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Amory Jones
Pre-English 9
Dominika Szybisty
30 July 2017

The Prosecution of Gentrification

As a young girl living in Baltimore County, my family and I would go into the city a lot.

As we drove through the city I would become mesmerized by the details and designs of all the

different houses, office buildings, and overall structures. Looking at these buildings made me

think about how amazing it is that someone thought of that building design in their mind and

now it is real. These trips into the city sparked my passion for architecture. In architecture, there

can be a lot of restorative projects but also gentrification projects. Gentrification is Common in

urban areas that have lower class neighborhoods near central business districts. They turn the

homes or abandoned buildings of these neighborhoods into huge office buildings or luxury

apartments for middle to upper-class people. In many cases such as Boston, San Francisco, New

York, and Washington, D.C. gentrification has helped better these cities through a decrease of

crime, economic increase, and creating diversity. In these same cities, gentrification has also

caused a lot of harm such as displacement, an increase of homelessness, increasing overall

prices, and the uproar of racial ignorance. By exposing both the positives and the negatives of

gentrification the question is, what, if any improvements does gentrification bring to major

cities?

The process of gentrification is quite complex. The first step in the gentrification process

is a small group of people who buy and renovate houses find a home or two in an urban area.

Since they are only looking for one or two these are usually vacant homes. From here the design

professionals and artist take over and renovate the home(s). The second step is to put it on the
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market. They usually sell or rent these home people who are slightly above income average the

over people in the area. During these two stages, they use multimedia to get the word out of these

renovations and spark an interest of possible new residents and developers. By there being an

increase in demand for renovated homes in the neighborhoods they increase the price of living in

that neighborhood causing displacement. These newly available homes are then also gentrified.

As the price of the homes goes so does the class of the people and families living there also.

In these areas, there are a lot of people who are against gentrification. In "Gentrification

as Anti-Local Economic Development: The Case of Boston, Massachusetts", the author, James

Jennings from Tufts University talks about how gentrification has negatively impacted not only

the families that live in these communities but also the small businesses that cater to the families

in those neighborhoods. Jennings discusses how these small local businesses dont only provide

for the neighborhood but also employ people from the neighborhood, team up with

organizations, and are a big part of the local economy. (Jennings Page 11.) If the areas being

gentrified take the homes of these employees and customers then what happens to the

businesses? Gentrification is also known for increasing social inequality in neighborhoods.

Gentrification attracts people who can afford to make the investment of moving into these

neighborhoods which are usually middle to upper-middle class people who are predominately

white. In Shaw, D.C. a man named Ernest Peterson, has lived there since 1978. He said he

cannot walk outside of his house without getting questionable looks from the white people who

have lived there for a year. He feels as though he is now an outsider to this neighborhood that he

has been an active part of for almost 40 years. In this article, "Old Confronts New In A

Gentrifying D.C. Neighborhood" by Sam Gringlas they also discuss how landlords have

increased the number of evictions of the poor tenants to speed up the process to gentrification.
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Landlords doing this is causing the increase of displacement while those who stay become

alienated. Some people who moved into gentrified neighborhoods did so to live The Wire as

said in "Derek Hyra and the Trouble With the Trouble With Gentrification". He elaborates by

explaining how a person went into a corner store asking to buy a Colt 45 and a lottery ticket for a

hood party.Events like this show that lower class people are losing their homes so upper-middle

class people can live out what some could considered an ignorant or racist fantasy.

Although many people have problems with gentrification there are also many people who

agree with it. When people hear gentrification they immediately think demolishing old buildings

but in some cases, they restore the exterior and renovate the interior which is keeping the history

of the neighborhood alive. There are also studies that have discovered that in neighborhoods

being gentrified, crime rates have dropped and the overall economy for those cities has

increased. A misconception of gentrification is the idea of white people only living in these new

luxury apartments created. Gentrified communities actually attracts middle-class black families

and some of the lower-class families actually want to stay in their gentrified communities as

motivation to better themselves. Gentrification creates jobs by demolishing, renovating, and

rebuilding buildings. Gentrification creates the need for workers in all aspects of the process.

Gentrification also creates new retail spaces not only help businesses expand but create new

opportunities for those in need of jobs in the cities.

Gentrification can be used to help develop cities economically and by creating safer

communities, but it can also create displacement and make those left in those communities feel

out of place in their own homes. Due to this, the matter should be up to the families who live in

the neighborhoods, the businesses that cater the neighborhood, and the companies gentrifying the

neighborhoods. Gentrification brings up a lot of issues and if approach differently could possibly
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lead to all parties getting what they desire through compromise. So the question truly is what, if

any improvements does gentrification bring to major cities?

Work Cited
Jackelyn Hwang, Robert J.Sampson. "Divergent Pathways of Gentrification ." Vol
79, Issue 4, pp. 726 751, 10.1177/0003122414535774. Accessed 27 July.
2017.
Jennings, James. "Gentrification as Anti-Local Economic Development: The Case of
Boston, Massachusetts," Trotter Review: Vol. 23: Iss. 1, Article 4.
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http://scholarworks.umb.edu/trotter_review/vol23/iss1/4. Accessed 27 July

2017.
Sam Gringlas. "Old Confronts New In A Gentrifying D.C. Neighborhood." NPR. 16
Jan. 2017. http://www.npr.org/2017/01/16/505606317/d-c-s-gentrifying-
neighborhoods-a-careful-mix-of-newcomers-and-old-timers. Accessed 27 July
2017.
Richard Florida. "This Is What Happens After a Neighborhood Gets Gentrified."
CITYLAB. The Atlantic. 16 Sept. 2015.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/this-is-what-happens-
after-a-neighborhood-gets-gentrified/432813/. Accessed 27 July 2017.
Benjamin Freed. "Derek Hyra and the Trouble With the Trouble With Gentrification."
Washingtonian. 28 June 2017.
https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/06/28/derek-hyra-trouble-trouble-
gentrification-cappuccino-city/. Accessed 27 July 2017

Word Count: 990 words