At first glance when I saw this weeks readings had to do with gentrification I thought they would be a bit more serious to an extent. However, Gentrification is barely mentioned, in fact in the beginning I don’t even believe they mentioned gentrification at all. But, they did describe it with the story presented. So honestly, as I was reading the chapter I was trying to figure out what each ‘random’ thing the author mentioned had to do with gentrification.
The first thing mentioned in the chapter is this concept of “Urban Pioneering” and this in fact was probably the only thing which right away struck me off as Gentrification. The story provided is about a couple which dared to move farther than the community they grew up in, which for them was Houston Street. They hoped that in doing so they’ll become a part of the ‘new neighborhood’ which everyone will want to be a part of and the example they gave was the village. She even compares moving to live a few blocks down to crossing over the Rocky mountains, granted it’s just an exaggeration here. But, to an extent this kind of makes them look arrogant. Take for example the actual pioneers who crossed the Rockies they weren’t the first to do so, after all there were native Americans around, but they like to believe they did because they thought they were superior. I’m not saying that this is what the couple is saying but, one could choose to interpret it that way. Furthermore, there is a similarity where the Native Americans were eventually removed from the land and with gentrification, eventually the ‘white man’ takes over the land.
Next he goes on to mention different types of themes that are developing in certain stores in Manhattan such as Tex-Mex themes as well as Native American themed places. I feel as though he was presenting gentrification in a new light with these examples. I feel that by describing how many different types of themes there are and how they are consistently adapting to the interest of the ‘white man’. To an extent I feel like Smith’s talking about the trend of fashion to consistently shift from fashionable to unfashionable. The analogy I feel Smith is making here is that the different themes are neighborhoods and it is referring to how people keep jumping neighborhoods to one in which they like more and this leads to Gentrification.
A third thing he mentioned which really got me confused as to his stance on gentrification is the story about ralph lauren and the talking about civil class nearing the end of the chapter. When it comes to Ralph Lauren, he says that Ralph Lauren was able to define what the average safari woman should look like even though he has never been to africa once. Therefore, I believe he is saying that a lot of human perspective is subjective and that many people are willing to agree with Ralph Lauren and say that in fact that is what a safari woman would look like when in actuality they might all be wrong. Similarly, he is saying that regarding what is considered the theory about combining civil class. This theory says that if people of good class join a neighborhood that has uncivil class qualities the good class should ‘teach’ the uncivil class and thereby make the neighborhood better as a whole. He disagrees with this theory which says gentrification can be beneficial by saying that the uncivil class is subject therefore the premise is flawed. Furthermore, it is implied in his writings that he doesn’t appreciate this theory because when he introduces it he kind of adds in parenthesis “without a murmur of dissent” which I read as a sarcastic way of saying that there should be more arguments against it.
When it comes down to it, I’m not really sure where Smith stands on gentrification, other than he didn’t like the theory of balancing the classes. He pretty much just closes with saying that gentrification is a word which holds a lot of value and that it can’t be easily described in one or two sentences.
