Historiography of Gentrification: a Review of Five Recent Works

HISTORIOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFICATION: A REVIEW OF FIVE RECENT WORKS Denise Gallagher HIST 6103 Modern American Dr. Mary Hoffschwelle Spring 2014 1 Introduction Gentrification is a topic of intense inquiry and debate in the academic circles and public sphere. The phenomenon first appeared in cities after World War II, when small pockets of reinvestment appeared in deteriorating urban neighborhoods. Known as the “gentrification debates,” a variety of academic fields have engaged in the study of gentrification—an occurrence that varies wildly across time and space. No single definition has been accepted by those writing on gentrification which primarily includes: sociology, anthropology, political science, planning, urban studies, geography, performance studies, and African American studies.1 Although a definitive definition is elusive, one of the field’s leading scholars, sociologist, Japonica Brown- Saracino, recently pinpointed a distinct set of traits based on over forty years of discussion. The factors include “an influx of capital; social, economic, cultural, and physical transformation; and displacement.”2 Outside the academy, gentrification has been extensively documented by journalists and passionately evaluated by the general public who all seek to understand the socio-cultural and environmental changes. Unfortunately, historians have been inexplicably missing from the debate. This paper will investigate five recent publications as they relate to the overall historiography of gentrification and will contemplate how historians can contribute to the discourse. The term gentrification derives from gentry—which comes from a 14th century French word genterise meaning a person of gentle birth. In 1964, British sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term gentrification in a report to the London Committee on Housing. Glass identified a process of specialized residential rehabilitation with overt class-based outcomes. She writes, One by one, many of the working class quarters of London have been invaded by the middle class—upper and lower. Shabby, modest mews and cottages—two rooms up and down—have been taken over, when their leases have expired, and have become elegant, expensive residences….Once this process of ‘gentrification’ starts in a district, it goes rapidly until all or most of the original working class 1 Japonica Brown-Saracino, The Gentrification Debates (New York: Routledge, 2013), 9. 2 Ibid., 13. 2 occupiers are displaced, and the whole social character of the district is changed.3 Glass’s work sparked a decade of empirically-based research focused on documenting where the process was occurring and who was involved. Only a few years before, activist Jane Jacobs had published The Death and Life of Great American Cities, a work that famously attacked the insensitive and destructive approach civic leaders used to improve cities. Jacobs argued that modern planning ignored the lives of human beings in favor of “rational” planning principles.4 The Death and Life of Great American Cities became a lasting framework for evaluating the health and vibrancy of urban communities devastated by large-scale government urban renewal projects. Therefore, the fact that Glass discovered a small, but significant enclave of returning middle-class residents raised many eyebrows among scholars and journalists who began searching for signs of urban revitalization. According to geographer Peter Muller, the mass media quickly declared a welcome shift in housing preferences. He notes, “Columnists pronounced the birth of a "back-to-the-cities" movement, which they believed could have only the most positive social consequences.”5 In the 1970s, scholars published the first theoretical explanations for the unexpected reversal of the decades-long decline of cities based on preliminary fieldwork. Much of the literature was focused on deciphering the ideology of the incoming gentrifiers. The notion of a new urban homebuyer was a striking departure from the familiar post-World War II suburban homebuyer who desired a single-family home in a nicely landscaped subdivision. Scholars wondered who the new urban homebuyers were and sought explanations for the change in preference.6 At the same time, scholars noted that the scope of gentrification was expanding beyond the rehabilitation of nineteenth-century housing to include new construction and large scale commercial developments designed to leverage cultural attractions and attract businesses and 3 Ruth Glass, “Introduction,” in The Gentrification Debates, ed. Japonica Brown-Saracino (Routledge, 2013), 22-23. 4 See Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961). 5 See Peter O. Muller, review of Back to the City: Issues in Neighborhood Renovation, by Shirley Laska and Daphne Spain. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, (1982). 6 See Timothy James Pattison, The Process of Neighborhood Upgrading and Gentrification: An Examination of Two Neighborhoods in the Boston Metropolitan Area. Thesis, 1977. 3 tourists. As the impact of gentrification on urban spaces increased, two theories of gentrification emerged that would dominated the academic discourse. One theory, led by geographer David Ley was later termed the “emancipatory city” and the other theory, by geographer Neil Smith was eventually called the “revanchist city.”7 The impact of these two theories on gentrification studies cannot be understated. It is impossible to write about the historiography of gentrification literature without including these opposing, yet overlapping viewpoints. In 1978, David Ley, argued that consumer demand for an alternative to the suburbs caused the resettlement of urban spaces. Ley’s “demand-side” theory is called “emancipatory” because the gentry actively seek spaces free from the hegemonic culture of conformity. Ley writes, “The neighbourhoods themselves include a measure of life-style, ethnic and architectural diversity, valued attributes of middle-class movers to the central city…these desiderata of the culture of consumption should not be under estimated in interpreting the revitalization of the inner city.”8 Ley was primarily concerned with the cultural politics of gentrification, prompting various theories of why individuals and families were moving back to the city. Scholars proposed the following reasons: the emergence of post-industrial white-collar jobs; rejection of suburban ideals; a growing interest in historic homes and neighborhoods; the rising cost of commuting to work; and an increased appreciation of human diversity and authentic urban living.9 According to Ley, the new “emancipated” gentrifier was less politically and religiously conservative than the “old” middle-class. Gentrification scholarship adhering to Ley’s theory typically focused on gender, sexuality and class as motivators. But according to geographer Loretta Lees, “By abstractly celebrating formal equality under the law, the rhetoric of the emancipatory city tends to conceal the brutal inequalities of fortune and economic circumstance that are produced through the process of gentrification.”10 7 Loretta Lees, “A Reappraisal of Gentrification: Towards a ‘geography of Gentrification,’” in The Gentrification Reader, ed. Loretta Lees, Tom Slater, and Elvin K Wyly (London: Routledge, 2010), 384-389. 8 David Ley, “Inner City Revitalization in Canada: A Vancouver Case Study,” Canadian Geographers, 25 (1981): 128 9 Loretta Lees, et al., “Introduction to Section A,” in The Gentrification Reader, eds. Loretta Lees, Tom Slater, and Elvin K Wyly (London: Routledge, 2010), 81. 10 Loretta Lees, “A Reappraisal of Gentrification,” 385. 4 Working at the same time, Neil Smith produced a highly influential capital-driven model in 1979 that challenged Ley’s consumer–based explanation. Smith positioned incoming homebuyers as “builders, developers, landlords, mortgage lenders, government agencies, real estate agents, and tenants” predominantly driven by the need to earn profit.11 Smith’s analysis was controversial because it built on Marxist ideas of political economy and argued that gentrification was an extension of state-sponsored structural inequality. This model “privileges economics over culture and structure over agency.”12 Smith’s “production-side” explanation generated strong debate over the perceived positive and negative consequences of gentrification, the most discussed aspect being displacement.13 In the mid-1980s, the influence of post-modernism on the social sciences caused scholars to accept multiple voices and a multitude of explanations for gentrification that did not fit the— by then—tired debates between supply and demand. Scholars began acknowledging the incredible variation in the way gentrification manifests and progresses over time. Every location is different—the geography, the individuals and groups involved, the political and economic forces, and the historical social and cultural fabric. In light of the broadening thinking on gentrification, in 1984, geographer Damaris Rose influentially argued that gentrification was a “chaotic concept.” Rose suggested that scholars examine a multiplicity of sources including the broad historical context, as well as the socio- economic conditions of the people involved.14 Scholars criticized Rose’s complete rejection of form as unnecessary, while at the same time they fully embraced the multidimensional study of gentrification that included race, class, gender, and sexuality. By the 1990s literature on gentrification had evolved intellectually, but

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