Gentrification: A Tangled Web of Cause and Effect

Gentrification is a process by which marginal urban neighborhoods are rehabilitated and revitalized by incoming middle- and upper-class residents. Gentrification proceeds in stages and involves a complex web of causes and factors. Largely monolithic supply- vs. demand-side arguments have presided over the tory of theoretical sociological discourse about gentrification, but a growing body of work in the field portrays the intricate interplay between supply- and demand-side behavior. Capital investment, cultural reproduction, status, as well as class conflict and other hazards such as residential displacement are examined in the case of the Village-Northton neighborhood, drawing on a fourteen-year ethnography of an inner-city Philadelphia community of the 1970s and 1980s.

Keywords Central Business District (CBD); City Planning; Community Development; Cultural Capital; Decentralization; Demand-side Analysis; Displacement; Economic Capital; Industrialization; Land Use Theory; Marginalization; Middle Class; Social Capital; Social Reproduction; Status; Supply-side Analysis; Urban Morphology

Gentrification: A Tangled Web of Cause & Effect

Overview

British sociologist Ruth Glass (1964) first coined the term gentrification to describe "the residential movement of middle-class people into low-income areas of London" (Zukin, 1987, p. 131). The concept of gentrification does not characterize singular events in which middle-income households choose to relocate to lower-income neighborhoods. When this process unfolds in collective action, however, and when it results in the spatial, social, economic, and cultural conversion of a neighborhood from a depressed and marginal area into a middle-class ecology with renovated homes, increased property values and service sector activity, this conversion is called gentrification (Zukin, 1987).

The gentrification process is generally recognized to occur in waves (Ley, 1996; Rose, 1984; Smith & Graves, 2005). Marginal gentrifiers are the first on the scene. Typically, this first wave is comprised of artists, childless couples, single parents and others who are looking for novel and/or affordable housing options within close range to the city- pioneering people who invest sweat equity into their homes, raising their property values and attracting a rising tide of interest in the area by other speculators, both large and small ("Gentrification," 2022; Ley, 1996; Rose, 1984). Second and third waves of middle-class and affluent gentrifiers wash over the area, raising property values higher, "successively upgrading the neighborhood's aesthetic, class and property value position" (Smith & Graves, 2005, p. 404), often at the ultimate exclusion of the marginal gentrifiers who "braved" the area first.

Urban Morphology & the Problem of Gentrification

One thing is for sure: cities change. As industry and occupational choice evolve over time (from agricultural, to industrial, to service-based, to information-based, and so on), we can expect the character of our cities to evolve accordingly. This happens in many ways—physically, in the demolition of factories and subsequent erection of high-rise office buildings; or demographically, in the influx of sector professionals seeking access to city housing. Certainly, with the pervasive presence of globalization and the deepening of the information age, we can expect that the very nature of our cities will continue to undergo dramatic changes reflective of evolving economic restructuring. Residential overturn that results from this "macro" or long-term industrial change is referred to as residential replacement (Newman & Wyly, 2006), which is regarded as an inevitable phenomenon.

To be sure, gentrification takes place in the context of these "macro" changes in industrial history. Properties and neighborhoods in which gentrifiers eventually settle would be neither as affordable nor as attractive were it not for the rise and fall of the postindustrial city. When capital flows away from one area (e.g., a once-thriving central business district) and towards another (e.g., the suburban front), the first area declines in value (Smith, 1996; Zukin, 1987). The wedge between actual and potential value encourages reinvestment of capital pursuant to commercial and individual interests (Smith, 1996) and the seeds of gentrification are sown.

Alongside its perceived benefits-urban revitalization, increased property values and tax revenue, historic preservation, and the attraction of service economy-gentrification also produces very harmful effects. The residential overturn resulting from gentrification is more acute than the residential replacement that arises from industrial and economic evolution. Gentrification targets specific neighborhoods, pushing out existing residents and creating a decreased "ability of low-income residents to move into neighborhoods that once provided ample supplies of affordable living arrangements" (Newman & Wyly, 2006, p. 26). The problem of gentrification is that it causes the systematic displacement of already marginal people, pushing them into greater marginality, instability, and itinerancy.

Gentrification Theory

What drives the gentrification process? For what reason do people seek to gentrify inner cities? Two major theories have constituted much of the academic discourse on the root causes of gentrification: the supply-side interpretation and the demand-side interpretation (Zukin, 1987), which one might also loosely conceptualize as capital investment theory and sociocultural reproduction theory, respectively.

Gentrification by Capital Investment (Supply-Side Interpretation)

When city centers decline, the opportunity arises to re-invest in properties with decreased fair market value. The rent-gap theory explains the lucrative nature of investing in undervalued properties-whose depreciated value will ultimately rise and/or which can be indefinitely subsidized by rental income. This is a sound financial strategy for those with the means for sustaining long-term investments, but at what cost? As Zukin (1987) states:

"In our time, capital expansion has no new territory left to explore, so it redevelops, or internally differentiates, urban space. Just as the frontier thesis in US history legitimized an economic push through "uncivilized" lands, so the urban frontier thesis legitimizes the corporate reclamation of the inner-city from racial ghettos and marginal business uses" (p. 141).

This is a very Marxian interpretation—that an underlying economic restructuring creates the conditions out of which all subsequent gentrifying choices, decisions and preferences are intoned (Zukin, 1987). In this view, gentrification is seen to fit into the model of production and consumption, where the opportunities to "consume" property, goods, and services as gentrifiers—and the very existence of the role of gentrifier—are the result of production strategies intended to benefit the interests of capital expansion.

Gentrification by Individuals or Collective Action (Demand Side Interpretation)

Economists, sociologists, and urban planners have all contributed to the discourse about residential location theory (RLT)—which tries to identify and explain patterns in people's preference and decision-making regarding dwelling location. The market approach to RLT contends that the selection of housing location functions largely on what the market will bear and can be articulated along an axis, with travel cost on one end and housing cost on the other (Phe & Wakely, 2000). According to Phe and Wakely, "It basically states that, given an opportunity, a perfect mobile household would move to a plot where it can satisfy its spatial requirements while paying acceptable transport costs" (p. 7). The choice of gentrifiers—often comprised of very mobile families-confounds this theory with spatial requirements that are unconventional by comparison to these standards, and with gentrifiers' motivation by factors such as historic preservation (Zukin, 1987).

The demand-side approach interprets gentrification as a social or cultural creation. Zukin (1987) affirms that:

"Culturally validated neighborhoods automatically provide new middle classes with the collective identity and social credentials for which they strive (cf Logan & Molotch, 1987). The ideology of gentrification legitimizes their social reproduction, often despite the claims of an existing population" (p. 143).

Phe and Wakely (2000) examine the role of social status in the decision-making process regarding residential location. In societies with stratified class structure, the selection of housing is one means by which people express power in the form of economic capital, social capital, and cultural capital. In this way, the selection of housing identifies us with a particular group, thereby differentiating ourselves from other groups.

In this demand-side interpretation, we observe how gentrifiers choose to gentrify based partly on a "historically, culturally conditioned perception of the significance of place" (Phe & Wakely, 2000, p. 10; Bachelard, 1995; Tuan, 1961). Phe and Wakely (2000) remind us that dwelling places are more than just the sum of their physical properties. This is something that anthropologists and philosophers have seen throughout the ages-that people at different times and civilizations have selected housing based on the meaning culturally ascribed to it.

Gentrifiers are attracted not only to the "bricks-and-mortar" architectural beauty of older homes in inner-city areas, but they are also drawn in by the cultural and historical significance of place-and by their desire to restore these kinds of homes and places to a version of their former glory. Through this process of identifying and rehabilitating homes and neighborhoods, gentrifiers express their taste level, their vision, or aesthetic sense-all expressions of what might be considered cultural capital. Like economic capital, cultural capital begets purchasing power and attracts investment. In fact, often in metropolitan settings, status can be attained by expression of taste as much as by ownership of property or materials (Webber, 2007). Middle-class gentrifiers reproduce or mimic the behaviors and preferences of the more affluent, thus constituting "quasi-bourgeois social reproduction by people who are not really rich" (Zukin, 1987, p. 144).

Economic and cultural capital are interwoven with social capital, the "buying power" one possesses by virtue of who one is associated with or by virtue of what people, groups, or resources one can access or mobilize towards a goal or objective-like gentrifying a neighborhood, for instance. The more social capital one has, the more access to resources one might actualize, including architectural, construction, civic, banking, and other resources that are important in the rehabilitation or revitalization of inner-city neighborhoods.

Blended & Alternative Theories

Many analyses of gentrification exist outside of the polarizing argument between supply- and demand-side theories. Some blend the two together, some layer in other factors as we will briefly touch upon here.

Blending supply-side and demand-side factors. Lees (1994) offers a broader conceptualization of gentrification emphasizing the interplay between supply- and demand-side interpretations (Smith & Graves, 2005). Zukin (1987) examines gentrification as a "multidimensional cultural practice that is rooted on both sides of the methodological schisms" (p. 143), postulating that perhaps "in the long run, economic institutions establish the conditions to which gentrifiers respond" (p. 144). Further, Zukin indicates:

"Affluent gentrifiers' cultural appropriations do not lack economic rationality. Cultural validation helps valorize their housing investment, and activism on behalf of historic property eases the transition, for some of them, into semiprofessional and part-time real estate development" (1987, p. 143).

Many sociologists have come to recognize the dynamic interplay between individual, institutional, economic, and sociocultural forces acting in the gentrification process. Smith and Graves (2005) affirm that:

"The production of gentrifiers suggests that structural changes in both the economy and wider society have given rise to a group of individuals who gentrify as an expression of their socioeconomic standing and evolving class identity. These individuals also engage in gentrification as a coping mechanism, which allows for the juggling of work and domestic duties or provides a spatial milieu in which alternative lifestyles will more readily be accepted " (cf Hamnett 1991, Karsten 2003, Ley 1996 and 2003, Mills, 1988, and 1993, Rose, 1984) (p. 405).

Government-sponsored gentrification. States and local governments have been found to be exercising greater agency in the gentrification of inner-city neighborhoods (Smith & Graves, 2005), likely for the benefit of generating sustainable tax revenue streams. In the US, the post-recessionary 1990s witnessed a growing alliance between the state and the wealthy. The fiscal responsibility for America's cities, once seated at the federal level, now belonged to the state, which created government-sponsored programs in partnership with business and the elite towards the "revitalization" of urban centers that had been in decline, and which had been underperforming in terms of tax generation. What is clear about this revitalization, however, is that its vision is rarely inclusive and magnanimous to the degree that it revitalizes for the benefit of all resident individuals and groups. As the government continued to provide tax benefits to corporations in an effort to increase corporate investments, create jobs, and stimulate the economy is cities across the US, experts noted that these efforts benefited some residents much more than others, as the benefits fail to flow equally. In an interview in 2022, Franklin Qian noted that government-sponsored gentrification efforts inevitably create winners and losers ("The role of high-tech," 2022).

"Corporatization" of gentrification. Twenty-first century analyses have also illustrated the role individual corporations can play in the gentrification of city neighborhoods. Smith and Graves (2005) reveal a phenomenon unfolding in Charlotte, North Carolina, wherein the Bank of America is the party responsible for the gentrification of the city's Fourth Ward-a neighborhood that once thrived in the late nineteenth century, which has witnessed decline from the onset of suburbanization through the 1970s. Through lending agreements, marketing plans and physical revitalization strategies (including moving attractive Victorian dwellings from other parts of Charlotte to the now-dilapidated Fourth Ward), the Bank of America sought to "transform the city's image and neighborhood spaces in a manner that would attract and retain globally mobile labor necessary to meet its expansionary corporate goals" (Smith & Graves, 2005). Interestingly, while the Bank of America created original provisions and subsidies for original occupants wishing to stay in the Fourth Ward, the gentrification brought prosperity and attracted affluent re-locators to such a degree that these provisions were later renegotiated-once-reserved lower-income housing was purchased and renovated to make way for the enlargement of gentrifying interests.

These dueling views of gentrification continued in the twenty-first century. Some scholars noted the concept was fundamentally based in capitalism, with capitalists continually seeking to "find and close the rent gaps to facilitate capital accumulation." Opposing views posit defining the theory in this way is simply too narrow and fails to recognize the violent forms of displacement that gentrification tends to take around the world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South America. The various views of gentrification indicate the evolution the term has undergone over time and its changed meaning across cultures (Verlaan & Hochstenbach, 2022).

Applications

The Village-Northton Case

In his book Streetwise: Race, Class and Change in an Urban Community, Elijah Anderson (1990) beautifully represents the complexity of social, cultural, spatial, and economic interaction between social groups living in a long-term gentrifying neighborhood he calls Village-Northton, a pseudonym for a Philadelphia neighborhood comprised of two parts: a gentrifying middle-class section (the Village) and a poor, Black section (Northton). Anderson conducted a fourteen-year ethnography of this community.

The Village

Before the onset of gentrification, the Village was one of the "most socially diverse and tolerant areas" (Anderson, 1990, p. 158) of the city, boasting a truly ethnically heterogeneous population including descendants of original Quaker inhabitants and ethnic immigrants who settled in the area to take advantage of the manufacturing boom of the early-to-mid 20th century, as well as a strong presence of a countercultural element, which established itself around the time of the Vietnam War and its related protests.

Gentrification (by predominantly middle- to upper-middle-class White professionals working in the service sector or academia) is homogenizing the Village, though most of the gentrifiers are attracted to residing in the Village because of its history of rather successful heterogeneity. Anderson reports:

"[When] well-to-do Whites move in, they form a new cultural group whose social status attracts others like them and makes the area even more desirable…the emerging neighborhood is valued largely to the extent that it is shown to be separate from low-income Black communities…as newcomers move in they in effect invest themselves, infusing a certain aura that can be transformed into market value when they sell their property" (p. 26).

Cultural Capital

Here Anderson refers to the power of social and cultural capital-when gentrifiers "in effect invest themselves" thereby transforming the perceived and market value of a once dilapidated building in a once depressed neighborhood.

They thus bargain in part with class status and culture. When they sell, they sell their informal share in the community that they have had a hand in shaping through their residence. The scarcity of these areas increases the cost of such property, while the actual and anticipated increase of individual purchases and of real estate activity helps set their general market value (Anderson, 1990, p. 27).

It is at this threshold in the trajectory of gentrification where lower-income people are in effect excluded from existing and further claim on the neighborhood undergoing change. In the case of the Village, as it became more desirable as a dwelling place for middle-class professionals and academics, old-timers and persons of diminished financial means were pushed out because of increasing costs of living-often into Northton or other areas.

The "buying power" of cultural capital is explicitly portrayed in the Village-Northton case:

"Part of what fuels the invasion of middle- and upper-income people is the antique nature of the dwellings they seek to own and inhabit….[the value of which is often unrealized] until such persons "discover" them, apply "spit and polish," and purchase "old things" to re-create a vintage style" (Anderson, 1990, p. 28).

As suggested by theoretical examination earlier in this paper, the "antique factor" becomes much more operative in the hands of middle-class gentrifiers because of the widely regarded perception of this group's cultural capital, including knowledge of the market, confidence in aesthetic discernment, etc.

Northton

Considered to be a predominantly Black neighborhood, Northton is a community whose socioeconomic status has been in a state of decline since the days of manufacturing. Heads-of-households who once had the means to accumulate property (e.g., through sustainable factory jobs) have passed on, in some cases leaving property to kin who are living in an economic context far less dependent on manufacturing, and who are struggling to maintain the housing. Northton residents are predominantly poor, many households managed by single mothers, many on welfare. Blight has overtaken much of Northton.

At the time of his ethnography, Anderson (1990) speculates about the future of Northton. Respondents from Northton wonder "whether [gentrifying] social conditions in the Village have made them into racists of a sort"-talking about the "criminal element" that has taken root at what both Village and Northton residents refer to as "the edge" between the two neighborhoods. Old residents have become as concerned as newcomers about the crime and violence potential of local black youths" (p. 149).

Anderson and Village-Northton residents can foretell the impending "march" of the Village into Northton territory:

"[These kinds of] changes in this community seem beyond the control of the residents because of the structural component involving the social economics of gentrification. As housing values increase, as long-vacant and boarded-up buildings are renovated, as service institutions on the periphery emerge and expand, and as investors and speculators take advantage of these developments, the area promises to become increasingly middle to upper income and predominantly White" (p. 149).

White middle-class gentrifying pioneers populate the periphery of the Village with greater frequency and in increasing density. When these property values rise as anticipated (and hoped), the frontier to be "discovered" and claimed by Village-seeking newcomers looking for deals is pushed further into Northton territory. At the time of Anderson's writing, the condition of real estate at the edge has some Northton residents very concerned:

"At present some of the dilapidated buildings of Northton near the boundary of the Village are boarded up …the overflow of pioneers may reach the Black community of Northton, influencing real estate values and thus extending by accretion the edges of the relatively prestigious Village. The more the community becomes consolidated both physically and socially, the more the edge will be extended-probably in time renaming parts of Northton 'the Village'" (p. 158).

Discourse

As is evident in the theoretical examinations of gentrification-as well as the practical manifestations of the phenomenon-the process of gentrification involves a complex web of agents, factors, and causes, from microscopic in scale to macroscopic.

A supply-side interpretation insists that gentrification is predicated upon capital investment. As flows money and capital interests, so flows individual and group behaviors regarding economic and material choices such as housing and so on. And while this is a compelling argument, its major shortcoming is in its diminishment of the role played by individual preferences and taste-and collective action of groups of individuals-in the creation of a preferred sense of housing. In practical application, analysis may reveal that capital interest in gentrification begets the social reproduction behaviors and preferences of gentrifiers. On the other hand, it may be discovered that socially reproductive behavior brings the attention of capital interests.

Whatever its causes may be, its effects are equally varied. Gentrification revitalizes depressed neighborhoods and brings them back to a degree of former glory, it stimulates economic growth within and at the periphery of the area, it champions historic preservation of buildings and communities, it raises property values and often generates increased and sustainable tax revenue to benefit local government initiatives.

The downside is that gentrification proceeds according to the interests and power of the middle- and upper-class residents who seek to claim and shape the space according to their cultural norms, social preferences, and desired economic gain. Too often, the result is the displacement of lower income residents, as well as diminishment of the community history associated with the displaced. The neighborhood's heterogeneity, which initially attracts many gentrifiers' attention, is often homogenized by successive waves of gentrification. In neighborhoods whose overturned residents are largely of minority populations, gentrification is seen as a subtle and not-so-subtle form of racism. And even without race factoring in, at the very least gentrification is an overt act of classism.

One might question why pre-gentrification residents are not more successful in their revitalization attempts. It is not as though they have not been trying. The problem is in how social and cultural (and even economic) capital is perceived. These are generally appraised by the culture of power (Delpit, 1995), the cultural group from which standards and expectations about behavior, consumption and communication are derived. Delpit (1995), in her work on inequity in schools, contends that power is attained by those who meet or effectively assimilate to meet these existing standards and expectations.

As society moves into a global and e-commuter society, how will this culture of power evolve, and how might this play out in the phenomenon of gentrification? What will the information age hold for the housing market and for the factors associated with residential location choices? What factors will predicate behavior and preference then? And, in the meantime, what interventions can be developed and sustained to ensure all residents in a gentrifying community—preexisting, new and incoming—can benefit equally from the neighborhood's revitalization?

Terms & Concepts

Central Business District (CBD): The commercial center of a city (downtown).

Cultural Capital: Knowledge and discernment accumulated through socialization and life experience, which bestows authority and/or status.

Demand-side Analysis: In sociology, the practice of examining behavior, events, and other phenomena in relation to the agency and preference of consumers or consumption groups.

Displacement: The driving out of existing residents resulting from residential relocation strategies such as gentrification or colonization.

Economic Capital: Command over economic resources (cash, assets), the amount of wealth a person controls or is capable of controlling.

Land Use Theory: A collection of hypotheses regarding, to whom and for what purpose or benefit land is allocated.

Marginalization: The effective exclusion from meaningful participation in society, in part because they is unable to participate in the labor market. It can be individual, communal, political, or global and often results in material deprivation.

Social Capital: Interconnectedness or identification with operative social networks, which bestows status, and improves facility in mobilizing people and resources.

Social Reproduction: The process of preserving and transferring social norms and position from generation to generation.

Status: The honor attached to one's position in society. It may be achieved and/or ascribed/inherited.

Supply-side Analysis: In sociology, the practice of examining behavior, events, and other phenomena in relation to capital interests and production.

Urban Morphology: The study of the physical form of a city and how it changes over time, includes patterns of land use (residential, commercial, industrial, etc.).

Bibliography

Anderson, E. (1990). Streetwise: Race, class, and change in an urban community. The University of Chicago Press.

Delpit, L. (1995). Other people's children: Cultural conflicts in the classroom. The New Press.

Douglas, G. C. (2012). The Edge of the Island: Cultural Ideology and Neighbourhood Identity at the Gentrification Frontier. Urban Studies, 49, 3579-3594. Retrieved October 28, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=83731316

Glass, R. (1964). Introduction. In London: Aspects of change, ed. Centre for Urban Studies, pp. xiii-xlii. MacGibbon and Kee.

Gentrification. National Geographic Society. (2022, May 20). Retrieved June 20, 2023, from https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/gentrification

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Phe, H. H. & Wakely, P. (2000). Status, quality and the other trade-off: Towards a new theory of urban residential location. Urban Studies, 37, 7-35. Retrieved April 29, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database, SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=2705350&site=ehost-live

Rose, D. (1984). Rethinking gentrification: Beyond the uneven development of Marxist urban theory. Society and Space, 2(1), 47-74. doi.org/10.1068/d020047

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Smith, N. (1996). The new urban frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist city. Routledge.

The role of high-tech firms in driving gentrification. Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. (2022, February 23). Retrieved June 29, 2023, from https://kenaninstitute.unc.edu/kenan-insight/the-role-of-high-tech-firms-in-driving-gentrification

Verlaan, T., & Hochstenbach, C. (2022). Gentrification through the ages. City: Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action, 26(2–3), 439–449. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2022.2058820

Webber, R. (2007) The metropolitan habitus: Its manifestations, locations, and consumption profiles. Environment and planning A, 39(1), 182-207. https://doi.org/10.1068/a3847

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Suggested Reading

Bourdieu, P. (2015). Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Cimino, R. (2011). Neighborhoods, niches, and networks: The religious ecology of gentrification. City & Community, 10, 157–181. Retrieved October 28, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=60911014

Freeman, L. (2011). There goes the hood: Views of gentrification from the ground up. Temple University Press.

Lees L., Slater T., and Wyly E. (2013). Gentrification. Taylor and Francis.

Pearsall, H. (2013). Superfund me: A study of resistance to gentrification in New York City. Urban Studies, 50, 2293–2310. Retrieved October 28, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=89242625