Gentrification, Displacement, and the Role of Public Investment

Abstract

Scholarly interest in the relationship between public investments and residential displacement dates back to the 1970s and the aftermath of displacement related to urban renewal. A new wave of scholarship examines the relationship of gentrification and displacement to public investment in transit infrastructure. Scholarship has generally conflated gentrification and displacement; however, this review argues for a clearer analytical distinction between the two. Although the displacement discussion in the United States began with the role of the public sector and now has returned to the same focus, it will be necessary to overcome methodological shortcomings to arrive at more definitive conclusions about the relationship.

Locational disadvantage and the spatial distribution of government expenditure on urban infrastructure and services in metropolitan Sydney (1988–2015)

“…The concept of filtering (Temkin & Rohe, , p.160) refers to processes of residential mobility whereby, when the availability or quality of services in a neighbourhood declines, wealthier residents who can afford to do so move out to newer neighbourhoods and are replaced by less affluent residents (for an Australian example, see Wulff, Flood, & Newton, ). In contrast, improvements in resource access are likely to lead to the gentrification of a disadvantaged neighbourhood by more affluent households (Zuk et al ., ).…”

Making Homes Unhomely: The Politics of Displacement in a Gentrifying Neighborhood in Chicago

“…Displacement, in particular, takes center stage (Bridge, Butler, and Lees ; Lees, Shin, and López‐Morales ; Zuk et al. ). Neil Smith's rent‐gap theory, premised on this observation, argues that the widening difference between potential rent and current rent of land drives gentrification (Smith ).…”

Impacts of Adaptive Reuse of Heritage Buildings to Small Hotel Buildings in Bangkok

“…Moreover, it can lead to fewer available housing, lack of accommodation, replacement of commercial and industrial areas, change of local services, and loss of social diversity as well as original inhabitants (Atkinson R., 2005). Regarding neighborhood and change, gentrification is related to three issues, namely, (1) primacy of the neighborhood community; (2) diversified concepts of neighborhood: substantive nature, social ecology, cycle of equilibrium and disequilibrium, and social organization and assimilation; and (3) attention to race, ethnicity, and poverty (Miriam Zuk, 2015).…”