Question: How effective is anti-displacement zoning at promoting city growth and development without displacing low-income populations in New York City?
Background: Gentrification is a controversial topic, not because many people disagree that it is undesirable to displace low-income residents, but because it is typically coincident with new business development, the increasing value of assets in a neighborhood, and a growing tax base. This is the central contradiction of Urban Renewal: the process of improving the economic conditions and standard of living in an area leads to displacing the residents that are already there. This creates a seemingly-paradoxical interest for city planners, developers, and politicians—how to capture the desirability of economic development, without the undesirability of resident displacement.
The process appears to have occurred throughout history, although it was not formally described as a common process of gentrification until recently. The term was coined in 1964, but it did not enter popular use until the 80s, and did not become widespread until the early 2000s. In recent years, politicians have taken up the rhetoric of gentrification in order to gain support from voters who strongly oppose the displacement of longtime residents of changing neighborhoods. These politicians face the task of creating a platform that unifies economic progress with residential livelihood.
In New York City, Anti-Displacement Zoning has been proposed as a potential solution to gentrification. This policy limits development in areas where the risk of displacement is deemed particularly severe. This plan is controversial, however, as it must strike a difficult balance between economic development and limiting population displacement. It is unclear whether this constitutes success in limiting the negative effects of gentrification.
The aim of this project, therefore, is first to define what constitutes success for this policy. There are both benefits and costs to any approach to gentrification, and it is only possible to evaluate them against one another if there are criteria for success. Once this exists, it will be possible to determine what conditions have made this policy more or less successful. From there, it may be possible to create a general-form plan for promoting growth while limiting displacement going forward.
Methodology:
- Examine communities where anti-displacement zoning has been implemented, and what effects it has had.
- Identify other factors in these communities that have contributed to the relative success of anti-displacement zoning.
- Compare anti-displacement zoning to other policies targeted at preventing displacement. What are the relative strengths of each?
References:
Smith, Neil. 1987. “Gentrification and the Rent Gap.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 77 (3): 462–65. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8306.1987.tb00171.x.
Google Ngram Viewer, “Gentrification.” https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=gentrification&year_start=1960&year_end=2007&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cgentrification%3B%2Cc0
Oakland Elects, 2014. [Mayoral] Candidate Question #13. http://oaklandelects.com/om201413schaaf.html
Marcuse, Peter. 1984. “To Control Gentrification: Anti-Displacement Zoning and Planning for Stable Residential Districts.” New York University Review of Law & Social Change 13: 931.