Expert answer:Answer questions about gentrification based in the
Expert answer:You need to answer the questions. It is not an essay you just need to answer the questions using the article plus the info that my professor provide. Length: two pages Format: typed; doublespaced Font: 12; Times Roman Margins: 1 inch all aroundQuestion:Taking a look at the histories we have learned and the article you have read, does gentrification follow similar patterns of conquest and displacement as the colonial period and manifest destiny? How does gentrification impact class and race, and does that bare similarities to the previous periods of we have historically covered?READ THIS:Option 2: GentrificationHistorically, we started our semester by looking at the early British colonial need for the exploitation of Africans as enslaved labor to advance their economic opportunity, and how this laid the foundation for thecreation of the American understanding of race (binary race relations). Though we did not talk about it, the colonial period featured the displacement of Native tribes alongside the force use of African labor. Wethen moved on and learned about the Market Revolution and the emergence of the Anglo-Saxon complex, which shaped the idea of manifest destiny. Similar to the process of colonization, manifest destiny led to the conquest of Mexican territory and the displacement of Mexican-Americans. The ensuing gold rush, corporate farming, and the industrial boom led to massive increase in wealth in the hands of the recent anglo and European arrivals to the west. Thus, in each of these two moments—the colonial period and westward movement in the era of manifest destiny—we have saw displacement tied directly to economic prosperity of a specific race in this country. In other words, class and race in this country are the driving forces in the power and wealth disparity between the dominant and subordinate groups. Today, we see the issue of gentrification in many of the major cities in the United States (definition of gentrification from Merriam-Webster: “the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents”), San Francisco being one of the major cites for tech-led gentrification. One of the major debates regarding gentrification is whether it is a form of modern day colonialism. Please read the following articles and answer the following question: Article: “Gentrification: The New Colnialism in the Modern Era :please see the document that i upload called journal ( i need to refer to this document)I also provide an example of a current event analysis but it need to be 2 pages.
journal34.pdf
current_eventanalysis1.docx
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Forum on Public Policy
Gentrification: The New Colonialism in the Modern Era
Jonathan L. Wharton, Affiliate Professor, History and Political Science, Stevens Institute of
Technology
Abstract
Within the last fifty years, gentrification has become a serious concern in numerous cities, particularly in North
America. Gentrification occurs when college educated business professionals or the so-called “gentry class” locate
(or relocate) to an urban community resulting in the displacement of low-income, often times long-time residents.
Consequently, housing and living expenses increase tremendously impacting a variety of local people. Although
these communities experience a number of modern changes (increased policing, improved city services and
expanded commercial corridors to cater to the new residents), so many long-time residents are forced to relocate
since rents and costs skyrocket to appeal to the gentrifying class.
Is gentrification the new 21st century colonialism? Developers, realtors, bankers, investors, planners,
architects, engineers and politicians often have a hand in this redevelopment and displacement phenomenon and act
as capitalists in the idealized neo-urban frontier. These actors frequently serve as the elite assuring that specific
plans and policies are established for urban redevelopment and they rarely disclose their proposals to the consumers
(the young urban professionals or yuppies) or long time residents, akin to colonialism. Thus the argument here is
that these elitists operate exclusively between themselves, serving as venture capitalists, while the consumers
(yuppies) are largely left unaware of their relocating implications on the local community, similar to the Atlantic
New World and western frontiers in North America.
Introduction
Within the last fifty years, gentrification has become a serious concern in numerous cities,
particularly in North America. While the noted British sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term to
describe how the middle class “invaded” former working class sections of London in the 1960s,
the process breeds exclusivity, marginalization and supposed revitalization for affluent urban
newcomers.1 Gentrification occurs when business professionals or the so-called “gentry class”
locate (or relocate) to an urban community resulting in the displacement of low-income
residents. Consequently, housing and living expenses increase significantly thereby impacting a
variety of long-term residents. Although gentrifying communities experience a number of
modern changes (increased policing, improved city services and expanded commercial
corridors), so many long-time residents are frequently forced to relocate. Is gentrification the
new 21st century colonialism? Gentrification is a continuum of modern man’s land and human
exploitation. Similar to colonialism, gentrification not only usurps local and economic power to
newer and often wealthier residents, there are also implied class and racial components attached
to it as well. A number of individuals amass wealth and power through gentrification and they
must be further analyzed since they profit from the process and serve as significant players in
redeveloping cities, while scores of urban residents are displaced.
Gentrification reinforces capitalism through economic demands (real estate) while at the
same time displaces a number of urban inhabitants (local residents).2 The entire process is
largely based on speculative real estate and a rental gap between neighbors when a cadre of elite
operatives (developers, realtors, bankers, public officials) allow for renters (though oftentimes
owners) to rent or purchase residential space at a premium cost in an effort to turn around
1
Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (New York: Routledge Press, 1996),
33. See also Loretta Lees, Tom Slater and Elvin Wyly, Gentrification (New York: Routledge, 2007), 10-13. They
go on and describe classical gentrification in London.
2
Lees, Slater and Wyly, preface.
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Forum on Public Policy
depilated or distressed urban neighborhoods.3 Some see this as a “new frontier” experience to
revitalize overlooked communities.4 While gentrification can lead to positive economic renewal,
it more often leads to problematic implications.5 Among these negative consequences includes
the displacement of longtime and a significant number of low-income residents who are
consequently priced out of their neighborhoods in exchange for new residents with high incomes
willing to pay inflated rents or mortgages.6 How is this modern phenomenon similar to
colonialism? There are interesting parallels since both gentrification and colonialism require an
economically empowered few to oversee an operation to economically and politically displace
one group for another, while achieving financial gain and political power. While colonialism is
considered an antiquated term, it nonetheless suggests disempowering one group of people and
empowering another, while at the same time an elite group operates the mechanisms for
colonialism or in this case, gentrification, to flourish.
A Genealogy Of The Pre-Gentrification Era
In order to fully grasp the history and politics of gentrification, a brief overview is
imperative for further investigation. Modern American cities experienced a rapid shift in
population dynamics during the mid-twentieth century. Cities were once vibrant industrial,
commercial and residential spaces. Employment, shopping and living were all key elements to
these locales. In many instances, however, cities were not the most pristine places since the
industrial revolution of the prior century led to environmental degradation and human health
problems.7 In American cities especially, urban areas lost their luster with these negative
consequences as well as migratory shifts during the “White flight” era when upwardly mobile
middle class Whites (and some Blacks) moved to newly created suburbs.8
With the sudden surge of southern Black Americans moving to northern cities during the
Great Migration for industrial jobs that many European immigrants once had (between 19401960 in particular), numerous businesses left for nearby suburbs.9 A number of towns lured
industries with tax incentives, grants and services. These economic advantages between the
corporate sector and local town officials reinforced significant partnerships. Most important,
many employees resided in the suburbs over the quickly changing city.10 By the turbulent 1960s,
riots broke out over so many racial, social and economic injustices11 that the private sector was
3
Smith, chapter 5.
Smith, chapter 1.
5
Joe Feagin and Robert Parker, Building American Cities: The Urban Real Estate Game, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990), 3.
6
Lance Freeman, There Goes the ‘Hood: Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 2006), chapter 1. See also David Maurrasse, Listening to Harlem: Gentrification, Community, and
Business (New York: Routledge, 2006).
7
Thomas K. Shannon et. al. Urban Problems in Sociological Perspective, 3rd ed. (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland
Press, 1997), chapter 1.
8
Rhoda Lois Blumberg, Civil Rights: 1960s Freedom Struggle (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1991), chapter 9.
See also Susan Welch, Lee Sigelman, Timothy Bledsoe, and Michael Combs, Race and Place: Race Relations in an
American City (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), xiv.
9
Alice O’Connor, Chris Tilly, and Lawrence Bobo, ed. Urban Inequality: Evidence from Four Cities (New York:
Russell Sage Foundation, 2001), chapter 1.
10
Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1985), chapter 9. See also Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation: The
Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (New York: North Point Press, 2000), chapter 7.
11
Adam Fairclough, Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890-2000 (New York: Penguin Books, 2001),
chapter 14.
4
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Forum on Public Policy
almost non-existent in once bustling industrial areas, particularly in rust belt Midwest American
cities like Detroit.12 In some cities, like Newark, the increasing Latino population added to the
already growing Black migration, particularly by the early 1970s. 13 Couple these demographic
shifts with the popularity of the modern suburb, numerous businesses left for nearby towns since
it seemed only fruitful for the corporate sector to leave cities where much of their workforce fled.
During this migratory period, class and racial lines were drawn by public officials, realtors,
and bankers. Redlining, steering, community board requirements, neighborhood zoning and
government classification methods became the accepted practices of this elite.14 While these
measures might have legally lasted for several decades, it nonetheless allowed for total class
shifts in cities and suburbs.15 These practices reinforced de facto segregation or “invisible
segregation” based on residential patterns by creating predominately affluent White suburbs and
specifically ethnically and racially zoned urban neighborhoods.16 Newark, New Jersey and its
nearby suburbs were notorious for such practices.17 Thus, the once heterogeneous city became
homogenized not just along racial, religious and ethnic lines, but also along class boundaries
since swaths of urban neighborhoods housed much of America’s poor populations. This period
(about 1960-1980) essentially crystallized modern inner cities in America. 18 With the relocation
of manufacturing and private sector jobs, middle class White flight (and middle class Black
flight) and the migratory surge of poorer Blacks and Latinos, cities became largely desolate,
depressing and homogenous spaces for so many poor people of color.19
While cities underwent tremendous transformations, their local governments experienced
significant financial strains. In the 1980s, the federal government offered fewer mandates, grants
and financial incentives for local governments.20 For instance, Philadelphia lost nearly 80
percent of its federal funding and yet the city relied on this money from the US government to
operate their annual budget.21 Interestingly, Philadelphia experienced the first wave of
gentrification only thirty years prior when Society Hill’s redevelopment displaced thousands of
poor Black residents for corporate employees to live near downtown.22 Beyond Philadelphia,
additional American cities had few corporate and manufacturing businesses as well as middle
and upper class residents. Once prospering industrial cities in the midwest, financial and
commerce cities in the northeast lost much of their tax ratable industries as well as affluent
inhabitants. Even worse, a number of urban governments hardly raised enough tax revenue for
12
Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1996), 9. See also Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern
City (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).
13
Kevin Mumford, Newark: A History of Race, Rights, and Riots in America (New York: New York University
Press, 2007), 197. Often there were alliances between Blacks and Puerto Ricans for political power in city hall.
14
Jackson, chapter 10.
15
David Rusk, Cities without Suburbs (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1995), 1.
16
James Blackwell and Phillip Hart, Cities, Suburbs and Blacks: A Study of Concerns, Distrust and Alienation
(Bayside, NY: General Hall, Inc., 1982), 103.
17
Jackson, chapters 10 and 11. These chapters address the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) policies and how
neighborhoods in Newark, Essex and Hudson Counties in New Jersey were zoned to specific groups. See also map
of Newark on page 212, which highlights suburban versus city new home mortgages for the Newark area.
18
Thomas Boston and Catherine Ross, ed. The Inner City: Urban Poverty and Economic Development in the Next
Century (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1997), 4.
19
Kenneth B. Clark, Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 12.
20
John Mollenkopf, The Contested City, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), chapter 1.
21
Richard Keiser, Subordination or Empowerment? African-American Leadership and
the Struggle for Urban Political Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 116-117.
22
Neil Smith, chapter 6.
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Forum on Public Policy
their annual budgets to address community programs and city services that much of their
struggling inner city constituents demanded.23 All the while, unemployment increased
disproportionately in blighted communities and crime became the chief concern of both public
officials and residents. Drugs, gangs and quality of life concerns were significant issues as well
as economic and social disparities. How these public officials operated cities with dwindling
budgets and urban problems became the tormenting quagmire in urban America during the last
decades off the twentieth century.24
Gentrification: The Panacea for Urban Malaise?
By several accounts, an “urban malaise”25 appeared to doom city residents and public
officials prior to gentrification. How could an American city rejuvenate itself and become reliant
on local tax revenue again without federal government funding, county and state revenue sharing
incentives? At the same time, how could city government officials address constituents’
problems while attempting to remake their city’s image? These were the pressing challenges
affecting public officials as well as residents.26
Attracting new and affluent residents became the trend in late twentieth century urban
America. A number of American city officials remade their urban locales through a specialized
elite. Developers, realtors, bankers, investors, planners, architects, engineers and politicians all
played a hand in this redevelopment and gentrification process. They were the elite or profiteers
assuring that plans and policies were shaped specifically for urban redevelopment and these
players rarely disclosed proposals to consumers (the young urban professionals) or long time
residents. In essence, the profiteers operated exclusively between themselves and served as
venture capitalists, while the consumers (the upwardly mobile urban professionals) were
unaware of their implications on the communities they were displacing through gentrification.
Public officials, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, attracted new residents even if they
appeared as outsiders to local residents. “Yuppies” (young urban professionals working in
corporate sector white collar jobs) were certainly en vogue during the latter part of the twentieth
century.27 They were usually twenty to thirty years old, college educated and overwhelmingly
White single men and women (some in Harlem were Black Yuppies or “Buppies”28 or Gay
Yuppies, “Guppies” in Chelsea, West Village sections of New York City). Aesthetically,
yuppies stood out in crowded blighted urban communities since they frequently wore pressed
collared shirts, dress slacks or skirts and often fashioned sneakers only to change later to dress
shoes at work. They idealized the spendthrift 1980s since they had commissioned salaries and
bonuses. Moreover, yuppies possessed disposable incomes since they were single (or married 23
Bernard Ross and Myron Levine, Urban Politics: Power in Metropolitan America, 6th
ed. (Itasca, IL: F.E. Peacok, 2001), chapters 4-6.
24
Peter Dreier, John Mollenkopf and Todd Swanstrom, Place Matters: Metropolitics for the Twenty-first Century,
2nd ed. (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2004), 47. See also Ross and Levine, chapter 1.
25
Silvio Laccetti, New Jersey Profiles in Public Policy (Palisades Park: Commonwealth Books, 1990), 132.
According to Laccetti, Newark was a prototype of many American cities, where redevelopment was limited to
specific neighborhoods and downtown Newark was transforming itself beyond urban blight.
26
W. Dennis Keating, Norman Krumholz and Philip Star, Revitalizing Urban Neighborhoods (Lawrence, KA:
University of Kansas Press, 1996), 4-5.
27
Joseph Barry and John Derevlany, ed. Yuppies Invade My House at Dinnertime: A Tale of Brunch, Bombs, and
Gentrification in an American City (Hoboken, NJ: Big River Publishing, 1987), xxi.
28
Smith, chapter 7. He mentions that in Harlem while gentrification can be cast as a racial White versus Black, this
neighborhood has seen more of an affluent Black class versus an underclass of Black long time residents vying for
rental units. See also Freeman, chapter 1.
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Forum on Public Policy
Dual-income, No Kids – DINKS) and had few long-term financial obligations. At the same time,
they were increasingly transient and seen as carpetbaggers by a plethora of local residents. 29 For
crumbling cities along the east coast of the United States, yuppies became the cash cow for urban
renewal. Hoboken, NJ for example, was once a thriving industrial New Jersey town across from
midtown Manhattan30 and yet by the 1970s, unemployment was twice the national average
(significantly higher for Puerto Ricans at 40 percent), crime increased and the city faced a fiscal
crisis. With little to offer constituents financially, public officials pushed real estate as the chief
moneymaker even though the housing market was substandard.31 And yuppies, unable to afford
many communities in New York City, were lured to Hoboken by the late 1980s with newly
constructed and refurbished dwellings, while at the same time they were harshly welcomed by
local residents with persistent social problems.32
Following cities like Hoboken, a number of American urban politicians recognized the
potential of attracting yuppies as well. Since many of these yuppies were mid-level managers or
part of the new bourgeois, they rarely qualified to live in longstanding wealthy neighborhoods.
Finding influential ways to attract yuppies to consider nearby communities became a common
practice by realtors, real estate brokers and developers.33 They frequently showcased residential
spaces that had “potential” for future development. All the while, public officials recognized the
financial possibilities for their cities if developers and retailers were going to steer yuppies’
toward specific areas, akin to Americans migrating to the west. “As in the nineteenth-century
West, the construction of the new urban frontier of the fine de siecle is a political geographical
strategy of economic reconquest,” argues Neil Smith.34 In other words, yuppies were the focal
point of so many public officials because these young professionals attracted new residential and
commercial potential. The possibilities of collecting property taxes based on new revenue
streams appeared promising to a number of American city leaders. Besides, they were hungry
for an urban turnaround and wanted visible victories where once destitute neighborhoods could
become viable communities.35
Yet the actual process of attracting yuppies to new areas required more than realtors’
steering and politicians waiting at the tax coffers. Financial capital from residential, commercial
investors and developers were the linchpin actors in urban gentrification. While realtors and
29
Smith, chapter 2. See also Barry and Derelvany, xxiii.
Barry and Derevlany, xx. “Urban decay and social unrest notwithstanding, Hoboken had one remaining virtue
intact — it’s proximity to New York City. Industry may have died, but Hoboken’s newest business — real estate -was about to emerge. The city would never be the same again…Hoboken seemed to have it all — transportation that
made it more accessible to midtown Manhattan than most parts of New York City, cheap rents, good food, smalltown charm. Why, it even looked like Manhattan, with its rows of 19 th century brownstones.”
31
Barry and …
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