Do gentrifying neighbourhoods have less community? Evidence from Philadelphia

Abstract

One of the more detrimental effects of gentrification is the potential for a decreased sense of neighbourhood community. Systematic analysis of the effect of gentrification on communities has been limited. This study investigated how an individual’s sense of connection to neighbourhood community, as measured by trust, belongingness and sense of cooperation, was influenced by their residence in a gentrifying neighbourhood. We utilised hierarchical linear models with individual data from the 2014/2015 Public Health Management Corporation’s Southeastern Pennsylvania Household Health Survey and neighbourhood data from the 2000 Decennial Census and 2010–2014 American Community Survey. We find that gentrification overall has a negative relation with neighbourhood community, but this relationship varied by the racial/ethnic turnover underlying the changes taking place in these neighbourhoods. Specifically, we find that gentrification marked by increases in Whites and decreases in non-Whites had no measurable relation with neighbourhood community; that gentrification marked by increases in non-Whites alone had a positive effect on neighbourhood community for Black and Hispanic residents; and that gentrifying neighbourhoods which experienced an increase in both Whites and non-Whites had a negative overall relation with neighbourhood community.

Shifting neighborhoods, shifting health: A longitudinal analysis of gentrification and health in Los Angeles County

“…Those with place-based social networks experience better psychological and physical health than their more isolated counterparts, largely because of the material aid, emotional support, information, and services that these networks provide (Caplan 1974;Cassel 1976;Cohen and McKay 1984;House, Landis, and Umberson 1988;Kawachi and Berkman 2003;Klinenberg 2003). Gibbons, Barton, and Reling (2019) find that on average, residence in a gentrifying neighborhood is associated with lower community connections. To the extent that displacement splinters neighborhood social networks, this may negatively impact both mental and physical health over time.…”

“…The results of this study are not an endorsement of the use of gentrification as a public health intervention. Gentrification is also associated with social, physical, and institutional displacement, as well as heightened class-based and racial tensions (Anderson 1997:199;Freeman 2006;Gibbons et al 2019;Hicken et al 2018;Logan and Molotch 1987;Sullivan and Shaw 2011;Zukin 2011). Instead, findings reiterate the importance of neighborhood investments for the health and well-being of their residents.…”

“…Because Hispanics are the second fastest-growing ethnic group in the country after Asians (Colby and Ortman 2015), Los Angeles-based research provides important insight into the racial dynamics of gentrification in a city with significant racial diversity. Second, while cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago are the focus of many gentrification studies (Ding, Hwang, and Divringi 2016;Gibbons and Barton 2016;Gibbons et al 2019;Mary Huynh and Maroko 2014; Hwang and Sampson 2014; Timberlake and Johns-Wolfe 2016), fewer works focus on locations like Los Angeles (Izenberg et al 2018).…”

Can We Bring Culture into the Large-Scale Study of Gentrification? Assessing the Possibilities Using Geodemographic Marketing Data

“…More importantly, different types of gentrifiers moderate the effects of gentrification, which much quantitative scholarship fails to address. Research is beginning to show that the race of gentrifiers matters for how communities evolve and amenities grow in gentrifying neighborhoods, for example (Gibbons, Barton, and Reling 2020; Moore 2009; Somashekhar 2019). The consequences of gentrification also vary depending on how politically and socially organized gentrifiers are.…”

“…Despite limitations of the lifestyle segment data, I am able to redefine gentrified neighborhoods as Census tracts that gentrified between 2010 and 2017 according to the DHD and TJW methods. Gentrification can take many years, but a variety of studies examine gentrification over short time periods (Gibbons, Barton, and Reling 2020; Glaeser, Kim, and Luca 2018; Somashekhar 2019). Supplemental Appendices 2 and 3 provide characteristics of Chicago neighborhoods that gentrified between 2010 and 2017 and did not change tract boundaries, reproducing Table 2 and Figure 1 for this new set of neighborhoods.…”