The Pros And Cons Of Gentrification

The Struggles from Gentrification

Do you know any areas around you that were once seen as rundown, but are now a lot more commercialized and improved? This is the result of gentrification. What is gentrification you might ask? Well, gentrification’s dictionary definition is a process of urban development in which a city neighborhood develops rapidly over a short time, changing from low to high value. This may sound like a great thing for the neighborhood that can bring a lot of benefits, which it does, but nothing is foolproof and perfect. It definitely comes with many negatives and downsides for these communities, like the displacement of individuals to name one. Gentrification has been affecting the San Francisco Bay Area communities harshly,

Thus, removing a lot of the culture and identity in these neighborhoods. A TedTalk by Liz Ogbu about Gentrification mentions how there was a plot of land that was vacant for years and was used for many temporary events to bring some joy to the Bayview Hunters Point community. This plot of land eventually turned into a permanent redevelopment plan and the companies talked about selling the land to developers. This angered the community because they knew these developers would only build complex condos and wouldn’t add any more resources or jobs to the community. This confirms the suspicions of poorer communities' inability to have a say in what is developed in their community. These developers are only there to seek profit and don’t pay any attention to the residents. The influx of inessential development plans does no good for the deeply rooted residents. In addition to this, the same TedTalk by Liz Ogbu describes what it feels like to be gentrified as a resident. She brings up words like “vanished”, “rent doubled”, and “no longer belong” while explaining to give

The culture and identity of our communities are what make up the community. There is no community without its own unique culture to set itself apart from others. In a book written by Manissa M. Maharawal about Tech-Colonialism, she discusses the problems that come with gentrification in the areas. The text shows, “The first tech boom of the 1990s and early 2000s saw thousands of Latinx families displaced as dot com companies and their employees moved in, causing a wave of cultural erasure in the Mission District neighborhood.” The Latino community in the bay was harshly affected by tech colonialism and the sudden increase in incoming residents. It experienced a “cultural erasure” as the book calls it. This pushed the whole community into a whole new type of culture and completely diminished the original one. All those deeply rooted families and businesses were just thrown away instantly only for some extra money. More examples of the culture being jeopardized are also from the same book written by Manissa M. Maharawal about Tech-Colonialism going on in the Mission District in San Francisco. It mentions,” In the most recent tech boom, the transit-accessible and "hip" Mission District has again become central in the city's eviction and displacement crisis: between 2009 and 2013 there was a 27 percent decrease in the