The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City/ Neil Smith

THE NEW URBAN FRONTIER Why have so many central and inner cities in Europe, North America and Australia been so radically revamped in the past three decades, converting urban decay into new chic? Will the process continue in the twenty-first century, or is it ended? What does this mean for the people who live there? Can they do anything about it? This book challenges conventional wisdom—which holds gentrification to be the simple outcome of new middle-class tastes and a demand for urban living—to reveal gentrification as part of a much larger shift in the political economy and culture of the late twentieth century. Documenting in gritty detail the conflicts that gentrification brings to the new urban “frontiers,” the book explores the interconnections of urban policy, patterns of investment, eviction and homelessness. The failure of liberal urban policy and the end of the 1980s financial boom have made the end-of-the-century city a darker and more dangerous place. Public policy and the private market are conspiring against minorities, working people, the poor and homeless people as never before. In the emerging revanchist city, gentrification has become part of this policy of revenge. Neil Smith is a Professor of Geography and Acting Director of the Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture at Rutgers University. THE NEW URBAN FRONTIER Gentrification and the revanchist city NEIL SMITH LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 1996 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1996 Neil Smith All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Smith, Neil. The new urban frontier: gentrification and the revanchist city/ Neil Smith. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Gentrification. 2. Gentrification—Government policy. 3. Urban renewal. 4. Urban policy. I. Title. HT170.S55 1996 307.76–dc20 95–46015 ISBN 0-203-97564-2 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-13254-1 (hbk) 0-415-13255-X (pbk) For Nancy and Ron Smith CONTENTS List of plates ix List of figures xii List of tables xiv Preface xv Acknowledgments xxii Introduction 1 “CLASS STRUGGLE ON AVENUE B” The Lower East Side as Wild Wild 3 West 2 IS GENTRIFICATION A DIRTY WORD? 28 Part I Toward a theory of gentrification 3 LOCAL ARGUMENTS From “consumer sovereignty” to the rent gap 49 4 GLOBAL ARGUMENTS Uneven development 72 5 SOCIAL ARGUMENTS Of yuppies and housing 89 Part II The global is the local 6 MARKET, STATE AND IDEOLOGY Society Hill 116 7 CATCH-22 The gentrification of Harlem? 136 8 ON GENERALITIES AND EXCEPTIONS Three European cities 163 Part III The revanchist city 9 MAPPING THE GENTRIFICATION FRONTIER 186 10 FROM GENTRIFICATION TO THE REVANCHIST CITY 206 Notes 228 Bibliography 231 Index 247 PLATES 1.1 New York City police retake Avenue A on the edge of Tompkins 4 Square Park, 1989 1.2 The closing of Tompkins Square Park, June 3, 1991 6 1.3 Tompkins Square Park fenced off, 1992 7 1.4 Real estate capital rides the new urban frontier 13 2.1 “Is Gentrification a Dirty Word?” 29 2.2 “Persecution after the Edict of Nantes” 34 2.3 The Art of Eviction: an art exhibit at ABC No Rio in the Lower 40 East Side, New York 2.4 Bullet Space: an artists’ squat in the Lower East Side 44 3.1 Disinvestment in the urban housing stock: an abandoned building 61 and community-based rehabilitation 3.2 Dr. Dan explains gentrification 68 3.3 Dr. Dan explains the rent gap 70 4.1 From “the ‘armpit of America’ to ‘Charm City’: the rebuilt 75 Baltimore waterfront 4.2 The Eton Center in downtown Toronto 80 4.3 Global graffiti against gentrification: Sydney, Gossler (Germany, 87 Granada (Spain), New York 5.1 “Join the ruling class”: newspaper advert for a new 90 condominium in New York City 5.2 The Porsches of Blythe’s Wharf 100 5.3 Gentrification-induced displacement 108 6.1 Society Hill, Philadelphia, on the eve of gentrification 118 6.2 The Dock Street market, Philadelphia, in the 1940s 121 6.3 Ground clearance for Society Hill Towers, 1961 124 6.4 Society Hill Towers and townhouses, 1971 126 6.5 Eighteenth-century housing stock, Philadelphia, before 129 gentrification 6.6 Restored buildings at the corner of Second Street and Pine 130 Street, Philadelphia 7.1 Restored Harlem Brownstones on Manhattan Avenue, 1985 145 7.2 Towers on the Park, Harlem, New York 150 8.1 Reinvestment in Amsterdam’s Canal District 168 8.2 Office and residential reconstruction on Nyár ut, in District VII, 173 Budapest 8.3 A street in the Marais, Paris 180 9.1 Contesting the frontier: abandoned and squatted buildings on 188 Thirteenth Street, Lower East Side, New York 9.2 “See no homeless” in the new urban reservation 204 10.1 After the park 215 10.2 Bulldozing Dinkinsville, Third and Fourth Streets between 217 Avenues C and D, New York 10.3 The revanchist city: police attack demonstrators at the 223 Community Board 3 meeting, New York, June 22, 1993 10.4 Demonstration against eviction, Park Avenue, New York, 226 December 22, 1991 FIGURES 1.1 New York’s Lower East Side 8 3.1 The ground rent surface and evolution of the land value valley in 58 Chicago 3.2 The devalorization cycle and the evolution of the rent gap 63 3.3 Evolution of the ground rent surface and land value valley 68 following gentrification 6.1 Society Hill, Philadelphia 117 7.1 Central Harlem in relation to Manhattan 137 7.2 Central Harlem 142 7.3 Above-average increase in per capita income in Harlem, 1970– 146 1980 7.4 Volume and value of private residential sales in Harlem, 1980– 148 1984 7.5 Private residential turnover rates in Harlem, 1980–1984 149 7.6 City of New York Redevelopment Strategy areas for Harlem 155 8.1 Central Amsterdam 167 8.2 Gentrifying districts of Budapest 174 8.3 Paris gentrification 179 9.1 Disinvestment (arrears) and population change (accounts) in the 197 Lower East Side, New York, 1974–1986 9.2 Cycles of serious and intermediate disinvestment in the Lower 199 East Side, 1975–1986 9.3 Turning points in four census tracts 200 9.4 The gentrification frontier in the Lower East Side, 1974–1986 201 9.5 The Lower East Side as gentrification surface 203 TABLES 3.1 The origin of rehabilitators in Society Hill, Philadelphia, 1964– 52 1975 3.2 The origin of rehabilitators in three cities 52 5.1 Share of aggregate household income in the US, 1967–1992 94 6.1 The origin of mortgages in Society Hill, Philadelphia, for 1954, 128 1959 and 1962 6.2 The origin of mortgages in Society Hill, Philadelphia, from 1963 128 at three-yearly intervals 7.1 Statistical profile of the Central Harlem (New York) population, 143 1980 7.2 Ownership of housing units in Central Harlem, New York, 1983 153 9.1 Level and year of peak vacancy in the northern East Village 197 (New York) area 9.2 Trends in residential tax arrears in the East Village, New York 198 PREFACE In his paradigmatic essay “The significance of the frontier in American history,” written in 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner (1958 edn.) proposed that: American development has exhibited not merely advance along a single line but a return to primitive conditions on a continually advancing frontier line, and a new development for that area. American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier…. In this advance the frontier is the outer edge of the wave–the meeting point between savagery and civilization…. The wilderness has been interpenetrated by lines of civilization growing ever more numerous. For Turner, the expansion of the frontier and the rolling back of wilderness and savagery were an attempt to make livable space out of an unruly and uncooperative nature. This involved not simply a process of spatial expansion and the progressive taming of the physical world. The development of the frontier certainly accomplished these things, but for Turner it was also the central experience which defined the uniqueness of the American national character. With each expansion of the outer edge by robust pioneers, not only were new lands added to the American estate but new blood was added to the veins of the American democratic ideal. Each new wave westward, in the conquest of nature, sent shock waves back east in the democratization of human nature. During the latter part of the twentieth century the imagery of wilderness and frontier has been applied less to the plains, mountains and forests of the West—now handsomely civilized—and more to US cities back East. As part of the experience of postwar suburbanization, the US city came to be seen as an “urban wilderness”; it was, and for many still is, the habitat of disease and disorder, crime and corruption, drugs and danger (Warner 1972).

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