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An Intro to Gentrification:

What is gentrification?

According to Google gentrification is the process of renovating and improving a house or district so that it conforms to middle-class taste. It can also be seen as the process of making a person or activity more refined or polite.

I see it as an invasion. An invasion by people who have large sums of money into a neighborhood with a large amount of culture. The thing is, gentrifiers, (those who do the gentrifying) usually come from areas that lack culture, places in which ‘home’ is sleek, modern, and all is new. A place of culture is one where there is a mess of love in every corner, where ‘old’ means wisdom and stories to be told are embedded in those old towns and in the families that live in them. These gentrifiers are trying to grasp some of this culture, they want to be part of a family that has their roots in the land they walk on. Gentrifiers are the type of people who do not have an understanding of community, they do not know what it means to be neighbors to the same family for years and see each other's families grow old, or what it means to see a small business you grow up with finally expand to a second location. Little things matter in these communities and gentrifiers don’t comprehend this. They see an opportunity for expansion and they quickly try to integrate into the culture and livelihood of others.

Where is gentrification present?

Literally everywhere. Look around you, I can assure you gentrification can be found in almost anything. From the changing cities of Los Angeles, San Fransico, New York, and many others, to the TV shows we watch and music we listen to, the topic of gentrification surrounds us and is making itself known.

~TIP: next time you listen to a rap song or watch your favorite show try to spot the topic of gentrification, I promise it isn’t as hard as you may think~

Can we do anything about gentrification/how can I help?

Don’t contribute by being a gentrifier, leave these communities at peace, ‘help’ by helping the people not taking over what is theirs (duh).

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Gentrification has two sides to itself, the gentrifier and the gentrified.

The gentrifier can be seen as a colonizer. A community embedded with culture and family in every corner is taken over by gentrifiers thinking that they are improving the land and maximizing it to its potential with their help. Just as colonizers have come into a foreign land and have used their better resources and advanced technologies, compared to that of natives', and have taken over land that is not theirs. Both of these groups of people believe that they are helping a city in need. They feel that their presence is necessary in order to help the land they are taking over improve and move into the new generation. They do not take into consideration the displacement that they are creating, the homes and history that they are rolling over with new concrete. The gentrifiers, who have more buying power than those they displace, bring with them big corporations that eventually bring in new revenue and bring life back into what they see to be a crumbling city. They bring in high-end stores, hipsters and the newest trends. Gentrifiers are nothing more than modern-day colonizers, they kick out people that are living comfortably in the communities that they have built.

The gentrified are those whose communities are being upscaled and changed. The communities and towns that they grew up in are no longer the same. Many of the times the gentrified do not have a say in the way that their city is changed. Trying to fight the bigger power is not a task that these people can do. Those being gentrified are usually people of lower-income, people of color, and minorities. they do not have the same resources that those who are gentrifying have and so their fighting power is reduced to nothing.

The Pixar movie UP is a great example of gentrification. (INSERT GIF OF UP). In the movie UP, buyers are trying to buy Carl Fredricksen’s house to turn it into a skyscraper. We see the way that at the beginning of the movie when Carl and his wife Ellie buy their home, surrounding it are huge trees and nature all around. By the time the movie begins and Carl uses his balloons to fly his house, we see that his home is the only house that is left. His white picket fence separates his green grass from the construction that is going on around him. The gentrification that is taking over his childhood town is too big for him to try to stop it, it is to the point that he must sell his beautiful home to the big corporate buyers. Carl is the gentrified, he can no longer maintain his town the way he grew up knowing it, his town is now a part of his memory. Although this movie is seen to be a child’s movie the implications of gentrification that are sprinkled in shows how much of a natural thing it has become. It is part of our culture now and is seen as the norm, the removal of small houses to create lavish buildings to fit in a higher population is no longer an obscure occurrence.

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How to Kill a City

In How to Kill a City, Peter Moskowitz talks about the dilemma that gentrification has brought forth onto the city he once called home, New York. From having your favorite pizza shop close to being turned into another Whole Food’s to middle-income housing becoming condos; gentrification affects all aspects of a city’s landscape and overall general vibe. 

Moskowitz explains the way that his childhood home of West Village no longer feels like home, the neighbors he used to recognize are now gone and the sense of community that used to shine thought West Village was no longer present. New faces had sprung up alongside the new income and race that began to overtake this once diverse city. The White population was now the majority and with this new fleet of people, the prices of housing and overall living expense increased to fit the new needs of West Village. Moskowitz goes on to explain the way that the cities of San Fransisco, New Orleans, Detroit, and New York have all experienced or are currently experiencing gentrification.

He tells us of stage 0. Stage 0 of these cities is what Moskowitz explains to be what opened the doors for gentrification (the beginning of the end if I may be so bold). Stage 0 for all but San Fransisco were a scare of bankruptcy and overall bad economic timing. Moskowitz tells us the way that gentrification begins, “First, a few ‘pioneering’ gentrifiers move into a neighborhood,” the initial step is simple, the innovation begins. Second corporations and retail chain stores see an opportunity with the new growing population in the said city and so they begin to establish themselves. Finally, he says, “the process becomes completely top-down,” the now gentrified land is now run by the new corporations that have established themselves. Gentrification is predictable, once it has begun it is easy to see how things will begin to unfold but the problem is that nothing is done to prevent the gentrification from occurring. Moskowitz continues explaining this problem and says, “I knew people were being kicked out. … gentrification wasn’t about some ethereal change … It was about mass evictions, about violence, about the decimation of decades-old cultures.” Gentrification comes knocking on the doors of our neighbors and asks if they're homes are for sale. It looks for any uncertainty in the city and leaching of cities who are in desperate need of money and in need of a ‘come-up.’

An example of such gentrification is episode 2 season 3 of Rick and Morty. The episode titled, Rickmancing the Stone shows an example of gentrification in the works. During this episode Summer tags along with Rick and Morty on one of their adventures and becomes involved with one of the men in the dimension they entered. The dimension is a diesel-fueled post-apocalyptic Earth, filled with dieselpunk cars, shotguns, and cannibals. Rick decides to stick around to steal the large piece of Isotope-322 and gets caught doing so, in order to try and regain their trust he uses this powerful green rock to create a city and gentrify the post-apocalyptic Earth. Houses are built and electricity is generated, the inhabitants of this planet become ‘civilized’ and the culture they had was crumbled. (to be fair having a culture of killing and eating other humans is not seen as something to prize, but hey culture is culture and gentrification is still gentrification). This subtle integration of gentrification into the episode is missed by many. It is seen as nothing more but helps to a community that so desperately needed it. The thing is that for this community that was their normal, it was what they enjoyed and what brought them together, and that was taken away by Rick.

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Blindspotting

The movie Blindspotting is based in Oakland, California and it focuses on many big topics affecting communities of color in America. From police violence to gentrification this movie covers all the corners of what Oakland is currently undergoing. The introduction of the movie shows side by side images of Oakland before and Oakland now. It is a way to point out the gentrification that is undergoing in a city that had built a name for itself through its community and its culture. Throughout the movie Miles and Collin (the main characters) bring up the topic of gentrification many times, it serves primarily as a sort of comedic relief in the movie, due to the heavy topics they discuss. Near the beginning of the movie, there is a scene in which Miles and Collin go to their local corner store and notice that green juice is being sold for ten dollars a bottle. Oakland is being taken over by hipsters and green juice is part of their regimen so it is no surprise that this corner store is now selling this drink. Due to the changing community, the sellers must adapt in order to stay on top of big chains that will try to take over. As the movie progresses Miles points out a man in a tall bike with a long beard and quickly identifies the hipster as part of the problem in the gentrification that his home town is enduring. In this scene, they both begin to rap about the gentrification they are experiencing and make fun of the situation.

(link to the song: Commander Miles)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcuPUCs41U8

We then see Miles and Collin moving an art exhibit and the owner of the exhibit openly talk about the gentrification of Oakland. The man says that they are being forced out for the new Oakland. Which is true. They have to now make space for the new wave of people coming into Oakland that are taking over ln that is not theirs. As the movie progresses we eventually see Miles and Collin attend a party that they are invited to and as soon as they walk in we notice that it is being hosted by hipsters and the people that are gentrifying Oakland. We quickly see the tension and the awkwardness that is in the air. The man hosting the party tries very hard to relate to both Miles and Collin and even goes on to talk about a tree stump he has in his living room of a 160-year-old Oak tree. This ironic scene shows just how ignorant these gentrifiers are. They do not understand the type of damage they are causing the city with their actions and the way that they are not welcomed. At the end of this scene, Miles is told to go home after fighting with a man who confused him for a hipster. Miles irritated begins to yell, “get the fuck out of where?” “Y'all get the fuck out of here.” Miles is fed up with these people who have come into his home and are now acting as if they have lived here longer than he has. Miles is unable to hold his feelings back, he tells these people how he feels about their presence in his community. He feels as though he is being kicked out of his home, and he can no longer stand for it.  

(link to the scene of Miles telling the hipsters how he feels)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmEdm2XSWBQ

The rap songs in this movie are not the only rap songs that talk about gentrification. The Gentrification Song by the Gift of Gab (as you can probably guess) talks about gentrification. The song talks about the way that home no longer feels the home. What Gift of Gab grew up with is no longer. He can no longer call home, home, the feeling of community of love that he grew up with has now disappeared with the appearance of new condominiums and the ‘improvement’ of the city. He takes into consideration the fact that gentrification causes displacement in his city. The people who used to live here can no longer afford to pay for rent. They are forced to leave and move into communities that they no longer see as home. Gentrification brings in pain to those who cannot afford to move out after it has begun, it takes away the essence of a city and changes it so much that it is no longer recognizable to the people who once lived there.

(link to The Gentrification Song)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArwI4l8N4Mk