In the next two weeks, we’ll conclude the seminar by discussing a different kind of diversity that results from a different kind of process. Gentrification is a process that generally involves an influx of wealthier residents, changes in the types of goods and services in a community, and often racial and ethnic change as well. As a result, class and lifestyle differences between old residents and new residents typically become the focus of conflict.
Our readings about gentrification focus on two theories. One is Harvey Molotch’s “growth machine” theory, which suggests that urban neighborhoods are shaped by the interests of powerful actors in real estate, industry, commerce and the government, all of whom try to maximize the “exchange value” of urban space. (Usually this means trying to increase property values as much as possible.) The behind-the-scenes maneuvering of these powerful actors often comes into conflict with the concerns of residents, who are more concerned with the “use value” of urban space – the benefits that a neighborhood holds for people who want to breath clean air, raise healthy children, establish connections with their neighbors and create and preserve sentimental attachments to local street corners and institutions.
The other theory is Sharon Zukin’s argument about the authenticity and the soul of a neighborhood, both of which are lost through gentrification. “Mom and Pop” stores give way to chain retail outlets and longstanding residents are replaced by yuppies and hipsters who, in seeking out “authentic” urban spaces, raise property values and price out working class people, destroying the authenticity that drew them to the neighborhood in the first place. The bad guys in this story are not private developers and self-serving politicians, but gentrifiers and chain stores, who represent an inherently destructive cultural and economic process.
After reading about these theories, choose one and then answer the corresponding question in 300-400 words:
- Molotch criticizes a process central to capitalism: the attempt to extract greater profits from a resource (in this case, the resource could be a city or a neighborhood). He suggests that neighborhoods hold other kinds of values for their residents that are not easy to put a price on. A beloved, worn-out pair of sneakers that you have had since 10th grade is valuable to you, but nobody else would buy them on Ebay, because their sentimental value is based on your own history with the shoes, and the subjective meanings that you attach to this history. Through gentrification, Molotch implies (he doesn’t explicitly talk about gentrification here), the exchange values of a neighborhood generally triumph over its use values. Choose an object or a place that you have possessed, experienced or read about, and discuss its use value and its exchange value. Do they conflict? Are they the same?
- Zukin suggests that the “soul” of a neighborhood lies in its small, locally owned businesses and in the people who have lived there for a long time. What do you think about this? Do longstanding residents have more of a claim to a neighborhood than newcomers? Or should the market be permitted to run its course, even if this means radically transforming a place and making it unrecognizable? (It may help to focus on an example neighborhood in your response, either real or hypothetical.)
