, “‘From the Frying Pan to the Oven’: Gentrification and the Experience of Industrial Displacement in Williamsburg, Brooklyn,” Urban Studies 44 (2007): 1427–40; also see interviews in Made in Brooklyn, a documentary film

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“The Births of the Cool,” New York Times, May 19, 2002; Joyce Ketterer, “L Café,” www.11211magazine.com, 3, no. 1 (2002). 20. Greg Sargent, “Gentrification’s Foamy First Wave,” New York, May 10, 2006; Steve Hindy, cofounder, Brooklyn Brewery, personal communication, April 2007. 21. www.brooklynindustries.com; Lexy Funk, talk

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at Science, Industry, and Business Library, New York Public Library, February 2007; Peter Geoghegan, personal communication, June 2006. 22. Jason Patch, “The Embedded Landscape of Gentrification,” Visual Studies 19 (2004): 169–86; Jay Walljasper and Daniel Kraker, “Hip Hot Spots: The 15 Hippest Places to Live,” Utne Reader, November–December 1997

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“authenticity,” such as dark skin, with a softer, more subjective performance of racial identity, tied to intention, that he calls “sincerity.” In her study of gentrification, Harlem between Heaven and Hell (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), the anthropologist Monique Taylor considers how authenticity is represented in Harlem by contrasting “market

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Real Estate; Historic District Is Undergoing Transformation,” Washington Post, March 13, 2005. 46. On an especially fraught discussion thread on www.brownstoner.com, about the gentrification of mixed-income black neighborhoods in Brooklyn, see Adam Sternbergh, “The What You Are Afraid Of: A Mischievous Online Bogeyman Is Haunting the Dreams of

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Domino Effect, Another Park Cracks Down,” New York Times, June 12, 1994. For a contrasting, highly critical view, see Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (New York: Routledge, 1996). 31. Gregory Squires, ed., Unequal Partnerships: The Political Economy of Urban Redevelopment in Postwar America (New Brunswick

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, 69, 78, 83 redevelopment. See urban redevelopment Red Hook community farm, 160, 208 consumer culture’s effect on, 189–90 film depictions of, 253n.31 gentrification of, 178, 184, 189, 191 and globalization, 191 industrial roots, 165, 168, 169, 191 pool renovation, 173–74 public housing, 165, 168, 253n.31

Tenants: The People on the Frontline of Britain's Housing Emergency

by Vicky Spratt  · 18 May 2022  · 371pp  · 122,273 words

haven’t sold a house to a family in a long time.’ Peckham has been changed in both good and bad ways by this shift – gentrification, the process whereby a place is ‘improved’, often when wealthier people move in or private companies or local government (sometimes both) knock down old

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an old tobacco factory in south Bristol that has been turned into an events space. Henry had deliberately chosen it because he thinks it ‘epitomises gentrification’ and is ‘the equivalent of east London in south Bristol’. Henry had left Bristol to do a degree at the University of Kent – the

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because it was one of the first jobs he could get, he had just finished writing a book of his own called Voices of Bristol: Gentrification and Us. He talked like he writes: loud and lamenting, angry and persuasive. And, if the rhythm of Henry’s speech implied urgency, it

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affected, with rents up by 9 per cent annually; the area registered the UK’s fastest rental growth in the third quarter of 2021. Gentrification, Gentrification, Relocation As Henry noted himself, there’s a word for all of this – one that gets thrown around a lot

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the opposite of sustainable regeneration; the former prioritises profit, the latter improves an area while protecting the community that inhabits it. The term gentrification was coined in 1964 by the sociologist Ruth Glass to describe change in London. In the early 1960s Glass, who had left Nazi Germany

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is now largely out of print, though leading academics such as Professor Loretta Lees and Professor Mindy Fullilove continue the study of gentrification and displacement. Glass’s definition of gentrification has become the definition of the inequity sparked by estate ‘renewal’ or urban ‘regeneration’ the world over. London was and remains

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One by one, many of the working-class quarters of London have been invaded by the middle classes – upper and lower … Once this process of ‘gentrification’ starts in a district it goes on rapidly until all or most of the original working-class occupiers are displaced and the social character of

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things, it sounds all right, doesn’t it? Almost natural and inevitable. Wealthy people move into less wealthy areas, bringing money with them. But gentrification is a story of conflicting parts, where the negative impact is usually glossed over. After all, when you renovate a home it is generally with

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an area where there isn’t enough social housing, people on low incomes will be priced out. The more you read Glass’s writing on gentrification today, the more prescient it becomes as a portent for what an unregulated housing market can do to society. In the same book, she

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be socially rented housing. Ordinary people become mere collateral damage in the pursuit of profit and a supposedly bright regenerated future. State or investor-led gentrification is distinct from but related to the creep of relocators, second-home buyers and buy-to-let investors. Either way, while something is always

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the buzz over the bougie restaurants and cafés that replace them. Accumulative Dispossession Bristol has a long history of fighting for renters’ rights and resisting gentrification. In the UK, the community union ACORN was founded in Bristol in 2014 and remains incredibly active; local residents also founded the Bristol Community

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the benefit of the community. In this sense, they aim to build financially sustainable homes and create inclusive communities to provide a grassroots bulwark against gentrification. Henry, who had close relationships with other local activists, had joined a long tradition of regional defiance. As he and I sat discussing what

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but to this practice. He used his power as a member of local government to take a stance on the state’s own role in gentrification, ensuring that the council renovated the properties earmarked for sale and put them back into circulation as social housing or leased them to reputable

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homelessness charities for a peppercorn rent. To his mind, what the council had been doing, intentionally or not, was ‘helping to accelerate the gentrification of inner-city Bristol areas’ by selling off the state-owned Victorian and Georgian housing that, though in poor condition, commanded high values. ‘The

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on the problems playing out in Bristol as a symptom of the financial assault on housing that had taken place, unregulated, for decades. ‘I think gentrification is actually a consequence of a dysfunctional housing system, not its cause,’ he told me. ‘It’s also a consequence of the retreat of

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would become so unaffordable. Would I do that again knowing that? Probably not.’ Paul’s personal quandary cuts to the heart of the problem of gentrification: the more people are impacted by unaffordable housing, the more likely they are to think only of themselves, of how to protect their futures

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when it started affecting what the middle classes could afford, too.’ Henry interjected. ‘Exactly, and that’s a reservation we all need to have about gentrification. Surely it’s masochism! It’s people hurting their own class, hurting other classes, all for profit. It’s like capitalism cannibalising itself.’ There is

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in search of housing they can afford and who cannot. And, uncomfortable as it may be to consider, the perpetrators of one type of gentrification who move in search of affordable homes are as likely to be the victims of a similar process of pricing out elsewhere. Londoners who have

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moved to Brighton, pricing out locals like Anthony, continue the process of gentrification, driving up prices over the heads of locals as others have done to them. In 2021, I spoke to Loretta Lees about her research.

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Through her work in London, she has developed a term to describe what happens when different forces of gentrification come together to make housing precarious: ‘accumulative dispossession’. This can be caused by multiple dynamics – poverty, low pay, austerity, state-led

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gentrification, bureaucratic failures of the benefits system, evictions, the unregulated housing market at large – which result in the build-up of policies and practices which

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it, as well as renters, to create a gradual but brutal dismissal of those on low incomes over time and space. While the proliferation of gentrification as a concept has given us a language for the visible and, indeed, less visible ways in which urban communities are transformed, she added

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that ‘it’s really important that we remember that gentrification is not a singular process’. Ruth Glass may have coined the term but, Lees told me, ‘the process predates the term’. In British cities,

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in particular, because we have different types of housing tenure – freehold and leasehold, private rental and social rental – different kinds of gentrification occur simultaneously and have different impacts on different social groups. ‘What you see in Bristol – where “regular” people move in, buy up homes and flip

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– is a more organic process,’ she said. ‘What we are seeing in London and Manchester is that, too, but combined with the state-led gentrification of council estates as well as, sometimes, offshore companies coming in and buying up properties to rent out at scale.’ The consequences of all types

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of gentrification are equally serious. Consider Cornwall, where, for example, the local NHS trust cannot retain vital staff because there is nowhere affordable for key workers

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to recruit entry-level staff because of high housing costs. In Community Land We Trust We finished our coffees and headed out for Henry’s ‘gentrification tour of Bristol’. In one area, Stokes Croft, which is to the north of the city centre, residents were taking action against what they

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saw as the spread of gentrification, coming together to buy buildings and bring them into community ownership – via the Stokes Croft Land Trust (SCLT) – in a bid to stop investors

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Street – but hoped to expand in the future, with their sights set firmly on several more properties. Change, they thought, might be inevitable, but gentrification was not. It was about giving residents a chance to shape their area, not just having developments imposed on them. The fact is that in

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and a lack of enforcement when it came to private developers meeting affordable home targets and planning regulations. The overlapping narratives of relocation, regeneration and gentrification beg two important questions: Who are the communities most affected by displacement and unaffordable housing? And who is to blame? We might turn up

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that the area I was walking through in Southwark had been the site of some of London’s most contentious housing battles. This is a gentrification hotspot, where a blueprint for how not to ‘regenerate’ an area has been drawn in real time. When I visited before the pandemic, the

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American food – the wrecking ball was swinging ever closer. On nearby Tiverton Street was some much-photographed graffiti in big yellow letters that read ‘GENTRIFICATION: Please bear with us while we tear apart your community’. As I passed what was once the Heygate Estate, it felt to me that the

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Pemberstone’s proposed new houses on the site would be valuable, and easy to rent out or sell. In this context, the residents were citing ‘gentrification’ in their formal objections to the planned demolition of their homes – they were, they felt, being displaced because of an opportunity to profit from evicting

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house prices and rents; people on wages who could not meet those housing costs; a lack of social housing; and the ever-moving hand of gentrification. Linda Elsworth, a 71-year-old pensioner with mobility problems, also lived on the estate, near Cindy and John. She had been in her

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up each month from her pension. Standing in her front garden with a jumper wrapped around her shoulders, she told me that, in her view, ‘gentrification’ was ‘exactly’ what was happening to her. ‘Our landlord [Pemberstone] has just done the bare minimum of maintenance here when they needed to do

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seemingly intractable problem of housing, succeeding where other policies have failed in transforming this country’s economic and social geography. Done wrong, it would be gentrification by another name, which would further entrench regional and social polarities. Change is inevitable. There may be more pandemics, more natural disasters. Our economy

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uk/news/northern-ireland/hooray-for-holywood-as-seaside-town-is-rated-the-best-place-to-live-in-northern-ireland-38007541.html Voices of Bristol: Gentrification and Us: Henry’s book is a lively and local account of what it feels like to grow up in a city that changes

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around you. Henry Palmer, Voices of Bristol: Gentrification and Us (Bristol: Arkbound, 2019). you may have to wait: www.gov.uk/council-housing By 2019, the average house cost £304,900: Hannah

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move into less wealthy areas: The work of Professor Loretta Lees is the best place to start if you want to know more about contemporary gentrification. She is an internationally renowned urban geographer. Put simply, she is the expert on this issue. Sadly, much of Ruth Glass’s work is

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out of print but you can access it in libraries and you’ll find analysis of it in The Gentrification Reader (London: Routledge, 2010), which was co-edited by Lees. forcibly removed: Mira Bar-Hillel, ‘Residents of the Heygate estate forced to move out

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Fiscal Studies, 16 February 2018, ifs.org.uk/publications/10506 there has long been an assumption: Loretta Lees, ‘Gentrification and Social Mixing: Towards an Inclusive Urban Renaissance?’, Urban Studies, special issue ‘Gentrification and Public Policy’ 45:12 (2008), 2449–70. the estrangement of a person from their humanity: See Karl

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private-companies-to-house-low-income-workers-in-empty-buildings-376283 being marketed off-plan to investors in east Asia: Loretta Lees, ‘Challenging the Gentrification of Council Estates in London’, Urban Transformations blog, 16 March 2018, www.urbantransformations.ox.ac.uk/blog/2018/challenging-the

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-gentrification-of-council-estates-in-london/ ‘the clustering of businesses …’ ‘… one place from another’: Jessica Perera, ‘“You need to look closely, because Elephant and Castle

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3 September 2021, www.nrla.org.uk/news/demand-for-rental-housing-in-yorkshire-and-the-humber-highest-in-the-country the residents were citing ‘gentrification’: democracy.leeds.gov.uk/documents/s188179/1%2017-0633-FU.pdf were beyond repair: www.kingschambers.com/assets/PDF/news/cases/LEEDS%2015%20JANUARY%202021

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-Blackwell, 2006) Leslie Kern, Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-made World (London: Verso, 2020) Loretta Lees, Tom Slater and Elvin Wyly, eds, The Gentrification Reader (London: Routledge, 2010) Anna Minton, Big Capital: Who is London For? (London: Penguin, 2017) Martha Nussbaum, Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice

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Generation X 1 Generation Z 1 intergenerational inequality 1 millennials 1, 2, 3 Generations: Does When You’re Born Shape Who You Are? (Duffy) 1 gentrification 1, 2, 3, 4 Germany 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Gillin, Nicola 1, 2, 3 Glasgow, Scotland 1 Glass, Ruth 1, 2, 3 Global

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5 Hope for Justice 1 Hope Housing 1, 2, 3 Hope Not Hate 1 house prices 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 gentrification and 1, 2 immigration and 1 Stamp Duty 1, 2, 3 unaffordable homes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 see also mortgages house sharing 1, 2

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Many’ (green paper) 1 Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) 1 housing market 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 gentrification and 1, 2, 3 immigration and 1 lack of demand, 1 new homes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 politics and 1 racism and 1, 2

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3, 4, 5 Localism Act (2011) 1 Location, Location, Location (TV series) 1 location/place 1, 2 London, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 gentrification and 1, 2, 3 Great Dock Strike (1889) 1 guardianship 1, 2 London Housing Panel 1 ‘London Living Rent’, 1 rent control 1, 2 rent

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2 Urban Studies journal 1 Uruguay 1 V Valuations Office Agency (VOA) 1 Vasudevan, Alexander 1 ‘Vent Your Rent’ campaign 1, 2 Voices of Bristol: Gentrification and Us (Palmer) 1 W Wales 1, 2, 3, 4 Walters, John Tudor 1, 2 Warm Homes Nest scheme (Wales) 1 Watchtower Security Solutions

Bike Snob

by BikeSnobNYC  · 5 May 2010  · 155pp  · 51,258 words

Life PART TWO Road Rules WHY IS EVERYBODY TRYING TO KILL ME?”: Fear, and How to Survive on a Bike CYCLING AND THE CITY: The Gentrification of the Bicycle LOOK AT ME, I’M ORIGINAL, TOO! The myth of a “bike culture” PART THREE Advanced Cycling LETTING GO: The burden of

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. Unless that’s your goal on the bike, too, you should probably use a light. CYCLING AND THE CITY The Gentrification of the Bicycle As a child growing up in pre-gentrification Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, I went everywhere by bicycle. My bike was in many ways the key to my neighborhood, which

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I grew up in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, before it was gentrified. You could get mugged! —Jonathan Lethem For years people have been talking about “gentrification.” Basically, gentrification is when some poor, or boring, or regular, or otherwise unremarkable neighborhood experiences an influx of bars and restaurants and clubs and young people and

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over $20, and all the employees are speaking with that mid-Atlantic accent Madonna has. People debate endlessly about gentrification being a good thing or a bad thing. Pro-gents say that gentrification brings safety, and amenities (if you call high-end clothing boutiques and places that sell truffle oil “amenities”), and

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increases the value of the neighborhood’s real estate for everybody. Anti-gents say that gentrification raises rents, forces out people with lower incomes, and creates a breeding ground for the ever-growing Nation of Smug Hipsters. Truth be told, both

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the pro-gents and the anti-gents make good points. And one thing that’s become an increasingly important part of gentrification, for better or for worse, is the bicycle. The hipster is a particular breed of person, and where there are hipsters, there are bicycles (usually

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, but not always, fixed-gears). And a hipster on a bicycle can spread gentrification more quickly than a stiff wind can distribute a cloud of ragweed pollen. Yes, hipsters on bicycles can cause entire cities to suffer from the

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a way, the fixed-gear bicycle was the lightning bolt that struck the primordial soup of trendiness from which the latest wave of hipsterdom and gentrification evolved. Naturally, the fixed-gear bicycle soon became an indispensable part of hipster culture, and because hipsters began to rely upon them more and more

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, while it only takes a fraction of a second to glance at someone’s feet. It’s this attitude that’s at the heart of gentrification. And while this attitude is as old as the first caveman who made a necklace out of bison’s teeth (I think bison-tooth necklaces

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-culture museum. And cycling and its many subsets are but some of the many lifestyles that have been uncovered and appropriated by the forces of gentrification. It can be annoying to see something you love being used as a fashion statement. But at the same time, being annoyed by this sort

The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class

by Joel Kotkin  · 11 May 2020  · 393pp  · 91,257 words

delayed that their IQs will never exceed 90.28 This portends a future as something like the Gammas and Epsilons of Brave New World. The Gentrification of the Left In developed nations, as the middle classes are being proletarianized and the working classes fall further behind, the longstanding alliance between the

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immigrants.39 Europe’s multicultural capital, London, by some measures now has a higher crime rate than New York, although fewer homicides.40 Densification and Gentrification The social fabric of big cities is being further frayed by efforts to redesign the urban landscape on an upscale model. In many cities, a

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driving blacks out, meaning black population decline is de facto public policy.44 This is part of a process that has come to be called gentrification, a term whose origins lie in mid-1960s London.45 At first it was unplanned, but over time it became a matter of design to

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similar—often with the same repetitive streetscape, shops, and even similar people—in major cities throughout the high-income world.47 For many people, this gentrification means a worsening quality of life. In fact, the urban world now being fashioned in London does not resemble “the social democracy imagined after the

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living in the cities outside the “glamour zone” feel trapped—victims of an urban system that doesn’t provide opportunity for them. A backlash against gentrification has appeared in many cities, such as Ontario, Berlin, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and New Orleans.59 Tactics for repelling gentrifiers have included vandalism

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sixth chapter, drew upon work done for the Urban Reform Institute, formerly the Center for Opportunity Urbanism, based in Houston. Our work on alternatives to gentrification were shaped in large part by Wendell Cox, Pete Saunders, Karla del Rio Lopez, and Cullum Clark, now at the Bush Center in Dallas. I

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, “Chicago’s Awful Divide,” Atlantic, March 28, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/chicago-segregation-poverty/556649/; Center for Opportunity Urbanism, Beyond Gentrification: Towards More Equitable Urban Growth, https://opportunityurbanism.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Toward-More-Equitable-Urban-Growth.pdf. 8 Linda Lutton, “The Middle Class

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/; Kevin Baker, “The Death of a Once Great City,” Harper’s, July 2018, https://harpers.org/archive/2018/07/the-death-of-new-york-city-gentrification/?ex_cid=SigDig. 25 Francesco Andreoli and Eugenio Peluso, “So close yet so unequal: Reconsidering spatial inequality in U.S. cities,” Dipartimento di Economia e

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-franciscos-black-population-is-less-than-5-percent-exodus-has-been-steady. 30 Kathleen Maclay, “More gentrification, displacement in Bay Area forecast,” Berkeley News, August 24, 2015, https://news.berkeley.edu/2015/08/24/more-gentrification-displacement-in-bay-area-forecast/; Sam Levin, “‘Largest-ever’ Silicon Valley eviction to displace hundreds of

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19, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-06-19/why-london-has-more-crime-than-new-york. 41 Center for Opportunity Urbanism, Beyond Gentrification: Towards More Equitable Growth, January 2019, https://opportunityurbanism.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Toward-More-Equitable-Urban-Growth.pdf. 42 Jane Jacobs, Dark Age

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-DISINVESTMENT-1940%E2%80%932000.pdf; NYU Furman Center, “Focus on Gentrification” June 9, 2016, http://furmancenter.org/files/sotc/Part_1_Gentrification_SOCin2015_9JUNE2016.pdf; Jonathan Wynn and Andrew Deener, “Gentrification? Bring It,” The Conversation, October 11, 2017, https://theconversation.com/gentrification-bring-it-82107. 47 Kevin Baker, “The Death of a Once

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Great City,” Harper’s, July 2018, https://harpers.org/archive/2018/07/the-death-of-new-york-city-gentrification/; Theodore Dalrymple, “The Architect as Totalitarian,” City Journal, Autumn 2009, https://www.city-journal.org/html/architect-totalitarian-13246.html; Claire Berlinski, “The Architectural Sacking

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Golden State,” Center for Demographics and Policy, May 5, 2017, http://centerforcaliforniarealestate.org/publications/Kotkin-Fading-Dream-printable.pdf. 54 Center for Opportunity Urbanism, Beyond Gentrification. 55 John Aidan Byrne, “The Exodus of New York City’s endangered middle class,” New York Post, December 22, 2018, https://nypost.com/2018/12

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5, 2013, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2013/12/05/rich-neighborhood-poor-neighborhood-how-segregation-threatens-social-mobility/. 59 Helen Raleigh, “Gentrification Provokes a Cofee Clash in Denver’s Five Points,” Wall Street Journal, December 22, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles

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/gentrification-provokes-a-coffee-clash-in-denvers-five-points-1513983831; Cameron McWhirter, “Atlanta’s Growing Pains Are Getting Worse,” Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2018, https://

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www.wsj.com/articles/atlantas-growing-pains-are-getting-worse-1535707800; Richard Campanella, “Gentrification and Its Discontents: Notes From New Orleans,” New Geography, February 28, 2013, http://www.newgeography.com/content/003526-gentrification-and-its-discontents-notes-new-orleans; “Google abandons Berlin base after two years of resistance,” Guardian

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, October 24, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/24/google-abandons-berlin-base-after-two-years-of-resistance; Chantal Braganza, “Why opponents of gentrification have taken to the streets of Hamilton,” TVO, April 5, 2018, https://tvo.org/article/current-afairs/why-opponents-of

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-gentrification-have-taken-to-the-streets-of-hamilton; David Streitfeld, “Protesters Block Google Buses in San Francisco, Citing ‘Techsploitation,’” New York Times, May 31, 2018, https://

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/la-me-ln-oakland-construction-ires-20170710-story.html; “Is Boyle Heights Coffee Shop Vandalism An Anti-Gentrification Message?” CBS Los Angeles, July 19, 2017, https://losangeles. cbslocal.com/2017/07/19/boyle-heights-vandalism-gentrification/. 61 Rakesh Kochhar, “The American middle class is stable in size, but losing ground financially to

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rules in; pessimism in Austria automation, baby boomers Ball, John Beard, Charles A. Beard, Mary R. Beijing; birth rates in; class division in; as “full”; gentrification in Belgium Bell, Daniel: on knowledge class; on technological control Bellow, Saul Benedict, Ruth Berry, Wendell Bezos, Jeff Bing, Stanley birth rates; in East Asia

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Friedman, Thomas Fukuyama, Francis Future Shock (Toffler) Galbraith, James Galbraith, John Kenneth García Martínez, Antonio Garreau, Joel Gates, Bill Gates Foundation Generation X Generation Z gentrification: of left; of urban core George, Stefan Germany: Berlin; demographics of; energy costs in; Green Party; inequality in; migrant influx in; Peasants’ Rebellion (1525); Social

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There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

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Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism

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Rough Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area

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I Hate the Internet: A Novel

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The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us

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Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities

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The Trouble With Brunch: Work, Class and the Pursuit of Leisure

by Shawn Micallef  · 10 Jun 2014  · 104pp  · 34,784 words

Suburban Nation

by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck  · 14 Sep 2010  · 321pp  · 85,267 words

On Bicycles: A 200-Year History of Cycling in New York City

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The London Compendium

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Floating City: A Rogue Sociologist Lost and Found in New York's Underground Economy

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Melting Pot or Civil War?: A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders

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Multicultural Cities: Toronto, New York, and Los Angeles

by Mohammed Abdul Qadeer  · 10 Mar 2016

Public Places, Urban Spaces: The Dimensions of Urban Design

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The New Geography of Jobs

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Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing

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The Rent Is Too Damn High: What to Do About It, and Why It Matters More Than You Think

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Retrofitting Suburbia, Updated Edition: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs

by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson  · 23 Mar 2011  · 512pp  · 131,112 words

Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture

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Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture

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Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong About the Future of Transportation

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Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life

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The City on the Thames

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The Retreat of Western Liberalism

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The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

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The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream

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Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America

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The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream

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One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger

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Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City

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Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions

by Christian Lander  · 5 Aug 2008  · 287pp  · 9,386 words

Corbyn

by Richard Seymour

Silicon City: San Francisco in the Long Shadow of the Valley

by Cary McClelland  · 8 Oct 2018  · 225pp  · 70,241 words

Wonder Boy: Tony Hsieh, Zappos, and the Myth of Happiness in Silicon Valley

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Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution

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The Origins of the Urban Crisis

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The View From Flyover Country: Dispatches From the Forgotten America

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Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It

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Saving America's Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age

by Lizabeth Cohen  · 30 Sep 2019

After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back

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The Devil's Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square

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The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism

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The New Tourist: Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel

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Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America

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Automating Inequality

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Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets

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Dreaming in Public: Building the Occupy Movement

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Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain's Underclass

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Migrant City: A New History of London

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Frommer's San Francisco 2012

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Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup

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We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

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Municipal Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Council Housing

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Once the American Dream: Inner-Ring Suburbs of the Metropolitan United States

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Straphanger

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Surveillance Valley: The Rise of the Military-Digital Complex

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Framing Class: Media Representations of Wealth and Poverty in America

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Supertall: How the World's Tallest Buildings Are Reshaping Our Cities and Our Lives

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Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy

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This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

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The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice

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Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline

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In Pursuit of Privilege: A History of New York City's Upper Class and the Making of a Metropolis

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The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration

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Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel

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Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture

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Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities

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Content Provider: Selected Short Prose Pieces, 2011–2016

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Cocaine Nation: How the White Trade Took Over the World

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The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class

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The Ones We've Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America

by Charlotte Alter  · 18 Feb 2020  · 504pp  · 129,087 words

Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity

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City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

by Catie Marron  · 11 Apr 2016  · 195pp  · 58,462 words

If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities

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Lonely Planet Pocket Berlin

by Lonely Planet and Andrea Schulte-Peevers  · 31 Aug 2012  · 277pp  · 41,815 words

Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back

by Douglas Rushkoff  · 1 Jun 2009  · 422pp  · 131,666 words

USA Travel Guide

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Artificial Whiteness

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Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress--And How to Bring It Back

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Bad Company

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Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone

by Sarah Jaffe  · 26 Jan 2021  · 490pp  · 153,455 words

USA's Best Trips

by Sara Benson  · 23 May 2010  · 941pp  · 237,152 words

New York 2140

by Kim Stanley Robinson  · 14 Mar 2017  · 693pp  · 204,042 words

My Own Country: A Doctor's Story of a Town and Its People in the Age of AIDS

by Abraham Verghese  · 1 Jan 1994  · 519pp  · 169,973 words

Dawn of Detroit

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The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain

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This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World

by Yancey Strickler  · 29 Oct 2019  · 254pp  · 61,387 words

Fodor's Hawaii 2013

by Fodor's  · 22 Jul 2012

Fodor's Rome: With the Best City Walks and Scenic Day Trips

by Fodor's Travel Publications Inc.  · 24 Sep 2012  · 618pp  · 159,672 words

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by Andrea Schulte-Peevers  · 17 Oct 2010

Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism

by Stephen Graham  · 30 Oct 2009  · 717pp  · 150,288 words

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by Lonely Planet  · 27 Sep 2012

1,000 Places to See in the United States and Canada Before You Die, Updated Ed.

by Patricia Schultz  · 13 May 2007  · 2,323pp  · 550,739 words

Queenie

by Candice Carty-Williams  · 19 Mar 2019  · 364pp  · 100,898 words

Infinite Detail

by Tim Maughan  · 1 Apr 2019  · 303pp  · 81,071 words

No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age

by Jane F. McAlevey  · 14 Apr 2016  · 423pp  · 92,798 words

Portland Like a Local

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The Warhol Economy

by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett  · 15 Jan 2020  · 320pp  · 90,115 words

Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist

by Liz Pelly  · 7 Jan 2025  · 293pp  · 104,461 words

Fodor's Essential Belgium

by Fodor's Travel Guides  · 23 Aug 2022

Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It

by Daniel Knowles  · 27 Mar 2023  · 278pp  · 91,332 words

Celebrating the Third Place: Inspiring Stories About the Great Good Places at the Heart of Our Communities

by Ray Oldenburg  · 30 Nov 2001  · 215pp  · 71,155 words

The Lonely Century: How Isolation Imperils Our Future

by Noreena Hertz  · 13 May 2020  · 506pp  · 133,134 words

The Longing for Less: Living With Minimalism

by Kyle Chayka  · 21 Jan 2020  · 237pp  · 69,985 words

Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle

by Silvia Federici  · 4 Oct 2012  · 277pp  · 80,703 words

Lonely Planet China (Travel Guide)

by Lonely Planet and Shawn Low  · 1 Apr 2015  · 3,292pp  · 537,795 words

The Internet Is Not the Answer

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The Way That Leads Among the Lost: Life, Death, and Hope in Mexico City's Anexos

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The Rough Guide to Australia (Travel Guide eBook)

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Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches From the Wrong Side of History

by Nellie Bowles  · 13 May 2024  · 207pp  · 62,397 words

Beautiful Solutions: A Toolbox for Liberation

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World Travel: An Irreverent Guide

by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever  · 19 Apr 2021  · 366pp  · 110,374 words

Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire

by Brad Stone  · 10 May 2021  · 569pp  · 156,139 words

State of Emergency: The Way We Were

by Dominic Sandbrook  · 29 Sep 2010  · 932pp  · 307,785 words

Concretopia: A Journey Around the Rebuilding of Postwar Britain

by John Grindrod  · 2 Nov 2013  · 578pp  · 141,373 words

America, You Sexy Bitch: A Love Letter to Freedom

by Meghan McCain and Michael Black  · 31 May 2012  · 367pp  · 117,340 words

Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life

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Frommer's California 2007

by Harry Basch, Mark Hiss, Erika Lenkert and Matthew Richard Poole  · 6 Dec 2006  · 769pp  · 397,677 words

Frommer's Portable California Wine Country

by Erika Lenkert  · 8 May 2006  · 218pp  · 83,794 words

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by Robert Ullian  · 31 Mar 1998

When the Iron Lady Ruled Britain

by Robert Chesshyre  · 15 Jan 2012  · 434pp  · 150,773 words

Rule Britannia: Brexit and the End of Empire

by Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson  · 15 Jan 2019  · 502pp  · 128,126 words

Chicago Like a Local

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by Geoff Wallis

Creating Unequal Futures?: Rethinking Poverty, Inequality and Disadvantage

by Ruth Fincher and Peter Saunders  · 1 Jul 2001  · 267pp  · 79,905 words

Divided: Why We're Living in an Age of Walls

by Tim Marshall  · 8 Mar 2018  · 256pp  · 75,139 words

Broke: How to Survive the Middle Class Crisis

by David Boyle  · 15 Jan 2014  · 367pp  · 108,689 words

Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley

by Corey Pein  · 23 Apr 2018  · 282pp  · 81,873 words

Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America

by Alissa Quart  · 25 Jun 2018  · 320pp  · 90,526 words

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by Lonely Planet

The Unicorn's Secret

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The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It

by Yascha Mounk  · 15 Feb 2018  · 497pp  · 123,778 words

Lurking: How a Person Became a User

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The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel's Battle for Its Inner Soul

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by Lonely Planet  · 892pp  · 229,939 words

The the Rough Guide to Turkey

by Rough Guides  · 15 Oct 2023

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by Rough Guides  · 24 Sep 2018  · 712pp  · 199,112 words

The Vanishing Neighbor: The Transformation of American Community

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Commuter City: How the Railways Shaped London

by David Wragg  · 14 Apr 2010  · 369pp  · 120,636 words

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by David Else and Fionn Davenport  · 2 Jan 2007

Frommer's England 2011: With Wales

by Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince  · 2 Jan 2010

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Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition That Is Shaping the Next Economy

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The End of Policing

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Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody

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Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World

by Gaia Vince  · 22 Aug 2022  · 302pp  · 92,206 words

The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World

by David Sax  · 15 Jan 2022  · 282pp  · 93,783 words

Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O'Connell's Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People

by Tracy Kidder  · 17 Jan 2023  · 270pp  · 88,213 words

Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy

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Explore Everything

by Bradley Garrett  · 7 Oct 2013  · 273pp  · 76,786 words

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by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh

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The Rough Guide to Amsterdam

by Martin Dunford, Phil Lee and Karoline Thomas  · 4 Jan 2010  · 537pp  · 135,099 words

France (Lonely Planet, 8th Edition)

by Nicola Williams  · 14 Oct 2010

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by Lonely Planet Publications  · 31 Mar 2013

Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America

by Jonathan Kozol  · 27 Aug 2012  · 323pp  · 106,008 words

The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans

by Eben Kirksey  · 10 Nov 2020  · 599pp  · 98,564 words

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by Rough Guides  · 21 Sep 2018

Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art

by Michael Shnayerson  · 20 May 2019  · 552pp  · 163,292 words

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The Rough Guide to Brussels 4 (Rough Guide Travel Guides)

by Dunford, Martin.; Lee, Phil; Summer, Suzy.; Dal Molin, Loik  · 26 Jul 2010

A Brief History of Neoliberalism

by David Harvey  · 2 Jan 1995  · 318pp  · 85,824 words

The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving

by Leigh Gallagher  · 26 Jun 2013  · 296pp  · 76,284 words

Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the Twenty First Century City

by Anna Minton  · 24 Jun 2009  · 309pp  · 96,434 words

Berlin Now: The City After the Wall

by Peter Schneider and Sophie Schlondorff  · 4 Aug 2014  · 313pp  · 100,317 words

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Wealth and Poverty: A New Edition for the Twenty-First Century

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The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World

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The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History

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Democracy and Prosperity: Reinventing Capitalism Through a Turbulent Century

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The Participation Revolution: How to Ride the Waves of Change in a Terrifyingly Turbulent World

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Uncomfortably Off: Why the Top 10% of Earners Should Care About Inequality

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San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities

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Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation

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There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

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System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot

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Pattern Recognition

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Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer

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Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground

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Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons

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The Rise of the Network Society

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The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

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The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy

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Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

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Does Capitalism Have a Future?

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Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems

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The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier

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The Deepest Map

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Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World

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IRL: Finding Realness, Meaning, and Belonging in Our Digital Lives

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The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics

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A Framework for Understanding Poverty

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The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

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The Burning Land

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Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World

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Bleeding Edge: A Novel

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The Job: The Future of Work in the Modern Era

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Yes Please

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The Coffee Book: Anatomy of an Industry From Crop to the Last Drop

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Because We Say So

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Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest

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The City: A Global History

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Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, From the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First

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The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age

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The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape

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Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization

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The Big Book of Words You Should Know: Over 3,000 Words Every Person Should Be Able to Use (And a Few That You Probably Shouldn't)

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Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World

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