Gentrification

The Gentrification Process

Gentrification typically occurs in settings where housing property is privately owned and sold on a free market (that is, without price controls imposed by anyone but buyer and seller), which describes most municipalities in capitalist societies. The process begins when a middle-class individual, couple, or family decides to find affordable housing in a low-income neighborhood. Although this promises a bargain, it is nevertheless an unusual choice. Historically, Americans have moved away from working-class and poor neighborhoods as soon as their economic situation allowed them to do so. In the suburbs, for example, they have found more spacious housing, neighborhoods and schools with fewer poor people, and jobs and shopping to maintain their middle-class lifestyles. This exodus of residents and business from central cities has made urban housing relatively inexpensive compared with outlying suburbs; it has also left poor people, immigrants, and (in a racially discriminatory society) people of color in central cities. Consequences such as the urban concentration of poverty and people of color and the deterioration of urban schools, physical infrastructure, and neighborhood safety have reinforced middle-class preferences for suburban housing.

However, at least three overlapping groups of middleclass residents are likely to seek housing in low-income neighborhoods, and they are the first wave of gentrifiers (sometimes called “urban pioneers”). First, bohemians, radicals, artists, gays and lesbians, and college students have long lived in cities because of their personal choices of lifestyles or for political reasons. Many of them can afford to live only in low-income neighborhoods, yet their frequently middle-class backgrounds suggest that some element of personal choice lies behind their economic situations.

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