(n) gentrification: the restoration of run-down urban areas by the middle class (resulting in the displacement of low-income residents) wordnetweb.princeton.edu
Image: Développements à Griffintown, Montréal | Axel Drainville (-AX-) | 2012
Effects
As rent-gap theory would predict, one of the most visible changes the gentrification process brings is to the infrastructure of a neighborhood. Typically, areas to be gentrified are deteriorated and old, though structurally sound, and often have some obscure amenity such as a historical significance that attracts the potential gentrifiers.[17] Gentry purchase and restore these houses, mostly for single-family homes. Another phenomenon is “loft conversion,” which rehabilitates mixed-use areas, often abandoned industrial buildings or run-down apartment buildings to housing for the incoming gentrifiers.[17] While this upgrade of housing value is the superficial keynote to the gentrification process, there are a greater number of less-visible shifts the gentry bring with them into their new neighborhoods (wikipedia).
Image: Momento (01), Montréal | Naccarato | 2011
| Positive | Negative |
|---|---|
| Higher incentive for property owners to increase/improve housing | Displacement through rent/price increases |
| Reduction in crime | Secondary psychological costs of displacement |
| Stabilization of declining areas | Community resentment and conflict |
| Increased property values | Loss of affordable housing |
| Increased consumer purchasing power at local businesses | Unsustainable speculative property price increases |
| Reduced vacancy rates | Homelessness |
| Increased local fiscal revenues | Greater take of local spending through lobbying/articulacy |
| Encouragement and increased viability of further development | Commercial/industrial displacement |
| Reduced strain on local infrastructure and services | Increased cost and changes to local services |
| Reduction of suburban sprawl | Displacement and housing demand pressures on surrounding poor areas |
| Increased social mix | Loss of social diversity (from socially disparate to rich ghettos) |
| Rehabilitation of property both with and without state sponsorship | Under occupancy and population loss of gentrified areas |
| Source: Loretta Lees, Tom Slater, and Elvin Wyly, Genrification Reader, p. 196. © 2008 Routledge.; Rowland Atkinson and Gary Bridge, eds., Gentrification in a Global Context: the New Urban Colonialism, p. 5. © 2005 Routledge. | |
Links relating to Gentrification:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification
- “Whose City? Our City!” (2013), Coop média de Montréal
- Demolition of Historic Site Continues (2013), Montreal Gazette
- In Cincinnati, Life Breaths Anew in Riot-Scarred Area, (2006), New York Times
- From redline to renaissance (1999), Salon.com
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