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Gentrification (a.k.a. economic displacement) refers to the process whereby a low-rent neighborhood is transformed into a high-rent neighborhood through redevelopment, usually in conjunction with changing demographics and an influx of wealthier residents. Image File history File links Stop_hand. ...

The term is used most frequently by those critical of this redevelopment, and historical examples (such as the demolition in the 1960s of entire blocks of old brownstones in Harlem to make way for hotels and strip malls) underscore the destruction of violent crime ridden slums for positive commercial gain. The 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969, inclusive. ... View of Harlem from Morningside Heights overlooking Morningside Park Lenox Avenue looking south from the corner of 124th Street. ...

The term is occasionally also used by supporters, who point out that rising prices due to market forces in the inner city serve not only to enrich property owners and boost local tax revenues, but often these same forces can efficiently mitigate problems that plague dense urban areas, such as high crime rates, drugs, gangs, abandoned cars, piles of trash, and boarded-up buildings.

Phenomenon

Sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term in 1964, which she defined using London districts such as Islington as her example: Sociology is the study of the social lives of humans, groups and societies. ... For the Nintendo 64 emulator, see 1964 (Emulator). ... For other uses, see London (disambiguation) and Defining London (below). ... Islington is an inner-city district in north London. ...

One by one, many of the working class quarters of London have been invaded by the middle-classes—upper and lower. Shabby, modest mews and cottages—two rooms up and two down—have been taken over, when their leases have expired, and have become elegant, expensive residences [...]. Once this process of 'gentrification' starts in a district it goes on rapidly until all or most of the original working-class occupiers are displaced and the whole social character of the district is changed.

Gentrification can be a politically contentious issue. It highlights the instability of renting: people might be forced to move away from newly-desirable areas because the landlords increase rents. Usually this conflict is limited to the local level; many who live outside urban areas may not be aware of it. The term working class is used to denote a social class. ... The middle class (or middle classes) comprises a social group once defined by exception as an intermediate social class between the nobility and the peasantry. ... A street of mews houses (Dunworth Mews) in Notting Hill, London, England Mews is a chiefly British term, used in the plural, referring to a certain type of stables with living quarters. ... 19th century Cottages in the small hamlet of Crafton, Buckinghamshire A cottage is a dwelling, typically in a non-urban location (although there are cottage-style dwellings in cities). ... A dwelling is a structure in which humans or other animals live. ... Local government areas called districts are used, or have been used, in several countries. ... The term working class is used to denote a social class. ... // Latin root meaning The term social is derived from the Latin word socius, which as a noun means an associate, ally, companion, business partner or comrade and in the adjectival form socialis refers to a bond between people (such as marriage) or to their collective or connected existence. ... Politics, sometimes defined as the art and science of government. ...

Property owners can also feel the effects of gentrification through increases in property taxes. Property taxes are typically based on a percentage of a property's assessed value. As property values increase in a given neighborhood, municipalities will typically reassess the values of properties within gentrifying communities resulting in higher property taxes for the neighborhood's long-term owners. If the owner cannot afford the tax increases, they are forced to sell (or, if they own a multi-family dwelling, they may pass the increases on to tenants in the form of higher rents). // Property tax is an ad valorem tax that an owner of real estate or other property pays on the value of the thing taxed. ...

Reasons for gentrification

The most simplistic reasons for gentrification may be that post-baby boomer professionals and/or their empty nester parents, having realized the business potential, beauty, and convenience of centralized locales in city centers, re-awaken to the reason they were built in the first place. A river, a lake, important architecture, or some historical significance spurs the draw. Many times choosing to "reclaim" the neighborhood of their youth, the romanticism of the New Urbanist may be more or less socially driven. A baby boomer is someone who was born during the period of increased birth rates when economic prosperity arose in many countries following World War II. In the United States, the term is commonly used to refer to the generation which demographic popularizers have identified with birth years from the... Empty Nest is a television sitcom that ran on NBC for seven seasons from 1988 to 1995. ... Downtown Honolulu in Hawaii, United States, an example of an urban downtown district Central business district (CBD) and downtown are terms referring to the commercial heart of a city. ... The Murray River in Australia. ... A lake is a body of water surrounded by land. ... The Parthenon on top of the Acropolis, Athens, Greece Architecture (from Latin, architectura and ultimately from Greek, αρχιτεκτων, a master builder, from αρχι- chief, leader and τεκτων, builder, carpenter) is the art and science of designing buildings and structures. ... New urbanism is an urban design movement that became very popular beginning in the 1980s and early 1990s. ...

If a depressed urban area has a bustling transportation hub, pedestrian accessibility and social interaction may be considered more desirable than the sprawl of the average suburban community. Meant primarily to discourage "undesirable elements," suburbs have in most cases produced a car-dependent lifestyle (since nothing except other houses are within easy walking distance.) This encourages more energy consumption, social isolationism, and physical inactivity. A pedestrian at the intersection of Alinga Street and Northbourne Avenue, Canberra, Australia Look up Pedestrian on Wiktionary, the free dictionary A pedestrian is a person travelling on foot, whether walking or running. ... Urban sprawl is a term for the expansive, rapid, and sometimes reckless, growth of a greater metropolitan area, traditionally suburbs (or exurbs) over a large area. ... Housing subdivision near Union, Kentucky, a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio. ... Isolationism is a foreign policy which combines a non-interventionist military and political policy with a policy of economic nationalism (protectionism). ...

For the average urban working-class renter, buses and trains are vital to their livelihood. The ideal is different for the urban pioneers, who like the advantage of a car, for longer commutes, but walk or use public transportation when travelling to the closer shops, cafes, and boutiques. This is the case with downtown Chicago, where trains, trolleys, buses, and pedestrian-friendly thoroughfares abound in the vibrant Loop and Greater Loop neighborhoods 24 hours a day, while owned cars can sit safely in private parking garages to be used at leisure. TheBus, established by Mayor Frank Fasi, is Honolulus only public transit system. ... For other uses, see Train (disambiguation). ... Chicago (officially named the City of Chicago) is the third largest city in the United States (after New York City and Los Angeles), with an official population of 2,896,016, as of the 2000 census. ... This article refers to the mass transit vehicle running on rails. ...

A concept that has received much consideration is the idea of globalization and the city’s role in this new economic environment, where urban centers are ranked by their ability to function in a climate where national borders are becoming less and less important. Academics have studied these “global cities,” trying to both characterize them theoretically and empirically. Friedmann, who laid down a hypothetical framework on which to build a study of global cities, used as one of the components to his seven part theory the emergence of a bifurcated service industry in major cites, which is comprised of “on the one hand, a high percentage of professionals specialized in control functions and, on the other, a vast army of low-skilled workers engaged in … personal services … [that] cater to the privileged classes for those whose sake the world city primarily exists” (1986, 322). That the last three components of his theory deals with the increased immigration to fill this demand, the class and spatial polarization that results from this, and the inability of the global city to deal with these rapidly growing “social costs” is no mistake (1986, 323-328). Friedmann places his vision of the global city squarely in a class context, a context that has been expanded on by Sassen and others. This polarization inherent in increasingly global cities can illuminate the theory that concerns itself specifically with the causes of gentrification. Globalization (or globalisation) refers to the worldwide phenomenon of technological, economic, political and cultural exchanges, brought about by modern communication, transportation and legal infrastructure as well as the political choice to consciously open cross-border links in international trade and finance. ... Plato is credited with the inception of academia: the body of knowledge, its development and transmission across generations. ... Friedman is the surname of: Friedman Alexander Alexandrovich Friedman, mathematician and cosmologist Celia S. Friedman, science fiction novelist David Friedman, writer Ignaz Friedman, pianist Jerome Isaac Friedman, Nobel Prize physicist Kinky Friedman, singer Michel Friedman, see German article Milton Friedman, economist Nat Friedman, programmer Perry Friedman, Canadian born Folk Singer... The tertiary sector of industry, also called the service sector or the service industry, is one of the three main industrial categories of a developed economy, the others being the secondary industry (manufacturing and primary goods production such as agriculture), and primary industry (extraction such as mining and fishing). ... Social class refers to the hierarchical distinctions between individuals or groups in societies or cultures. ...

Gentrification cannot be separated from the economic climate in which it occurs. The advent of the new economy, with its phenomenal rise in service sector jobs (both high and low-paying) and its new, more educated and more prosperous middle class, has taken center stage in the gentrification discussion, especially as their jobs move more and more from the suburbs and the outer periphery to the “new urban economic core of banking and service activities that comes to replace the older, typically manufacturing oriented, core” (Sassen 1995, 65). This has changed the city’s very economic scope, with old retailers who resided in this urban core and supplied goods to the traditional, yet now more scarce, blue-collar middle class being “replaced by upmarket boutiques and restaurants catering to new high-income urban elites” (Sassen 1995, 66). Economics (deriving from the Greek words οίκω [okos], house, and νέμω [nemo], rules hence household management) is the social science that studies the allocation of scarce resources to satisfy unlimited wants. ... The New Economy is a term that was coined in late 1990s to describe the evolution of the United States into a high technology-based economy, arising largely from new developments in the Internet, telecommunications and computer sectors. ... The middle class (or middle classes) comprises a social group once defined by exception as an intermediate social class between the nobility and the peasantry. ... For other uses, see Bank (disambiguation). ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... A drawing of a self-service store Retailing consists of the sale of goods/merchandise for personal or household consumption either from a fixed location such as a department store or kiosk, or away from a fixed location and related subordinated services (Definition of the WTO (last page). ... A blue-collar worker is a working class employee who performs manual or technical labor, such as in a factory or in technical maintenance trades, in contrast to a white-collar worker, who does non-manual work generally at a desk. ...

Early explanations of gentrification saw a conflict between production-side and consumption-side arguments. The production-side argument, which is associated primarily with the work of geographer Neil Smith, explains gentrification through economics and the relationships between flows of capital and the production of urban space. Smith argued that low rents on the urban periphery during the two decades after World War II led to a continuous movement of capital toward the development of suburban areas. This caused a 'devaluation' of inner-city capital, resulting in the substantial abandonment of inner-city properties in favour of those in the periphery, and a consequent fall in the price of inner-city land relative to rising land prices in the suburbs. From this, Smith put forth his rent-gap theory, which describes the disparity between "the actual capitalized ground rent (land value) of a plot of land given its present use and the potential ground rent that might be gleaned under a 'higher and better' use" (Smith, 1987b, p. 462). Consumption is the using up of a resource. ... A geographer is a crazy psycho whose area of study is geocrap, the pseudoscientific study of Earths physical environment and human habitat and the study of boring students to death. ... Neil Smith is a hockey executive who is most well known as a former General Manager of the NHLs New York Rangers. ... Economics (from the Greek οίκος [oikos], family, household, estate, and νομος [nomos], custom, law, hence household management and management of the state) is a social science that studies the production, distribution, trade and consumption of goods and services. ... In politics, a capital (also called capital city or political capital — although the latter phrase has an alternative meaning based on an alternative meaning of capital) is the principal city or town associated with its government. ... Urban area is a term used to define an area where there is an increased density of man-made structures in comparison to the areas surrounding it. ... Combatants Allies: • Poland, • UK & Commonwealth, • France, • Soviet Union, • United States, • China, ...and others Axis: • Germany, • Italy, • Japan, ...and others Casualties Military dead: 17 million Civilian dead: 33 million Total: 50 million Full list Military dead: 8 million Civilian dead: 4 million Total: 12 million Full list World War II, also... Illustration of the backyards of a surburban neighbourhood Suburbs are inhabited districts located either on the outer rim of a city or outside the official limits of a city (the term varies from country to country), or the outer elements of a conurbation. ... Devaluation is a reduction in the value of a currency. ... In politics, a capital (also called capital city or political capital — although the latter phrase has an alternative meaning based on an alternative meaning of capital) is the principal city or town associated with its government. ...

Smith believed that the rent-gap theory was the fundamental explanation for the process of gentrification. He argued that when the rent-gap was wide enough, developers, landlords, and other people with a vested interest in the development of land would see the potential profit to be had in reinvesting in abandoned inner-city properties and redeveloping them for new inhabitants. Such redevelopment effectively closes the rent-gap and leads to a higher and better use of the land. A developer can be one of: A software developer, one who programs computers or designs the system to match the requirements of a systems analyst. ... A landlord, or landlady, is the owner of a house, apartment, condominium, or real estate which is rented or leased to an individual or business, who is called the tenant. ... Profit is a positive return made on an investment by an individual or by business operations. ...

The de-industrialization of the inner-city is seen as a prerequisite, which is often coupled with the growth of a divided white collar employment sector, one part of which is engaged in professional/managerial positions which follow the spatial centralization of capital. This is a product of corporations requiring spatial proximity to reduce decision-making time. Growth can refer to: Auxology Bacterial growth Cell growth Economic growth For financial growth due to simple interest or compound interest see Interest Exponential growth Fungal growth Logistic growth Growth hormone Personal growth Population growth Tumours can sometimes be referred to as a growth This is a disambiguation page: a... White-collar workers perform tasks which are less laborious yet often more highly paid than blue-collar workers, who do manual work. ... Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. ... The service sector or the service industry, is one of the three main industrial categories of a developed economy, the others being the secondary industry (manufacturing and primary goods production such as agriculture), and primary industry (extraction such as mining and fishing). ... A professional does an activity to receive payment for an act (as a profession), which usually requires expertise and carries with it socially significant mores and folkways. ... Management (from Old French ménagement the art of conducting, directing, from Latin manu agere to lead by the hand) characterises the process of leading and directing all or part of an organization, often a business, through the deployment and manipulation of resources (human, financial, material, intellectual or intangible). ... It has been suggested that Incorporation (business) be merged into this article or section. ...

The consumption-side theory, on the other hand, has gained more force as an explanation for gentrification. Supporters of this argument generally view the characteristics of gentrifiers themselves to be of greater importance in the understanding of gentrification. The post-industrial city, as defined in the Dictionary of Human Geography, is one with an “employment profile focused on advanced services…, [with a] profile that is materialized in a downtown skyline of office towers, arts and leisure sites, and political institutions. Its middle-class ambiance may be reflected in a distinctive politics charged with a responsible social ethos…the demand for more amenities, for greater beauty and a better quality of life in the arrangement of our cities” (616). David Ley has been one of the foremost thinkers in purporting this idea of a city that is becoming more and more influenced by the emerging “new middle class.” Ley defines as a subset of this sector a “cultural new class,” made up of artists, cultural professionals, teachers, and other professionals outside of the private sector (1994, 56). And, although not particularly dwelt upon in Ley’s articles, these are the first stage gentrifiers who prepare the way for the embourgeoisment of the inner city (and, in effect, the more conservative politics) that often follows them—conservative politics which often lead to decreased funding for affordable housing, stricter laws dealing with the homeless and other people affected negatively by their original displacement by the creative class. This sentiment can also be found in Zukin’s “second-wave” observations in the artist’s lofts in Manhattan, who, when her building went “co-op” in 1979, “bade good-bye to the manufacturers, an artist, and several residents who could not afford the market prices at which our lofts were sold,” residents who were replaced by lawyers and accountants, retailers and investment bankers (1982, x). This same process can be seen still today, as “artists move into otherwise undesirable buildings, usually make significant improvements to their spaces and their surrounding areas. Everyone benefits from these tenuous and uneasy…arrangements. Then landlords, suddenly aware that they are sitting on gold mines, rush to cash in” (Cash 2001, 39).

Whereas Smith and other Marxists often take an approach that vilifies this new middle class as a homogenized, self-centered group who often act without concern for the consequences of their actions or the results of their strive to gentrify inner-city environs, Ley’s work instead frames gentrification as a natural outgrowth of the rise of professional employment in the CBD and the predilection of the creative class to an urbane lifestyle. Ley, when studying this class through case studies of Canadian cities, does not seek to vilify anyone but concentrates instead on the diversity of this class, especially the liberal ideas that often find voice in its politics (see Ley’s 1980 article “Liberal Ideology and the Post-Industrial City” which describes then deconstructs the TEAM committee’s strive to make Vancouver a “livable city”). Ley’s work, and that of Rose, Beauregard, Mullins, Moore, and others who have built upon Ley’s theories by arguing that “gentrifiers and their social and cultural characteristics was of crucial importance for an understanding of gentrification,” has been criticized by Hamnett, however, as not going far enough, and not incorporating the “supply of dwellings and the role of developers/speculators in the process” (Hamnett 1991, 186, 187).

The emergence of a 'service-class', that is, a group of people—generally between the ages of 25 and 35—with a high disposable income and service-oriented jobs in the urban core that they want to be close to, is one of the primary tenets of the consumption-side theory of gentrification. This emergence is partly a manifestation of the shift in much of the Western world from a manufacturing-based economy to a post-industrial, service-based economy. In economics and marketing, a service is the non-material equivalent of a good. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... A post-industrial society is a proposed name for an economy that has undergone a specific series of changes in structure after a process of industrialization. ... Service economy can refer to one or both of two recent economic developments. ...

Demographically speaking, Western cities are seeing a growing percentage of 25–35 year-olds in the inner-city (urban) core. Other demographic shifts are occurring as well; there is a lessening of gendered divisions of labour, and people are waiting longer to get married and have children (c.f., the DINK—Double Income No Kids—syndrome). Additionally, urban researchers are seeing an increase in the number of single women professionals living alone in gentrified areas. Division of labour is generally speaking the specialisation of co-operative labour in specific, circumscribed tasks and roles, intended to increase efficiency of output. ... Dink could refer to: DINK is a term used to define the Dual Income, No Kids. See demographic. ...

In the UK, ever-rising house prices have meant that many middle-class people under age 40 either inherit or can be gifted a substantial amount from a parent – enough to buy a house outright in the sort of area traditionally vulnerable to gentrification. Gentrification, as an aspect of gender studies discourse, has not been studied extensively, but researchers have discovered that women and gay men have had at least some impact on the gentrifying process in older, inner-city neighbourhoods. Moreover, women are seen to be gentrifying in response to different patriarchal structures; they are seen as being potentially forced by oppressive class relations related to their gender into moving into the inner-city, as opposed to deciding on moving there as a result of locational preference. The breakdown of the notion of male as breadwinner/female as domestic, as higher education becomes more accessible to women, has also contributed to the movement of single women into the inner-city. Gender studies is a theoretical work in the social sciences or humanities that focuses on issues of sex and gender in language and society, and often addresses related issues including racial and ethnic oppression, postcolonial societies, and globalization. ... milton sibanda is the best example of this word. ... A patriarch (from Greek: patria means father; arché means rule, beginning, origin) is a male head of an extended family exercising autocratic authority, or, by extension, a member of the ruling class or government of a society controlled by senior men. ... Oppression is the negative outcome experienced by people targeted by the arbitrary and cruel exercise of power in a society or social group. ... A bagpiper in Scottish military clan-uniform. ...

In London, a large proportion of gentrified housing was originally built for middle class occupants, and if it was ever occupied by working class people, this mainly came about when the middle classes left for more distant suburbs between the two World Wars. In Islington, four storey houses are much more common than two storey cottages.

Gentrification usually increases the property value of an area. This is a positive development for city officials (by raising tax revenue, which is often dependent on property values), the middle class, as well as existing resident owner-occupiers. Unfortunately this same rise in property value can be devastating to those in lower income groups, when children of such residents find they can no longer afford to live in certain neighborhoods. As a result, there tend to be very strongly opposed views on gentrification, with some seeing it leading to healthier, more vibrant cities, and others seeing it as destroying poor communities. Both views would seem to be correct.

Hipsters as a factor

In the case of cities like New York City, groups of "pioneers" moved out to areas such as Park Slope or Williamsburg (in Brooklyn) or Hoboken, New Jersey, which were once run-down, inner-city neighborhoods, because Manhattan had become prohibitively expensive to live in. These areas then became desirable to hipsters because many saw them to have a bohemian atmosphere, thus beginning gentrification and increasing property values and rents. This often forced the original residents to move out to adjacent areas (such as Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn or Jersey City, New Jersey), where the process may start again. Nickname: The Big Apple Official website: City of New York Government Counties (Boroughs) Bronx (The Bronx) New York (Manhattan) Queens (Queens) Kings (Brooklyn) Richmond (Staten Island) Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) Geographical characteristics Area Total 468. ... A typical Park Slope block in spring. ... The Williamsburg Bridge connects the Brooklyn neighborhood to Manhattan Williamsburg is a neighborhood in northern Brooklyn, New York City. ... Main article: New York City A map of New York City, highlighting Brooklyn. ... Image of Hoboken taken by NASA (red line shows where Hoboken is). ... The Borough of Manhattan, highlighted in yellow, lies between the East River and the Hudson River. ... Bedford Stuyvesant (aka Bed-Stuy) is a neighborhood in central Brooklyn, New York City. ... Official website: http://www. ...

A similar phenomenon can be seen in Los Angeles. Adjacent to Hollywood is an area called Los Feliz, which for the last decade or so has been seen as a desirable area for its hipster community. As gentrification has occurred here with property prices rising, there has been a migration out to other adjacent areas, such as Silverlake, Eagle Rock and Highland Park. In many cases, a prominent early sign that the migration is occurring is that owners of popular hipster hangouts will start opening new establishments in these areas. ... Los Feliz (usually pronounced Loss Feeliss by most non-Spanish-speaking locals) is a neighborhood in the north-central region of the city of Los Angeles, California. ... A hipster is a person who is strongly associated with a subculture that has been deemed hip, or hep. ... Silver Lake is a Los Angeles neighborhood east of Hollywood. ... Eagle Rock is a neighborhood in northeastern Los Angeles, California. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

In London, the now extremely upmarket areas of Chelsea and Notting Hill developed in a similar manner during the 1960's and 1980's respectively. More recently, Camden Town, Islington and Hoxton/Shoreditch in Hackney have followed suit. Chelsea can refer to: Locations in the United Kingdom: A neighbourhood in London, see: Chelsea, London A now defunct, but still famous, porcelain factory, see Chelsea porcelain factory A borough in London, see: Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea A bridge in London, see: Chelsea Bridge Locations in the United... Notting Hill is a district of London located to the west of the centre and close to the north-western corner of Hyde Park. ... Camden Town is a place in the London Borough of Camden, England. ... Islington is an inner-city district in north London. ... Hoxton Square, September 2005. ... Shoreditch is a place in the London Borough of Hackney. ... Hackney is the principal area of the London Borough of Hackney in East London. ...

Gay men as a factor

Manuel Castells's seminal work on gays as "gentrifiers" in San Francisco has revealed a pattern replicated, to some degree, in other North American cities, as "many [gays] were single men, did not have to sustain a family, were young, and connected to a relatively prosperous service economy" (Castells, 1983, p. 160). Additionally, gay men (sometimes called "guppies" — Gay Urban Professionals) tend to choose inner-city neighbourhoods as places to live because of the lower cost of housing in these areas, their accessibility to jobs in the downtown core, and their proximity to gay social networks (which are generally found in inner-city cores), but their larger disposable incomes allow for them to "fix up" their homes and increase property values. Gay men are often seen as "pioneers" in gentrification, along with artists. Manuel Castells (b. ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ...

In Detroit and its suburbs, this process has occurred over the last few years. The old, working class downtowns of suburbs such as Royal Oak and Ferndale have been replaced with vibrant, hip downtowns. Leading this charge have been gay-owned businesses, such as Pronto!, a popular restaurant/bar that caters to the gay community. Shortly after the gay community moved into downtown Royal Oak, so did the young, urban professionals that cities covet: in Royal Oak, after the gay bars went in, so did many "hip" straight bars. Today, formalizing what started in the early 1990s, Royal Oak's Downtown Development Association advertises the neighborhood as "trendy" [[1]]. Nickname: Motor City Motto: Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus (Latin for, We Hope For Better Things; It Shall Rise From the Ashes) Official website: www. ... Royal Oak is a city in Oakland County of the U.S. state of Michigan. ... Ferndale is a city located in Oakland County, Michigan, along I-696. ...

The PBS documentary Flag Wars outlined the tension between an urban African-American community in the old silk stocking district of Columbus, Ohio and a flock of gay pioneers moving in, who were accused of gentrification and racism. However, it's important to note that there is a problematic tendency (rooted in both racism and homophobia) to think of "gay" and "black" as being mutually exclusive. This ignores the realities of many gay black people's lives. The "there goes the neighborhood" response to gentrification is often amplified by prejudice against gays, therefore singling out gays as responsible for larger economic trends.

And gay men are in some senses a special case in a discussion of gentrification. Many are forced to avoid their towns and neighborhoods of origin because of the need to start a new life and form a new community after coming out. Further, the observation that many gay men are single and childless should be viewed in the light of social policy (like adoption and marriage restrictions) that intends to keep it that way. So while economics and a desire to make good real estate investments drive some of the association of gay men with urban gentrification, so too do homophobia and social stigma. Coming out of the closet (very often shortened to coming out in winking reference to the public introduction of debutantes) describes the voluntary public announcement of ones sexual orientation, sexual attractions, gender identity, or (less commonly) paraphilia. ... Adoption is the legal act of permanently placing a child with a parent or parents other than the birth parents. ... The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ...

Attempts to control gentrification

Affordable housing

In many cases, existing residents of gentrifying neighborhoods have organized into grassroots groups to develop new strategies to retain affordable housing in their communities. In New York City, this has met with limited success, primarily because property values and rents have soared exponentially in most parts of that city's metropolitan area. In the London Borough of Hackney in December 2005, residents occupied a local café on Broadway Market to stop it being demolished and turned into luxury flats. Hackney Town Hall was built in the 1930s for the old Metropolitan Borough. ... Broadway Market is a pedestrianised area running from London Fields to the Regents Canal in Dalston in the London Borough of Hackney, East London. ...

Because gentrification is such a contentious issue, it often creates a variety of sides and stakeholders that are often at odds with one another. On the one hand, gentrification helps to revitalize distressed urban communities that have experienced disinvestment and abandonment, and can often be beneficial to long-time residents of these areas. It can result in the opening of grocery stores and other services that may not have existed there previously. However, it has the added side-effect of displacement, particularly for renters.

Inclusionary zoning

Cities have responded to gentrification in different ways. Inclusionary zoning is an increasingly popular method of stemming gentrification, employed by cities, in an attempt to create affordable housing units in urban areas. Through inclusionary zoning, developers are either required or provided with incentives (such as higher build-outs) to develop a certain percentage of affordable housing units. Because inclusionary zoning is such a relatively new concept, there have been few studies regarding its effect on limiting gentrification. Inclusionary zoning is a tool orginally created in suburban communities in reaction to the exclusionary zoning practices in growing suburbs. ...

Rent control

In response to gentrification pressure, some cities pass rent control ordinances. While rent control allows existing tenants to remain, it doesn't directly affect the overall increase in underlying property prices. For example, the formerly downscale southwestern section of Santa Monica, California and the eastern section of West Hollywood, California became more gentrified despite rent control. Since many forms of rent control allow landlords to have high prices for newer residents while forcing them to keep prices low for long-time residents, this may have the unintended consequence of actually providing a policy incentive for gentrification, and for landlords to rent to residents they hope will leave sooner. On the other hand, without rent control, a neighborhood undergoing gentrification might change even more rapidly because landlords could quickly raise rents on long-time residents and thereby displace them from the neighborhood. Some evidence exists to demonstrate that the 1994 abolition of rent control in Boston, Massachusetts and some surrounding suburbs (via statewide ballot) sped up gentrification in that area, although strong economic growth in the following years is probably a larger factor. Rent Control refers to laws or ordinances that set price controls on residential housing. ... Ordinance can mean: A law made by a non-sovereign body such as a city council or a colony. ... Santa Monica Pier Santa Monica is a coastal city in western Los Angeles County, California, USA, by the Pacific Ocean, south of Pacific Palisades and Brentwood, and north of Venice. ... West Hollywoods logo illustrates the citys borders. ... Nickname: City on a Hill, Beantown, The Hub (of the Solar System), Athens of America Motto: Official website: www. ...

References

• Cash, Stephanie. “Landlords put a squeeze on Booklyn artists.” Art in America v. 89 (3), pp. 39-40.
• Castells, M. (1983) "Cultural identity, sexual liberation and urban structure: the gay community in San Francisco" in M. Castells, The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements (Edward Arnold, London) pp. 138–170.
• Friedman, John. “The world-city hypothesis.” From World Cities in a World-System, Paul L. Knox and Peter J. Taylor (eds), Cambridge UP, 1995, pp. 317-331. (originally published 1986)
• Hamnett, Chris. “The blind men and the elephant: the explanation of gentrification.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 1991, v. 16, pp. 173-189.
• Hamnett, Chris. "Gentrifiers or lemmings? A response to Neil Smith.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 1992, v. 17, pp 116-119.
• Knox, Paul L. “The restless urban landscape: Economic and Sociocultural change and the transformation of metropolitan Washington, DC.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 1991, v. 81, pp. 181-209.
• Ley, David. “Alternative explanations for inner-city gentrification: a Canadian assessment.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 1986, v. 76, pp. 521-535.
• Ley, David. “Gentrification and the politics of the new middle class.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 1994, v. 12, pp. 53-74.
• Ley, David. “Reply: the rent-gap revisited.” Annals of the Association of the American Geographers 1987, v. 77, pp. 465-468.
• Moore, Keith. “From redline to renaissance.” Salon.com, August 2, 1999. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/08/02/harlem/print.html.
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• Zukin, Sharon. Loft Living. John Hopkins UP, Baltimore, 1982.

See also

• Urban renewal

Blight often stands side-by-side with new structures during urban renewal efforts. ...

External links

• Understanding Gentrification from the City of Port Phillip official website

• Website for the community occupation of Francesca's Café 34 Broadway Market fighting gentrification in South Hackney

• Flag Wars Detailed documentary about Ohio gentrification in Columbus, detailing conflicts of race and homophobia