Monday, October 23, 2017

Gentrification: Some Background

It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.  My late aunt's longtime neighborhood.
This was just about the lowest that Brooklyn's Sunset Park ever got,
before the neighborhood began to stabilize in the 1990's, with a dramatic influx of Chinese immigrants.
However, the fingers of gentrification began to reach into Sunset Park only a few years ago.
_____
Navigating this 3-part series
- Part Two  Gentrification: Abandonment Issues
- Part Three  Gentrification: Whither (or Wither) Community?

_____



Let's talk gentrification.

It can be easy to understand, yet complex in its reality.

Gentrification is what many cities hope happens to their marginalized neighborhoods, yet what most folks living in those marginalized neighborhoods want to avoid.

Unless they own property there.

Indeed, with gentrification, the biggest winners are property owners, especially those who've owned property during a time when it was practically worthless - at least in comparison to what it's worth now, with gentrification taking hold in their neighborhood.

Those property battles can take on lives of their own, like they have in Los Angeles' Boyle Heights district, which has practically become a war zone; not between urban street gangs, however, but between affluent newcomers and advocates for the neighborhoods' longtime (and poor) Hispanic residents.

Gentrification is an urban phenomenon with economic, sociological, racial, and political characteristics.  It can also be caused by any or all of these characteristics, and create deep changes within any or all of these characteristics.  And just as many urban neighborhoods have been gentrified over the past few decades, the phenomenon is even beginning to impact older suburban areas in the United States; suburbs that comprise the earliest ring of development around urban cores, where many whites initially decamped after beginning their mass exodus from cities after World War II.

What is Gentrification?

Gentrification is the process by which neighborhoods that have been in decline are economically reinvigorated and socially re-populated.  It's not simply that property values increase, or that the demographics change, but both of these have to happen for a neighborhood's evolution to be considered gentrification.

Gentrification isn't so much about aesthetics, especially since the grunge look, based largely on the urban slum ethic from the latter half of the Twentieth Century, has become very trendy across the urbanized (and suburbanized) West.  But gentrification creates an environment where grunge exists because people want it to exist, not as a de-facto result of residents not being able to afford anything different.

As a process, when it happens, gentrification can make aging urban neighborhoods relevant again in terms of their ability to provide a relatively safe and robust social environment.  This environment nurtures a community in which people can enjoy many of the things we consider important components of a desirable lifestyle.  Things like clean stores that sell a variety of healthy items, restaurants that aren't just fast-food outlets, schools where students can learn in physically safe environments, and homes that meet and exceed all building codes.

Of course, gentrification occurs where there has recently been a decay in these desirable lifestyle standards.  By contrast, gentrification doesn't happen in neighborhoods that have always been wealthy or socially stable.  Just because a luxury home experiences a rapid rise in its value doesn't mean that gentrification is happening.  However, gentrification in neighborhoods near traditionally affluent ones can drive up prices in long-desirable neighborhoods, further expanding the economic benefits of urban revitalization.

America's Post-War Urban Experience

It's the neighborhoods that experienced white flight after World War II that are the most obvious candidates for gentrification.  Today, in neighborhoods that were initially built for whites, but are now owned or rented by minorities, housing costs are typically the lowest in the city.

By the way, very few cities - particularly in the North - have neighborhoods that were built for blacks.  There are cities in the South that have traditionally been neighborhoods where blacks have lived, but their housing stock has never been considered as desirable as the better-built housing for whites.  Many black neighborhoods in the South had to struggle for the same water and sanitation systems that cities were expected to construct and maintain in whiter neighborhoods.

Yet although racism has played a role in urban blight, a blight which is now being rehabilitated with gentrification, other factors were at play in post-war America that laid the groundwork for today's gentrification.

And please be forewarned:  while an overview of a topic like gentrification can seem overly-dependent on simplifications and generalizations, be aware that to almost every facet of gentrification, there are exceptions depending on the city, the state, and the part of the country where gentrification is taking place. 

Nevertheless, it's a proven fact that across America, many whites moved out of inner cities during the 1950's through the 1980's because suburbanization was considered more desirable than city life.  For one thing, young post-war parents didn't want to raise their children in the same cramped, congested, dirty cities in which they themselves had grown up.  And developers were happy to oblige, buying up farmland and building sprawling new subdivisions with relatively roomy houses and big yards.  American industry was also happy to oblige, offering even more automobiles so suburbanites could put even more miles between their families and the big, bad cities.

Indeed, cities have historically been places of noise, congestion, and filth, where privacy was rare, congestion was commonplace, sanitation was dubious, illnesses could spread quickly, and corruption was rampant.  It's easy for us today to forget how attractive suburbia was when it was invented. 

Unfortunately, another reason suburbanization was considered more desirable rested in the fact that blacks were disproportionately moving into inner cities, making city whites uncomfortable.  Ever since the end of the Civil War, during America's booming Industrial Age, blacks had been migrating to big northern cities in search of work.  And if blacks weren't going north, they were moving from the South's old plantations to southern cities, where work was more abundant. 

For decades, before World War II, there was deep segregation between the races in virtually all American cities.  Because of a variety of factors, including racial prejudice in the job market and in public schools, a significant number of African-Americans were never able to latch onto the rising economic tide that was lifting white boats across American society.  Although big cities have always struggled with poverty, especially among ethnic whites (Irish, Poles, etc.), it was just as noticeable when blacks began populating public housing as when more affluent blacks began moving into formerly white middle-class neighborhoods.  The specter of black crime became something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, especially when poverty rates among blacks began to increase as factories began moving out of their old, outdated urban facilities... and to the suburbs, where their white employees were already moving anyway.

Back in the cities, remaining whites were growing increasingly restless, as property values began to plummet on their block, the more black families moved in.  Banks started redlining entire neighborhoods in racist attempts to preserve housing values so white mortgage-holders wouldn't become "upside-down" in what they owed banks.  Rising crime rates occurred at a suspiciously similar time to what whites saw as a black infiltration into their neighborhoods, and for many whites, it sure seemed like all the street thugs were black.  Of course, as urban black populations grew, and white populations declined, more blacks were being arrested.  Criminologists debate whether that was because so many more blacks were criminals, or whether there were so fewer white criminals, thanks to suburbanization.  It's like a "which came first" game.  But when it comes to urban blight, whites decided that that last one out of the old neighborhood was the rotten egg.

So they kept leaving.

The Tide Turned

This went on unabated across North America until sometime during mid-1990's, when Generation X began to wonder if their parents, the so-called "Greatest Generation," the people who'd left the inner cities decades ago, hadn't given urban America enough of a chance.

You see, to the extent that suburbanization was a trend, we all know what happens to trends:  they change!  And although there's little scientific proof, it's surely no coincidence that after the phenomenal popularity of Gen-X-era television sitcoms set in cities, such as "Seinfeld," "Friends," and even "Cosby Show," a new generation of young people began to rediscover city life.  It looked so cool, so fun, so convenient - everything suburban America no longer was.  The old architecture was intriguing again, as urban buildings suddenly seemed to have more character than the shoddily-built suburban stuff.  So what if cities were noisier than the 'burbs?  America's newest trend-setters were young, and they liked noise.  Suddenly, the bohemian asymmetry that many poorly-maintained urban streetscapes now boasted, after years of make-do budgets and little new construction in financially-stressed cities, was hip, not horrible.

And there it was.  Suburbs had lost their trendy edge.  They were no longer fashionable.  All at once, it seemed, everybody realized they could tell how easy it is to quickly identify when a tract house had been built - simply from looking at its facade.  Suburbs had also lost their ability to fascinate, since by now, suburban life was so ubiquitously American.  And convenience was a rapidly disappearing feature of suburbia, since you needed a car to get anyplace, and traffic congestion was always increasing.

Suddenly, living within blocks of one's work, and hip restaurants, and museums, and not always needing to drive to all of those places - it was like a whole new world was opening up to young people eager to leave their parents' lifestyle behind.  So they did. 

Of course, by now, most inner-city school districts had gotten so bad, that many Gen-X'ers still decided to decamp back to the 'burbs when their own progeny hit the pre-K stage.

But the suburbanization trend had definitely been reversed.  Sure, some hard-core suburbanites continued to press outward, past the older ring of dated suburbs, to the exurbs, even further away from the city.  But America's return to its cities, which were now seen as desirable places to live and work, has been a surprising and welcome change for many long-beleaguered city halls.

Property values have risen in old cities, banks are now lending and offering market-rate mortgages in some admittedly decrepit neighborhoods.  Indeed, if there are red lines today, they're around neighborhoods bankers see as ripe for redevelopment opportunities.  Builders are constructing new apartment complexes and office buildings on previously discarded or under-utilized land, and new mass transit projects are trying to help new urbanites secure as much of that walkability factor as possible.

This all means that cities are collecting more in taxes, "brownfield" land has been re-purposed, crime rates are lower, and even if some suburbanites still don't want to live downtown, they're now far more willing to go there for pricey dinners and entertainment options.

_____

Next Up:  Cities Were Never Abandoned
Only white people have considered cities to have been abandoned.  But that's because it's been mostly whites who abandoned urban America (to be continued...)



No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for your feedback!

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.