Over the course of our research project, we found strong evidence for a correlation between gentrifying neighborhoods and trendy restaurants. Broadly speaking, gentrification taking place in North Portland exemplifies the displacement of long-term residents (commonly minority populations), through improving developmental practices in pre-existing urban social spaces. Trendy restaurants in gentrified neighborhoods function as cultural amenities that further encourage new housing patterns. In doing so, these “hip” restaurant spaces operate as promotional aesthetic spheres seeking to cultivate new social populations.
As a means of operationalizing these new commercial aesthetics, a mixed-methods approach was implemented comprised of GIS mapping, academic literature analysis, field investigation, and a narrative analysis of trendy restaurant profiles. Results pertaining to these approaches illustrates an increase in targeted minority communities for economic development. These targeted minority neighborhoods undergo a process in which long-standing cultural aesthetics are replaced with new symbols aimed at higher economic populations. This act of renewal consciously restructures social spaces as illustrated by our field investigation and narrative analysis.
Future research pertaining to this subject could tackle the central causal and sequential questions about gentrification and restaurants—do trendy restaurants cause gentrification? or do they merely reflect existing gentrification? In our view, it is very likely that both forces are at work, but evaluating the causality is an important next step in this research. Though our research project did attempt to examine the relationship between Northeast Portland neighborhoods and trendy restaurants, we had insufficient time and information to systematically investigate the causality of these relationships; doing so would require fine-grained information about restaurant founding dates, housing prices, investment, and demographics, likely on a block-by-block and year-by-year basis.