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Gentrification: Impact and Implications

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Introduction, impact of gentrification, implications for local residents, implications for policymakers.

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ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Gentrification.

Gentrification is a clash between the power of private capital and government policy and the power of people in targeted communities to preserve their homes and heritage.

Anthropology, Sociology, Social Studies, U.S. History, Human Geography

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Gentrification is a demographic and economic shift that displaces established working-class communities and communities of color in favor of wealthier newcomers and real estate development companies. Heavy private investment in target neighborhoods causes price to rise sharply, and amenities enjoyed by the new residents, such as more expensive shopping and dining, drive out businesses that were supported by the established community. The process can leave neighborhoods that generations have called home transformed in just a few years.

Photojournalist John Langmore documented this time of change in the African American community of East Austin in his book Fault Lines. His photographs capture the character of the community between 2006 and 2010, a time of very rapid gentrification. Co-author Wilhelmina Delco expressed the pain of dislocation for the community, not merely as an injustice, but as a broader loss: “I fear we’re losing something of real value to our city, both in terms of a history and for Black people. My plea is simply that all this change not come at such high a cost—that is, that Austin not forget the important contribution East Austin’s Black community made to the city.” 1

Many of the gentrified communities in the United States, and areas where gentrification is in process, developed because of racist housing policies dating back to the 1940s. Housing discrimination based on race was legal in the United States until 1968 and, in practice, it carried on much longer. People of color were often segregated into areas that white people found less desirable. When the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka integrated public schools in 1954, many white Americans moved away from cities and into suburbs that were largely white and excluded people of color. The phenomenon was called “white flight.”

To encourage people to move into suburbs, real estate brokers practiced something called  blockbusting . They encouraged Black families to pay a premium to move into particular urban neighborhoods so that white families would sell their houses at a low price to move out to the suburbs. After this process was complete, the new minority communities were denied the money they needed to invest in improvements to their neighborhoods through a practice called redlining. These factors combined to reduce opportunities in many urban areas. Capital investment shifted away from cities and segregated communities into predominantly white communities. Because public services are funded by taxes, a smaller, less affluent tax base left many communities underserved.

Beginning in the late 1970s, the U.S. government passed the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Credit, which created an incentive for developers to invest in urban areas that had been all but abandoned by affluent white people. In 2000, the federal government enacted the New Markets Tax Credit, which made tens of billions of dollars in government money available for urban revitalization projects in low-income communities. Urban neighborhoods that had been overlooked by investors became more attractive. The economic benefits to the city often came at the expense of existing residents of these areas, who were displaced.

In the early 2000s, affluent professionals began to reject suburban life for a chance to live in cities, where they could live close to work and enjoy the cultural amenities of a large urban center. Many moved to city neighborhoods that were home to people of color and working-class families.

The trend toward gentrification is not entirely limited to the United States, though the economic and social factors underpinning it are not the same in other counties. For example, both East London and Rome’s Testaccio district were traditionally working-class or minority neighborhoods. Both areas have experienced an influx of wealthier residents and increased real estate development. As India’s economy expanded dramatically in recent decades, the country has experienced rapid urbanization. Urbanization is a phenomenon that resembles gentrification in that less affluent communities are displaced by more affluent residents. The economic benefits of urbanization for developers and governments clash with the needs of villagers who are forced from the land that sustains them to make way for massive new or expanded cities. In the state of Gujarat, a rapidly urbanizing area, people facing the seizure of their agricultural land by the government have organized and protested. But activists see a grim future for the villagers. Persis Ginwalla of the advocacy group Jameen Adhikar Andolan warns, “Industries and urban centres need disposable low-wage workers, and those displaced from their villages will provide just that.” 2

In the United States, local organizers in communities vulnerable to gentrification have had some success in pushing for preservation efforts in their neighborhoods. Increasingly, real estate developers and city leaders have worked together with community organizers to create a shared vision for development projects. This approach is often called “equitable development”—a new experiment in urban planning with yet-unknown results.

Carlton Eley, a senior official of the Environmental Protection Agency and driver of the equitable development concept, says equitable development is an approach to the challenges faced by cities and their citizens that could produce healthy, resilient, thriving communities without displacement. “Obviously there is no one-size-fits-all way to address [gentrification],” Eley says. Equitable development, he explains, is “a way whereby we can try to encourage more parity and better outcomes through the process of changing how we plan and develop communities.” 3

1. John Langmore et al., Fault Lines: Portraits of East Austin (San Antonio: Maverick Books/Trinity University Press, 2019).

2. Kumar, Raksha. “‘Leave Us Alone’: India’s Villagers Rebel against Urbanisation.” The Guardian , February 12, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/feb/12/india-villagers-rebel-urbanisation-gujarat

3. Mock, Brentin. “Urban Planners May Have Finally Found How to Get to Sesame Street.” Grist, February 13, 2015. https://grist.org/cities/urban-planners-may-have-finally-found-how-to-get-to-sesame-street/

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What we talk about when we talk about gentrification

The worst problems are in the neighborhoods that aren’t gentrifying.

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“Was anyone really asking for a gentrified Gone Girl?” reads a one-line, half-star review of Promising Young Woman .

“Graphic Novels Are Comic Books, But Gentrified” one headline to a Jacobin article proclaims.

Gentrification appends so many words these days — “ graffiti ,” “ rock music ,” “ font ,” “ thrifting ” — that it bears scant similarity to its original definition. In 1964, sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term gentrification. As Steven Thomson explained for Curbed , Glass was describing a “class phenomenon … by adapting the British-ism ‘gentry’” to describe the process of “middle class liberal arts intelligentsia” moving into her primarily working-class London neighborhood.

The term flew across the Atlantic and made its home in the United States, where similar trends would begin making their way through cities over the last few decades of the 20th century. Google Books data shows the term “gentrification” didn’t really take off in the US until the late ’90s and has been steadily growing in use ever since.

There isn’t an agreed-upon empirical definition of gentrification among scholars, which makes it difficult to talk about it with any certainty. But talk we do: From Indianapolis to Austin , on a presidential debate stage and on a panel on bike lanes , and of course, on Twitter . Any time we talk about housing, the g-word inevitably pops up.

Our focus on gentrification might lead people to believe that it is the dominant form of inequality in American cities (our outsized focus on the phenomenon may be due in part to the fact that gentrification scholars, journalists, and consumers of digital media tend to live in gentrifying neighborhoods themselves ). But the core rot in American cities is not the gentrifying neighborhoods: It is exclusion, segregation, and concentrated poverty.

White, wealthy neighborhoods that have refused class and racial integration have successfully avoided much scrutiny as gentrification has taken center stage in urban political fights. On the other hand, predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods often don’t gentrify due to disinvestment and centuries of racist and classist policies .

And yet, gentrification captures our imagination, providing the visual juxtaposition of inequality. While stagnant, segregated neighborhoods are an accepted backdrop of American life, fast-changing, diverse neighborhoods and the culture clash that accompanies gentrification are the battlefield where all the disagreements come to the forefront.

Gentrification as the juxtaposition of the haves and have-nots

In his 2019 paper “ Hoboken Is Burning: Yuppies, Arson, and Displacement in the Postindustrial City ,” Princeton historian Dylan Gottlieb documented the violent displacement Puerto Rican residents faced between 1978 and 1983 as the city of Hoboken, New Jersey, gentrified. As thousands of young professionals flooded into Hoboken, the potential sale or rent price for converted units rose precipitously, and “property owners faced powerful incentives to displace low-income tenants.”

As a result, “nearly five hundred fires ripped through tenements and rooming houses in the square-mile city,” Gottlieb writes. “Most [displaced residents] never returned to Hoboken. Nearly every fire, investigators determined, had been the result of arson.” In sum, 55 people died and over 8,000 were made homeless.

Today, this sort of violent displacement is not what most people mean when they talk about gentrification. But what, exactly, they’re talking about is less clear, and the muddled debate often produces muddled policy goals.

A recent New York Times article features a Black Brooklyn homeowner who went to talk to a new white neighbor and was mistaken as a panhandler: “I went over to strike conversation and before I could finish a sentence, he told me that he didn’t have any money,” the man told the Times. Stories like this of Black homeowners watching their neighborhoods change around them abound, often with the earlier residents experiencing culture shock as the new entrants treat them or longstanding cultural markers with disdain.

In a Twitter thread about the article, educator and historian Erica Buddington recounted how when a package was mistakenly delivered to her new neighbor’s house and she went to retrieve it, the neighbor immediately assumed she was a salesperson and shut the door in her face.

Beyond these frustrating and racist microaggressions is the concern about displacement and harms that might befall those who stay. A 2020 study by then-University of Florida sociologist Brenden Beck showed that “on average, calls to the police increased after a neighborhood’s middle-class population grew.” While Beck did not find that those calls translated into more stops or low-level arrests, he did find that “police made more order-maintenance and proactive arrests following real estate market growth.”

This is absolutely the way my new neighbors are. My package was delivered to the wrong house, and a guy answered the door and said, “I don’t want anything your selling.” When I told him that I was looking for a package, he said, “What the post office does isn’t my problem.” pic.twitter.com/Qtmm8OWdS2 — Erica Buddington (@ericabuddington) August 18, 2021

Yet while gentrifying neighborhoods create those types of interactions between neighbors or heavier “order maintenance” policing, the gentrification isn’t the root issue. Segregating neighborhoods does not get rid of these sentiments or the harms they cause: it simply hides them. In a wealthy, white enclave like the Upper East Side, there aren’t somehow fewer people who assume any Black person on their street is begging for money than there are in gentrifying neighborhoods. In fact, there are likely more . Gentrifying neighborhoods pull back the veil and allow for these worlds to collide, displaying the vast differences in income, access to education, and government protection and investment.

All of the problems people worry about when they invoke gentrification — displacement, police action against people of color, lack of investment, predatory landlords — are also present in segregated neighborhoods, often even more so .

As George Washington University professor Suleiman Osman wrote in his 2011 book The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn : “Stories abounded of renters [in Brooklyn] being pressured by landlords to leave revitalizing areas. But non-revitalizing blocks with high rates of abandonment and demolition saw rates of displacement that were just as high.”

What is gentrification?

Defining gentrification is hard, even for the experts.

The Urban Displacement Project, a research and policy group at the University of California Berkeley, defines it as:

a process of neighborhood change that includes economic change in a historically disinvested neighborhood — by means of real estate investment and new higher-income residents moving in — as well as demographic change — not only in terms of income level, but also in terms of changes in the education level or racial make-up of residents.

While this covers the conceptual ideas, determining which neighborhoods are gentrifying has been difficult for researchers. Not for lack of trying: MIT urban studies PhD candidate Benjamin Preis and his study co-authors compared four different models of gentrification and displacement risk and found “striking differences between the models.” For instance, one weighted “access to public transit” as a gentrification risk factor while the others didn’t, and another didn’t include data on racial composition.

The researchers applied all of the models to Boston and found that there are “only seven [census] tracts that all four models agreed were either gentrifying or at risk of gentrification or displacement.”

“[The models] disagree on the front end, they disagree on what we call gentrification, and then not surprisingly, they really disagree on the back end to actually map out what those neighborhoods are,” Preis told Vox. “You end up with radical disagreement. One method identified nearly 120 tracts facing displacement pressure and another had just 39.”

As Columbia University researcher Brett McMillan explains in the publication Shelterforce, while people often assume that gentrification happens predominantly in overwhelmingly Black or brown neighborhoods, that is not actually the case. He details research finding “ Chicago neighborhoods with Black populations of greater than 40 percent experienced significantly lower rates of gentrification” and “ white ‘invasion’ into census tracts with Black populations of 50 percent or more has been a relatively infrequent phenomenon.”

The other big issue with defining gentrification is attempting to quantify physical displacement. Widely viewed as the most pernicious byproduct of gentrification, the evidence that gentrification causes physical displacement is a mixed bag.

Displacement is another phenomenon that is difficult to define. The reasons people move are not cataloged in any database, and poor Americans are notably transient due to financial insecurity. Additionally, defining “forced” displacement is difficult — if someone can afford a one-bedroom apartment in their community but not a larger home, are they being displaced if they have a kid and move to a more affordable neighborhood? People move for a variety of reasons: In 2015, FiveThirtyEight calculated that the average American moved more than 11 times in their lives, indicating that there are very few “longtime residents” of anywhere.

Importantly, research by preeminent eviction scholar Matthew Desmond “found no evidence that renters residing in gentrifying or in racially- and economically-integrated neighborhoods had a higher likelihood of eviction.” But perhaps increasing rents can cause displacement without evictions. (The way to avoid that would be to keep rents low by building more housing and preserving existing affordable housing, but more on that later.)

While the arson in Hoboken was a clear-cut case of forced displacement, measuring the insidious ways that financially insecure Americans could be nudged out of their neighborhoods is extremely difficult.

The research literature in this space is mixed. Some researchers have found that “rather than rapid displacement, gentrification was associated with slower residential turnover among [disadvantaged] households.” Other research , however, found that “between 8,300 and 11,600 households per year were displaced in New York City between 1989 and 2002 ... between 6.6 and 9.9 percent of all local moves among renter households.”

Overall, the research literature leans toward the view that gentrifying neighborhoods can lead to displacement, but they don’t have to. Gentrification can bring with it the promise of integration and sorely needed investment that can increase residents’ quality of life — but only if disadvantaged residents are set up to take part in the benefits of increased investment.

Most urban dwellers live in poor neighborhoods that stay poor, or in higher-income neighborhoods doing their damnedest to stay that way

The cry of “fire, fire, gentrifier” spread through city neighborhoods last year during some of the racial justice protests. The battle lines in these neighborhoods are not clear but the anger directed at the yuppies brunching on the sidewalks was palpable. The group that conspicuously gets to avoid this conflict? Wealthy (often white) urban and suburban homeowners who have long refused to allow either integration or even yuppies to live in their segregated neighborhoods.

Chants of “Fire fire, gentrifier. Black people used to live here!” as the crowd makes their way through Logan Square this evening in Chicago #Chicago #AdamToledo pic.twitter.com/04S1qHUQvU — Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) April 17, 2021

While there are very real harms that accompany gentrification, it’s important not to lose the forest for the trees.

Gentrifying neighborhoods are “very tiny pieces of the story,” says UC Berkeley professor of city and regional planning Karen Chapple, who leads the school’s Urban Displacement Project (UDP), which has worked to map gentrification in several US cities.

When Chapple was doing her first map of the Bay Area in 2005, she says, “about 10 percent of the neighborhoods were gentrifying but about 40 percent were just getting poorer over time. And it wasn’t the story that anybody wanted to hear. ... Systemic poverty and racism is so hard ... and [gentrification] is also much more visible.”

Looking at UDP’s work in Southern California , they find that in San Diego County only “7 percent of tracts experienced risk of or ongoing gentrification/displacement.” In Chicago, they find that only 18 percent of low-income households “live in low-income neighborhoods at risk of, or already experiencing gentrification and/or displacement.”

What’s happening in the rest of the neighborhoods? Segregation and/or concentrated poverty, which have been constant companions to disadvantaged communities.

In Denver, Colorado, they find that only “17 percent of neighborhoods were at risk of gentrification,” and “45 percent of Denver’s moderate-to-high-income neighborhoods demonstrated risk of or ongoing exclusion of lower-income households.”

Racial and income segregation locks low-income people in a trap of concentrated poverty . The best schools are relegated to the highest-income neighborhoods, good jobs often exist in either exclusive or gentrifying neighborhoods, and businesses are less willing to take root in an area of concentrated poverty because there are fewer customers. All of this is a vicious cycle that traps low-income Americans. It also hinders their ability to foster growth on their own because financial insecurity makes people transient and lacking in time and energy to build community.

Meanwhile, homeowners in well-off neighborhoods have cemented systems of local control through rules like exclusionary zoning to keep their neighborhoods prohibitively expensive for lower-income Americans, including many Black and brown Americans.

Zoning laws are the rules and regulations that decide what types of homes can be built where. While this can sound innocuous, exclusionary zoning is anything but. These rules have a dark history in the United States as a tool of racial and economic segregation, used explicitly to keep certain races, religions, and nationalities out of certain neighborhoods. And while the explicit racism has been wiped from the legal text, the effect of many of these rules remains the same: keeping affordable housing and the people who need it away from the wealthiest Americans.

City by city, the message is clear: Segregation and concentrated poverty are the true blights of urban life, despite our fascination with gentrification.

How to ethically create integrated neighborhoods

Gentrification does carry with it real harms, but there are ways to reduce those and to provide a pathway for integrated, equitable cities.

Integration is not a panacea, but research shows that following gentrification, “children benefit from increased exposure to higher-opportunity neighborhoods, and some are more likely to attend and complete college.” Further, gentrification can allow existing homeowners in a community to benefit from the rising property values, as long as anti-displacement policies exist to ensure property tax payments don’t price people out.

There are a few other policies the US could pursue to mitigate the harms that accrue to disadvantaged communities.

First, the economic literature is clear that increased housing production reduces rents. It also ensures that new entrants don’t bid up the price of existing homes but rather turn to new construction for their housing needs. The evidence that does exist showing that modern-day gentrification leads to displacement links that displacement to rising rents. Reducing that pressure is paramount to stopping unwanted displacement. In Hoboken, New Jersey, during the violent evictions and arsons, the vacancy rate fell below 1 percent by the start of the 1980s. This supply crunch contributes to the incentive for property owners to push out lower-income tenants.

Second, tenant protection policies could help forestall some evictions. A right to counsel in housing proceedings, for example, would rebalance power between low-income tenants and property owners seeking to evict due to potential profits from selling or converting the property for higher-income use. It’s also important for cities to work to preserve existing affordable housing , especially as new housing gets built.

Third, rezoning of wealthy white segregated neighborhoods could slow the speed at which gentrifying neighborhoods change, and help tackle segregation. Slowing gentrification can ensure that local officials can respond to protect existing residents while also allowing the benefits of the phenomenon to accrue.

These types of interventions can provide a roadmap for how to ethically integrate urban neighborhoods.

None of this is to undermine the very real cultural conflict that gentrification brings. Even if you’re able to stay in your neighborhood and your home, watching store after store pop up that doesn’t serve your community or isn’t available to you at your income level can be deeply alienating. It’s no wonder that people who have faced centuries of disinvestment grow angry as public and private money flows into their neighborhoods only after high-income, college-educated people choose to move there. Even if those people are not wholly responsible for the inequality, the blatant injustice is hard to ignore.

Taken all together, it becomes clear why we focus on gentrification while the unseen culprits (segregated enclaves) are able to avoid controversy: Gentrification is the most visual manifestation of inequality in urban life.

“Gentrification is a cultural sphere to work out feelings of resentment around inequality. ... Those feelings aren’t to be discounted,” Gottlieb argues. “This is a manifestation of a long-running sense of ‘I am not welcomed in the city, I don’t have a right to the city.’ Sometimes those feelings can be worked out in the cultural terrain of gentrification, even indeed if the people moving in aren’t the proximate cause for them leaving.”

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Gentrification

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• First Online: 26 April 2023
• Cite this living reference work entry

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This chapter reviews the recent evidence in Urban Economics on gentrification. The first part of the chapter provides a definition of gentrification and describes recent trends in academic research and popular interest in the topic. The chapter then presents evidence on the causes of gentrification, followed by consequences of gentrification. Four main factors that can spur gentrification in neighborhoods are analyzed: changes in amenities, labor markets, commuting, and housing markets. The chapter then reviews papers showing the consequences of gentrification in six main areas: housing costs, amenities, displacement of poorer households, local employment, health, and human capital accumulation of children. The chapter then summarizes the consequences of gentrification in terms of wage and welfare inequalities between low-income and high-income individuals. The chapter concludes by reviewing the literature that can guide the policy analysis about how to alleviate the housing affordability issues generated by gentrification. Throughout the chapter, avenues for further research are outlined.

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Acknowledgments

Responsible Section Editor: José Alberto Molina

The article has benefitted from valuable comments of the editors. Financial support by Fundación Ramón Areces through the XIX Concurso Nacionalpara la Adjudicación de Ayudas a la Investigación en Ciencias Sociales and PID2021-127822NA-I00 (AEI/MICINN) is gratefully noted by Federico Curci. The authors thank Stefano D’Angelo for the research assistance. There is no conflict of interest.

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Curci, F., Yousaf, H. (2023). Gentrification. In: Zimmermann, K.F. (eds) Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_422-1

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Is Gentrification Really a Problem?

By Kelefa Sanneh

At the Golden Globe Awards, in January, Ennio Morricone won Best Original Score for his contribution to “The Hateful Eight,” the Quentin Tarantino Western. Accepting the award on Morricone’s behalf was Tarantino himself, who brandished the trophy in a gesture of vindication, suggesting that Morricone, despite all the honors he has received, is nevertheless underrated. Tarantino proclaimed Morricone his favorite composer. “And when I say favorite composer,” he added, “I don’t mean movie composer—that ghetto. I’m talking about Mozart. I’m talking about Beethoven. I’m talking about Schubert.” The backlash began a few moments later, when the next presenter, Jamie Foxx, approached the microphone. He smiled, looked around, and shook his head slightly. “Ghetto,” he said.

Tarantino’s comment, and Foxx’s one-word response to it, became a big story. In the Washington Post , a television reporter called Tarantino’s “ghetto” comment a “tone-deaf flub.” A BBC headline asked, “ IS THE WORD ‘ GHETTO ’ RACIST ?,” and the accompanying article summarized the thoughts of a Rutgers University professor who accused Tarantino of implying that “the ghetto was not a place for white, European, male composers.” Of course, “ghetto” is itself a European term, coined in the sixteenth century to describe the part of Venice to which Jews were confined. And Tarantino, in suggesting that the category of film composition was a ghetto, was using a common dictionary definition: “something that resembles the restriction or isolation of a city ghetto.” But “ghetto” is also an idiomatic way of dismissing something as cheap or trashy. And the adjectival “ghetto” owes its salience to the fact that a modern American ghetto is not only poor but disproportionately African-American. Recent census data showed that 2.5 million whites live in high-poverty neighborhoods, compared with five million African-Americans. Earlier this year, Senator Bernie Sanders went further, saying, “When you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto.”

What is a ghetto, really—and who lives there? In “Dark Ghetto,” a pioneering 1965 sociological study, Kenneth Clark depicted Harlem, a paradigmatic ghetto, as a “colony of New York City,” defined by both its economic dependence and its segregation. In the decades that followed, scholars argued over the limits and the utility of the term—did it apply to any poor neighborhood, any ethnic enclave? The word may have various definitions but it arouses singular passions, which is why, in 2008, the sociologist Mario Luis Small suggested that his colleagues stop using it altogether. He argued that, in many ways, “poor black neighborhoods” were neither as distinctive nor as homogeneous as “ghetto” implied, and warned that academic theories of “ghetto” life might “perpetuate the very stereotypes their proponents often aim to fight.”

Mitchell Duneier seems to have taken Small’s pronouncement as a challenge; his response is “Ghetto” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), a history of the concept which also serves as an argument for its continued usefulness. Duneier is a sociologist, too, sensitive to the sting of “ghetto” as an insult. But for him that sting shows us just how much inequality we still tolerate, even as attitudes have changed. Where the ghetto once seemed a menace, threatening to swallow the city like an encroaching desert, now it often appears, in scholarly articles and the popular press, as an endangered habitat. Academics and activists who once sought to abolish ghettos may now speak, instead, of saving them. This shift, as much as anything, accounts for the vigorous response to Tarantino’s comment: people wanted to know just what was so bad about a ghetto, anyway.

In 1945, St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton published “Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City.” When they wrote about a “Black Ghetto” in Chicago, they were making a provocative analogy. Duneier notes that, in explaining how blacks were prevented from buying or renting homes in white neighborhoods, Drake and Cayton referred to “the invisible barbed-wire fence of restrictive covenants,” a formulation that was calculated to evoke gruesome images of the Third Reich. Despite the long history of Jewish ghettos in Europe, Duneier is at pains to show that the Nazi ghetto was not a revival of European history but a break from it. In the old Italian ghettos, Jews, who were ostracized by authorities, created their own tightly organized communities. The restrictions were onerous but not absolute; residents were sometimes permitted to leave during the day and return at night. (Duneier suggests that some inhabitants of the Roman ghetto might have viewed it as “a holy precinct, its barriers recalling the walls of ancient Jerusalem.”) By contrast, the Nazi version was a brutal, short-lived experiment. Duneier describes the debate, among Nazi officials, between “productionists,” who saw the inhabitants of Jewish ghettos as a useful source of slave labor, and “attritionists,” who preferred them dead.

The modern history of American ghettos, then, begins with a misunderstanding: the term acquired its awful resonance because of the Nazi ghettos, even though the conditions in American cities more closely resembled those of the older European ghettos, which were places capable of inspiring mixed feelings, among both inhabitants and scholars. American ghettos were the combined product of legal discrimination, personal prejudice, flawed urban planning, and countless economic calculations. For more than thirty years, starting in 1934, the Federal Housing Authority steered banks away from issuing mortgages to prospective buyers in poor black neighborhoods, which were deemed too risky; black tenants or prospective homeowners were often stymied by banks that doubted their creditworthiness, or by deed requirements that sought to maintain a neighborhood’s character and forbade blacks to buy or lease, or by intimidation and violence. Disconcertingly, white homeowners who worried that integration might erode the value of their homes may have been correct, even as their decision to flee exacerbated the problem. Drake and Cayton described their subjects as less bothered by segregation itself than by its stifling effects. “They wanted their neighborhoods to be able to expand into contiguous white areas as they became too crowded,” Duneier summarizes, “but they did not actually care to live among whites.”

Scholars who studied the ghetto tended to be motivated by sympathy for its residents, which often resulted in a complicated sort of sympathy for ghettos themselves. Clark, making his study of Harlem, spent time with Malcolm X, who insisted that segregation—“complete separation”—was the only way to solve America’s problems. Clark didn’t go that far, but he did express a certain skepticism about the wisdom and the prospects of school desegregation. Better, he thought, to “demand excellence in ghetto schools,” as Duneier puts it. Similarly, the anthropologist Carol Stack, in an influential 1974 book called “All Our Kin,” suggested that the black ghetto fostered social coöperation, knitting its residents together in extended “networks” of families and friends. At the same time, scholars sought to pin down the relationship between “ghetto” and its Spanish-language analogue, “barrio,” and to compare poor black neighborhoods with other enclaves. When an activist named Carl Wittman announced, in 1970, “We have formed a ghetto, out of self protection,” he was calling for a different kind of separatism: he was writing about his adopted home town of San Francisco, in a pamphlet titled “A Gay Manifesto.”

Duneier’s book makes it easy to see how, through all these changes, black ghettos in America have remained the central point of reference for anyone who wants to understand poverty and segregation. By some estimates, African-Americans are more isolated now than they were half a century ago. In a study published last year, scholars at Stanford reported that even middle-class African-Americans live in markedly poorer neighborhoods than working-class whites. And the linguist William Labov has suggested that, during the past two centuries, African-American speech patterns have been diverging from white speech patterns, owing mainly to “residential segregation.” By many measures—marriage rates, incarceration levels, wealth metrics—poor black neighborhoods stand out.

Even so, Duneier’s review of the scholarly literature cannot obscure the fact that the term “ghetto” does seem to have faded somewhat from common usage. In the past decade or so, the adjective has overshadowed the noun: a word that once conjured up intimidating neighborhoods now appears in unintimidating coinages like “ghetto latte.” (This is a coffee-shop term popularized in the aughts, in honor of the parsimonious customer who, instead of ordering an iced latte, orders espresso over ice, which is cheaper, and then dumps in half a cup of milk.) On hip-hop records, “ghetto” has largely given way to the warmer, more flexible “hood,” which sounds less like a condition and more like a community; Kendrick Lamar’s ode to the bad old days is called “Hood Politics,” not “Ghetto Politics.” The persistence of residential segregation has tightened the relationship between concentrated poverty and African-American neighborhoods, and made the word “ghetto” harder to use. “Ghetto” has come to sound like an indictment of a people as well as of a place.

Our doubts about the word may also have something to do with our changing view of cities. Many of the studies in Duneier’s book were conducted in the shadow of white flight and, starting in the nineteen-sixties, rising crime rates. The term suggested that a particular sort of dysfunction was native to urban environments and, possibly, inseparable from them. But fewer people talk about cities that way anymore: among contemporary urbanists, a dominant influence is Jane Jacobs, known for her lifelong commitment to the simple but radical notion that city life can be pleasurable. To judge from the literature, the major preoccupation among today’s urbanists is not the ghetto but a different G-word: “gentrification,” a process by which a ghetto might cease to be a ghetto.

It is an inelegant term, and must have seemed a strange one when it was first introduced, in a 1964 essay by Ruth Glass, a British sociologist. Glass, who wrote under the influence of Marx, was distressed to see that “the working class quarters of London have been invaded by the middle classes.” As the gentry moved in, the proletariat moved out, “until all or most of the original working class occupiers are displaced and the whole social character of the district is changed.” The story of gentrification was, curiously, the story of neighborhoods destroyed by desirability. As the term spread through academic journals and then the popular press, “gentrification,” like “ghetto,” became harder to define. At first, it referred to instances of new arrivals who were buying up (and bidding up) old housing stock, but then there was “new-build gentrification.” Especially in America, gentrification often suggested white arrivals who were displacing nonwhite residents and taking over a ghetto, although, in the case of San Francisco, the establishment of Wittman’s so-called “gay ghetto,” created as an act of self-protection, was also a species of gentrification. Even Clark’s “dark ghetto” was a target. In 1994, Andrew Cuomo, who was then at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, told the Times , “If you expect to see Harlem as gentrified and mixed-income, it’s not going to happen.” He was, in due course, proved wrong.

A gentrification story often unspools as a morality play, with bohemians playing a central if ambiguous part: their arrival can signal that a neighborhood is undergoing gentrification, but so can their departure, as rising rents increasingly bring economic stratification. Stories of gentrification are by definition stories of change, and yet scholars have had a surprisingly hard time figuring out who gets displaced, and how.

In 2004, Lance Freeman, an urban-planning professor at Columbia, and the economist Frank Braconi, who ran the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, tried to answer the question. They produced a paper called “Gentrification and Displacement: New York City in the 1990s,” which has been roiling the debate ever since. In the paper, which was based on city survey data, they came close to debunking the very idea of gentrification. Looking at seven “gentrifying neighborhoods” (Chelsea, Harlem, the Lower East Side, Morningside Heights, Fort Greene, Park Slope, and Williamsburg), they found that “poor households” in those places were “19% less likely to move than poor households residing elsewhere.”

While traditional gentrification narratives suggest that poor residents, if not for the bane of gentrification, would have been fixed in place, the truth is that poorer households generally move more often than richer ones; in many poor neighborhoods, the threat of eviction is ever-present, which helps explain why rising rents don’t necessarily increase turnover. And gentrification needn’t be zero-sum, because gentrifying neighborhoods may become more densely populated, with new arrivals adding to, rather than supplanting, those currently resident. Freeman and Braconi suggested that in some cases improved amenities in gentrifying neighborhoods gave longtime residents an incentive to find a way to stay. At the same time, New York’s rent-control and rent-stabilization laws have protected some tenants from sharp rent increases, while others have an even more reliable refuge from rising prices: subsidized apartments in city buildings. “Public housing, often criticized for anchoring the poor to declining neighborhoods, may also have the advantage of anchoring them to gentrifying neighborhoods,” they wrote. When two scholars who took a dim view of gentrification, Kathe Newman and Elvin Wyly, did their own investigation, their conclusion was mild. “Although displacement affects a very small minority of households, it cannot be dismissed as insignificant,” they wrote. “Ten thousand displacees a year”—this was one estimate of New York’s total—“should not be ignored, even in a city of eight million.”

Newman and Wyly’s paper was called “The Right to Stay Put, Revisited,” in tribute to a decades-old question in urban sociology: Do tenants have a political right—a human right—to remain in their apartments? In New York, regulations like rent stabilization not only limit the amount by which some landlords can raise rents but also restrict a landlord’s ability to decline to renew a lease. In Sweden, the rules are tighter: rents are set through a national negotiation between tenants and landlords, which means that prices are low in Stockholm, but apartments are scarce; a renter in search of a long-term lease there might spend decades on a government waiting list. Another solution is to allow more and taller buildings, increasing supply in the hope of lowering prices. Often, the steepest rent increases are found in places, like San Francisco, that have stringent building regulations: a recent study of the city found that fewer poor residents had been displaced in neighborhoods with more new construction. In seeking to preserve what Ruth Glass called the “social character” of a neighborhood, anti-gentrification activists echo the language that was once used to defend racially restrictive covenants. Arguments over gentrification are really arguments over who deserves to live in a city, and the notion of a right to stay put is sometimes at odds with another, perhaps more fundamental right: the right to move.

Earlier this year, in the pages of National Review , Kevin D. Williamson devoted a typically astringent column to the kind of poor community that is rarely called a ghetto and even less often targeted for gentrification. A fellow-pundit had suggested that Donald Trump, unlike many other Republican politicians, spoke to and for white voters living lives of economic frustration and opioid dependency in towns like Garbutt, New York. Williamson, no fan of Trump, responded with a withering attack on Garbutt and its ilk. “The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die,” Williamson wrote. Their inhabitants, in his view, “need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.”

This diagnosis sparked an outcry. But was Williamson wrong to insist that people are more important than places? Arguments about gentrification sometimes imply that places matter most. Jane Jacobs, for instance, could seem to cherish Greenwich Village more than she cherished the people who lived there, to say nothing of the people who might have liked to join them, if only there had been more and cheaper housing. When it comes to the neighborhoods that Duneier would call ghettos, there is some evidence that the most humane approach is not to improve them but, in effect, to dismantle them, by encouraging their inhabitants to move. A program called Moving to Opportunity, which was initially judged a failure, now provides modest evidence that removing children from high-poverty neighborhoods can have lasting positive effects on their lifetime earnings. And a recent study by Deirdre Pfeiffer, a professor of urban planning, suggests that racial minorities encounter “more equitable” conditions in newly built suburbs than in cities.

The uneasy way we discuss ghettos and gentrification says something about our discomfort with the real-estate market, which translates every living space into a commodity whose value lies mainly outside our control. Things that happen across the street, down the block, or on the other side of town affect the worth of our homes, and this lack of control is predestined to frustrate capitalists and community organizers alike. “Bushwick is not for sale!” Letitia James, New York City’s Public Advocate, announced at a recent anti-gentrification protest in Brooklyn. She was hoping to get the city to force developers to set aside more units for low-income families, but she was also voicing a familiar and widely shared distaste for the way the character of a neighborhood is hostage to its market price. The opposite of gentrification is not a quirky and charming enclave that stays affordable forever; the opposite of gentrification is a decline in prices that reflects the transformation of a once desirable neighborhood into one that is looking more like a ghetto every day.

In a recent Times Op-Ed, the Harlem historian Michael Henry Adams lamented the changes in his neighborhood, complaining that “poor black neighborhoods” were “irresistible to gentrification.” But New York is an unusual place, and it’s possible that the conversation about gentrification has been distorted by our focus on neighborhoods like Harlem. A recent study found that Chicago neighborhoods that were forty per cent or more African-American were the least likely to experience gentrification. This statistic was cited by the journalist Natalie Y. Moore in her new book about her city, “The South Side.” She recounts the pride she felt when she bought a condo in a seemingly up-and-coming South Side neighborhood: she paid a hundred and seventy-two thousand dollars, and she was shocked when, five years later, an assessor told her that its value had depreciated to fifty-five thousand. She writes about herself as a “so-called gentrifier,” adding, ruefully, that “black Chicago neighborhoods don’t gentrify.”

In May, on CNN, the comedian W. Kamau Bell hosted a one-hour program about gentrification in Portland, Oregon. He has a keen eye for irony and a high tolerance for awkward situations, so he walked around the city, chuckling at hipsters—a word at least as hard to define as “ghetto” or “gentrification”—and listening sympathetically to residents of the city’s dwindling African-American neighborhoods. An older woman named Beverly said that her neighborhood was gone; standing on the porch of her mauve-trimmed house, she gestured across the street at a new apartment building going up, which seemed likely to ruin her lovely view. To hear the other side, Bell met with Ben Kaiser, a local developer, who was unapologetic. Bell told him, “I talked to an older black woman in this neighborhood, and every so often somebody knocks at her door or calls her and is offering to buy her home, even though she’s made it clear that she wants to keep her home. And somebody’s telling them to make that phone call.”

“We always think it’s a somebody, and in my opinion it’s an economic force—there’s no one orchestrating this outcome,” Kaiser said. “What’s happened, historically, is they’re offered a tremendous amount of money, and they’re kind of nuts not to take it. At some point, her kids—or she—will say, ‘I am nuts not to take this offer.’ ”

Bell was unconvinced. He wasn’t sure how many new “twelve-dollar juice bars” and “high-end vegan barbecue” restaurants the neighborhood needed, and he worried that the old neighborhood wouldn’t survive. In the ghetto narrative, a poor neighborhood falls victim to isolation; in the gentrification narrative, a poor neighborhood falls victim to invasion. These stories are not necessarily contradictory—they reflect a common conviction that the sorrows and joys of neighborhood change tend to be unequally shared. One effect of gentrification is to make this inequality harder to ignore. The call to save a neighborhood is most compelling when it serves as a call to help a neighborhood’s neediest inhabitants. That might mean helping them stay. But it might also mean helping them leave. ♦

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Jews in sixteenth-century Venice were confined to the ghetto by papal decree. The papal decree applied to Jews in Rome.

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By Adam Gopnik

By John Colapinto

By Dhruv Khullar

By Gideon Lewis-Kraus

The Gentrification Debates: Perceptions and Realities of Neighborhood Change

Gentrification and the real and perceived impacts that neighborhood change has on longtime local residents as well as new dwellers, is complicated to unpack and define.  Many believe displacement is an inherent byproduct of gentrification, yet little research exists to quantify or even confirm if and how displacement occurs.  We are left to speculate about whether residents are being priced out of their rents; do owners chose to “cash out” and sell their properties; and/or do people of color choose to leave the neighborhood because the longstanding cultural character and amenities are eroding. Is displacement inevitable, is it voluntary or involuntary; and if so, is it economic or cultural?

So, what definition of gentrification are we to rely on to improve our understanding of neighborhood change.  The gentrification definition that relies on the statistics commonly measured by inflation in housing prices, increases in median household income, and changes in educational attainment, might confirm that neighborhood change through gentrification is real.   Or what about the definition of neighborhood change as presented in the 2014 “Lost in Place” report highlighting that only 100 out of 1,100 urban areas saw reductions in poverty levels between 1970-2010, a change that may be a function of backfilling four decades of neighborhood population decline rather than the upward mobility of long time low-income households.  This report is telling us we are obsessed with the wrong neighborhood change phenomenon– that instead of tracking the smaller percentage of urban areas that are truly “gentrifying”, we should instead be more focused on why the other 1,000 out of 1,100 urban areas and its residents are no better off than they were 40 years ago!

But what about the upside of new investment in historically disinvestment neighborhoods? The addition of new, and often better quality amenities should be a benefit to all residents, incoming and existing.  Long-time homeowners who have not seen increases in the value of their homes should now see increases in their long-term household wealth.  And areas of the city that have been steeped in income and racial divide can become places of mixed income and mixed-race, enabling a more productive social and economic ecosystem of community life.  Does this type of investment always have to be seen as disruptive?

This course will explore the debate about the causes and effects of gentrification and attempt to document the real and perceived impacts of such change on the physical, economic, social and cultural dynamics of community.  The course will use national and city-specific research on gentrification; neighborhood change measurement methodologies; examine the neighborhood change using data research, literature and media articles and guest lectures.  Students will prepare 1) an opinion-editorial essay, offering a definition of gentrification; 2) participate in a team debate arguing either the positive or negative impacts of gentrification; 3) assign indicators and metrics for measuring the presence of gentrification and 4) prepare a case study presentation on  effective strategies for addressing either the negative impacts or advancing positive impacts of gentrification.

Up to eight seats will be held for MDes students, with priority given to Publics Domain students.

This course will be taught online through Friday, February 4th.

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“Clear action requires clear thinking”: A systematic review of gentrification and health research in the United States

Melody esther tulier.

a Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA), Yale University, 60 College St. New Haven, CT 06520-8034, USA

Carolina Reid

b Department of City and Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley, 312 Wurster Hall #1850 Berkeley, CA 94720–1820, USA

Mahasin S. Mujahid

c University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health Division of Epidemiology, Haviland Hall, 2121 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94720-7360

Amani M. Allen

d University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health Division of Community Health Sciences, 2121 Berkeley Way, MC #5302; Berkeley, CA 94720-7360

Gentrification is a process in which formerly declining, under-resourced, neighborhoods experience reinvestment and in-migration of increasingly affluent new residents, with understudied implications for individual health and health-protective community resources for low-income and minority residents. Increased attention on urban health inequities have propelled research on the relationship between gentrification and health. Yet, there are significant challenges inherent in the study of gentrification given its non-linear process occurring at multiple levels and via various mechanisms in a complex web of urban systems. How then have empirical studies addressed questions regarding the relationship between gentrification and health and wellness from a conceptual and methodological standpoint? Applying key search terms to PubMed and Web of Science, we identified 546 papers published in the United States. This review is guided by three foundational premises informing the inclusion and exclusion of articles. These include: 1. a clear definition of gentrification and explicit health outcome; 2. identification of a specific geographic context (United States) in which gentrification occurs, and 3. use of a social determinants of health framework to identify potential health outcomes of interest. 17 papers met our inclusion criteria. Through systematic content analysis using MaxQDA software, we evaluated the included studies using three critical frames: 1. conceptualization of gentrification; 2. mechanisms linking gentrification and health; and 3. spatio-temporal considerations. Based on this analysis, we identify the strengths and limitations of existing research, and offer three methodological approaches to strengthen the current literature on gentrification and health. We recommend that future studies: 1. explicitly identify the mechanisms and levels at which processes can occur and systems are organized; 2. incorporate space and time into the analytical strategy and 3. articulate an epistemological standpoint driven by their conceptualization of the exposure and identification of the relevant mechanism and outcome of interest.

1. Introduction

Similar to the human body, the urban environment is an intricate web of social, political, physical and economic systems and diverse resources ( Galea et al., 2005 ). The complexity of the urban environment is magnified during periods of urban change, such as during the process of gentrification. Gentrification is an interactive process in formerly declining, under-resourced, predominantly minority neighborhoods involving economic investment and increasing sources of capital infusion and in-migration of new residents, generally with a higher socio-economic status. The process is dynamic, uneven, and occurs in stages. ( Clay, 1989 ; Helms, 2003 ; Hochstenbach and van Gent, 2015 ; Hwang and Sampson, 2014 ; Kerstein, 1990 ; Maloutas, 2012 ). The process of gentrification is a multi-level phenomenon linking social, political, and economic structures and conflict between blocks, neighborhoods, districts, cities and regions ( Smith, 1996 , p. 16). Simultaneously, it shapes a neighborhood’s social context, physical attributes, and other key resources and opportunities, which are critical to resident health outcomes ( Hwang and Sampson, 2014b ; Timberlake and Johns-Wolfe, 2017 ).

Efforts to reduce health inequities have propelled research on the relationship between gentrification and health. Yet, there are significant challenges inherent in the study of gentrification. Conceptually clear and methodologically rigorous research regarding the relationship between gentrification and health is challenging given the complex, multi-level, nuanced process of gentrification itself, as well as its potentially contradictory outcomes for different population groups. In addition, the specification of research questions concerning how and why urban change may affect health is of prime importance and requires consideration of systems spurring gentrification, from macrosocial forces such as limited federal government financial support to create new, affordable housing to local community factors such as the reliance of private developers to invest in housing and support business improvement districts ( Galea and Schulz, 2006 , p.278). Finally, given the spatially uneven process of gentrification and the ebbs and flows of gentrification through time, selection of relevant geographic scope of time periods of study are also essential considerations.

Confronting these challenges through explicit conceptualization and measurement of the phenomena itself and identification of potential mechanisms and relevant spatio-temporal scales can help illuminate how, for whom, and under what circumstances gentrification exacerbates or mitigates health inequities.

The aim of this review is to systematically evaluate how empirical studies have addressed questions regarding the relationship between gentrification and health and wellness conceptually and methodologically. Illuminating conceptual and methodological challenges can generate novel research approaches and methods for understanding and measuring the drivers of social exposures resulting in health inequities more generally. Specific to gentrification, it can facilitate unearthing plausible mechanisms linking gentrification and health and wellness, assisting in the production of a translational epidemiology linking research to policy and action.

Given the breadth of the literature on gentrification, this interdisciplinary review draws on research across the fields of public health, anthropology, sociology, environmental science, and criminology. We evaluate the included studies using three critical frames: 1. conceptualization of gentrification; 2. mechanisms linking gentrification and health; and 3. spatio-temporal considerations. Based on this analysis, we identify the strengths and limitations of existing research through these critical frames, and three methodological approaches to strengthen the current literature on gentrification and health. We recommend that future studies: 1. explicitly identify the mechanism(s) and levels (a construct that organizes systems and processes that can occur simultaneously but some of which may be more causally relevant than others) by which exposures are related to which outcomes, 2. incorporate space and time into the analytical strategy and 3. articulate an epistemological standpoint to improve methodological rigor driven by their conceptualization of the exposure and identification of the relevant mechanism and outcome of interest.

2.1. Inclusion/exclusion criteria

Selected articles were empirical studies using either quantitative or qualitative data examining the relationship between gentrification and health. This review is guided by three foundational premises informing the inclusion and exclusion of articles. These include: 1. a clear definition of gentrification; 2. identification of a specific context (United States) in which gentrification occurs, and 3. use of a social determinants of health framework to identify potential health outcomes of interest. Each of these premises is described below.

First, we defined gentrification as a socio-economic process within neighborhoods where formerly declining disinvested neighborhoods experience reinvestment and in-migration of increasingly affluent new residents. In line with Maloutas’ call for conceptual clarity and theoretical rigor by exposing contextual assumptions within gentrification research, we specify the process of gentrification as operating in the United States geographic context (2012). This includes neighborhoods with a history of disinvestment and marginalization, neo-liberal regulation, commodification of housing, and restructuring of urban space which moves capital back to the city ( Maloutas, 2012 ; Smith, 1979 ).

Second, given the varied trajectories and increasing globalization of gentrification, some argue that gentrification is now so generalized that the “concept captures no less than the fundamental state and market-driven ‘class-remake’ of cities throughout the world” ( Shaw, 2008 ). Often gentrification, urban renewal and urban change are used interchangeably. For example, these terms are used to describe the process of gentrification or a completely distinct process, such as urban regeneration in the United Kingdom, which is led by government policies and not market forces, or in Paris where the urban core has never experienced disinvestment ( Maloutas, 2012 ). For this systematic review, we incorporated a broad array of terms that may be associated with gentrification, and thoroughly reviewed the article to assess if words such as urban renewal were used in the context of gentrification in the United States.

Third, guided by a social determinants of health framework and by fundamental cause theory, we defined health and wellness broadly. The social determinants of health place importance on structural drivers and social, political, economic, and cultural conditions shaping a range of exposures and thus an array of health outcomes ( Woolf and Braveman, 2011 ). Furthermore, the ability to control disease and death is mediated and moderated by access to fundamental flexible resources, including knowledge, money, power, prestige, and beneficial social connections, which may be shaped by gentrification ( Link and Phelan, 1995 ). We therefore do not limit our search to direct health outcomes alone, but include a range of mediators and moderators to health status such as financial status and neighborhood crime, which research has shown to be a critical factor shaping mental and physical wellness ( Giurgescu et al., 2015 ; Morrison Gutman et al., 2005 ; Nuru-Jeter et al., 2009 , 2008 ; Theall et al., 2017 ). Financial hardship making housing unaffordable has been associated with anxiety, depression, and lower self-rated health ( Burgard et al., 2012 ).

2.2. Search strategy

We conducted a literature search in April 2018 according to the 2009 PRISMA guidelines ( Moher et al., 2009 ). We used Web of Science and PubMed databases to identify empirical studies in the United States with no restrictions on publication date. Keywords related to the exposure included gentrification, gentrified, urban renewal, urban change, and socio-economic ascent. Keywords related to the outcome used in Web of Science given its interdisciplinary scope included health, disease, medical, medicine, and wellness. These key words were not used when searching the PubMed database, given PubMed’s exclusive focus on biomedical, science and health literature.

2.3. Identification and study selection

The search located 383 entries through PubMed and 199 through Web of Science, with 36 duplicate entries ( Figure 1 ). A review of 546 titles and abstracts using the aforementioned eligibility criteria resulted in the exclusion of 461 articles. We examined the remaining 85 full-text articles based on our exclusion/inclusion criteria, and excluded an additional 71 articles. These 71 articles were excluded for the following reasons: 1. gentrification was not the primary exposure of interest or there was exclusive focus on assessing if displacement is induced by gentrification (35); 2. urban renewal/urban regeneration/relocation was the exclusive focus of the article and did not connect gentrification with health and wellness (17); 3. the article was theoretical in nature (11), and 4. outcomes were not related to health and wellness (6). A list of the 85 articles reviewed and the rationale for exclusion is provided in Appendix 1. Three additional articles were identified through other sources and reference lists. This resulted in the inclusion of 17 articles.

Flow chart following guidelines in the PRISMA statement (Moher et al., 2010)

2.4. Data extraction and analytic approach

Using MaxQDA Pro 2018 software, for each study, we extracted the following information: author(s), title, year, conceptualization of gentrification, hypothesized mechanisms and levels of these mechanisms, spatial scale, frequency of measurement, measurement approach, frequency of gentrification measurement to capture change over time, spatial scale of data measuring gentrification, and health outcomes. To examine our main research question - how have empirical studies examined the relationship between gentrification and health and wellness from a conceptual and methodological standpoint – we conducted the following process. First, we identified categories of the ways gentrification was conceptualized through content analysis. These categories were defined in the codebook with examples to ensure consistent coding. Then, mechanisms were coded and grouped and included in the established codebook with examples. The level at which these mechanisms operated were also coded and analyzed concurrently with the mechanism itself using the Reports function in MaxQDA. Furthermore, we assessed the spatial and temporal characteristics of gentrification and outcome measures.

Reflecting recent salience of gentrification processes in urban health research, all studies were published since 2011. Ten of the 17 articles were published after 2015. Of the 17 articles meeting our inclusion criteria, three used qualitative data in their analysis. Two qualitative studies used a case study approach to explore the experience of gentrification and exclusion of Latinos from health protective neighborhood resources and social fabric ( Anguelovski, 2015 ; Betancur, 2011 ). The third qualitative study used semi-structured interviews to examine experiences of gentrification and structural drivers of food insecurity ( Whittle et al., 2015 ).

The remaining 14 studies employed quantitative data. All of the quantitative studies used longitudinal data to measure exposure to the process of gentrification. Discordantly, 11 of these studies measured a health outcome at only one point in time ( Abel and White, 2011 ; Anguelovski, 2015 ; Breyer and Voss-Andreae, 2013 ; Desmond and Gershenson, 2017 ; Ding et al., 2016 ; Ding and Hwang, 2016a ; Gibbons and Barton, 2016 ; Huynh and Maroko, 2014 ; Kreager et al., 2011 ; Linton et al., 2017 ; Smith et al., 2018 ). Three remaining articles from all 14 studies employing quantitative data (two articles which focused on the outcomes of crime and violence) used longitudinal data for both the exposure and outcomes of interest ( Lim et al., 2017 ; Papachristos et al., 2011 ; Smith, 2014 ).

The reviewed studies encompassed a broad range of outcomes related to health and wellness. These included: socio-spatial patterns of exclusion, mobility and industrial air toxic risk exposure ( Abel and White, 2011 ; Anguelovski, 2015 ; Ding et al., 2016 ) access to healthy food and food insecurity ( Breyer and Voss-Andreae, 2013 ; Whittle et al., 2015 ), housing instability ( Desmond and Gershenson, 2017 ), financial health ( Ding et al., 2016 ; Ding and Hwang, 2016a ), self-rated health ( Gibbons and Barton, 2016 ; Smith et al., 2018 ), crime ( Kreager et al., 2011 ), health care access ( Lim et al., 2017 ), homelessness ( Linton et al., 2014 ), preterm birth ( Huynh and Maroko, 2014 ); robberies and homicide rates ( Papachristos et al., 2011 ); gang homicides ( Smith, 2014 ), and violent crime ( Gibbons and Barton, 2016 ).

Fourteen studies acknowledged the potential impact of gentrification on marginalized and underserved populations ( Abel and White, 2011 ; Anguelovski, 2015 ; Breyer and Voss-Andreae, 2013 ; Desmond and Gershenson, 2017 ; Ding et al., 2016 ; Ding and Hwang, 2016b ; Gibbons and Barton, 2016 ; Huynh and Maroko, 2014 ; Kreager et al., 2011 ; Lim et al., 2017 ; Linton et al., 2017 ; Smith, 2014 ) for example, with one study focusing on people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) ( Whittle et al., 2015 ) and one focused on the elderly ( Smith et al., 2018 )

In the following section, we evaluate the included studies using three critical lenses: 1. conceptualization of gentrification; 2. mechanisms linking gentrification and health; and 3. spatio-temporal considerations. We provide examples of both strengths and limitations of current research through these lenses. Identifying how current studies are conceptualizing gentrification, the extent in which there is explicit articulation of mechanisms linking gentrification and health and wellness, and consideration of spatio-temporal scales will provide the foundation for a subsequent discussion illuminating opportunities to increase rigor in current research on gentrification and health and wellness.

3.1. Conceptualization of gentrification

A conceptual framework transforms experiential knowledge, prior theory, and research into a system of constructs and presumed interrelationships among them that supports or informs one’s research ( Maxwell, 2012 , p. 39; Miles and Huberman, 1994 , p. 18). Additionally, conceptual frameworks help identify the most critical variables to include in research design and the ways in which they influence one another ( Ravitch and Riggan, 2012 , p. 6).

We identified three key ways in which authors themselves articulated their conceptualization of gentrification in guiding their research. These categories do not reflect the expansive literature on the multitude of ways gentrification is conceptualized and are not mutually exclusive; categories of how gentrification is conceptualized in these research articles are the following: 1. socio-economic upgrading; 2. political conflict and urban restructuring, and 3: stages of gentrification. Identifying how research conceptualizes gentrification shapes the research questions posed, the facets of the complex construct of gentrification that are interrogated, the variables employed or groups given voice, and relevant methods utilized, as illustrated in the following examples. The majority of studies (14/17) described gentrification as a process of socio-economic upgrading. For example, Huhyn et al., state: “little work has examined the influence of social and economic change over time (i.e., gentrification) on health” (2014). Three of these studies considered the racial dimensions of gentrification by explicitly examining, either quantitatively or qualitatively, differences in the relationship between gentrification and health among individuals or communities identifying as distinct racial and ethnic identities ( Anguelovski, 2015 ; Barton, 2016 ; Papachristos et al., 2011 ). Three articles also included residential displacement as potentially part of the process of gentrification ( Desmond and Gershenson, 2017 ; Ding and Hwang, 2016b ; Gibbons and Barton, 2016 ) ( Table 1 ).

Categories of conceptualization and associated mechanisms

The second conceptualization of gentrification is based on theories of power, race and political conflict. One study ( Smith, 2014 ) conceptualized gentrification and incorporated socio-economic upgrading and political conflict within a staged process. Two articles explicitly conceptualized gentrification as a process interwoven with urban restructuring and political conflict ( Anguelovski, 2015 ; Betancur, 2011 ). For example, Anguelovski indicates gentrification includes changes in the socio-economic and demographic composition of a neighborhood, while also employing language concerning gentrification’s inherent power and racial dynamics.

Anguelovski writes:

when supermarket greenlining occurs, it produces new socio-spatial patterns and experiences of environmental inequality and exclusion, transforming these amenities into new locally unwanted land uses (LULUs) for vulnerable residents. LULUs comprise not only toxic sites and industries, as highlighted by much of the traditional EJ literature, but can also include green amenities. Protests against current urban redevelopment dynamics highlight the multiple forms of exclusion and displacement produced by food gentrification, and by the manipulation of health and sustainability discourses about food.” (2011).

Here, gentrification is an unjust process where the right to land, ownership and power over key decisions is appropriated by new, predominately white residents with higher incomes.

Two studies conceptualized gentrification as a staged process along with it triggering socio-economic upgrading and displacement ( Ding et al., 2016 ; Ding and Hwang, 2016b ). Incorporating a staged model implies outcomes may differ for individuals depending on the extent in which gentrification has advanced in the neighborhood ( Ding et al., 2016 ; Ding and Hwang, 2016b ). Hypothesized stages of gentrification differ across studies. For example, two studies classified gentrified tracts that started gentrifying in 2000 as either experiencing weak, moderate or intense gentrification ( Ding et al., 2016 ; Ding and Hwang, 2016b ). Kreager also identified gentrification as a staged process, with crime rates being moderated during the most advanced stages of gentrification (2011). In the next section we identify the mechanisms explicitly articulated in the reviewed studies. These conceptualizations have implications for spatio-temporal scales employed for measuring exposures and outcomes, along with the types of data collected. These implications are presented in the discussion section below.

3.2. Mechanisms linking gentrification and health

The context of gentrification influences the operation of mechanisms; these mechanisms indicate how and why macrosocial factors, such as gentrification, impact population health ( Ng and Muntaner, 2014 ). Mechanisms operate at various levels (i.e. individual, interpersonal, community, institutional) simultaneously; the extent in which each level is causally relevant to the outcome of interest is determined by the conceptualization of the phenomenon of interest ( Krieger, 2008 ).

We identified four categories of mechanisms, operating at distinct levels across studies, linking gentrification to health. First, the majority of studies identified neighborhood attributes and specified the following neighborhood-level sub-categories: either in terms of altered infrastructure, economic opportunities/development, or social cohesion as the main attribute linking gentrification and health and wellness ( Abel and White, 2011 ; Barton, 2016 ; Desmond and Gershenson, 2017 ; Ding et al., 2016 ; Ding and Hwang, 2016b ; Gibbons and Barton, 2016 ; Huynh and Maroko, 2014 ; Kreager et al., 2011 ; Lim et al., 2017 ; Linton et al., 2015 ; Papachristos et al., 2011 ; Smith, 2014 ; Smith et al., 2018 ). Second, four studies identified individual mechanisms of change via individual health protective resources within a neighborhood experiencing gentrification ( Breyer and Voss-Andreae, 2013 ; Ding and Hwang, 2016b ; Huynh and Maroko, 2014 ; Lim et al., 2017 ). Third, three of these studies identified both neighborhood and individual level mechanisms such as economic opportunities and growth and individual health protective resources such as financial status ( Ding and Hwang, 2016b ; Huynh and Maroko, 2014 ; Lim et al., 2017 ). Fourth, one study focused on the role of political and economic institutions in shaping the relationship between gentrification and health ( Whittle et al., 2015 ).

Linking findings concerning the conceptualization of research with mechanisms employed, the mechanisms of neighborhood attributes or individual level resources were associated with conceptualizing gentrification as a process of socio-economic upgrading ( Abel and White, 2011 ; Barton, 2016 ; Breyer and Voss-Andreae, 2013 ; Desmond and Gershenson, 2017 ; Ding et al., 2016 ; Ding and Hwang, 2016b ; Gibbons and Barton, 2016 ; Huynh and Maroko, 2014 ; Kreager et al., 2011 ; Lim et al., 2017 ; Linton et al., 2015 ; Papachristos et al., 2011 ; Smith, 2014 ; Smith et al., 2018 ). Three studies related to sense of community/exclusion conceptualized gentrification as a process combining urban restructuring and political conflict ( Anguelovski, 2015 ; Betancur, 2009; Smith, 2014 ).

3.3. Spatiotemporal considerations for rigorous research

A third challenge in the literature on gentrification and health outcomes is the ability to adequately capture the spatial and temporal dimensions of processes of neighborhood change. Gentrification is driven by varying dynamics across community, city, regional and national scales with urban neighborhood impacts, but it can also start on a single city block; it can be rapid, or the process can take decades to unfold ( Beauregard, 1990 ; Brown-Saracino, 2017 ; Hwang and Sampson, 2014 ; Shaw, 2008 ; Smith, 2002 ). As Hwang and Sampson point out, traditional data sources do not capture multi-level political and economic forces, such as the nature of global capital flows, nor do census tracts allow us to assess gentrification’s uneven nature within neighborhoods (2014). However, the scale and time periods at which gentrification is measured matters. As such, we assessed the scale and time period each article used to understand how and to what extent are the various spatial and temporal attributes relevant to gentrification reflected in current research ( Table 2 ).

Temporal and spatial considerations and concordance with health outcomes

We focus first on spatial scale. Ten quantitative studies used census tracts as the unit of analysis ( Abel and White, 2011 ; Breyer and Voss-Andreae, 2013 ; Desmond and Gershenson, 2017 ; Ding et al., 2016 ; Ding and Hwang, 2016b ; Gibbons and Barton, 2016 ; Kreager et al., 2011 ; Smith et al., 2018 ). One analyzed data at the zip code level ( Linton, 2017 ), one used Public Use Microdata Area (PUMA) boundaries (n = 55, median population in each PUMA = 149,447) ( Huynh and Maroko, 2014 ), and three analyzed data at the neighborhood cluster or sub-borough level ( Barton, 2016 ; Papachristos et al., 2011 ; Smith, 2014 ). Two qualitative studies used study participant and author perceptions of place to identify gentrifying neighborhoods ( Anguelovski, 2015 ; Betancur, 2011 ).

Beyond the spatial, gentrification possesses temporal attributes requiring consideration when assessing the effect gentrification may have on health. It is a staged process that can occur over time, in quick succession, or with varying levels of intensity. As such, we analyze the literature through these three different lenses. First, gentrification itself is a process and to reflect its temporal nature changes over time should be clearly articulated and reflected in both the conceptualization and measurement of variables. As shown in Table 2 , all quantitative studies examined in this review except for three articles focusing on crime (as a result of the widespread availability of crime data over time), lacked measurement of change of both the exposure and outcome of interest ( Macintyre et al., 2002 ). For example, Gibbons and Barton used self-rated health to assess how gentrification – a process inherently reproducing change – only at one point in time (2008).

Second, gentrification is a staged process which can occur in quick succession. To capture its health effects, it is necessary to design studies selecting outcomes where the exposure time of gentrification can theoretically trigger a change in health outcomes, employing multiple data points to capture any shifts in health outcomes, and allowing for adequate lag-time between the stage of gentrification and measurement of outcomes of interest. Particular outcomes can plausibly change within the finite period of time during the stages of gentrification; examples of these outcomes in the reviewed literature include crime, financial health, self-rated health, emergency department visits, and homelessness ( Barton, 2016 ; Ding and Hwang, 2016b ; Gibbons and Barton, 2016 ; Kreager et al., 2011 ; Lim et al., 2017 ; Linton et al., 2015 ; Papachristos et al., 2011 ; Smith, 2014 ; Smith et al., 2018 ). Diseases with a long pre-clinical phase or health outcomes resulting from stressful, severe life events causing weathering could be overlooked if the hypothesized exposure period is inadequate to theoretically induce the specific health outcome, if data collection is infrequent, or if lag-time between the exposure and outcome is absent thereby not permitting enough time for the disease to progress. As an example, a health outcome of interest that theoretically requires exposure over the life course is preterm birth ( Luet al., 2010 ). This outcome, employed by Huynh and Marako’s 2013 article was collected at one point in time between 2008 – 2010, which overlaps with the time period included in estimating gentrification as the community district level (population between 35,000 and 200,000). The large scale for measuring gentrification, selection of a health outcome that requires an extended exposure period, measurement of the outcome at one point in time, and overlapping time periods between health outcome and exposure increase the risk of misestimating the relationship between gentrification and health.

The inconsistent pace of gentrification over time, and the differential impacts pace may have on health outcomes requires longitudinal data for both the exposure and outcome. Regarding hypotheses of the varying intensity of gentrification over time, two studies explicitly mentioned the pace of gentrification ( Ding et al., 2016 ; Kreager et al., 2011 ). As an example, Kreager hypothesizes that gentrification in 1980’s Seattle was “spotty” and contributed to increases in crime yet with a more complete gentrification in the 1990s, gentrification was associated with decreases in crime (2011).

4. Discussion

Our results indicate a surge of gentrification and health research since 2015 within the United States context. A broad number of health and wellness outcomes are employed in studies, ranging from crime rates to pre-term birth, with health outcomes generally measured at one point in time. The majority of studies conceptualized gentrification as a socio-economic process, primarily occurring at the individual level. Only three studies identified neighborhood and individual level mechanisms as integral factors in identifying the connection between gentrification and health and wellness. This is despite evidence that both individual, neighborhood level change (i.e. people and place policies) are intertwined and reinforce one another ( Galster, 2017 ; Katz, 2004 ). Further, gentrification itself is a political and economic process spanning communities, regions, and institution, requiring examination of mechanisms across scales and levels.

Furthermore, while gentrification results from forces at various scales, the process can occur on a block by block or neighborhood basis. In the reviewed studies, the smallest unit of analysis was the census tract, with four studies using data of a larger spatial scale. Regarding temporality, only three studies studied the process of urban change by incorporating data for more than one point in time for both the exposure and outcome.

Narrowing the context to the United States allows for specification of the urban context, reflecting the history of formerly declining, under-resourced urban areas inhabited by marginalized populations. Through this lens we can assess the literature on gentrification and health while beginning to understand how health equity is reflected in current research. Implications of the findings and suggested avenues to advance the field are discussed below.

4.1. Conceptualization of gentrification and linkages to mechanisms

Integral to understanding the relationship between gentrification and health is developing conceptual clarity around gentrification itself and explicit articulation of the guiding principles for its conceptualization within each research study. With competing definitions, it is imperative to specify the aspect of gentrification guiding conceptualization of research. The majority of studies identified the broad term of socio-economic upgrading as the defining feature of gentrification. Only one study focused on the role of political and economic institutions, providing evidence of the rejection of critical perspectives of gentrification as evidenced by a pre-occupation with ideological differences in the literature and dominance of neoliberalism ( Slater, 2006 ). Absent or muddled in the literature are the power dynamics inherent in gentrification, the differential valuing of individuals based on class and race, in addition to the upstream structural factors that drive gentrification and engender class and racial conflict. This prevents identification of who is responsible if negative health impacts are associated with gentrification, and the potential points of intervention ( Krieger, 2001 ).

Social epidemiology’s increasing focus on causality and policy-related research to guide action on how to improve population health (translational social epidemiology) requires clarity and rigor around the logical propositions linking conceptualization of a modifiable exposure to mechanisms that link exposures to outcomes ( Oakes et al., 2015 ). Clear conceptualization of the exposure and mechanisms linking the exposure to the outcome of interest are critical from both policy development and causal inference perspectives. For example, conceptualizing gentrification as a socio-economic process, as identified in the reviewed literature, is related to various mechanisms of neighborhood and individual level attributes. It spans levels and is connected with political, economic, and social institutions and community resources. As such, articulation of the mechanisms, associated levels, and measurement of these variables is necessary to understand the mechanisms that can be intervened upon to modify the relationship between the exposure of gentrification for instance and the outcome of interest. In terms of causality, violation of the consistency assumption threatens causality but is avoided when whichever facet of socio-economic upgrading is altered, the outcome is the same ( Rehkopf et al., 2016 ). The “treatment” of gentrification encompasses various forms of socio-economic upgrading (such as business developments, employment opportunities, social networks, etc.) and the lack of specificity stemming from the conceptualization of the treatment can threaten causal inference ( Rehkopf et al., 2016 ) and validity more generally.

Regarding explicit identification of the mechanisms linking exposures to outcomes to support a translational epidemiology, analyses indicate a lack of rigor in connecting the conceptualization of gentrification to the hypothesized mechanisms that influence health. First, we highlight three studies providing strong examples of concordance between the conceptualization of gentrification and the mechanisms and levels identified in research on gentrification and health. Breyer and Voss-Andrae (2013) conceptualize gentrification as a process that changes neighborhood food resources. They thus measure outcomes as the cost and availability of healthy food at the neighborhood level. This study provides a clear conceptualization between the process (gentrification), the mechanism (changing the types of grocery stores in a neighborhood), and its impacts on low-income populations (increased cost of food which may go against the goal of expanding access to healthy food). Kreager stipulates gentrification as a process changing both population and property characteristics such as high-end residential development and improving an area’s real estate and local infrastructure (2011). According to Kreager, gentrification is a form of urban restructuring that occurs when infrastructure development and real estate enhancement change area-level characteristics, which in turn results in area-level shifts in crime. This is different from a study that conceptualizes gentrification as a process that displaces low-income households. This too may lead to a reduction in crime, but in this case, area level investment in infrastructure would not be the appropriate mechanism.

Ding et al., examines how stage of gentrification, which alters affordability, moderates mobility patterns (2016). Among vulnerable residents living in neighborhoods of moderate or intense levels of gentrification are more likely to move to lower-income neighborhoods, shedding light on the importance of the outcome of residential moves ( Ding, et al., 2016 ). Critical to the strength of this study’s research design is their clear conceptualization of gentrification as socio-economic upgrading within central urban areas in previously low-income neighborhoods whereby incoming residents are of a higher socio-economic status (2016). The authors also clearly state that while this conceptualization implies displacement, evidence is inconclusive. Given this, mechanisms linking gentrification and mobility (rather than displacement via eviction for instance) relate to affordability of the neighborhood. Affordability, an economic mechanism at the neighborhood level then directly is reflected in their research aim to “examine mobility patterns based on stage of gentrification, which neighborhoods residents move to, if it differs for the most vulnerable, and time at which gentrification commenced in the neighborhood” ( Ding et al., 2016 ).

To illustrate ramifications of discordance and/or lack of clarity between conceptualization and mechanisms, we use one case example. To be sure, data constraints are a critical barrier, but it is instructive to identify theory to help reveal ideal research designs and considerations to drive methodological decisions. Huynh and Marako test the association between gentrification and pre-term birth (2013). In this study, gentrification is conceptualized as socio-economic upgrading, resulting in higher income residents and housing investment. This may cause changes in neighborhood economic attributes by providing additional opportunities or material resources, while also potentially resulting in increased stress and susceptibility to disease due to the displacement of health protective social networks and key community institutions, for example. This broad conceptualization of gentrification and potential mechanisms however does not specify the chronic or acute exposure to gentrification that can plausibly be linked to pre-term birth. Given this broad conceptualization of gentrification and lack of specificity and measurement regarding the hypothesized mechanisms that result in pre-term birth, the opportunity to develop policy recommendations to reduce health inequity as a result of this work is lost. In this case, a theoretical framework to identify what we know and assume would anchor firm hypotheses. For example, employing life course theory would lead to questions regarding length of time and intensity of exposure to gentrification, changes in material resources prior to and within the period of exposure, and distinctions between levels of exposure, timing and embodiment. This would then require a shift in mechanisms, measurements, and considerations of spatiotemporal scale.

4.2. Linking conceptualization, mechanisms and epistemology

The conceptualization of an exposure can reflect the worldview or epistemology of the researcher. Epistemology is not solely a way of knowing but systems of knowing and this knowledge is generated through the subjective experiences of individuals ( Creswell, 2014 , p. 20). Worldviews, tied to these systems, are influenced by the conditions in which people live and learn, and these can be formed by their gender, race, class, sexuality, language and other forms of difference ( Ladson-Billings, 2000 ).

The scarcity of research focused on political conflict, despite substantial literature on gentrification acknowledging conflicts and tensions around race, class, and displacement provides an opportunity for developing research that is suited to uncovering these experiences and social meanings via interpretive methods. Analyses of two papers (Betancur, 2009; Anguelovski, 2015 ) employing political conflict as their conceptual frame and sense of community/exclusion as the mechanism of interest illustrates the manner in which conceptualization and identification of mechanism highlights epistemological standpoints. Explicit identification of these three facets of research can lead to identification of research methods best suited to answer the area of inquiry.

First, Betancur’s aim was to identify if gentrification was an invasion, succession, or forceful relocation for a group of long-term Latino residents. He captures shifts in resident experiences, elucidating how intensifying gentrification resulted in transitioning from efforts around community building to a community defense. In addition, Anguelovski, explicitly identifies the powerful elite and articulates their goal of shifting ownership of the community, from lower-income residents to outside sources of capital. This is illustrated by clear identification of investors developing properties for higher-income residents and municipal leaders labeling areas of reinvestment as “sites for revitalization and tourism” ( Anguelovski, 2015 ). The author does not employ the conceptualization of gentrification as a form of socio-economic upgrading, unlike the majority of the other studies reviewed. Rather, conceptualization of gentrification as a political conflict incites a social justice framework and moves away from a positivist epistemology. Because of this framing, he focuses on “new socio-spatial patterns and experiences of exclusion, transforming amenities into locally unwanted land uses (LULUS)” ( Anguelovski, 2015 ). Therefore, experiences of community and exclusion are the factors tying gentrification to health. By extension, the level of interest is the community-level, which aligns with the study aim to understand how gentrifying places establish new forms of exclusion and privilege.

Betancur and Anguelovski’s worldview focusing on conflict, experience, and justice lend itself to interpretive methods. It places priority on generating detailed rich description and using systematic procedures to uncover new knowledge that is situated within the context of the knower who is producing this knowledge ( Yanow and Schwartz-Shea, 2015 , p. 10). Interpretive methods emphasize a deeper understanding of how does one know and that distancing in fact compromises a deeper understanding acknowledgement of the “messiness that is part of being human” ( Yanow and Schwartz-Shea, 2015 , p. 430). These two papers use a case study design, centered on qualitative data collection that allows for redefining main research questions during data collection, unearthing and contextualizing experiences and meanings, and giving voice to individuals ( Keene, 2018 , pp. 194–195). Furthermore, moving away from generalizability acknowledges the heterogeneity of neighborhoods and supports employing case studies of extreme cases ( Small et al., 2018 ). In addition, it allows for hypothesizing and examining distinct effects of gentrification across subpopulations ( Small and Feldman, 2012 ).

4.3. Considerations of spatio-temporal scale

Analyses of these research studies through the lens of spatio-temporal scale reveal limited consideration of the implications of large scales, spatial dependencies, and research design implications resulting from the unevenness of gentrification itself. These considerations can be helpful in guiding clear, rigorous research. First, studies of gentrification employing large areal units such as PUMA boundaries, will likely face the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) where artificial units of spatial reporting of continuous geographical phenomena results in artificial spatial patterns; this issue is akin to ecological fallacy ( Heywood et al., 1998 , p. 8). Aggregated values will vary depending on which boundaries we use. For example, analysis of data aggregated at the county level will offer distinct conclusions in comparison to data collected at the census tract level. At smaller spatial scales, ranges or variations in data are more apparent. A larger spatial scale may obscure important extremes. Gentrification is often conceptualized as an uneven urban phenomenon. As such, larger areal units, such as PUMA boundaries and potentially census tracts, which range in population size between 1,800 and 8,000 individuals, with the optimal size being 4,000 individuals, may not capture the unevenness of gentrification. In early stage gentrifying areas, gentrification may not occur within a tract as a whole but on a block by block basis. Understanding both the stage of gentrification and the density of the urban environment in which it is taking place will be helpful in identifying the most appropriate scale. Though the lens of density for example, the measurement scale of gentrification in Los Angeles may be distinct in comparison to the dense, older structural environment of New York City. Similarly, smaller scale measurement at the onset of gentrification may be able to signal incoming shifts of gentrification processes in comparison to larger whole-neighborhood changes.

Moreover, all census tracts do not have the same probability of being gentrified. Those census tracts that are least likely to gentrify due to continued lack of investment and marginalization may be clustered. Being surrounded by multiple disinvested tracts may have distinct implications for residents than living close to clustered resource rich census tracts ( Diez Roux and Mair, 2010 ). This lack of independence, or spatial dependency between census tracts, may induce spillover effects beyond the imposed census tract boundaries and affect health outcomes ( Diez Roux and Mair, 2010 ). None of the studies but one study by Ding et al., discussed spatial dependencies as a limitation in research or acknowledged the varying spatial contexts relevant to the gentrification process. Ding et al., both acknowledged and incorporated statistical analysis reflecting spatial dependencies by restricting their sample to residents of nongentrifying or gentrifying areas that are .5 miles away from gentrifying neighborhoods, assuming the amenities in gentrifying areas may confound the relationship between the exposure and outcome variables of interest.

Third, gentrification is a dynamic process that occurs in stages ( Clay, 1979 , p. 57; Helms, 2003 ; Hwang and Sampson, 2014 ). Health outcome data was collected and analyzed at only one point in time for the 12 quantitative studies that focused on non-crime related outcomes. This may increase selection bias, which occurs when the subjects identified are not representative of the target population. For example, collecting data at only one point in time during the advanced stages of gentrification may capture low-income residents who were not displaced, for example, because they owned their home or had strong family support networks; these households may not be representative of the population, therefore distorting any measure of association. Furthermore, collecting outcome data at one point in time prohibits accounting for past effects of the process of gentrification on health and identification of an appropriate latency period. Given gentrification’s dynamic, staged process, one should consider the following: 1. the number of not only exposure data points to quantify urban change but importantly outcome data points used in the study and 2. hypotheses regarding whether gentrification is constant or accelerates at certain points in time and the resultant timepoints necessary to capture those changes.

5. Limitations and Conclusions

This is the first systematic review, to our knowledge, which provides an account of the conceptualization of current research related to gentrification and health, mechanisms identified across studies, and offers opportunities to strengthen current research as a result of this analysis. This review is limited by the search terms selected and the review protocol implemented. We conceptualized health and wellness broadly, aiming to include as many articles as possible. Although we used a combination of search strategies to find published articles that met our eligibility criteria, it is possible that our search strategy missed some articles that would have been eligible.

Research on gentrification can pave the way to developing a process for understanding the influence of complex macrosocial phenomena on health. Debates may ensue regarding whether gentrification is a powerful determinant of urban poverty. Regardless, conceptual clarity, clear linkages to mechanisms, and intentional research design that responds to the methodological challenges of understanding gentrification and city and regional transformation are necessary to begin the process of illuminating social exposures magnifying health inequities. Furthermore, understanding linkages between gentrification and other processes of neighborhood change contributing to health inequity will encourage methodical and careful thinking and research about gentrification itself and economic shifts within cities ( Brown-Saracino, 2016 ). It is by wrestling with this complexity that we will move from medical advancements for individuals to understanding how to advance population level health equity.

• An array of health outcomes was examined, ranging from crime rates to pre-term birth
• Health outcomes were generally only measured at one point in time
• The majority of studies conceptualized gentrification as socio-economic upgrading, overlooking power dynamics and structural factors
• Few studies consider small scales for analysis, spatial dependencies, and unevenness of gentrification itself
• We recommend studies explicitly identify the mechanism and associated levels linking gentrification and health, incorporate space and time and articulate an epistemological standpoint driven by their conceptualization of the exposure

Acknowledgements:

The authors would like to thank Dr. Danya Keene for helpful comments and suggestions. Dr. Tulier received support from the Yale University Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (#T32MH02003).

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Declarations of interest: None

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• Yanow D, Schwartz-Shea P, 2015. Interpretation and method: Empirical research methods and the interpretive turn Routledge. [ Google Scholar ]

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gentrification

Definition of gentrification

Examples of gentrification in a sentence.

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'gentrification.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

gentry + -ification

1964, in the meaning defined above

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“Gentrification.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gentrification. Accessed 17 Apr. 2024.

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Gentrification Nation

By Lola Olagbegi

Published: July 31, 2020

Situation: As a life-long resident of metro Atlanta, I am concerned about the effects of gentrification in the city of Atlanta. Many neighborhoods have been gentrified, meaning that the amount of affordable housing is decreasing, and many people are being displaced from their homes. One of these people includes my aunt, who was unable to renew the lease on her apartment due to her rent being raised dramatically. I assume my audience will be somewhat familiar with gentrification itself. With this speech, I hope to inform my Writing and Rhetoric class on the issue and convince them that gentrification should be stopped.

Good afternoon, my fellow classmates! I have only had the pleasure of being in your section for a little under half a semester, but in this short time, I greatly enjoyed getting to know all of you Posse Scholars in an academic setting. It is crazy to think that our first semester of college has already passed us by and that we are only five months away from becoming sophomores. It seems like just yesterday that I was meeting some of you during Welcome Weekend or the Feed Your Faith event on South Quad. I assume by this point all of you have settled into your dorms to some degree. You have made friends with people on your floor or in your section, have had a couple of conversations with your rector or RAs, established a routine with your roommate, and perhaps have even attended a mass or two. We can agree that our dorms provide us with some form of community, regardless of whether you choose to attend every hall event or use your dorm only as a place to sleep. We were placed in these dorms by random, but strangely develop this innate allegiance and sense of community that would be hard to compromise. However, imagine if our residential system did not work this way. Imagine a system where you had to select your dorm based on what you could afford. At first, there is a wide price range of dorms, ranging from the high-end Flaherty and Baumer Halls to the old but inexpensive Cavanaugh and Fisher Halls. Over time, however, the school starts to renovate all of the inexpensive dorms and hike up their prices, therefore leaving no affordable options for students of lower incomes. These students are now forced to move off-campus and seek affordable housing elsewhere. Although this scenario is very unrealistic, it depicts a very real phenomenon called gentrification, which is something that has come to affect me and my family. Recently, my aunt was unable to renew the lease on her apartment due to surging rent costs from new housing developments in the Atlanta area. Because of this, she decided to move in with my family for the time being. Before my aunt's situation, I never really understood what gentrification was and how it affected the people that were being displaced. Since my specific neighborhood was not affected, I kept an "out of sight, out of mind" mentality. Many of you may feel the same way, but it is important to be informed on the issue, as your city may be up next and your household could change in an instant. Gentrification is a very multifaceted topic, so, unfortunately, I will not be able to discuss all the issues related to it. Nevertheless, I hope to leave you with a better understanding of what gentrification is and why you should agree that it should cease.

A Brief Definition and Context

Before going into why gentrification should stop, I would like to first define what gentrification is and give some context as to how big of a problem it is. Gentrification is a very connotative word but can generally be defined as the process of renovating a run-down district, usually paired with an influx of more affluent residents. It normally brings an increase in property values, more investments in businesses and infrastructure, and more economic opportunity overall (Grant). Unfortunately, these benefits are enjoyed mainly by the new residents. Long-time residents with lower incomes and small businesses are often unable to afford the increasing rents and taxes associated with the gentrification (Valoy). Because of this, these residents and businesses are displaced and face numerous challenges. In the United States, gentrification has rapidly accelerated over the past few decades. In the 1990s, only 9 percent of low-income neighborhoods were gentrified, compared to 20 percent since the 2000s. Around 464,000 people with low incomes have had to leave gentrifying neighborhoods in our nation's largest cities (Thatch). Gentrification mainly affects big cities such as Washington D.C., New York City, Atlanta and even your very own, New Orleans. Looking into my city specifically, Atlanta has been on the rise for gentrification issues, as it has the fifth-highest rate of gentrification in the country. Since 2000, the average rent has increased by 28 percent. Also, according to a 2018 report by the real estate marketplace HotPads, the rent in Atlanta is rising three times faster than the national average (Lartey). These statistics show that gentrification is an urgent problem that needs to be addressed with great concern.

Economic Impacts of Gentrification

As gentrification is a means of economic improvement, it has many associated economic impacts. Looking at the surface, gentrification brings new housing developments, new boutiques and eateries, higher wages, and more job opportunities. Both sides can agree on this. However, there is debate over who is actually enjoying these benefits. According to the organization POV who released the critically acclaimed documentary, Flag Wars , about gentrification, some previous residents may acquire jobs in construction or the service sector, but most of the benefits are being enjoyed predominantly by the new residents (Grant). Due to rising rents, mortgages, property taxes, and decreased job security, many residents can no longer afford their housing and have to leave their communities. This also means they can no longer contribute to the local economy. In some cases, it is not rare to see landlords "bully" their lower income renters into moving out of apartments by either refusing to renew their leases or failing to maintain their apartments (Valoy). In addition, many local businesses have to close due to rising rents and lost clientele. You, like me, would probably think that the influx of wealthy residents would bring much profit to the existing businesses. However, new residents are not shopping at these older, small businesses, but at the new larger corporations or upscale developments that they feel more "comfortable" with (Valoy). In the capitalistic society that we live in, it is easy to be socially irresponsible and make decisions that are only concerned with how much of a profit can be turned. It is also easy to be selfish and narrow-minded when you are more privileged and have amassed much wealth for yourself. This sentiment was expressed profoundly by the journalist Sarah Kendzior, who states, "Gentrifiers focus on aesthetics, not people. Because people, to them, are aesthetics." However, as students at the University of Notre Dame who are here to be educated in the mind and heart, it is important that we recognize the consequences of our actions and how they impact others in the short and long term. Therefore, we must consider if the positive economic impacts of gentrification are worth it if they are at the expense of people who have to be uprooted from their households and livelihoods.

Health Impacts of Gentrification

Along with the disparity in economic benefit, gentrification results in negative health consequences for the displaced. After having to leave their homes, many of the displaced struggle to provide for themselves or their families, often facing obstacles like food insecurity. In many cases, people face substantial periods of hunger or have to rely on a cheap diet that lacks proper nourishment (Whittle 154). They may also have to face poorer living conditions, which results in higher exposure to harmful substances like lead paint and mold in their residences. Along with malnourishment, the displaced are reported to have higher rates of infant mortality, higher incidences of cancer, diabetes, asthma, and cardiovascular disease, and a shorter life expectancy ("Health"). It is also reported that children displaced from gentrified areas have a higher rate of anxiety and depression. Specifically, children displaced from gentrified areas have a 22 percent higher rate of anxiety and depression than children who were not displaced (Dragan 1431). This is most likely due to the heavy stress of household instability. If hearing these statistics makes you feel heartbroken, imagine being diagnosed with one of these illnesses. These are diagnoses that can be prevented, through the termination of gentrification.

Societal Impacts of Gentrification

Along with having adverse health impacts, gentrification disproportionately affects people of color. Many of the low-income neighborhoods are also heavily populated by minorities. This is largely due to the lingering effects of racial discrimination and injustice in this country. One profound example of this is the redlining policy of the mid-20 th century. This policy, created by the Federal Housing Administration in 1934, made it impossible for black people to receive loans for homeownership by marking or "redlining" predominantly black neighborhoods as "hazardous" to loan to (Lockwood). It caused black neighborhoods to be highly underdeveloped and made it harder for blacks to gain wealth over time. This is shown by a recent study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, which stated, "3 out of 4 neighborhoods that were on redlined government maps 80 years ago continue to struggle economically" (Jan). Although much progress has been made with equality and inclusion, minorities are still suffering from the aftermath of harmful policies of the past, and gentrification isn't exactly helping them succeed. It would, in fact, set them even further back in society. As most of us here are people of color, I am sure we would not want our people to be relegated to an even lower level in society.

Also, when minorities are pushed out of their communities due to gentrification, the communities become less diverse, which is very unfavorable in our current society. Diversity has a host of benefits in both the general community and in the workplace. For example, diverse schools help children gain a better understanding of the world, teaching values like acceptance and empathy from a young age. Similarly, diverse workplaces foster creativity and productivity, which in turn leads to higher profits and greater overall success for the companies (O'Boyle). Therefore, it would be in the community's best interest to not gentrify to allow the community to reap the great benefits of diversity.

In addition to looking at what a wealth of diversity can bring, it is also important to examine what a lack of diversity can bring. A lack of diversity in a community creates homogeneity that could allow intolerant and close-minded attitudes to fester and pervade throughout. These kinds of attitudes are why minorities are seen as criminals, and why they are often wrongfully arrested, beaten, or killed at much higher rates than their white counterparts. When gentrification occurs, there is a definite increase in this criminalization. There is a theory that this is because the new wealthier residents, mainly whites, often view activity that was previously considered normal as "suspicious" and therefore are more likely to get the police involved or take action themselves (Fayyad). An extreme example of this theory lies in a popular event that many of you may be familiar with—the death of Trayvon Martin. Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman, who was suspicious of an unarmed Martin for simply just walking around the neighborhood where his father lived. Looking deeper into this Floridian community, called The Retreat at Twin Lakes, I found that it was predominantly white and had "very few black teens" (Fears et. al). I also found that Zimmerman, who lived in the community for 3 years at the time of the shooting, had not treated other black people in the community kindly and had falsely accused some of them of crimes like theft (Fears et al.). This example demonstrates how communities with a lack of diversity can lead to more criminalization of minorities. If the Retreat at Twin Lakes had more diversity, it is likely that there would be more friendly interaction between the different racial groups, and that minorities would not be seen as criminals but fellow members of the community. Furthermore, if communities didn't face gentrification, minority residents of the community would not have to face unfounded criminalization based on the color of their skin.

Additional Refutations

Proponents of gentrification may argue that gentrification does not largely displace long-time residents from their communities. However, statistics from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition show that between 2000 and 2013, over 135,000 residents were displaced from their homes in 230 gentrifying cities across the United States (Wiltse-Ahmad). Some may also argue that gentrification does diversify communities, in both the racial and socioeconomic sense. While I acknowledge that this can happen in certain areas, in many areas, the people driven out are minorities. In fact, 82 percent of people being displaced are African American (Wiltse-Ahmad). If minorities are being driven out and wealthy white people are moving in, is there really diversification happening?

Call to Action

After hearing all of these details, I hope you all are thinking deeply about how gentrification has or could affect your community. It is not something that is easy to process, as it is a very multifaceted topic. There are several factors in each of your lives that could influence you to advocate for or against it. However, what I hope you take away from my speech is that gentrification is very real and there are people's lives at play. It is important that we as Notre Dame students, and more importantly, as humans, act with empathy for others. As the founder of our university Reverend Edward Sorin so powerfully stated, "This college will be one of the most powerful means for doing good in this country" ("About"). This mission is similar to the one of the Posse Foundation, which promotes leadership and becoming an "active agent of change" (Cripps). I urge you all to look into your communities to see how gentrification could be severely harming people in your community. Ask yourselves, are all the shiny new developments worth it if they are at the expense of people's livelihoods, health, and safety? If you become passionate about protecting the well-being of people at risk of displacement in your community or another's, I highly suggest writing to your local representatives about the issue. Thank you all for listening to my speech and I hope you have a wonderful holiday break!

Works Cited

"About: Notre Dame at a Glance." University of Notre Dame , University of Notre Dame, www.nd.edu/about/ .

Cripps, Karla. "About Posse." Posse , The Posse Foundation, 13 Dec. 2019, www.possefoundation.org/about-posse .

Dragan, Kacie L., Ingrid Gould Ellen, and Sherry A. Glied. "Gentrification and the Health of Low-Income Children in New York City." Health Affairs , vol. 38, no. 9, Sept. 2019, pp. 1425–1432., https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2018.05422 .

Grant, Benjamin. "What Is Gentrification?" POV , PBS, 17 Jan. 2003, archive.pov.org/flagwars/what-is-gentrification/ .

"Health Effects of Gentrification." Healthy Places , Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 15 Oct. 2009, www.cdc.gov/healthyplaces/healthtopics/gentrification.htm .

Fayyad, Abdallah. "The Criminalization of Gentrifying Neighborhoods." The Atlantic , 20 Dec. 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/the-criminalization-of-gentrifying-neighborhoods/548837/ .

Fears, Darryl, Manuel Roig-Franzia, and Tom Jackman. "Florida Shooter George Zimmerman Not Easily Pigeonholed." The Seattle Times , 22 Mar. 2012, https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/florida-shooter-george-zimmerman-not-easily-pigeonholed/ .

Jan, Tracy. "Redlining Was Banned 50 Years Ago. It's Still Hurting Minorities Today." The Washington Post , 27 Apr. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/28/redlining-was-banned-50-years-ago-its-still-hurting-minorities-today/ .

Kendzior, Sarah. "The Peril of Hipster Economics." Al Jazeera , 28 May 2014, https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/05/peril-hipster-economics-2014527105521158885.html .

Lartey, Jamiles. "Nowhere for People to Go: Who Will Survive the Gentrification of Atlanta?" The Guardian , 23 Oct. 2018, www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/oct/23/nowhere-for-people-to-go-who-will-survive-the-gentrification-of-atlanta .

Lockwood, Beatrix. "The History of Redlining." ThoughtCo , 30 July 2019, www.thoughtco.com/redlining-definition-4157858 .

O'Boyle, Toni. "5 Reasons Why Diversity Is Important in the 21st Century." AMP Global Youth , 29 Dec. 2018, https://ampglobalyouth.org/students/5-reasons-diversity-important-21st-century/ .

Thatch, Thela. "Gentrification, 'Negro Removal,' and a Housing Crisis." Black Enterprise , 2 Nov. 2018, www.blackenterprise.com/gentrification-black-communities /.

Valoy, Patricia. "7 Reasons Why Gentrification Hurts Communities of Color." Everyday Feminism , 2 Sept. 2014, everydayfeminism.com/2014/09/gentrification-communities-of-color /.

Wiltse-Ahmad, Alyssa. "Study: Gentrification and Cultural Displacement Most Intense in America's Largest Cities, and Absent from Many Others." National Community Reinvestment Coalition , 18 March 2019, ncrc.org/study-gentrification-and-cultural-displacement-most-intense-in-americas-largest-cities-and-absent-from-many-others/ .

Whittle, Henry J., Kartika Palar, Lee Lemus Hufstedler, Hilary K. Seligman, Edward A. Frongillo, and Sheri D. Weiser. "Food Insecurity, Chronic Illness, and Gentrification in the San Francisco Bay Area: An Example of Structural Violence in United States Public Policy." Social Science & Medicine vol. 143, Oct. 2015, pp. 154-161, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.08.027 .

• Skilled writers use a variety of transitions, establishing relationships between or among ideas as they move readers through their arguments. Where does Lola use transitions effectively? Also, do you notice any relationship between the types of transitions she uses and the overall structure of the essay?
• Oftentimes, student writers are told not to use “I” in their essays. While there are certainly instances where “I” is either distracting or inappropriate, not fitting the rhetorical situation and purpose, in this essay the author makes regular use of the first-person. How does her use of the first person help her advance her argument?

Assignment Prompt

Lola Olagbegi

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What Is Gentrification?

Understanding gentrification, gentrification poses complex issues, why gentrification is controversial, the causes of gentrification, challenging long-held views.

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Gentrification: Definition, Causes, Pros & Cons

Gentrification is the transformation of a city neighborhood from low value to high value. Gentrification is also viewed as a process of urban development in which a neighborhood or portion of a city develops rapidly in a short period of time, often as a result of urban-renewal programs. This process is often marked by inflated home prices and displacement of a neighborhood's previous residents.

Key Takeaways

• Gentrification is a process of urban development in which a city neighborhood develops rapidly over a short time, changing from low to high value.
• A neighborhood's residents are often displaced by rising rents and living costs brought about by gentrification.
• Gentrification raises complex social issues and has both benefits and drawbacks; it is often politically charged.
• Causes of gentrification can include rapid job growth, tight housing markets, preference for city amenities, and increased traffic congestion.

Gentrification is derived from the word "gentry," which historically referred to people of an elevated social status. In the United Kingdom, the term "landed gentry" originally described landowners who could live off of the rental income from their properties . In its current context, gentrification was first popularized by the British sociologist Ruth Glass in 1964, when she used the term to describe the influx of middle-class people into London's working-class neighborhoods, displacing the former residents of those localities.

Numerous cities around the world experience the phenomenon of gentrification, which can have a direct impact on housing market dynamics . In most major cities, some neighborhoods that were previously less than desirable have morphed into vibrant districts with plush condominiums and offices, new coffee shops and restaurants, expensive retail storefronts, and various entertainment choices.

Gentrification is a complex social issue with both benefits and drawbacks. Young families welcome the opportunity to buy reasonably priced homes in a safe community with sound infrastructure , and a wide choice of amenities and services. Local municipalities and governments also benefit from collecting higher taxes on rising property values and increased economic activity. However, the neighborhoods' original inhabitants—also families, as well as singles of various ages—are often displaced from the very community that they helped build because of rising rents and a higher cost of living.

Gentrification has become controversial because, historically, it has come with a significant component of discrimination against racial minorities, women and children, the poor, and older adults. Even as it may bring about a reversal in the decline of a city, displacement caused by gentrification can force prior residents into poorer and relatively unsafe areas, with limited access to affordable housing, healthy food choices, and social networks. In turn, this can trigger increased stress levels and decreased mental health.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), vulnerable segments of the population are at increased risk for negative health effects of gentrification, such as shorter life expectancies and increased rates of cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Displacement often leads to exclusion of the original residents, particularly people of color, and a lack of government support—for low-income housing assistance, for example—as well as weakened social and community ties.

A 2019 study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition found that between 2000 and 2013, seven of the biggest U.S. cities—New York City, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Baltimore, San Diego, and Chicago—accounted for nearly half of the country's gentrification.

An oft-cited study of the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy highlights some of the factors that contribute to gentrification.

• Rapid job growth in both a city's downtown core and along its periphery can foster gentrification.
• Tight housing market dynamics play a critical role in causing gentrification and can vary from one location to the next. In the gentrification wave of the 1980s, for example, constrained housing supply was a feature of the San Francisco Bay Area, and relative home affordability was an issue in Washington, D.C.
• Preference for city amenities can play a factor because certain demographic groups have traditionally preferred to live in urban neighborhoods because of attractions like cultural venues, a plethora of appealing restaurants and shops, vibrant street life, and population diversity. The presence of such features can help city planners to identify which neighborhoods would tend to gentrify.
• Increased traffic congestion can contribute because as metropolitan populations rise and infrastructure ages, the resultant increase in traffic congestion and commute times, along with the consequent decline in quality of life, can contribute to gentrification.
• Targeted public-sector policies play a role because many cities pursue revitalization policies —including tax incentives , public-housing plans, and local economic development tools—that offer incentives for middle- and high-income families to move into distressed communities, or for original residents to upgrade their homes.

One way to combat pricing people out of affordable housing, a form of housing discrimination, is a community land trust (CLT) . These are private, non-profit organizations that own land on behalf of a community, promoting housing affordability and sustainable development and mitigating historical inequities in homeownership and wealth-building. 

Recent research challenges some long-held views about the negative effects of gentrification. In a July 2019 paper, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and the U.S. Census Bureau found that gentrification can create some important benefits for original residents, and few observable harms.

• The study found no evidence that original residents who moved out—including the most disadvantaged residents—relocated to observably worse neighborhoods or experienced negative changes in employment, income, or commuting distance.
• Many adult original residents stayed in their gentrifying neighborhoods and benefited from declining exposure to poverty and rising home values. Children also benefited from increased economic opportunity; some were more apt to attend and complete college.
• The quantity and composition of people moving into the neighborhood, not the direct displacement of previous residents, drove the most visible changes associated with gentrification.

Mehdipanah, Roshanak, Giulia Marra, Giulia Melis, Elena Gelormino. " Urban Renewal, Gentrification, and Health Equity: A Realist Perspective ." The European Journal of Public Health , vol. 28, no 2, November 2017, pp. 243-248.

Ruth Glass. " Introduction to London: Aspects of Change ." University College, London, Centre for Urban Studies, London, 1964. (Access to pages unavailable)

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. " Health Effects of Gentrification ."

National Community Reinvestment Coalition. " Shifting Neighborhoods ."

The Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy. " Dealing with Neighborhood Change: A Primer on Gentrification and Policy Choices ," Pages 10-14.

Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. " The Effects of Gentrification on the Well-Being and Opportunity of Original Resident Adults and Children ," Pages 4, 18, 23.

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Gentrification Definition and Description Thesis

It should be noted that the chosen topic for the activity is “gentrification”. It has been selected because it is controversial and there are many supporters and opponents of it. This implies that the research on the topic will be revealing and insightful and may change the point of view of the author in the course of the investigation. Gentrification is a process in which a change in the property system occurs and when a richer group of the population invests in the territory (Franz, 2015). Thus, following the new needs of the higher-income group, the development of the area occurs. On the one hand, this approach is beneficial for all residents and for the city in general since consistent development may be observed. On the other hand, the city becomes accessible to its residents to varying degrees (Gould & Lewis, 2017). The author of this paper supports the second position, and the thesis statement is developed based on the opposing opinion. It is as follows: despite the positive aspects of gentrification, it is necessary to understand how it should proceed in order to make the territory inclusive.

To develop the thesis statement, the writer first researched general insights into the topic using the suggested readings. Then additional research was carried out to comprehend the controversy surrounding gentrification (Franz, 2015). After that, the author of this writing took the side of people opposing gentrification that is not inclusive in character, which allowed narrowing down the thesis statement to the necessary degree. It is expected that, in the course of carrying out research, the writer may open up a new perspective on some aspects of gentrification.

Franz, Y. (2015). Gentrification in neighbourhood development: Case studies from New York City, Berlin and Vienna . Göttingen, Germany: V&R Unipress.

Gould, K. A., & Lewis, T. L. (2017 ). Green gentrification: Urban sustainability and the struggle for environmental justice . New York, NY: Routledge.

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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Gentrification Definition and Description." September 24, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/gentrification-definition-and-description/.

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What Is Climate Gentrification?

NRDC senior program advocate Sasha Forbes explains what it means to be displaced by climate change and why cities must invest in long-term housing affordability—and a self-sustaining future—for their low-income communities and communities of color.

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The cycle is all too familiar: Affluent residents move into lower-income neighborhoods in cities and make their mark on the area’s character and culture. Property values and the cost of living rise in tandem. While the process of gentrification may revitalize under-resourced neighborhoods, the skyrocketing costs of living displace longtime residents and businesses, leaving a new demographic to enjoy the benefits.

As climate change starts to play a more significant role in where we live, it has become a trigger for gentrification and displacement in its own right. Coastal cities that lie on the frontlines of global warming have seen an influx of investments to improve climate resilience . The efforts to redevelop or build new structures that can withstand the impacts of intensifying storms, flooding, erosion, and sea-level rise may inadvertently pose new threats to low-income communities of color.

On the other hand, the lack of equitable investment in low-income communities leaves people even more at risk for climate change impacts when the development model maintains a do-nothing status quo. The same consequence can happen when high-income households relocate from flood-prone coastal properties to higher-elevation cities, displacing the residents there. Extreme weather events fueled by global climate change can also rapidly reshape a city’s identity and people’s cultural connections to places they call home.

There are a few ways you can look at the causes of climate gentrification. Sasha Forbes , a senior program advocate in NRDC’s Healthy People & Thriving Communities Program, breaks them down.

The Lure of Higher Ground

Increasingly, high-income households are moving away from coastal properties to avoid threats like sea-level rise and erosion. The lurking impacts of the climate crisis “are pushing people inland onto communities that have been rooted there and have endured disinvestment, racism, and inequality and are now under the threat of gentrification and displacement,” Forbes explains. Meanwhile, even owners of more-resilient coastal properties are eyeing properties farther from the shore due to expenses associated with climate change, such as the rising cost of flood insurance .

Residents of Liberty City in Miami are among those now facing the ramifications of climate gentrification. Sitting at a higher elevation than the rest of Miami, Liberty City is less vulnerable to the expected sea-level rise of 14 to 26 inches by 2060 —and this has caught the attention of real estate developers.

A 2018 study shows that real estate sitting on higher elevation in Miami has appreciated at a faster rate than anywhere else in the country. This value appreciation has not been leveraged to collectively benefit the predominantly Black residents of Liberty City who have been fighting for more resources for their community. Not only are they seeing a shift in their neighborhood, but these residents are also under pressure from developers to sell their homes.

Evacuation from Extreme Weather

Natural disasters can also accelerate gentrification. “A large part of the reality is that Black- and brown-owned property is undervalued by the market, so in times of disasters—and we can include COVID-19 in this as well—predatory investors and developers take advantage of even cheaper property and land values than existed prior to a disaster,” Forbes says.

Recent studies have shown that Black communities are undervalued by an average of $48,000 . The recovery and redevelopment period presents “a mix of residents trying to maintain or recoup what might be left of their homes; residents who have lost their jobs and are on the verge of being evicted with no option for affordable housing elsewhere; land grabs; and cities engaging in redevelopment processes that might tout equity but still create intentional strategies to attract more higher-income residents without enough emphasis on supporting existing low-income residents—all of which can lead to gentrification and displacement,” says Forbes.

Climate-related disasters in 2018 alone displaced more than 1.2 million people . These extreme weather events—which will only increase in frequency as climate change worsens—can spur immediate gentrification in under-resourced communities. In 2017, when Hurricane Harvey swept through Houston, one in six families receiving assistance from the Houston Housing Authority saw their home battered or destroyed. After the city’s many displaced families returned to seek new accommodations, they found skyrocketing rents across the city . And one year later, Houston still wouldn’t commit to rebuilding or replacing all of the lost subsidized housing.

The rebuilding of New Orleans, which bore the brunt of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, remains perhaps the starkest example of climate gentrification of a city in U.S. history. It is estimated that 100,000 Black New Orleans residents have been permanently displaced from their homes due to the destruction of affordable housing following the storm. This included the razing of some developments that saw no significant damage as part of the city’s rebuilding strategy.

Researchers have since concluded that hurricane damage was positively associated with the likelihood of a New Orleans neighborhood having gentrified 10 years after Katrina. This suggests that natural disasters can sometimes pave the way for gentrification, uprooting existing populations en masse and wiping out infrastructure. Developers can swoop in afterward and invest in properties at lower prices and build higher-end projects meant to attract a wealthier population.

The High Line in New York City

Green—but Inequitable—Investments

Forbes also points to cities’ efforts to implement eco-friendly infrastructure as a potential trigger for displacement. Green gentrification , such as the building of large-scale green spaces in neighborhoods, can inadvertently push out residents from the surrounding areas as it increases property values.

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“While it is good that cities adopt green interventions to increase climate resilience, the greening can lead to gentrification and displacement, given our racially and structurally unjust planning practices and policies, which don't focus enough on keeping people in place if they so choose, especially renters ,” says Forbes.

These eco-friendly amenities may only end up benefiting wealthy residents— which is what’s in danger of happening along the Los Angeles River , where profiteering developers are taking advantage of a restoration project intended to benefit surrounding ecosystems and riverside communities. One of two large projects proposed along the river, north of downtown L.A., would disrupt habitat restoration efforts and place a commercial development atop riverside land that the city had previously envisioned as part of a contiguous public park. The other proposed project features luxury housing in L.A.’s Chinatown and has already led to reports of landlords evicting long-term residents.

Other projects like the High Line in New York City, the 606 in Chicago, and the Atlanta BeltLine have prompted similar concerns of accelerated gentrification, despite their original goals of neighborhood revitalization. Forbes explains that there needs to be proactive strategies and policies tied to such projects that not only focus on anti-displacement measures but also allow low-income communities and communities of color to access the new amenities for their well being.

“Programs and policies for community ownership, cultural programs, income and workforce development that support communities should be implemented months or years ahead of the groundbreaking of any major development, as well as after the development is completed,” Forbes says. “The continued failure to do so is as dangerous as the ‘unintended consequences’ of projects that are implemented to make things better. We don’t account enough for inaction.” Urban planning and zoning are key forces driving gentrification as a whole, Forbes adds, with local governments playing a significant role in regulating these practices.

Given that reality, Forbes and national and local partners with the Strong, Prosperous, and Resilient Communities Challenge (SPARCC) say that community-led investment and self-determination by low-income communities and people of color are fundamental to any city’s revitalization projects and to determining what happens to local land. Toward that end, SPARCC collaborates with community partners and amplifies local efforts to promote equitable and sustainable development practices —not just for housing protection but also for access to public transportation, cultural preservation, and parks.

“We must have increased voice, power, and access to adaptive financial resources, especially for community-led organizations, to make sustainable, healthy, and equitable development a reality,” Forbes says. This can vary depending on the specific needs of the neighborhood. In the Bay Area, for example, 64 percent of low-income residents living near transit are at risk of displacement due to rising housing costs. To help mitigate this risk, SPARCC partners have focused on supporting the region’s community land trusts—local nonprofit organizations that ensure long-term housing affordability in a neighborhood—and have succeeded in acquiring several single-family homes in collaboration with residents, lenders, and developers.

We already know that climate justice, housing justice, racial equity, and economic opportunity are interconnected . To begin working through these issues and avoid the pitfalls of gentrification, cities need to ensure that they recalibrate their inequitable planning and economic development practices of the past and bring the decision-making table to those experiencing the issues firsthand.

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Meaning of gentrification in English

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• anti-bourgeois
• go/come down in the world idiom
• go/come up in the world idiom
• petit bourgeois
• petty bourgeois
• social mobility
• the bottom of the heap idiom
• the petite bourgeoisie
• trailer trash
• ungentrified

gentrification | Intermediate English

• This word is now sometimes used in a disapproving way, but was originally considered positive.

gentrification | Business English

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