Gentrification? Good!

I have always been bemused, puzzled and sometimes distressed about the hysteria with which "gentrification" is greeted. Apparently, Robert Fulford feels the same way:

Urban activists and scholars on several continents have convinced themselves that there's something fundamentally wrong and selfish about improving a neighbourhood. That seems to me precisely the reverse of the truth. In fact, the gentrification movement has helped solve, through the spontaneous decisions of millions of citizens, what once seemed a grave and intractable problem.

Forty years ago, the same sort of people who are now averse to gentrification were worrying that "white flight" was destroying the inner cities. Across the U.S., white middle-class families were moving to the suburbs because downtown neighbourhoods were increasingly populated by blacks. By leaving, the middle classes shrank the tax base of the cities, eroding schools and other services. Everyone claimed that downtowns were dying, even where race was not a major factor.

But the 1960s and 1970s brought a big change for the better -- or so it seemed. Middle-class families began taking over cheap, decrepit housing and improving it. Districts that were called "slums"...

I agree entirely. Many older inner-city neighborhoods have seen an "increase in value." But that simply reflects new consciousness --- an awareness such neighborhoods had been "undervalued."

"Value" is not an independent variable; it is a result of human choice. That we now place greater value in urban living --- close-in and in traditional walkable neighborhoods --- strikes me as a maturing of our society (and something about the new urbanism btw which my friends at RPPI seems to misunderstand.)

That seems good to me and a wise use of society's "spatial resources." In the case of Seattle, I can say with certainty, having been part of the process, that such properties were always transferred through fair-market purchase.

(I am not talking here of "urban renewal" of the 50s to 70s which used condemnation to destroy neighborhoods, nor of landlords who shut off water and electricity to tenants to force them to move so as to re-do a building. Those are bad, even wicked, things.)

Gentrification is a process by which individual buyers and sellers voluntarily transfer property. The buyers usually -- I did it then and my young relations are doing it now -- buy a house in disrepair and through mostly sweat equity bring it back to full functionality. They fix the roof and prune the trees. They value the house and put money into it. Others are encouraged to do the same and the neighborhood revives.

Are there problems for older poor people who do not want to move & sell but who have pay higher taxes? Yes and I favor current use tax assessment for such folks. (And in the big picture let's remember that they in their dottage or their heirs will gain significantly by the increase in property values due to the newcomers.)

Do neighborhood change? Yes. Is that OK with me? Indeed yes.

Comments

[jack tindall]

This is a subject that I have never brought up before, simply because of my own insecurity. I thought,"How could people much smarter than me not discussed this". I also thought it just might be part of a general reluctance by New Urbanists to get in a discussion about race.

[Brian Miller]

I agree with you, David. IMO, much of the bleating about gentrification, particularly in the Bay Area, was quite racist. The Mission, for example, was once a white working class neighborhood that transitioned into a Latino working class neighborhood. Complaints about gentrification seemed to imply that only latinos (or maybe hip "anarchist" artists) were worthy of living in the neighborhood. The local semi-conservative lifestyle rag, SF Weekly, even prepared a parody "Mission Residency Application."

At the same time, it is difficult to deny that market forces are often quite damaging or disruptive to long term residents who were unable (or unwilling) to become property owners. These residents may have deep emotional ties to a neighborhood whose housing they cannot afford to buy. There is a sense of resentment against often smug, callow newcomers swooping into a neighborhood and pricing your family, friends, and long-time neighborhoods out of their housing. In cities where neighborhood residents are not property owners, this is a problem.

Nonetheless, I tend to agree with you: neighborhoods change. There are ways of helping to avoid displacement, but trashing the newcomers (admittedly very annoying) SUVs in the name of "revolutionary conscioussness" is not one of them.

[Laurence Aurbach]

Gentrification is a desirable process that improves properties, increases the tax base and brings the middle and upper classes back into the city to support its institutions. New urbanists have been dealing with gentrification issues for years, particularly in the context of HOPE VI public housing projects, where the best practice is a one-for-one replacement policy for low-income residents. Other government interventions may be necessary to prevent low and fixed-income residents from losing their homes because of rising property taxes.

A compilation of online discussions was collected in "New Urban Post II: On Gentrification," which can be purchased:
http://www.tndtownpaper.com/debate.htm#post. Or you can simply join the new urbanist listservs and search the archives.

[Bill Seitz]

I think a couple other common objections to gentrification are:

* once there's some money in the 'hood, the new stores tend to be chain entities (e.g. PotteryBarn) rather than independent, so the area starts to look like every other neighborhood.

* the later arrivals tend to push toward policies that reduce the texture of the neighborhood: regulate sidewalk cafes, force out certain types of business, etc. (often this is by simply pushing for more stringent enforcement of existing rules).

http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/SlAck

[Mark]

yeah, but are you guys on the "front lines" ? I am, in the Columbia Heights section of Washington, DC. I guess I should start bloggin' about it?! I'm in the last building, where folk in here are payin' $600 per month or so, and everything else around here are $400K (and up) condos.