Gentrification

Gentrification and the Economy

Urban scholars debate the causes of gentrification. Some have stressed the preference toward the social life of the city as one factor that drives the process. Cities usually have a variety of cultural, social, ethnic, and racial components in a concentrated local area (i.e., a neighborhood) that is attractive to a particular demographic. This intergenerational, intercultural mixing produces Many outputs, such as museums, art galleries, concerts, libraries, cafes, trendy nightspots, and other cultural institutions that are in short supply in suburban and rural areas. Therefore, when young, urban professionals see an opportunity to move closer to these institutions, they do so in droves.

Other scholars have pointed to job growth as a key indicator or factor leading to gentrification. Young professionals seeking to reverse-commute gentrify neighborhoods so they will be in close proximity to work. Also, Many cities in the 1970s and 1980s offered tax breaks to corporations to reinvest in central city districts. Generally, gentrification has occurred in larger, older cities on the U.S. East Coast, moving westward over time.

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Gentrification begins when a deteriorated and/or partially abandoned neighborhood appeals to housing speculators. Old housing stock is bought, upgraded, and resold at higher prices than originally obtained. During this period, economic revitalization also takes place, and the pace of gentrification and displacement of original residents increases

Still others have pointed to the housing market as the priMary driver of this type of redevelopment. As the United States grew, the inner cities (primarily the economic engines of the late 1800s and early 1900s) declined, and residents moved to the suburbs. During this period, single-room occupancy hotels, multifamily units, apartments, and townhomes were the priMary styles of residence for city dwellers. The growth of the suburbs far outside the city from the early 1900s on, however, changed the economic landscape dramatically. Suburbs provided safety, cheaper single-family housing, land for economic development, and the peace and quiet that cities could not offer. Deindustrialization, or the rapid restructuring of urban economics marked by factories and businesses leaving the inner cities for cheaper rents, increased urban displacement. Once suburbs became the preference of young professionals, city housing stock deteriorated and businesses followed workers to suburbia. This left an abundance of cheap urban housing stock for speculators to renovate.

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