Exploring the Ambivalent Mobilization of Upper-Middle-Class Gentriﬁers, South End, Boston

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Volume 38.4 July 2014 1181–94 International Journal of Urban and Regional Research DOI:10.1111/1468-2427.12128 Loving Diversity/Controlling Diversity: Exploring the Ambivalent Mobilization of Upper-Middle-Class Gentriﬁers, South End, Boston

SYLVIE TISSOT

Abstract This article centers on a group of upper-middle-class gentrifiers living in a neighborhood in the South End of Boston, and their complex attitude towards diversity. I use data from my fieldwork in the South End, based on ethnographic observation and 77 interviews with residents active in local organizations, such as neighborhood associations. These residents explicitly stress their endorsement of diversity, in terms of class, race, but also sexual orientation, and their commitment to maintaining it. I examine the meaning they give to this principle, the actions they take in its name and the kind of relations they establish with those ‘others’ who embody such diversity. I argue that the gentrifiers’ love of diversity, which cannot be reduced to sheer hypocrisy, is intrinsically linked to their capacity to control it, thus shedding light on the changing definition of social distinction in upper-middle-class culture.

Introduction For middle- and upper-middle-class residents who move to the inner-city neighborhoods of North America, endorsement of ‘diversity’ is as central to structuring their identity and lifestyle as pushing expensive strollers, drinking Starbucks coffee and hanging out in ‘authentic’ restaurants (Zukin, 2008). Most gentrifiers claim to enjoy mixed areas composed of white and non-white, poor and wealthy, gay and straight populations (see Jackson and Benson, 2014, this issue; August, 2014, this issue). The surprising picture of a middle class seemingly eager to live next to not very ‘respectable’ neighbors challenges our vision of social boundaries automatically translating into spatial boundaries: why are these middle-class people here, and more importantly, why do they enjoy it? Sociological perspectives help make sense of this puzzling fact. First, there is some rationalizing of the constraints that result from skyrocketing real-estate values in large cities. The middle class, facing increasing difficulties buying property in the most desirable neighborhoods, learns how to love where it is forced to live. Likewise, praising mixed demographics can be a commercial strategy to turn the undesirable into the desirable. Real-estate agents ingeniously emphasize diversity of up-and-coming neighborhoods to attract potential buyers (Berrey, 2005). Lastly, one needn’t look far to notice the distinct limits on the interactions gentrifiers, including African-American gentrifiers (Taylor, 2002), develop with non-white and low-income neighbors. These important analyses still contain serious pitfalls, though: do they imply that ‘diversity’ is only a rhetorical facade, which barely masks exclusionary practice and self-interest? Based on my research of upper- middle-class lifestyle in a gentrified neighborhood in the United States I suggest an

© 2014 Urban Research Publications Limited. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA 1182 Sylvie Tissot alternative thesis that examines power relations by taking the taste for diversity seriously. I argue that this attitude is part of a broader set of practices, values and dispositions — or ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu, 1986) — that reveals a restructuring of social distinction among privileged groups (Tissot, 2011a). In this article, I draw on Bourdieu’s theoretical perspective according to which social domination not only rests on economic exploitation but also incorporates and even relies on more symbolic processes such as social distinction based on cultural tastes. As the French sociologist argues, the power of the elite is not limited to socioeconomic resources; it also comes from the sense of legitimacy surrounding cultural practices and attitudes considered ‘superior’ to working-class lifestyles. This phenomenon of ‘distinction’ plays itself out through a mix of spatial inclusion and exclusion that I aim to investigate here. Among scholars who have analyzed the social and economic factors of gentrification (Authier, 1993; Smith, 1996; Lees et al., 2008), some focused on gentrifiers’ lifestyle. They brought to light its specificity in terms of consumption habits, values, political engagement and community activities, and explained how it transformed the urban environment (Zukin, 1988; Ley, 1996; Lloyd, 2006). Two major books recently emphasized ‘diversity’ as a watchword for mobilization in the United States. Modan (2007) analyzed the way in which gentrifiers use rhetoric to develop a legitimatizing representation of their neighborhood and themselves. New residents of Mount Pleasant, Washington, DC, developed a series of oppositions between mixed neighborhoods and the suburbs, heterogeneity and homogeneity, interactions and individualism, public and private, social ties and fears to define themselves. In an attempt to grasp both discourse and practice, Brown-Saracino (2009) studied what gentrifiers living in urban and rural environments do in the name of diversity. She explains how ‘social preservationists’ not only care about authentic landscape and historic preservation, but behave in a way that can help old-timers stay in the neighborhood. They do not limit themselves to individual practices, such as going to locally owned businesses rather than to new and more expensive ones; they also organize to voice their concern against real-estate projects that would accelerate gentrification and support affordable housing for middle- or low-income residents. One of the most convincing aspects of her work is that she analyzes the concrete impact of inclusive attitudes while bringing to light its limitations: gentrifiers are committed to preventing the displacement of old-timers, but there is a selection of the ‘authentic’ old-timer, which most often excludes young gays and lesbians, working-class and poor African Americans, residents of halfway houses and middle-class Russians. My research, which draws on the same perspective but explores mobilization in a gentrified neighborhood since the 1960s, aims to map the mix of exclusion and inclusion at work in the lifestyle of a specific group of gentrifiers: upper-middle-class residents. I argue that collective endorsement of ‘diversity’ allows them to negotiate excitement and fear at the same time. Loving diversity results in a commitment to socializing newcomers to the same values, but controlling diversity remains necessary to make this love possible.

Fieldwork on local associations in the South End, Boston In the years after the second world war, Boston’s disadvantaged South End neighborhood was considered a ‘skid row’ that was to be demolished as part of urban renewal efforts. It is now a sought-after address in Boston. In 2010, the total population of 34,669 residents was composed of 17,153 whites, 5,938 African Americans, 4,830 Asians and 5,745 Hispanics. Major housing projects built in the 1960s as well as subsidized units in smaller buildings explain the still-mixed demographics. Thus, in 2000, more than 50% of households spoke a language other than English, and one out of four residents was living below the poverty line. However, the percentage of whites and the median income in census tracts close to downtown are equivalent to percentages in the upscale neighborhoods of Back Bay and Beacon Hill and in the most desirable suburbs of the city such as Newton and Brookline. In the 1960s and 1970s, a mixed crowd was still moving

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38.4 © 2014 Urban Research Publications Limited Diversity and ambivalent gentrifiers in South End, Boston 1183 to the South End: not only white middle-class residents but also Puerto Ricans (it was not until the 1980s that the percentage of African Americans and Hispanics started decreasing), and notably gay people. Considered a ‘gay ghetto’ in the late 1970s and the 1980s, the area gained a reputation as a ‘gay-friendly’ neighborhood, with many local institutions such as restaurants and neighborhood associations welcoming gay and straight people of high socioeconomic status. I conducted fieldwork in the South End from 2004 to 2010, spending a total of 14 months there, interviewing 77 residents, and studying documents pertaining to urban renewal policy from 1960 to 1980 at the Boston Redevelopment Authority and the South End Historical Society. I also used an ethnographic methodology: as I was invited to parties, social events and fundraisers, I progressively integrated myself into gentrifiers’ lives and mingled with wealthy accountants, consultants, lawyers and managers. A white academic coming from a relatively privileged background, I could behave in a way that signaled shared social codes. I did not feel intimidated but was often shocked by the level of wealth, thus experiencing difficulties and concerns radically different from those ethnographers encountered in impoverished neighborhoods (Bourgois, 2003). My French nationality proved to be an asset for ethnographic fieldwork among people using ‘European culture’ as a social marker, among people who frequently went on vacation to France. Gender solidarity allowed me to develop friendships with several women living in the South End; thus I became particularly aware of gender issues and of the crucial role of women in local groups. I focused on local groups, namely 15 neighborhood associations, the Historical Society, a parents’ association and several associations created to maintain and improve gardens and parks. By means of local mobilization, a group of white upper-middle-class residents progressively gained power in the decision-making process and managed to control renovations, commercial and real-estate development. I did fieldwork among these groups to analyze the complex emergence of a local elite, while exploring the spatial, social and symbolic boundaries upper-middle-class residents drew between themselves and ‘others’, in terms of class, race and sexual orientation.

Loving diversity Beyond similarities between gentrifiers’ rhetoric in cities around the world, their definitions of diversity and how they engage with other social groups differ considerably. Far from being intrinsic to a type of space (gentrified neighborhoods) or a social group (the ‘new middle class’, see Ley, 1996), the rhetoric of diversity emerges from specific national and local contexts. My research is a case study in the South End (see above). It analyzes the central role of diversity in gentrifiers’ identity and brings into focus a strong, although particular, commitment to supporting diversity. I used a sociological and historical approach in order to explain why such rhetoric emerged in the South End. I also studied its characteristics and its institutionalization via a network of residents and associations progressively forming a local elite. The South End residents’ endorsement of such a notion is linked to the history of urban renewal and the critique of modern planning in North America. But it did not prevail among gentrifiers’ associations until the 1990s, when local politics became less polarized, allowing its leaders to unify around the new values of liberalism. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs (1961) criticized urban renewal policies, which destroyed rich urban neighborhoods and instead created artificial and isolated communities. She provided a vivid description of Greenwich Village in Manhattan, where various groups constantly met and interacted, and opposed it to the suburbs, where people only used their cars for transport (instead of walking through the streets or taking shared public transport) and withdrew into the domestic sphere. Jacob’s book met with huge success in the 1960s as protests developed against urban renewal.

The policy was progressively forcing out inhabitants and razing their homes in inner-city neighborhoods in the United States, mainly populated by low-income people. In Boston, the federal government funded one of the largest inner-city restructurings in the country (Mollenkopf, 1983; O’Connor, 1993), eventually leading to the demolition of the West End (Gans, 1962). In her introduction, Jane Jacobs mentions Boston’s North End to praise its lively atmosphere and network of small shops, expressing surprise at the ‘skid row’ label attached by municipal planners. In the early 1960s, young middle-class and already-upper-middle-class residents started to move to the South End (like the West End and the North End, the South End is located near downtown). After having been badly hit by the Great Depression, Boston witnessed sudden economic growth in the 1960s; downtown neighborhoods such as Beacon Hill and Back Bay turned out to be too small to house a growing professional class. A section of this new crowd, aware of the ‘negro removal’ resulting from urban renewal (Massey and Denton, 1993), opposed urban planners’ policies, while many others simply sought to protect the neighborhood where they had bought property. Jacobs’ description of Greenwich Village helped them in designing and promoting a new urban model that could help to alleviate the ghetto reputation of the South End. This model still pervades gentrifiers’ representations of themselves and their neighborhoods. Strong social ties, small local businesses, pedestrians on the street: these are the elements my interviewees mention to illustrate the ‘diversity’ they liked in the 2000s, revealing the changing perspective on cities in the United States; formerly associated with disorder and danger, urban density has become a positive feature. My interviewees — upper-middle-class residents active in local groups — constantly emphasized how many other residents they know, that many of their neighbors even keep a set of their keys, and mentioned the vast number of people to whom they said ‘hello’ on the street every day. By contrast, they stressed the anonymity of Beacon Hill and Back Bay, although rarely admitting that they would not be able to afford to buy property in these prestigious areas of central Boston, where many of them had previously rented. Instead, they carefully explained that they did not know any neighbors there or that the neighbors were extremely unfriendly. A retired woman, who graduated from Wellesley College and whose upper-class family of rich entrepreneurs was based in New York, lived in Beacon Hill before moving to the South End. She explained, ‘I like it here much better. Because you can get to know people. It is friendlier’. Like other interviewees, she joined an organization created in 1990 in the South End, Walk Boston, which promotes walking for transportation and recreation. However, the word ‘diversity’ did not emerge in South End local politics until the 1990s, when neighborhood associations began to institutionalize its use. Two features explain this late emergence. The first is related to the history of the South End, which differs from the usual narrative of progressive, artist-oriented and Bohemian ‘pioneers’ followed by more affluent, conservative and intolerant ‘yuppies’. ‘Counter-culturalists’ — described by Anderson (1990) as people at ease with living in mixed areas — existed in the South End, but did not prevail in the local political scene. Rather, the Historical Society, created by amateur historians and real-estate agents in 1966, was mainly composed of upper-middle-class conservative residents. This group claimed to represent the community and had broad influence. One of its leaders, a member of the Junior League from a conservative and wealthy background, was married to a banker, also active in his neighborhood association. Eager to prevent demolition and to increase the value of Victorian buildings, the Society secured the label ‘historical district’ for the South End in 1983. In the mid-1970s, members also actively fought radical groups of black and Hispanic activists who had been protesting displacement and demanding affordable housing in the South End since 1968. Sharing conservative ideas and sometimes feeling sympathetic to the anti-busing movement in Boston (Formisano, 1991), many of the leaders of the Historical Society adopted explicitly hostile stances against poor people and minorities living in their neighborhood. However, because these stances started to discredit the Society’s efforts in a neighborhood with a liberal

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38.4 © 2014 Urban Research Publications Limited Diversity and ambivalent gentrifiers in South End, Boston 1185 reputation, the organization eventually ostracized the most explicitly racist members. In the 1980s, the Historical Society turned to more moderate attitudes, by then shared by other residents active in neighborhood associations. The prevalence of local radical groups and political fights were also on the decline, and the city of Boston halted a major social-housing program for low-income people. The endorsement of diversity could now safely encapsulate a liberal but moderate attitude. Decreasing polarization in South End politics allowed mobilized gentrifiers to share a common rhetoric, based on a commitment to the ‘community’ and its ‘diversity’. The endorsement of diversity by South End middle-class residents was also a legacy of the history of liberalism in the United States (Horton, 2005). Very active in the fight against Jim Crow from the mid-1950s, many liberals came to fear the radicalization of the Black Power movement and the New Left in the late 1960s (Lawson, 1997). Not only did the radical movements criticize institutionalized segregation, they also pointed to the structural roots of poverty. As the ‘white backlash’ in the 1970s and the neoconservative movement in the 1980s violently attacked the Left, diversity became a way of stressing a commitment to progressive values while maintaining a distance from radicalism. Affirmative action was redefined as the promotion of ‘cultural diversity’ (Sabbagh, 2003) and in the 1990s big corporations started promoting ‘cultural diversity’, conceived as a way not so much to challenge social structures but to increase efficiency. Also, the discourse of diversity stopped focusing solely on race and instead expanded to encompass a variety of groups, such as women and gay people (Anderson, 2004). As Berrey (2005) discussed, the notion of diversity supports progressive politics while somehow downplaying racial and class cleavages. This is the case in the South End, where some community leaders are similar to the white liberal activists Berrey interviewed. Far from revealing inequalities that should be eliminated, differences are seen as something positive in themselves, thus often leaving power relations unquestioned. When asked to define diversity, South End interviewees stress the density of social ties and also provide a list of social groups which make diversity valuable for everyone. A consultant, who moved there in 1987 with his lawyer wife, explains:

It’s a small community of very different people . . . People are different age-wise, racially, ethnically, they are different educationally, they are different economically, with regard to their sexual orientation.

Another consultant, a woman married to a corporate manager, also a member of a neighborhood association, says:

We wanted to live in the part of the city which could offer what we consider the best of the city, which was diversity. In all its ﬂavors, diversity in terms of [the] age of people who live there, ethnic mix, the vibrancy of the South End art, the homosexuals, the low-income housings, the empty-nesters.

Thus, current gentriﬁers can value their residential environment and highlight their openness to ‘others’, while obscuring power issues related to the coexistence of racially and socially distinct populations. However, this does not mean that they simply ignore or dismiss inequalities.

Socializing to diversity Today a network of a few hundred mobilized residents form a local elite, a huge majority of whom are white upper-middle-class homeowners. Since the late 1960s, they have become active in local groups without, however, entering the political sphere, being, as Weber (1978) put it, ‘notables’. In the 1960s, in an era of growing protest, activists and progressive planners harshly criticized urban renewal. In Boston, the election of a more

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38.4 © 2014 Urban Research Publications Limited 1186 Sylvie Tissot progressive mayor in 1968 prompted the shift from bulldozer to participation of local residents as a means of transforming the inner city. However, mainly white middle- class residents were members of the particular neighborhood associations with which City Hall ultimately agreed to collaborate. More precisely, the composition of the neighborhood associations represented an alliance between white upper-middle-class property owners — by and large newly relocated to the neighborhood — and the owners of boarding houses, who were generally residents of longer standing, members of the middle-middle class, and from a French-Canadian, Lebanese, Irish and African- American background. While improving urban infrastructures and providing some limited funds for social housing, City Hall supported a loan system, making it easier for new homeowners to renovate their brownstones, a policy that mainly beneﬁted the upper middle class and also secured their foothold in the neighborhood. The newly arriving white property owners would soon eclipse their partners, especially as the 1980s saw a substantial rise in Boston’s population and a commensurate rise in housing prices, leading to the conversion of boarding houses into condominiums, transferring ownership further to wealthier white people. Among the newcomers who were joining the neighborhood associations, young families coexisted with gay people. Although remaining in the closet until the 1980s, many gay males, most of whom were homeowners, were active in local groups. Economic interests trumped moral condemnation, thus strengthening the group of homeowners. To speak about a local elite does not mean that the city, along with the Boston Redevelopment Authority, is not a major actor. It is, but neighborhood associations are closely connected to City Hall. Similarly, economic interests, especially those of developers, have also become powerful, but there are strong although sometimes confrontational relationships between developers and local groups. Asked about his neighborhood association’s attitude towards developers, one resident, who worked for City Hall in the 1970s and then became a developer before working as a consultant, explains:

Now it turns out, there is a bunch of us who have been on the other side, and who are perfectly able to do all the numbers, all the professional stuff, so we can make it difﬁcult . . .

A local power emerged through associations such as the Historical Society and about 15 neighborhood associations of the South End. Today, the Historical Society helps the Landmark Commission to implement preservation rules. It also organizes talks and hosts an annual ball as its main fundraiser. It still focuses on the history of the socioeconomic elite who moved to the South End, when it was built in the mid-nineteenth century, although to a lesser extent in recent years. Formerly run by owners of boarding houses, the neighborhood associations were progressively overtaken by the new white middle class, and their organization, activities and rhetoric changed radically. Today they explicitly deal primarily with concrete issues: garbage, park maintenance or problems relating to nearby restaurants, such as liquor licenses, terraces and noise. These issues, which upset homeowners, are discussed intensively during meetings. Other groups, often run by residents who are also active in neighborhood associations, raise money to maintain parks. One such group reorganized public space by creating a dog run in the main park (Tissot, 2011b). I argue that one less explicit goal of all these groups relates to ‘diversity’. More precisely, their leaders, who claim to represent the ‘community’, although their organizations are strongly class-based, work to socialize newcomers to diversity. At the end of the nineteenth century the South End, an initially bourgeois neighborhood, was in decline. There was a continuous inﬂux of migrants from Europe, the Middle East and Asia, followed by African Americans during the Great Migration and Puerto Ricans after the second world war. In line with these demographic trends, many social agencies were opened. As in other American cities, young male and female professionals created settlement houses to provide social and education programs

(Halpern, 1995; Deutsch, 2000). In the late 1890s, a founder of a settlement house in the South End, Robert Woods, described the neighborhood as ‘the most “charitied” region in Christendom’ (Woods, 1898: 245). Since then, homeless people, abused women, former drug addicts and prisoners have come to this part of Boston to seek help. In the past decades, the contrast between this population and the residents able to buy property in the South End has become increasingly marked. In 2000, the South End Gini coefficient (a measure of the inequality of income distribution) was the second highest in Boston. Since the 1960s, a significant proportion of newcomers have come from nearby city neighborhoods or from the city of Cambridge, but in the most recent years many have left the suburbs, an environment where they lived in big houses and rarely ventured into public spaces. Recently retired ‘empty nesters’, whose children are now adults, are eager to enjoy urban life. However, when moving to a neighborhood such as the South End, they are suddenly faced with a level of diversity they are not familiar with. One organization in particular fuels embarrassment and hostility among new residents. Situated in the eastern part of the neighborhood close to Chinatown is a shelter — Pine Street Inn — accommodating mostly African-American and Hispanic men. Beyond the discussions the neighborhood associations seem to focus on, they are engaged in dealing with residents’ fear of the unfamiliar mixed environment and of the ‘deviant’ population they meet on the street on a daily basis. The associations acknowledge these fears but at the same time turn them into something positive: not the exclusion of others, but praise of diversity. Thus I argue that neighborhood associations not only address mundane issues related to the urban environment. They do not share the suburban neighborhood associations’ goal of maintaining a strict social and racial homogeneity (Fisher, 1994; Davis, 2006). They work as agents of socialization, promoting norms and behaviors that are not limited to exclusion. Many social events and local activities organized by neighborhood associations aim to bring people to public spaces and make them safely aware of (and accustomed to) diversity. One popular event is the South End walk. I participated in these walks, which gave me a chance to analyze in detail the particular view of the neighborhood the guides provided; their explicit description of the past is indeed an implicit prescription for the present. Created by a woman who moved from a Boston suburb to the South End in the late 1990s, the walks are hosted by different guides, usually a well-known local character: a long-term resident, a policeman or a community leader. They last about one hour and end with a meal in a local restaurant. The walks are centered on various topics: communities who lived in the South End (Greek, Lebanese, Jewish, German), former economic activities (piano factories) and cultural places. Unlike the Historical Society, which focuses on buildings and high culture, the walks emphasized people. The guides usually mention crime and poverty at the time of the ‘skid row’, most often from a dramatic perspective, allowing them to contrast the past with the present. The frightening dimension of ‘diversity’ — the visible presence of working-class migrants and African Americans — is revealed to be an element of the past. At the same time, what remains of this past today — projects, homeless people on the street — is presented as an element of a broader, desirable picture. First, in keeping with the contemporary definition of liberalism, minorities are described as one element of diversity among many, including gentrifiers. The diversity is less visible than it used to be and does not challenge the gentrifiers’ privileges. Secondly, promoted by mobilized gentrifiers as an expression of openness and tolerance, ‘diversity’ works as a positive social marker stressing the gentrifiers’ difference from conventional and selfish suburbanites. My fieldwork allowed me to attend other activities based on the same attitude towards diversity: praising its charms while holding its frightening aspects at arm’s length. Twice a year, residents get together and use municipal equipment to clean the sidewalks. One neighborhood association includes residents of a nearby halfway house: about a dozen men came to help — and did most of the work. Another association, which had been explicitly created to lobby for the creation of a dog run, has been very active in promoting

‘diverse’ public places. As I have previously discussed (Tissot, 2011b), the creation of the dog run, an exclusive place for mainly upper-middle-class pet owners, went hand in hand with a highly positive description of Peters Park as a ‘diverse’ place, namely a place with people from various races, classes and sexual orientations. These groups nominally included racial and sexual minorities, residents of social housing, even homeless people. However, as usage of the dog run proved to be heavily homogeneous in terms of class and race, with strong symbolic boundaries generated by social markers of distinction such as accessories and expensive services, it became clear that ‘diversity’ did not question increasing white upper-middle-class visibility in this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. Yet, as community leaders explain, privilege goes hand in hand with responsibility: while these leaders never question the gentrifiers’ authority to mark specific social norms in public spaces, they nevertheless call for an acceptance of the limited visibility of ‘others’. Constant efforts to socialize newcomers to diversity imply the creation of a ‘good neighbor’ ethos, as described by Anderson (1990) in his work in a gentrifying neighborhood in Philadelphia. This ethos contributes to promoting a tolerant atmosphere and decreasing conflicts between different groups. Many upper-middle-class community leaders, for the most part liberal-minded and supporters of the Democratic Party, go to interracial discussions organized by the Urban League. Some are also active in the Greater Boston Interfaith Community, which organizes exchanges between communities and religions. These engagements, as well as local commitment to socialize their peers to diversity, reveal a willingness to engage with the deep racial and class cleavages that structure American society. These wealthy liberals not only endorse a ‘political correctness’ limited to language, they also acknowledge the dignity of each group — gay people, low-income residents, and the black population. They make conscious efforts to engage in direct interactions with these groups, and promote acceptance and tolerance on the part of their similarly privileged peers. As one resident explains:

Certainly some of the neighbors don’t like the Salvation Army and the halfway house. But they usually come out for clean-ups and stuff like that . . . Some people don’t like these things around, but I think they are important to have. That’s part of the South End. A mission of the neighborhood association is to bridge that gap, have people to talk to people they wouldn’t talk to.

This resident, a woman of 50, who moved to the South End in 1997, is very active in her neighborhood association. She is a scientist working for a company conducting cancer research and earns about US $100,000 a year. Every year, she devotes a great deal of personal time to organizing a fundraiser for a local youth association. At the beginning of one neighborhood walk she hosted as a guide, she mentioned the fundraiser, encouraging those in attendance that day to attend the fundraiser as well, and to donate money. More importantly, she also stressed the importance of the youth association’s work and the advantage of prevention instead of repression to address neighborhood crime. In the same way as Howard Becker (1991) spoke of ‘moral entrepreneurs’, upper-middle-class community leaders in the South End function as ‘diversity entrepreneurs’. Their civic engagement reveals an interesting mix of distance and proximity, which has a class and a gender dimension. In sharp contrast with the traditional elite organizations in the United States, upper-middle-class organizations in the South End question gender boundaries. Wuthnow (1998) described the three prevailing models of civic engagement in the 1950s in the United States: the organization man, the club woman and the good neighbor. Commitment to diversity in American gentrifying neighborhoods such as the South End contributes to restructuring these models as it allows women, especially educated ones, to engage in local politics. My interviewees consisted of both men and women whose engagement bears traditional dissimilarities. Conﬁdence and aggressiveness are more frequent among men; conversely, timidity and self-effacement characterize many women (a point also

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38.4 © 2014 Urban Research Publications Limited Diversity and ambivalent gentrifiers in South End, Boston 1189 discussed by August, 2014, this issue). Nevertheless, the main leaders of neighborhood associations, including presidents, are often retired or semi-retired women, or working part-time and/or at home, but highly educated. This was the case of one leader of the group lobbying for the dog run; she then ran a parent association that had recently been created to raise money to renovate a local public school. Forty-four years old, she graduated from Harvard and is currently a part-time consultant for non-profits, working from home. Unlike this woman, who is married and has two kids, many women active in local groups moved to the South End after a divorce or a separation. Some do not have offspring, or their children are grown-up. The commitment to ‘diversity’ encapsulates many of their aspirations. They are eager to develop a new social life, at some distance from conjugal norms, and outside church and parent associations, which are strongly family-centered. South End neighborhood associations are places for making friends, including friendships with gay men. Through this, these women can experience and express a gay-friendliness, which also comes with a lifestyle that is more oriented towards restaurants and bars than around the domestic sphere. In neighborhood associations, they also have opportunities to gain empowerment in sectors traditionally controlled by men in local communities. In the South End, there is still a strong distinction between women (as well as gay men), who are more inclined towards dealing with philanthropy, fundraisers and social events, and straight men who are well-accustomed to negotiating with City Hall, developers and business. However, a significant number of women who are highly educated and no longer living as a couple, are able to overcome these gender divisions. The rhetoric of diversity, with its promises of challenging novelty and non-conventional lifestyle, echoes their social, professional and intimate trajectories. Well-educated, they can implement their professional skills through engagement that emphasizes openness but also implies control.

Controlling diversity In addition to promoting an ethos tolerant of difference, the leaders are also able to organize in order to defend the right of low-income residents to continue to live in the neighborhood. Even if some of their actions, such as renovating their homes, maintaining parks and calling for new restaurants, objectively resulted in raising real-estate values in the neighborhood, thus accelerating displacement, it would be a mistake to see displacement as an explicit goal. Acting as ‘social preservationists’ (Brown-Saracino, 2009), some of the mobilized residents are in favor of mixed-housing programs, with buildings including a percentage of affordable units. Residents give money to charities and serve on their boards, thus supporting some of their programs. A conflict that took place between 2007 and 2008 in the South End, over a program aiming to provide housing for formerly homeless people, illustrates this commitment. I describe this conflict in order to point to the power of this elite and analyze its ambivalent civic engagement: while they almost unanimously took a strong stand in favor of the program and actively fought its opponents, their engagement also entailed a control of the diversity they supported. Inclusion and exclusion come together; more precisely: the latter makes the former possible. In 2008, Pine Street Inn decided to buy three additional buildings in order to accommodate formerly homeless people, a move that attracted protests from abutting homeowners. At that time, another non-profit that was running a program for former alcoholics owned the three buildings. Eighty men were living on the premises, one block from a complex housing many Puerto Ricans, but closer to downtown (and thus located in the most desirable sections of the South End) than the Pine Street Inn shelter. A small group of residents wrote and circulated a petition demanding that two of the three buildings be sold at market rates. They explicitly explained that they did not want too

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38.4 © 2014 Urban Research Publications Limited 1190 Sylvie Tissot many low-income residents on their street and that they valued owners rather than renters. Less explicitly, they also expressed concerns about the impact on their property value. Immediately, residents who had been long active in local groups started another group called the Welcoming Committee. This committee called for numerous meetings, which were extremely well attended, and launched another petition signed by 500 residents. In the name of ‘diversity’ and the right of low-income residents to live in the South End, they defended the shelter, which ultimately succeeded in buying the buildings. As the petition said:

We believe it is imperative to maintain and increase well-managed, low-income housing in Boston and to stem any further net loss of this housing. We support a South End which has long been an economically diverse community. We welcome residents of all economic, ethnic and social backgrounds to share in the vitality and neighborliness of the South End. We are committed to preserving affordable housing where residents can have a place to call home while rebuilding their lives.

I attended several meetings and had access to the whole list of the petitioners. I was surprised by the massive turnout. The most prominent leaders of the local groups I had investigated for some time (presidents of neighborhood associations, and even conservative members of the Historical Society) showed up. One prominent leader of the neighborhood, one showing strong liberal convictions and connected to numerous local groups as well as social agencies she helps organizing fundraising events, played a crucial role. Not only did she start the Welcoming Committee, but as a retired person she spent endless hours talking to neighbors, friends and acquaintances and circulating a petition. I also gathered that this massive support revealed two things: first, the central role of diversity as a core value structuring the identity and legitimacy of the current gentrifiers; and secondly, a strong commitment to organizing this ‘diversity’, not merely supporting it. While calling for tolerance, residents active in local groups were eager to have a say in the proportion of ‘others’ composing the ‘good’ diversity, and thus, as I will explain, to have a say in the low-income residents’ visibility in public places. The campaign led by the Welcoming Committee in defense of the homeless shelter illustrates this ambivalence. While explicitly defending diversity, they organized public meetings and started negotiations between the non-profit organization and the angry residents. During public meetings, both the progressive community members and the representatives of the non-profit organization emphasized the selection and supervision of the renters. The residents encouraged Pine Street Inn to provide a document answering questions relating to ‘size’, ‘screening’ and ‘supervision’ of the residents. It explained that, compared to the current halfway house, the number of occupants would decrease, and listed strict rules in terms of guests, smoking and sitting on the stoops:

All guests and visitors must sign in and out with the date and time in the guest book. Overnight guests and visitors are allowed, provided that adequate advance notice is given to the house manager.

As far as supervision was concerned, it stated:

We will begin this new housing program with 24-hour stafﬁng, 7 days per week. The stafﬁng will include two case managers, one evening counselor and one overnight house manager.

Of course, the document aimed to allay some of the neighbors’ anxiety but interestingly, the Welcoming Committee kept explaining how this anxiety was legitimate and should be acknowledged. They strongly disagreed with the preeminent black leader Mel King, who came to a meeting to encourage the Welcoming Committee simply to dismiss the selﬁsh and racist ‘yuppies’. Rather, they were insistent on promoting an attitude of friendliness and tolerance of all perspectives, hiring a public facilitator for public meetings and believing in the possibility of reaching compromise by taking everybody’s

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38.4 © 2014 Urban Research Publications Limited Diversity and ambivalent gentrifiers in South End, Boston 1191 points of view into account. This attitude revealed a moderate position, which, more importantly, went hand in hand with an active role in negotiations. Eventually, negotiations resulted in a significant decrease in the number of renters and a plan to have a minimum percentage of middle-income residents. Thus, a stricter definition was given to ‘diversity’, endorsed by the Welcoming Committee. The number of units went down from 37 to 30. In addition, 40% of the units were reserved for people in the 60% median-income category (which roughly works out to allowed earnings of between US $30,000 and US $35,000 per annum). While they distanced themselves from the question of ‘density’ raised by a few angry residents (a term characteristically used by the neighborhood-association movement in the suburbs), the bulk of the South End upper-middle-class leaders proved to have the same concern for social balance. The leader of the Welcoming Committee was aware that some members of the group would disagree, and some did, including one of the few African-American members of the group. Still, the leader explained her endorsement of the deal by saying:

The introduction of a middle-income population to the mix is also a healthy feature. It brings another level of economic integration into the neighborhood. It also gives balance to the house by adding a group that may be more outgoing, more apt to participate in neighborhood projects, and able to serve as a bridge between the poorer residents who from PSI’s experience tend to stay to themselves and the neighborhood at large.

The promotion of diversity reflected a concern for social balance, based on a representation of the ‘others’ as positive and yet potentially dangerous. Of course, they did not picture low-income residents of the new buildings the way the angry petitioners did. There were strong ideological differences, as I saw in discussions with a couple who had recently relocated to the South End and who opposed the Pine Street Inn proposal. During a meeting in their renovated brownstone, and perhaps fueled by a desire to explain the realities of American society to a European woman, they made a range of very derogatory comments about African Americans, characterizing them as dangerous individuals and irresponsible parents. The leaders of the Welcoming Committee did not share such prejudices, and strongly criticized this couple in private. However, the way they considered low-income people and minorities remained structured by a clear opposition between the dangerous population and the deserving one. Anxious to stress these boundaries, and to make clear that they were ready to help those people who deserved it, they had an interesting discussion about pins they planned to sell and circulate in order to publicize their cause. Several members strongly opposed the first proposed slogan, ‘All are welcome’, for fear that it would imply support of criminals and rapists. The way in which openness and control are intrinsically bound up in one another became apparent during the neighborhood walks I mentioned earlier. During these walks, some of the guides praised the role of the ‘pioneers’ who were brave enough to move into the area in the 1960s and were dedicated to renovating the neighborhood and addressing its problems. They mentioned a diversity cultivated by neighborhood associations. The walks provided opportunities to mention the associations’ engagement to close ‘bad’ bars, organize crime patrols and pressurize the city to install new equipment and urban amenities. The narratives started with a description of the South End as a ‘skid row’, celebrated the work of the ‘pioneers’ and finally pointed to the achievement of a renewal that resulted in a mixed though renovated area. The founder of the walks, also a prominent member of the Welcoming Committee, was eager to fight the ongoing prejudice against and fear of the shelter and so organized a walk in Pine Street Inn. The guide on this walk was a Pine Street Inn employee who described homeless people as deserving compassion rather than blame, and who expressed the organization’s commitment to social work. At the same time, she acknowledged that many people were concerned about problems that might arise as a

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38.4 © 2014 Urban Research Publications Limited 1192 Sylvie Tissot result of the men leaving the shelter in the morning, as well as the right of neighborhood associations — and as a consequence homeowners — to voice their concern and to demand more control. Interestingly, many affluent gentrifiers opposed the stigmatization of homeless people, low-income residents and people of color. They expressed a commitment to living next to them, and their readiness to fight against their displacement if needed. At the same time, this progressive attitude relied on strict conditions: gentrifiers praised low-income residents’ and minorities’ attitudes when they showed goodwill and docility. The usual sentence I heard during interviews was that ‘they blend in’, suggesting that too much visibility from these residents was not appreciated. Another major argument to support the cause of diversity pointed to the agreeable character of the current renters of the halfway house: why would their successor from Pine Street Inn not have the same positive attitude? As they frequently said, former drug addicts following the detoxification program not only participated in the clean-ups twice a year but also in a neighborhood association picnic every year in a small public park. Every year, they cooked hamburgers while other residents were busy participating in the auctions and social talks. As this distribution of people in public spaces revealed, inclusion in ‘diversity’ goes hand in hand with very specific — and subordinate — positions and a limited visibility in public places. As I explained, the upper-middle-class residents’ mobilization aims to construct ‘good neighbors’. This means having accepting newcomers on the one hand, but also limiting the presence of low-income residents and people of color to the obedient and the minimally visible on the other hand.

Conclusion Rejecting both the idealized vision of a spatial mixing that abolishes social differences, as well as the analysis of gentrification as a purely exclusionary process, my study takes the gentrifiers’ endorsement of diversity seriously. I take a disenchanted although not cynical view of this commitment. In this article, I have pointed out how power is controlled by a local elite, which has a clear exclusionary dimension, that nevertheless goes hand in hand with tolerant perspectives and policy efforts. How can we make sociological sense of such ambivalence without reducing inclusion to hypocrisy, and concluding that exclusion entirely pervades relations between social groups, even in mixed areas? Such an undertaking requires studying the specificity of this local elite, and its strategies of distinction when, surprisingly, openness is symmetrical with controlling the spaces where they live. Gentrifiers not only claim to be open, they try to implement their values, notably by socializing newcomers to diversity and promoting a ‘good neighbor’ ethos that they hope can generate peaceful relations among different groups. But this commitment to diversity is intrinsically linked to the gentrifiers’ capacity to control it. In fact, as the conflict over Pine Street Inn in the South End showed, in the course of promoting peaceful relations, ‘diversity entrepreneurs’ are very careful to take a strong role in organizing those relations by controlling the proportion of each group that makes up the ‘diversity’. Since the 1960s, a network of community groups has organized this specifically local power. What does this case study bring to the literature on gentrification and diversity? First, my approach, based on notions such as distinction defined as a mix of inclusion and exclusion that can vary across countries and periods of time (Bourdieu, 1986; Lamont, 1992), helps to avoid scientific and political deadlocks. The lack of critical perspective in the literature on gentrification has been rightly lamented (Slater, 2006). Undoubtedly, if critical thought aims to highlight and analyze power relations and domination processes at stake in urban transformations, far from expertise commissioned by public authorities, this article embraces that approach. At the same time, this work differs from the theoretical framework analyzing urban transformations as participating in a univocal way in the repressive tendencies

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38.4 © 2014 Urban Research Publications Limited Diversity and ambivalent gentrifiers in South End, Boston 1193 characteristic of the neoliberal city (Davis, 2006; Low and Smith, 2006; Hackworth, 2007). Such research is extremely valuable. However, studying practices and rhetoric in a local context brings to light more complex phenomena. Without making a moral judgment, nor being naïve, I argue that the upper-middle-class emphasis on diversity in mixed neighborhoods is indicative of the changing mechanisms of domination. My fieldwork reveals not so much residents’ desire to establish strong spatial boundaries protecting homogeneous communities, but to have a limited and controlled proportion of ‘others’ in their residential area. ‘Diversity’ epitomizes a new kind of social distinction, which does not rely on segregation between homogeneous residential areas, but on strict control of spatial mixing within residential areas. Secondly, this case study highlights the conditions under which wealthy gentrifiers are likely to be tolerant rather than intolerant, open to ‘others’ rather than hostile to them, ready to engage in new interactions rather than refusing them. As I wrote earlier, there is a diversity of commitment for ‘diversity’, rather than an automatic and generalizable relationships between the migration of wealthy residents to mixed neighborhoods and their active engagement in the social order. Rather, this commitment takes variable forms. In many countries, specifically in North America and Europe, the rhetoric of diversity has been largely institutionalized. While still a watchword used by progressives to remake society in a more egalitarian form, in many circumstance it has also stabilized as a feature of consensus and status quo, as well as a category of public policy. Today, ‘diversity’ is the priority of many rehabilitation programs (see August, this issue). But because there is a legitimate rhetoric does not mean that in every circumstance, people such as gentrifiers are likely endorse it. When diversity appears threatening, as it was in the South End in the 1970s or is present in less desirable but gentrifying cities such as Noisy-le-Sec near Paris (see Bacqué et al., 2014, this issue), gentrifiers are less likely to promote it. One way of reducing the frightening dimension of diversity, if not reducing diversity itself, is to control it. I argue that the other condition for gentrifiers to claim openness is the possibility of controlling what they are open to. This control, though, is not equivalent to repression or complete exclusion. When diversity is made into a reality controlled by gentrifiers, their love for it has no limits.

Sylvie Tissot ([email protected]), University of Saint Denis-Paris 8, 2 rue de la Liberté, 93526 Saint-Denis cedex, France.

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