Explicating Divided Approaches to Gentrification and Growing Income Inequality

Abstract

Contemporary sociology offers competing images of the breadth and consequences of gentrification. One subset presents gentrification as a nearly unstoppable force that plays a prominent role in the spatial reorganization of urban life; another presents it as less monolithic and less momentous for marginalized residents, particularly racial minorities. Although neither camp is methodologically homogenous, more qualitative scholars, typically relying on micro-level analyses of individual neighborhoods, tend to present gentrification as increasingly endemic, advanced, and consequential, whereas more quantitative scholars, typically relying on macro analyses, tend to present it in less dire terms. These competing images of gentrification originate in the fact that each subset of research asks different questions, employs distinct methods, and produces particular answers. Exacerbating and partially driving these divergences are different responses to an anxiety within and beyond the academy about broader spatial and economic shifts, such as growing income inequality.

“Change Agents” on Two Wheels: Claiming Community and Contesting Spatial Inequalities through Cycling in Los Angeles

“…This study also sheds new light on resistance to gentrification in terms of who participates, when and where members organize, and how Los Angeles's specific uneven spatial developments shaped both the trajectories of neighborhoods and the communities that responded in resistance. Past work examining resistance to gentrification has largely focused on the sentiments, rather than acts, of resistance (Brown-Saracino 2016). This study adds to the literature by analyzing how everyday actors continually organize and contest the terms of gentrification, thus providing new ways of examining how urban social movements play out against a backdrop of neighborhood change and gentrification.…”

“…Debates within both scholarly and mainstream circles about gentrification often revolve around displacement, typically centering on the physical displacement of longtime residents. Whether or not gentrification actually results in physical displacement is a contentious topic that scholars have yet to fully resolve (Brown‐Saracino ) . Gentrification may also produce an additional form of displacement, symbolic displacement.…”

“…As gentrification threatened to spill over from nearby neighborhoods and into the predominantly Latino and immigrant neighborhoods of Los Angeles's Eastside (Medina 2013), the bicycle collective began mobilizing in resistance. Sociological examinations about resistance to gentrification have largely centered on sentiments of resistance rather than organizing efforts or actual acts of protest (Brown-Saracino 2016). Addressing this gap, this study examines the aims, practices, and organized campaigns of this bicycle collective and describes how the group responded to threats of gentrification.…”

Broken Windows as Growth Machines: Who Benefits from Urban Disorder and Crime?

“…That said, while there is gentrification literature that focuses on places where abandonment and decline become sites for growth, it is fair to say that a great deal of gentrification literature is focused on the visible signs of gentrification, which involve less disorder and more investment , than on the disorder or disinvestment that create the circumstances that make gentrification possible in the first place. Brown‐Saracino () points out that “qualitative scholarship … emphasizes the outcomes of gentrification” (518), and outcomes are of course visible in the present. A great deal of gentrification literature—both scholarly and popular—conceives of it as an event as opposed to a process, so the moment it gets attention is the moment things start to “develop” in the neighborhood.…”

Who’s ditching the bus?

“…The socio-demographic characteristics associated with bus ridership change could not be fully understood without taking into consideration intra-urban migration. When people who depend on transit as their main mode of transportation can no longer afford to live close to frequent bus service, they are likely to relocate in lower-density suburbs with less access to transit (Hwang and Lin, 2016;Brown-Saracino, 2017). To control for the potential impact of gentrification on ridership, we consider the shifting demographics in our model.…”