Gentrification Pros And Cons

Gentrification, or urban redevelopment has become a dominate point of debate in American cities. The biggest critique of gentrification is that it leads to cultural degeneration and the displacement of the poor and people of color, and the disruption of economic growth and stability for communities. Corporations identify ideal sections of urban cities which have advantageous or strategic settings and communities that have striking cultural characteristics or countercultures. From there, renewal morphs culture into a pleasing simulation of cultured utopia. In his book, America, postmodern philosopher, Jean Baudrillard insists that “All societies end up wearing masks.” I intend to investigate how gentrification became such a debated topic in

I argue that this definition is too sterile and too simplified, as it conveniently leaves out any of its possible pros or cons. Thus, I will adopt Peter Marcuse’s definition of gentrification from his article Gentrification, Social Justice and Personal Ethics. In his “Debate & Developments” article, Marcuse defines gentrification as a process of demographic displacement either by the means of economic upgrading (uppricing), physical upgrading (redevelopment), social upgrading (upscaling), or any combinations of the three. In his article, Marcuse asserts that any of these three kinds of upgrading do not inherently result in gentrification: “[…] upgradings can indeed take place without displacement and bring with them quite different sets of costs and benefits” (Marcuse

Nixon and company were able to manipulate this idea of hyperreality and simulation of security and comfort to prevent an American revolution within the black communities by breaking them up. The Housing Choice Voucher Program, or Section 8 housing allows private landlords to rent apartments and homes at fair market rates to qualifying low income tenants, with a rental subsidy administered by Home Forward (all funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development). From a Baudrillardian perspective, this could be seen as a “simulacra”, which in short-terms is a lie or copy that depict things that either had no original to begin with, or that no longer have an original. This links to Baudrillard’s concept of postmodernity of Late Capitalism in which simulacrum becomes more imperatives than the original, making the distinction between reality (the neo-colonialism of black ghettos and communities) and the convenient representation (acceptance of the black ghettos and communities into capitalism) much harder to distinguish. As black and poor communities were let in on the supposed American Dream and validated under this strategic move to avoid American revolution, the continued American capitalism simulation continues to morph and take on new meaning for Americans of all