The Death and Life of Gentrification: A New Map of a Persistent Idea

Sociologist Brown-Saracino (How Place Make Us) observes in this perceptive account that there has been shift in what the word gentrification signifies. Urban planner Ruth Glass first coined the term in 1964 to describe the displacement of working-class people when their neighborhoods become trendier, attracting middle-class residents who price out the original inhabitants. But the word has since evolved into “a catch-all term to indicate elite appropriation of something significant to a lower status group”—from niche music genres going mainstream to vegetables’ prices skyrocketing when they become popular—or the “transformation of a person, group, or object to a more elite or rarified version” (as with Sarah Schulman’s theory of “gentrification of the mind,” which posits that queer artistic expression became “gentrified” after the AIDS pandemic). Brown-Saracino tracks how this expansive meaning of gentrification enables discussion of social and economic inequalities without the more politically charged specificities of class or race. The term, as she astutely outlines, allows for a broad, undefined in-group to recognize and share negative emotions around unwanted transformation, dissolution of community, and a loss of authenticity; it also allows for pointed critiques of the complex, shadowy political alliance between governments and developers. This is a keen analysis of the intellectual underpinnings of a protean idea in today’s political and social life. (Jan.)