Introduction
The environment forms a person in the same manner as a person forms the environment. This is one of the key principles and driving forces for designing better streets, housing, squares, parks, and other elements of cities. Most people enjoy comfort and strive to achieve it in places where they live. The tendency for beautification, repainting and remodeling apartments and houses is also applicable to cities and neighborhoods. People plant flowers and mow their lawns, so their homes would look more attractive. The same can and should be done in neighborhoods with an urban environment, so it is more pleasant, safe, and tidy. With a few nuances, this is the idea behind a process called gentrification.
What is Gentrification?
Essentially, gentrification is a renovation of poor, criminalized or deteriorating neighborhoods or areas of the city through the means of inviting middle class and high-end businesses and people. Sufficient concentration of well-mannered public, recreation, shopping facilities, street furniture, and other attributes of a good neighborhood makes an area more attractive for living. In addition, the level of criminal activity also drops. As a side effect, housing prices and rent grows, which is not always desirable for long-term tenants who have lived there before changes.
Gentrification is one of the instruments of urban planners and mayors to create spaces that follow the current image of comfort. In many cities, there are areas where there is no meaningful activity or the land is poorly used. Such places become home to corruption and criminality, which diminishes the potential for local people to live decent lives. In an attempt to reverse the trend for deterioration and bring new life to an area, officials, businesses, and local activists collaborate to attract funding and renovate a toxic environment. The introduction of new stylish street furniture, greenery, beautifully-designed houses, high-quality paving, recreation facilities, public places, and so forth initiates the reverse effect of a broken window. According to a Wilson and Kelling’s theory, a neighborhood with visible signs of crime, vandalism, untidiness, and other attributes of a low-class behavior attracts even more civil disorder (qtd. in O’Brien et al. 108). In a positive urban environment with clean streets, attractive housing, and public amenities in good condition there is less tendency in people to create disorder. In essence, gentrification is a process of creation of livable conditions for people to reverse trends for anti-social activity in neighborhoods.
There are certain good examples of gentrification. New York, for instance, has changed a great deal since the year 2000, as more than 40,000 buildings were erected in the period of 10 years (Baker). As the city continually raised its status as a place for business, tourism, and recreation, the cost of living in it also grew. Nonetheless, New York is now considered one of the greatest cities in the U.S. as its urban conditions have improved significantly over the years. Baker cites President Nixon who first initiated massive gentrification of New York with its “rime, dirt, days-old garbage left on the street, cockroaches, the Bronx burning, homelessness…”. The city officials, business, and citizens have done an enormous job of making New York safer, more attractive, and livable.
However, there are always people who would use every occasion to their benefit. Gentrification is a positive change for a city as a whole but can also be a weapon for the unethical enrichment of certain people. According to Sholette, The Ghost Ship, a warehouse space outside of San Francisco Bay where the homeless, artists, and criminal youth used to meet, allegedly was burned down in order to use the land for new construction. This is an example of fierce and uncompromising gentrification. On the one hand, the area looked unpleasant and full of criminals, and some changes had to be made. On the other hand, such harsh measures are unacceptable.
Gentrification of Today
Gentrification of today has to be inclusive. It should amend the mistakes of the past, where families faced illegal and forceful relocation from gentrified areas or rapid increase of rent (Coates; Tobias). Today, there is no place for discrimination. Instead, inclusiveness and collaboration is the new face of urban planning and design that is applied to all its instruments. An example of such a process is gentrification in Decoto, San Francisco. There, poor local residents created their own esthetics by combining survivalist philosophy and their own special multicultural imagery that added great charm to the neighborhood (Bedoya). Rose believes that true gentrification lies in the minimally-invasive approach that combines esthetics of several classes. In this way, the area receives a unique combination of lifestyles and demonstrates a balance of interest. A perfectly gentrified area should gently preserve the local traditions of long-term residents and link them to the new quality of life.
How Schools Can Help
Minimally-invasive gentrification can be evidenced by the addition of a new school to the neighborhood. A school is usually a unifying object in an area where children and parents meet. It is essential that people of all social classes, races, and ethnicities attend the same schools to ensure social diversity is present. Redrawing school district boundaries could help create an inclusive area, making high-performing schools accessible for every group of population (Eschbacher). As such, Denver Public Schools have introduced “shared enrollment zones” which are reported to be highly effective in terms of forming a positive urban environment (Eschbacher). Such a change can be considered sustainable as generations of people with inclusive mentality begin to form, cementing social relationships of a new type. A balance of interests, different pricing ranges for housing, attractive and accessible public amenities is what gentrification of today is striving to achieve.
How People can help
In order for this process to initiate, each citizen of a gentrified area needs to contribute to it. It all starts with changes in mentality when a person not only calls their apartment or house home but the street, neighborhood, and city. Each school student, each businessman, and employee should love and contribute to their area. Buying food from local producers and shop owners, participating in and organizing events for the people in the neighborhood, meeting and talking to various people living nearby is essential for gentrification to be successful.
Posters that invite people to actively participate in gentrification is another way to facilitate positive change. Their content helps people to know their local shops’ location. Pastel colors of the example poster create a soothing effect signifying the soft transition to a new life. Bright spots are the details that help gentrification to unfold and generate positive change. Attention to those spots is everybody’s business and responsibility because it is the neighborhood we live in, and we are the people that make it livable.
Works Cited
Baker, Kevin. “The Death of a Once Great City.” Harper’s Magazine, 2018.
Bedoya, Roberto. “Spatial Justice: Rasquachification, Race and the City.” Creative Time Reports, 2014.
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. “The Case for Reparations.” The Atlantic, 2014.
Eschbacher, Brian. “Integrating Schools in a Gentrifying City through Choice.” Brookings, 2017.
O’Brien, Daniel Tumminelli, et al. “Ecometrics in the Age of Big Data, Ecometrics in the Age of Big Data: Measuring and Assessing ‘Broken Windows’ Using Large-Scale Administrative Records.” Sociological Methodology, vol. 45, no. 1, 2015, pp. 101–47.
Rose, Kalima. “Your Guilt Trip Won’t Stop Gentrification.” The Guardian, 2015.
Sholette, Gregory. “The Ghost Ship Fire and the Paradox of a “Creative City.”” Hyperallergic, 2016.
Tobias, Jimmy. “Meet the Rising New Housing Movement That Wants to Create Homes for All.” The Nation, 2018.