Over the past week, I read and annotated 10 new sources on my topic, viewable in the sidebar at the right. I used Davidson and Lees (2005), Smith (1996), Newman and Wyly (2006), Smith and Williams (1086), and Wyly and Hammel (1999) as my foundational sources, after finding those sources continually cited in the backgrounds to gentrification sections of papers. Few articles directly and primarily addressing transit in conjunction with gentrification may really be considered foundational (it seems to be a topic that’s attracted significant interest only in this millennium), though there were a number of recent articles examining transit-induced gentrification and the links between transit-oriented development and gentrification.
I’ve come to view the notion of a split between “consumption-side” and “production-side” theories of gentrification—supposedly typified by the gentrification debate between Neil Smith and David Ley—as practically non-existent in the original texts of the two scholars, appearing a matter of relative emphasis than absolute assertion. The far more fundamental disagreement stands in the conception of what the elasticity of gentrification as a concept should be—whether to stand by Ruth Glass’s (1964) formulation of gentrification as the extensive rehabilitation/renovation of residential structures in working-class neighborhoods by the upper- and upper-middle class, to see it as defined by broader class-upgrading of working class spaces, or, to broaden the concept even further, to include the reconstruction of urban space for the upper class with its implicit class-based exclusion. This issue is discussed at length by Davidson and Lees (2005), who settle on describing new-build gentrification in London as, in fact, gentrification, while noting the potential difficulties associated with definitionally over-saturating the concept.
Personally, I come down rather firmly in the latter camp. In the two cities with which I’m most familiar, Seattle and Portland, extensive renovations of dilapidated/abandoned housing are relatively rare, owing to their historical contexts. The two cities have never possessed the vast disinvested brownstone ghettos of east coast or midwest cities, yet they have also seen a dramatic reconstruction of space near the urban core. Gentrification is instead typified by generalized increased prices, radiating out from the core, alongside the proliferation of townhomes, 5-0ver-1 mixed use apartments, and highrises where they are permitted by planning. “Sweat equity” plays only a peripheral aspect of change in these cities in which gentrification and housing affordability are among the top issues under consideration by the city council and local news coverage.
Another primary issue arising from the literature is the matter of the link between displacement and gentrification. Early papers on gentrification assumed displacement to be a core and necessary aspect of gentrification. Though displacement is a salient issue, it comes with complicating empirical factors as discussed by Newman and Wyly (2006). Several influential papers were published in the early aughts that cast doubt on this link, supposedly finding evidence that poor households actually move out of gentrifying/gentrified neighborhoods at lower rates than non-gentrifying neighborhoods. Newman and Wyly discuss the methodological problems associated with these papers—namely a biased comparison/non-gentrifying control group, a lack of attention to the specific timing of gentrification/displacement, and the limitations of the data source used (the NYC HVS doesn’t measure those who are displaced from the city entirely or households which double up). A larger problem, however, may be in these papers’ consideration of their estimated 10,000 people displaced by gentrification per year as insignificant and in how they have been seized upon to naturalize metropolitan restructuring. Though such debates may seem rather esoteric, they have some rather important implications for the interpretation of gentrification and revitalization. By casting brownfield development as some sort of class-neutral revitalization, and by downplaying the problem of displacement, the central problem of who our cities are created and marketed for with redevelopment is silenced.
These issues present a particular contradiction when examined alongside transit. Much of the empirical literature consists of neoclassical urban economics articles examining an increase in land value around transit as a social benefit—an indication that people are willing to pay more for transit access. The idea of locational indifference is central to this conception of cities. Displacement is erased from view here, as is the increasingly salient fear of the “social Manhattanization” of entire cities. Moore (2015) directly addresses transit-induced gentrification in Bangkok, where the expansion of the Skytrain has led to massive condo developments and the social cleavage of an area. He leaves aside the issue of systematically empirically demonstrating the effects of the Skytrain across the metropolitan area, which would elucidate the extent and possible limits to the relationship.
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