I.Gentrification and Neighborhood Change:Clarity in Concepts

1

****For RC21 Berlin 2023 and blog?Socially Just Gentrification? Theory and Practice. Peter Marcuse

I.Gentrification and Neighborhood Change:Clarity in Concepts

Discussions around gentrification often are unclear in just what is meant by the term. Its traditional definition considers a defining feature to be the displacement from a given neighborhood of lower income or lower status residents by a higher income or status group. The problem with gentrification is thatin social justice terms, it reduces the availability of housing for those most in need, for the benefit of those better able to obtain good housing in the housing market. It is different from forms of slum clearance and urban renewal in that it is led by private market changes, although frequently supported by governmental actions. It is particularly insidious because it so often justified as “neighborhood improvement,” when it is in fact improvement only for the neighborhood spatially defined (and thus for whatever original residents may be init after the improvements), rather than the neighborhood defined by its people at the beginning of the improvements.

It is important to beclear on exactly what neighborhood change consists of. One might list the components, some or allof which may be present in any particular case, as follows:

1. Neighborhood Physical Upgrading of the built environment in the neighborhood and its ancillary services: New construction, rehabilitation, elimination of “blight,” road improvements, ancillary services.
2. Economic Upgrading within the neighborhood, and is generally measured in market terms, represented by changes in land values, housing prices, incomes, wealth. It can be in both directions, it will typically lead to the pricing out of originally resident lower income households and their replacement by those of higher income, the process is known as gentrification. Itis the primary motor of population displacement.
3. Economic Downgrading within the neighborhood, also generally measured in market terms, which will generally be accompanied by physical downgrading and a net loss of adequate and affordable housing for those of lower income. When extreme, the process is known as abandonment.It may or may not be followed by economic upgrading.[1]
4. Neighborhood Original Resident physical and social Upgrading.For original residents, higher incomes, better education, better health, broader recreational opportunities, a more enjoyable environment, for those already living in in the neighborhood.
5. Governmental action affecting physical, economic, or social Regrading. Historically, in the United States, and most advanced industrialized nations, governmental action has led abrupt changes in neighborhood conditions, through policies such as slum clearance, urban renewal, building and health codes, Some governmental policies have led to original resident upgrading and limited displacement, others have led to reqiring or inducing displacement. With neo-liberal policies government action has tended to follow private market actions, as in gentrification and economic upgrading.

Clarity about the processes of neighborhood residential change, of which gentrification is only and not always a part, in fact requires separation out of these separate processes. The differences among them are crucial from the point of view of policy goals. Perhaps the most crucial distinction of all is that between treating a neighborhood as a space, and treating it as a community of people., and recognizing that in sulch communities there will be very different kinds of people, often with conflicting interests some befitting from some of these processes, others hurt by them, the difference generally directly related to their incomes and wealth.

II.Gentrification and Social Justice

Each of these processes carries with it different values from a public policy point of view, different implications for social justice, and needs to be assessed quantitatively and qualitatively through different methodologies.

1. Population displacement. The benefits for the in-movers are generally advantageous costs, often lower crime rates, public and private physical upgrading, and speculative profit possibilities. The costs are incurred by those displaced, and have been extensively documented by a variety of methodologies, among which demographic data are among the most widely used. Almost all studies suffer from the difficulty of tracing those displaces to their subsequent locations. Quantitative studies rarely consider the continuing nature of the process of displacement, e.g. the differences between direct last-person displacement, Direct chain displacement, Exclusionary displacement and displacement pressures.[2]
2. Physical upgrading. A benefit for new residents, an initial public and/or private cost, but presumably recouped through higher tax revenues and private profits. While the intuitive benefits are visible and sometimes dramatic, measurement in dollar impact is also feasible.
3. Economic change. The benefit in rising real estate prices is directly recouped by the owners of property, and paid for by the properties’ users. It is measurable in dollar terms, with the usual issues of the discount rates to be used. There are presumably also net economic benefits in the conduct of business within the city or region as a whole, perhaps through net lesser transportation costs, agglomeration economies, etc., but these are harder to measures although they may be significant.
4. Resident Benefit.The benefits or costs to those residents in place at the beginning of the processes and remaining in place throughout are perhaps the ost controversial aspect of the process. Clearly some benefit, some do not. Some studies[3] emphasize the benefit of physical upgrading and economic change for those residents of the neighborhood that have remained after others have been displaced. From a public policy point of view, social justice concerns would look at the costs incurred for failure to take other steps at improving the lives of the original residents: security of tenure, preservation of social networks, democratic participation and control of the immediate environment. . Normal quantitative analysis is rarely an adequate methodology to assess costs, however but including it in any policy-relevant analysis would be critical for a just evaluation.

III.Gentrification and Public Policy

If the concern is with social justice and the housing of those most in need, gentrification is by definition unjust. As a matter of policy, three approaches to gentrification and social justice are possible:

1. Market principles – neo-liberal policies.Gentrification can be allowed to proceed according to strict market principles with public policy facilitation, the justification to be found in various ways: ideological commitment to the free private market, concern for physical condition, "sustainability"", increasing the tax base, “freedom of choice,” etc., with no explicit attention to the social justice of the result;
2. Welfare-oriented principles – liberal policies.. An analysis of the distributional impact of policies planned according to other principles and for other purposes can add considerations of social justice to the mix, including a variety of measures to control the displacement aspects of gentrification, such as eviction controls, relocation aids, mixed income requirements for new construction, etc.
3. Over-riding social justice principles – transformative policies. . Such an approach would begin with a consideration of the needs of the residents and users of the neighborhood subject to the economic pressures of gentrification, and would prevent displacement through a variety of techniques including limiting new investment, regulating occupancy prices, appropriate land use and zoning controls, and, where necessary, targeted public investment.

While the effects of the application of market and liberal principles have been widely explored, a consistent application of social justice principles would utilize a reconceptualization of the process of gentrification to reveal its essential components. Using the definitions in Part I above, gentrification as conventionally definedconfuses two different, although closely linked, processes. One is gentrification carefully defined, as above, an economic process leading to displacement. The other, physical upgrading, is the very visible physical upgrading and upgrading of public services, involving a range of both private and public investments, and results in an increase in land values and prices.[4]Taken together, they result in an apparent but deceptive social “upgrading” of the characteristics of the neighborhood spatially defined, deceptive because as conventionally measured it is not an upgrading of a constant population, the origin residents, but rather results of in the substitution of one group of residents for another.

The confusion is a methodological one. The social upgrading aspect is most generally displayed by the analysis of the residents of the neighborhood before and after the gentrification has taken place. Such analyses are often presented quantitatively, by an almost compulsive counting of the characteristics of the residents there before and after: has the educational level improved the employment rate? Therooms per person?The level of maintenance complaints? Building code violations? Sometimes, the increase in property values and frequency and profitability of real estate transactions are taken as indicators of a “healthy housing market” and themselves measures of the success of the process.

Sometimes such quantitative studies do not go beyond the data available:if it can’t be measured, it’s not there. Classically, the social networks established in a neighborhood, the support they provide, the solidarity involved, is a major benchmark of resident welfare; it doesn’t appear in any statistics, its loss is not included in the analysis, it does not appear as an offset to the otherwise quantified social upgrading. . Nor is the value of history, the importance of roots in a place, customarily thus included.[5]

Sometimes qualitative indicators are added,[6] rarely enough to have statistical significance, and they are analyses of post-change neighborhood residents and do not encompass the much harder to find out-movers. The failure to differentiate between the residents of a neighborhood before and after gentrification is a fatal flaw in analysis.Some statistics are available, e.g. on length of residence, and can sometimes be crossed with changes in social characteristics, but that is rarely the focus of a study. Even that however does not capture the present condition of the out-movers, the displacees, where the information for serious tracking is not easy to come by. So the studies of social change are essentially the change between two different sets of residents, two different populations.

The other flaw in the frequent conceptualization and evaluation of the process of gentrification is the confusion between the physical/economic and the social aspects of what is going on. Critically in market-oriented approaches, but also in many liberal approaches, the examination is of the change in the physical neighborhood geographically defined, rather than defined by the population residing within it. Are buildings better maintained, public spaces greener, shops tidier, is their renovation, modernization, new construction of residential and commercial properties. A social justice analysis would require keeping the physical changes separate from the social, and define its subject, both within geographic bounds, but looking at quite different aspects of what is within those bounds: crudely, buildings or people. From a social justice perspective, the focus needs be on the community socially defined, andon what “upgrading” of that socially-defied community and its members really means.

IV.Transforming Gentrification in Practice

While we know in general measures that would address some of the problems created by gentrification, a more detailed look at the possibilities suggests two different possible perspectives, paralleling the difference between liberal and transformative policies suggested above. Nancy Fraser has a simple and clear definition of the difference. She speaks of "affirmative" (here "liberal" ) policies:

[Affirmation], which incorporates any action that corrects ‘inequitable outcomes of social arrangements without disturbing the underlying framework that generates them….. [Transformation] remedies aimed at correcting inequitable outcomes precisely by restricting the underlying generative framework.[7]

Consider Alan Scott’s formulation:, the social democratic position, at

In the circumstances, somekind of pragmatic socialdemocracy securing a politically progressive capitalism, would sem to be one of the best feasible bets for establishing a viable and stables pathway to the future, that is, a pathway to economic growth, social justice and democratic order.[8]

Transformative policies on gentrification might well be social democratic affirmative policies that implicitly or explicitly also lay out just what that pathway to measure dealing with the underling generative framework might be.

To list briefly some examples:

Rent control. Directly acting to prevent or limit the increases in housing prices that are the motos of the displacement that characterizes gentrification are generally acknowledged to be the single most effective immediate often locally-feasible measures to limit that displacement, and moderate rent control is a frequent liberal policy. Providing laws regulating tenure and evictions that protect residents would likewise help.

But to imbue such policies towards transformative content, they should be seen as steps towards ending the speculative dealing in housing ad land, completely revising the system of allocating housing to limit the market’s role and guarantee that the human needs for housing are met before market forces come into play. Considering tenant need and costs as well as landlord need and costs would move strongly towards social justice. Promotion of alternate forms of tenure, such as community land trusts and non-profit ownership and public social rental forms likewise move to a transformation of the treatment of housing from an object of exchange to an object of use.

Zoning. Zoning regulations can limit unnecessary upgrading, unwanted new construction, and can facilitate the provision of housing and community services that meet the needs of lowero-income original residents. Inclusionary zoning can facilitate the expansion of housing opportunities for lower income residents and desired in-movers. Where there are official neighborhood or community-level democratically constituted bodies, givingthem effective input into zoning decisions is useful.[9]

But for zoning to have a strong transformative impact, inclusionary zoning would have to be mandatory, and strongly favor non-market based production of public and social housing and services.

Tax and budgetary policies.Real estate taxes can be made progressive, and favor housing available to lower-income households. Public expenditures can treat all communities fairly, and see to it that investment in gentrifying communities meet the needs of its original lower-income residents rather than favoring in-movement of higher-income.

But a transformative approach might envisage a virtual 100% tax on any speculative gain made on a housing transaction, limiting profit on a rental or sale to compensation for labor and material invested.

Regional actions.The disparities between central ciies (or parts of them) and suburbs (or parts of them) are well known. The distribution of governmental resosurces, and of planning and other land use and economic controls, can be modified to provide greater equity for lowero-income neighborhoods, to even out the pressures that result in unevent development.

But consolidation of governmental powers at a regional level would go much further to making possible a concerted effort to eliminate spatial segregation disadvantaging lower-income neighborhoods. It might also bring into play powers of governmental above local and regional level, such as state, even more national, perhaps even some international (such as dealing with immigration).

National level actions. Actions at the national level (and failures to act) play a major role in creating and/or permitting the problems gentrification causes. The competition among cities for a strong tax base give local governments an incentive to welcome gentrification and facilitate it, since it leads them to strive to attract higher-income residents, who will pay higher taxes that will swell city coffers. Both national and state actions can penalize such competitive behavior and reduce public governmental and political support for gentrification.

But relying on local sources of revenue to provide essential services inevitably leads to distributional inequities. Nationalization of tax measures with national controls over the social impact of their distribution has the potentialof transforming the taxation system as a whole in the direction of social justice, and would be a significant buttress to parallel local efforts.

Electoral reform. Government action – and inaction – has a huge impact onlocal neighborhoods, and whether it willmove in the direction of social justice will depend on the results of the democratic processes shaping government actions. Almost all of the above measures are politically dependent of how justly the democratic process is working. Election reform is a staple of liberal policy. and ultimately how gentrification is handled is dependent on it. Measures such as ending gerrymandering, limiting financial contributions, guaranteeing effective free speech and media access, are all important.

But more than such measures are needed to ensure real democracy. Democracy requires the active and decisive participation of an informed electorate. It requires a critical educational system, it requires levels of welfare and security that enable real participation in political issues, it requires a media not controlled by an elite nor dependent on private profit for its existence.

Many other such measures may be thought of., and the liberal, movin as far towards the transformational as possible, would be needed to fully end the negative consequences of gentrification. We know, and have experience, with, the public policy measures required to physically upgrade a neighborhood. We know, but have much less experience with, measures that will upgrade a community socially defined, or what having social justice as the primary purpose of upgrading a neighborhood would mean. We know (at least in theory) how to improve schools, produce better public spaces, keep streets and public infrastructure in good repair, build decent housing, subsidize decent housing, limit rents, tax speculative profits, lure businesses to specific locations, permit resident participation if planning and public budgeting. Whether “we” use these means or not, how far "we” move on the spectrum from liberal to transformative measures, depends on obnoxious hard facts like who "we” are, what the distribution of power is between "us” and opposing interests, the whole messy politics of urban policy. A little greater clarity on the issues and the consequences of various policies, and to whom, would be a real contribution if social justice is the goal.