“When the Neighborhood Changes”: Matthew Loftus

covers a lot of ground quickly:

[Baltimoreans] have good reason to be afraid. Some places are using “artwashing” — the practice of drumming up the art scene in a neighborhood or building to drive out lower-income residents in preparation for higher-income tenants — to advance gentrification. Indeed, much of New Urbanism hinges on “reviving” blighted areas of a city with more upwardly mobile residents, with long-term residents simply not included at least and deliberately opposed at worst. A neighborhood not far from where I lived in Baltimore is facing many of these challenges, exposing the very real class conflicts at the heart of New Urbanism: Can urban revival and neighborhood development happen without displacing the poor?

It can. But only if the poor have ownership in the development happening in their neighborhoods.

more (and as I said when I first read this piece, if you want a portrait of the kind of church-based, class-conscious response to gentrification that he’s talking about, there’s an excellent one in Ruben Castaneda’s S Street Rising.)