...today, gentrification is becoming a solution or problem to many cities and neighborhoods that are changing. Many people might not know what gentrification is or even have heard of it before, but it is happening in their neighborhoods right in front of their eyes. Gentrification is the process where an influx of middle-class and upper-class people cause a revitalization and rebuilding of deteriorating areas because of the money they bring to the local economy. This often results in the displacement of impoverished residents in the area. This is happening in many countries and in many populated cities in America like San Francisco, Boston, and Philadelphia. Some people’s opinions on gentrification is that it is beneficial, while others view gentrification harmful. While both sides feel that they are correct, people that favor gentrification seek the benefits that it can produce while the people against gentrification worry about losing their neighborhood and eventually being forced to move out. When viewing both sides of the argument, it is clear that the benefits of gentrification...
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...The best solutions to the aforementioned problems, is for the general public to become informed, to support policies beneficial to marginalized individuals, and to encourage those most affected to advocate for themselves. There is no need for an intensive plan of action, but there is a need for residents to be aware, and to make adjustments as they see fit. Introduction Gentrification is a recurrent problem in modern societies across the globe. It is a complex and highly nuanced subject, with a multitude of factors playing into its effects. The following analysis addresses the social (marginalization of minorities, impact on demographics, and quality of education), economic (increased rent, positive inclinations in...
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...Gentrification is a process of renovation and revival of deteriorated urban neighbourhoods which results from an influx of more affluent residents, a related increase in rents and property values, changes in the districts character and culture. Gentrification is generally seen by some as a negative and controversial topic, suggesting the displacement of low- income families and small businesses. Others see it as an increase in an area’s economy and a revitalisation of the built environment. In this essay I will be addressing whether gentrification does help or hinder low income, urban communities using references from contemporary examples such as New York City and London, I will outline both positive and negative impacts of gentrification...
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...Steven Cardenas SSN 187 Professor Walker Gentrification Response Paper Sharon Zukin is a well known sociologist at Brooklyn College who is well known for her views on gentrification of the lower east side of Manhattan. Her views on gentrification is that she is against it and believes unless the government creates more regulations on rent and zoning, then many neighborhoods will continue to become more stratified. I agree with her because I believe it is a constant cycle of immigrants building houses and culture with in a neighborhood, just so high-class people can visit and then eventually take over the neighborhood has to stop. Many times high class people come to visit these high cultured neighborhoods and are attracted by the artist, restaurants, art galleries, and bars. They then tend to move in these neighborhoods and become residents and eventually when more and more high class residents move in, then that drives the rent of the building so high that it forces the current residents to look for a new home. Zukin believes that it is not the people that give the neighborhood its culture and make it unique, but the buildings itself is what makes it unique. For example, Soho used to be an immigrant’s traditional settlement that was filled with socialist politics and labor movement. The buildings and roads of Soho were hand made from stones and immigrants were known for creating this unique neighborhood and this is what first attracted higher-class people to first start...
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...response to this urban decline, many local governments have introduced urban regeneration schemes. Urban regeneration is the attempt to reverse that decline by both improving the physical structure, and, more importantly and elusively, the economy of those areas. Re-urbanisation is the movement of people back to live in old city centres and inner city areas that have been redeveloped. The four different processes that drive re-urbanisation are Gentrification (Notting Hill), through partnerships (Sheffield City Centre and Park Hill Flats), property led regeneration schemes (Sheffield Development Cooperation in the Lower Don Valley) and Urban Re-Generation in Mumbai. One partnership scheme which aimed to achieve urban regeneration was the Urban Splash scheme in Sheffield which focused on the regeneration of the Park Hill flats just outside the city’s CBD. The flats were built in 1957 to ease the problem of developing slums in the area. However over time the flats have become an eyesore. They were rundown and crime and vandalism became a problem. The regeneration scheme worked towards improving the aesthetics of the flats by adding coloured panels and glass to the exterior and by making the flats a listed building in the hope of attracting investment. The scheme was not a huge success overall, although the project did succeed in brightening up the exterior of the flats to a degree. It also served to benefit the community as residents could work together to...
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...concentrating on using gentrification indicators as a framework to examine and analyse changes to predict the gentrification within community neighbourhoods, to find a solution for an investment company to find an area, which has a potential to become gentrified. The objectives of this programme is to establish and point out the factors influencing gentrification within any town in the world, in this case in United Kingdom, that may be going through gentrification process – changes that result when wealthier people acquire or rent property in low income and working class communities (Grant, 2003). The research needs to be carried out to establish what factors cause gentrification, to examine demographic shifts, how to control gentrification etc...There are two wider areas with main issues that we need to be concentrating, when researching gentrification: Production-supply of 'gentrifiable' property; the workings of housing and land markets; spatial flows of capital and the 'rent-gap'; role of public and private finance; 'uneven development' (Slater, 2000). Consumption- The characteristics of the 'pool of gentrifiers'; 'new middle-class' ideology; consumer demand and consumption practices; (counter) cultural politics; the roles of race, gender and sexuality; education, occupational change and household composition (Slater, 2000). This section brought out the objectives of this paper, next I am giving a brief overview on the background and significance of gentrification. IV. Background...
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...In the 1991 American hood drama film, Boyz N the Hood, many global and urban planning issues are exemplified through the urban neighborhood, also referred to as the hood, in South Central Los Angeles. The film puts into perspective the effect gun violence, gentrification and role model relationships in an urban slum. The creation of these urban slums comes directly from a term known as gentrification. Gentrification is the process of shifting an urban community towards a wealthier one by removing the lower class from the area and forcing them to relocate. Resulting from gentrification, new urban slums are created which have a high density of residents on the lower end of the socio-economic hierarchy. Consequentially, these urban planning issues...
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...Bryan Krayko Economic Geography GEOG 22100 Annie Spencer Foreclosures and Gentrification in New York City The uneven development of New York City’s outer boroughs has taken a dive into massive foreclosure in the recent years due to high unemployment, unyielding bankers, and gentrification. The issue is on an urban and regional scale and needs to be closely observed and studied to better prevent the spread of this plague. The recent victims in this failure are the middle class, with whom the troubles of foreclosure are starting to catch up. Gentrification is also starting to push the poor out of their homes to make way for the rich. This unevenness came from the inevitable shift of balance that comes with industrial capitalism. A fresh wave of foreclosures is impacting middle-class homeowners in Queens. Queens neighborhoods have been sinking since 2008 when the crisis first started. Come 2011, the foreclosure rate spiked and began to trouble middle-class homeowners. Many homeowners rely on tenants to help them with paying their mortgage. With the recent departure of tenants from the area, Queens homeowners are left with less money and more problems. According to the New York Post, “Foreclosures jumped 19 percent in New York City and 164 percent in Queens in 2012 versus 2011, as The Post reported last week. Four of the hardest-hit sections of Queens — St. Albans, Rosedale, Cambria Heights and Queens Village —...
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...How do residents from the Brooklyn area survive gentrification? Introduction Neighborhoods can change in many different forms by social polarization, political factors, and integration of new neighbors or departure of long-time folks. These changes around a specific area are sum up as gentrification. The renewal of neighborhood environments that transform and attract middle and upper-class households and investors, creating problems for those who cannot afford rises of rents. However, what cause some dwellers to remain in their homes despite the rise of property values? Or how lower-class populations persist in gentrified zones? With the aid of federal and government institutions, low-income characters would not be able to continue living in their homes. Even though the process of restoration can result in the increase of the cost of life, some dwellers opt to remain in Green Point, Brooklyn because they enforce a number of methods, such as Section 8, Low Interest Rate programs and rent regulation, to fight displacement. Definition Generally speaking, gentrification is a two-edge process that usually pushes long-time dwellers from a neighborhood as the upgrading or improvement of the urban environment takes place around this specific neighborhood. In other words, residents opt to move out of the neighborhood because of the rise of rents, property value, and the renovation of the stock housing, which usually ends up with the replacement of the lower class with the middle to...
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...Definition of Gentrification: Gentrification is just one of the nebulous social issues taking place within modern Brixton, as London becomes more globalized and newer forms of ‘urban renewal’ are put into place. This particular urban phenomenon is best characterized as gentrification, which is defined for the purposes of this argument as a middle-class effort to undermine the local populace’s business, structure, and daily life by asserting their own values (Merriam-Webster). Expressed in expansive economic terms by Eric Clark, gentrification is noted as: “a process involving a change in the population of land-users such that the new users are of a higher socio-economic status than the previous users, together with an associated change in...
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...Urban Geography * Urban is a matter of scale * Large size * High density * Vertical geography * Social heterogeneity * What is the minimum population to be categorized as a city in the US? * 2,500 * Physical Definition of a City * Central City – delimited municipality within which local government has legal authority * Urbanized Area – central city plus surrounding built-up suburbs (DOES NOT correspond to government boundaries) * MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) – functional area of a city- zone of influence * Central city * Urbanized area with at least 50,000 * County within which city is located * Adjacent counties with high pop. Density plus large % of people work in central city’s county (includes land area that is NOT urban) * Micropolitan Statistical Area – smaller urbanized areas between 10,000-50,000 plus the county in which it is located * Newberry is an example * Consolidated MSA – overlapping MSAs (conurbation) * Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, NY and to Boston (Megalopolis) * 1/4th of every American lives there * Megacity – city with more than 10 million inhabitants * About 30 of these exist * Urbanization – process by which the population is cities grow * 2008 – urban/rural = 51/49 * Larger % Urban = higher level of development in the country * Cities occupy < 1% of Earth’s...
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...What seems to be the biggest roadblock of the action plan is the power dynamics involved. Gentrification is a problem that positively impacts some at the expense of others. The three main pieces of this puzzle are the families currently living in Johnson City, the future families of Johnson City, and Binghamton University. The University appears to be the piece with the most power of the three, but the study they’re currently involved in is greatly skewed toward the future direction of Johnson City rather than the very real implications of the “improvements” to come. If Binghamton University were to participate in this action plan they would have to put money toward redeveloping other buildings (perhaps outside of Johnson City). This would...
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...pregnancy, AIDS, and drug abuse, amongst a variety of other societal ills. Almost any of the problems surrounding poverty in New York CIty, have existed and continue to exist in East Harlem. It is a densely populated neighborhood with rough boundaries between 96th street and around 140th street on the East Side of manhattan, the neighborhood is clustered with low income high rises, often referred to as the projects. While driving through one will notice the towering brick monoliths that rise above the three to five story brownstones that comprise of most of the non-federally subsidized residencies...
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...The urban in fragile, uncertain, neoliberal times: towards new geographies of social justice? R. ALAN WALKS Department of Geography, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario, Cananda L5L 1C6 (e-mail: alan.walks@utoronto.ca) Canadian cities are at a crossroads. The neoliberalization of governance at multiple scales, inadequate re-investment in urban infrastructure, increasing reliance on continental and international trade, and the restructuring of the space economy have combined to weaken Canada’s cities just as the global economic system is undergoing transformation. Canadian urban geographic scholarship has much to offer under current conditions, and is already making significant contributions in key areas. In particular, research on what might be called the contours and impacts of urban restructuring and the neoliberal city, immigration and cities of difference, and urban environmental justice show much promise and are likely to define the core of Canadian urban geography into the future. Key words: cities, urban geography, Canada, economic restructuring, neoliberalism, social justice L’urbain ` une ´poque fragile, incertaine et a e n´olib´rale: vers de nouvelles g´ographies de la e e e justice sociale? ` Les villes canadiennes sont a la crois´e des chemins. e Alors que l’´conomie mondiale traverse une p´riode e e de transformation, la situation des villes au Canada se pr´carise avec les effets de la restructuration e ` n´olib´rale de la gouvernance a multiples...
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...Homework 1 What would be the key impacts of studying these problems on the community? There are many problems in my locality and or community that requires social scientific research. One of the biggest problems in my African diaspora community is the epidemic of skin bleaching. Considering this issue as an epidemic might sound extreme but when looking at the statistic of skin bleaching amongst the Africans and African diaspora, it has clearly become more than an individual’s preference or choice. Conducting a social scientific research will help to answer the question of why Africans are prone to skin bleaching, ways to inform the people about the effects of skin bleaching and skin bleaching recovery. Gentrification is another issue that requires social scientific research. This problem is evidence in almost all major cities. Due to race and economical statues, minorities are concentrated in areas that are the worst parts of the cities while the white majority live in the best parts of the cities. Researching this problem will bring to light the effect of gentrification on the minorities and also to those majorities who might be “innocent” to the issue. It would also force the government to do something about it on the polity level. culture appropriation should also be research because our society allows for a certain group to “borrow” the culture of another group that has been exploited without giving the credit where it’s due. culture appropriation happens...
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