Gentrifier types
Just as critical to the gentrification process as creating a favorable environment is the availability of the 'gentry,' or those who will be first-stage gentrifiers. The typical gentrifiers are affluent and have professional-level, service industry jobs, many of which involve self-employment.[72] Therefore, they are willing and able to take the investment risk in the housing market. Often they are single people or young couples without children who lack demand for good schools.[24] Gentrifiers are likely searching for inexpensive housing close to the workplace and often already reside in the inner city, sometimes for educational reasons, and do not want to make the move to suburbia. For this demographic, gentrification is not so much the result of a return to the inner city but is more of a positive action to remain there.[72]
The stereotypical gentrifiers also have shared consumer preferences and favor a largely consumerist culture. This fuels the rapid expansion of trendy restaurant, shopping, and entertainment spheres that often accompany the gentrification process.[24] Holcomb and Beauregard described these groups as those who are "attracted by low prices and toleration of an unconventional lifestyle".[73]
An interesting find from research on those who participate and initiate the gentrification process, the "marginal gentrifiers" as referred to by Tim Butler, is that they become marginalized by the expansion of the process.[72] Research has also shown subgroups of gentrifiers that fall outside of these stereotypes. Two important ones are white women, typically single mothers, as well as white gay people who are typically men.
The upper-class
Research shows how one reason wealthy, upper-class individuals and families hold some responsibility in the causation of gentrification is due to their social mobility.[74] Wealthier families were more likely to have more financial freedom to move into urban areas, oftentimes choosing to do so for their work. At the same time, in these urban areas the lower-income population is decreasing due to an increase in the elderly population as well as demographic change.[74]
Jackelyn Hwang and Jeffrey Lin have supported in their research that another reason for the influx of upper-class individuals to urban areas is due to the "increase in demand for college-educated workers".[75] It is because of this demand that wealthier individuals with college degrees needed to move into urban cities for work, increasing prices in housing as the demand has grown. Additionally, Darren P. Smith finds through his research that college-educated workers moving into the urban areas causes them to settle there and raise children, which eventually contributes to the cost of education in regards to the migration between urban and suburban places.[76]
Women
Women increasingly obtaining higher education as well as higher paying jobs has increased their participation in the labor force, translating to an expansion of women who have greater opportunities to invest. Smith suggests this group "represents a reservoir of potential gentrifiers."[72] The increasing number of highly educated women play into this theory, given that residence in the inner city can give women access to the well-paying jobs and networking, something that is becoming increasingly common.[31]
There are also theories that suggest the inner-city lifestyle is important for women with children where the father does not care equally for the child, because of the proximity to professional childcare.[72] This attracts single parents, specifically single mothers, to the inner-city as opposed to suburban areas where resources are more geographically spread out. This is often deemed as "marginal gentrification," for the city can offer an easier solution to combining paid and unpaid labor. Inner city concentration increases the efficiency of commodities parents need by minimizing time constraints among multiple jobs, childcare, and markets.[31]
Artists
Phillip Clay's two-stage model of gentrification places artists as prototypical stage one or "marginal" gentrifiers. The National Endowment for the Arts did a study that linked the proportion of employed artists to the rate of inner city gentrification across a number of U.S. cities.[33] Artists will typically accept the risks of rehabilitating deteriorated property, as well as having the time, skill, and ability to carry out these extensive renovations.[31] David Ley states that the artist's critique of everyday life and search for meaning and renewal are what make them early recruits for gentrification.
The identity that residence in the inner city provides is important for the gentrifier, and this is particularly so in the artists' case. Their cultural emancipation from the bourgeois makes the central city an appealing alternative that distances them from the conformity and mundaneness attributed to suburban life. They are quintessential city people, and the city is often a functional choice as well, for city life has advantages that include connections to customers and a closer proximity to a downtown art scene, all of which are more likely to be limited in a suburban setting. Ley's research cites a quote from a Vancouver printmaker talking about the importance of inner city life to an artist, that it has, "energy, intensity, hard to specify but hard to do without".[33]
Ironically, these attributes that make artists characteristic marginal gentrifiers form the same foundations for their isolation as the gentrification process matures. The later stages of the process generate an influx of more affluent, "yuppie" residents. As the bohemian character of the community grows, it appeals "not only to committed participants, but also to sporadic consumers," and the rising property values that accompany this migration often lead to the eventual pushing out of the artists that began the movement in the first place.[31] Sharon Zukin's study of SoHo in Manhattan, NYC was one of the most famous cases of this phenomenon. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Manhattan lofts in SoHo were converted en masse into housing for artists and hippies, and then their sub-culture's followers.
| Stages of Gentrification |
| Early Stage | Transitional Stage | Late Stage |
|---|
Artists, writers, musicians, affluent college students, LGBT, hipsters and political activists move in to a neighborhood for its affordability and tolerance. | Upper-middle-class professionals, often politically liberal-progressive (e.g. teachers, journalists, librarians), are attracted by the vibrancy created by the first arrivals. | Wealthier people (e.g. private sector managers) move in and real estate prices increase significantly. By this stage, high prices have excluded traditional residents and most of the types of people who arrived in stage 1 & 2. |
| Retail gentrification: Throughout the process, local businesses change to serve the higher incomes and different tastes of the gentrifying population. |
| Source: Caulfield (1996);[pages needed] Ley as cited in Boyd (2008);[pages needed] Rose (1996);[pages needed] and Lees, Slater & Wyly (2010)[pages needed] as cited in Kasman (2015).[pages needed] |
United States
From a market standpoint, there are two main requirements that are met by the U.S. cities that undergo substantial effects of gentrification. These are: an excess supply of deteriorated housing in central areas, as well as a considerable growth in the availability of professional jobs located in central business districts. These conditions have been met in the U.S. largely as a result of suburbanization and other postindustrial phenomena. There have been three chronological waves of gentrification in the U.S. starting from the 1960s.[41]
The first wave came in the 1960s and early 1970s, led by governments trying to reduce the disinvestment that was taking place in inner-city urban areas.[41] Additionally, starting in the 1960s and 1970s, U.S. industry has created a surplus of housing units as construction of new homes has far surpassed the rate of national household growth. However, the market forces that are dictated by an excess supply cannot fully explain the geographical specificity of gentrification in the U.S., for there are many large cities that meet this requirement and have not exhibited gentrification.
The missing link is another factor that can be explained by particular, necessary demand forces. In U.S. cities in the time period from 1970 to 1978, growth of the central business district at around 20% did not dictate conditions for gentrification, while growth at or above 33% yielded appreciably larger gentrification activity.[31] Succinctly, central business district growth will activate gentrification in the presence of a surplus in the inner city housing market. The 1970s brought the more "widespread" second wave of gentrification, and was sometimes linked to the development of artist communities like SoHo in New York.[41]
In the U.S., the conditions for gentrification were generated by the economic transition from manufacturing to post-industrial service economies. The post-World War II economy experienced a service revolution, which created white-collar jobs and larger opportunities for women in the work force, as well as an expansion in the importance of centralized administrative and cooperate activities. This increased the demand for inner city residences, which were readily available cheaply after much of the movement towards central city abandonment of the 1950s. The coupling of these movements is what became the trigger for the expansive gentrification of U.S. cities, including Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C.[31]
The third wave of gentrification occurred in most major cities in the late 1990s and was driven by large-scale developments, public-private partnerships, and government policies.[146] Measurement of the rate of gentrification during the period from 1990 to 2010 in 50 U.S. cities showed an increase in the rate of gentrification from 9% in the decade of the 1990s to 20% in the decade from 2000 to 2010 with 8% of the urban neighborhoods in the 50 cities being affected.
Cities with a rate of gentrification of ≈40% or more in the decade from 2000 to 2010 included:[147]
Cities with a rate of less than 10% in the decade from 2000 to 2010 included:[147]
Health
Displacement carries many health implications that contribute to disparities among populations such as the poor, women, children, the elderly, and members of racial/ethnic minority groups.[63] These specific populations are at an increased risk for the negative consequences of gentrification. Studies indicate that vulnerable populations typically have shorter life expectancy; higher cancer rates; more birth defects; greater infant mortality; and higher incidence of asthma, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Displacement due to gentrification limits access to or availability to housing affordability, healthy food alternatives, transportation, education institutions, outdoor and green space, exercise facilities, and social networks.[63] Limits to these effects can lead to changes in stress levels, injuries, violence, crime, incarceration rates, mental health, and social and environmental justice.[63] Research found that gentrification leads to job losses by 63% on prior residents, which forces most of them to find work farther from their homes.[64] Careful consideration of zoning, neighborhood design, and affordability is vital to mitigating the impacts of gentrification.[65] A culmination of recent research suggests that gentrification has both detrimental and beneficial effects on health.[66]
A 2020 review found that studies tended to show adverse health impacts for Black residents and elderly residents in areas undergoing gentrification.[67]
A 2019 study in New York, found that gentrification has no impact on rates of asthma or obesity among low-income children. Growing up in gentrifying neighborhoods was associated with moderate increases in being diagnosed with anxiety or depression between ages 9-11 relative to similar children raised in non-gentrifying areas. The effects of gentrification on mental health were most prominent for children living in market-rate (rather than subsidized) housing, which lead the authors of the study to suggest financial stress as a possible mechanism.[68]
Measurement
Whether gentrification has occurred in a census tract in an urban area in the United States during a particular 10-year period between censuses can be determined by a method used in a study by Governing:[69] If the census tract in a central city had 500 or more residents and at the time of the baseline census had median household income and median home value in the bottom 40th percentile and at the time of the next 10-year census the tract's educational attainment (percentage of residents over age 25 with a bachelor's degree) was in the top 33rd percentile; the median home value, adjusted for inflation, had increased; and the percentage of increase in home values in the tract was in the top 33rd percentile when compared to the increase in other census tracts in the urban area then it was considered to have been gentrified. The method measures the rate of gentrification, not the degree of gentrification; thus, San Francisco, which has a history of gentrification dating to the 1970s, show a decreasing rate between 1990 and 2010.[70]
Scholars have also identified census indicators that can be used to reveal that gentrification is taking place in a given area, including a drop in the number of children per household, increased education among residents, the number of non-traditional types of households, and a general upwards shift in income.
To counter the gentrification of their mixed-populace communities, there are cases where residents formally organized themselves to develop the necessary socio-political strategies required to retain local affordable housing. The gentrification of a mixed-income community raises housing affordability to the fore of the community's politics.[92] There are cities, municipalities, and counties which have countered gentrification with inclusionary zoning (inclusionary housing) ordinances requiring the apportionment of some new housing for the community's original low- and moderate-income residents. Inclusionary zoning is a new social concept in English speaking countries; there are few reports qualifying its effective or ineffective limitation of gentrification in the English literature. The basis of inclusionary zoning is partial replacement as opposed to displacement of the embedded communities.
In Los Angeles, California, inclusionary zoning apparently accelerated gentrification, as older, unprofitable buildings were razed and replaced with mostly high-rent housing, and a small percentage of affordable housing; the net result was less affordable housing.[94] German (speaking) municipalities have a strong legal role in zoning and on the real estate market in general and a long tradition of integrating social aspects in planning schemes and building regulations. The German approach uses en (milieu conservation municipal law), e.g. in Munich's Lehel district in use since the 1960s. The concepts of socially aware renovation and zoning of Bologna's old city in 1974 was used as role model in the Charta of Bologna, and recognized by the Council of Europe.[95]
Most economists do not think anti-gentrification measures by the government make cities better off.[96][additional citation(s) needed]
Other methods
Direct action and sabotage
When wealthy people move into low-income working-class neighborhoods, the resulting class conflict sometimes involves vandalism and arson targeting the property of the gentrifiers. During the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, the gentrification of San Francisco's predominantly working class Mission District led some long-term neighborhood residents to create what they called the "Mission Yuppie Eradication Project".[97] This group allegedly destroyed property and called for property destruction as part of a strategy to oppose gentrification. Their activities drew hostile responses from the San Francisco Police Department, real estate interests, and "work-within-the-system" housing activists.[98]
Meibion Glyndŵr (Welsh: Sons of Glyndŵr), also known as the Valley Commandos, was a Welsh nationalist movement violently opposed to the loss of Welsh culture and language. They were formed in response to the housing crisis precipitated by large numbers of second homes being bought by the English which had increased house prices beyond the means of many locals. The group were responsible for setting fire to English-owned holiday homes in Wales from 1979 to the mid-1990s. In the first wave of attacks, eight holiday homes were destroyed in a month, and in 1980, Welsh Police carried out a series of raids in Operation Tân. Within the next ten years, some 220 properties were damaged by the campaign.[99] Since the mid-1990s the group has been inactive and Welsh nationalist violence has ceased. In 1989 there was a movement that protested an influx of Swabians to Berlin who were deemed as gentrification drivers. Berlin saw the Schwabenhass and 2013 Spätzlerstreit controversies,[100] which identified gentrification with newcomers from the German south.
Canale delle Moline in Bologna
Zoning ordinances
Zoning ordinances and other urban planning tools can be used to recognize and support local business and industries. This can include requiring developers to continue with a current commercial tenant or offering development incentives for keeping existing businesses, as well as creating and maintaining industrial zones. Designing zoning to allow new housing near to a commercial corridor but not on top of it increases foot traffic to local businesses without redeveloping them. Businesses can become more stable by securing long-term commercial leases.[101]
Although developers may recognize value in responding to living patterns, extensive zoning policies often prevent affordable homes from being constructed within urban development. Due to urban density restrictions, rezoning for residential development within urban living areas is difficult, which forces the builder and the market into urban sprawl and propagates the energy inefficiencies that come with distance from urban centers. In a recent example of restrictive urban zoning requirements, Arcadia Development Co. was prevented from rezoning a parcel for residential development in an urban setting within the city of Morgan Hill, California. With limitations established in the interest of public welfare, a density restriction was applied solely to Arcadia Development Co.'s parcel of development, excluding any planned residential expansion.[102]
Community land trusts
Because land speculation tends to cause volatility in property values, removing real estate (houses, buildings, land) from the open market freezes property values, and thereby prevents the economic eviction of the community's poorer residents. The most common, formal legal mechanism for such stability in English speaking countries is the community land trust; moreover, many inclusionary zoning ordinances formally place the "inclusionary" housing units in a land trust. German municipalities and other cooperative actors have and maintain strong roles on the real estate markets in their realm.
Rent control
In jurisdictions where local or national government has these powers, there may be rent control regulations. Rent control restricts the rent that can be charged, so that incumbent tenants are not forced out by rising rents. If applicable to private landlords, it is a disincentive to speculating with property values, reduces the incidence of dwellings left empty, and limits availability of housing for new residents. If the law does not restrict the rent charged for dwellings that come onto the rental market (formerly owner-occupied or new build), rents in an area can still increase. The cities of southwestern Santa Monica and eastern West Hollywood in California, United States gentrified despite—or perhaps, because of—rent control.[103]
Occasionally, a housing black market develops, wherein landlords withdraw houses and apartments from the market, making them available only upon payment of additional key money, fees, or bribes—thus undermining the rent control law. Many such laws allow "vacancy decontrol", releasing a dwelling from rent control upon the tenant's leaving—resulting in steady losses of rent-controlled housing, ultimately rendering rent control laws ineffective in communities with a high rate of resident turnover. In other cases social housing owned by local authorities may be sold to tenants and then sold on. Vacancy decontrol encourages landlords to find ways of shortening their residents' tenure, most aggressively through landlord harassment. To strengthen the rent control laws of New York, housing advocates active in rent control in New York are attempting to repeal the vacancy decontrol clauses of rent control laws. The state of Massachusetts abolished rent control in 1994; afterwards, rents rose, accelerating the pace of Boston's gentrification; however, the laws protected few apartments, and confounding factors, such as a strong economy, had already been raising housing and rental prices.[104]
See also
