The Pandemic Disproved Urban Progressives Theory About Gentrification – The Atlantic

Whether in stagnant northern cities or in the booming Sun Belt, a wide array of groups thus had ample reason to oppose urban development. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, through the implementation of height limits, density restrictions, design review boards, mandatory community input, and other veto points in the development process, they achieved more victories than many of the initial participants thought possible. The broad-based nature of the anti-growth coalition was key to its success. Nature enthusiasts, architectural historians, homeowners, and rock-ribbed socialists all found it advantageous to portray developers as a shadowy, parasitic force in metropolitan politics. Politicians, for their part, were more than willing to position themselves as defenders of this broad array of neighborhood groups and their values. But the composition of the coalition also limited the scope of its activism. In particular, the centrality of homeowners within the anti-growth alliance meant that maintaining the stability of property values would always guide the direction of the movement overall. In the 1960s and 70s, when renting in cities was relatively affordable and owning a house was often not especially profitable, this dynamic posed no obvious problem. Environmentalists believed that they could seek to save their conservation areas, preservationists their historic districts, leftists their tenant protections, and homeowners their exclusive neighborhoods, all apparently without harming one anothers interests.

These now-half-century-old arguments have had remarkable staying power well into a different era of urban history, one in which gentrification, rather than renewal, is the hot-button issue. Despite this shift, many still insist that neighborhood change remains inextricably linked to development. As Stringers reference to a gentrification-industrial complex indicates, critics have come to portray high-end shopping and glassy condos not as lagging indicators of local demographic change but as the causes thereof. The battle lines are drawn in the form of fights over discrete construction projects. Every politician wants to be seen as the second coming of Jane Jacobs, taking to the streets to block the bulldozers and save the soul of the neighborhood.

But if gentrification is defined as a demographic transition toward wealthier, whiter residents, this approach makes for a poor policy response. This is because the forces that drive this kind of neighborhood change do not come from the construction of specific apartment buildings or retail complexes, no matter how many granite countertops or artisanal coffee shops they might contain. Instead, they result from a degree of demand for inner-city living that would have shocked the slow-growthers of the 1960sdemand that, for the most part, has been channeled not into new condos but into homes built before the first wave of anti-development activism. When white-collar firms began to re-concentrate downtown in the 1980s and 90s, their workers, soon priced out of elite neighborhoods, bought old homes in marginal areas and modified them to their liking. The people they displaced crowded into poorer quarters of the city, or moved to lower-end suburbs, or, often, left for more affordable parts of the country altogether.

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The Pandemic Disproved Urban Progressives Theory About Gentrification - The Atlantic