gentrification

From the Field

An Unexpected Victory in the Fight to Save Philadelphia Chinatown

Andrew Lee - 14 October 2025

Grassroots efforts to counter gentrification-inducing megaprojects often fail as elected officials negotiate various...

Interviews

Unleashing Finance Capitalism in the City: An Interview with Isaac Rose, Author of The Rentier City

Jonathan Silver & Isaac Rose - 24 June 2025

Jonathan Silver interviews author and tenant organizer Isaac Rose about his book on housing financialization in...

Debates

Deconstructing Gentrification

Todd Swanstrom & Jason Hackworth - 5 November 2024

Can changing the way we understand the process of gentrification open possibilities for political and social change?...

From the Field

Manifested Stories

Rebecca Blythe Pryor - 5 January 2021

Rebecca Pryor traces the history of the revitalization of the Bronx River, illustrating an alternative narrative to...

Essays

When Measurement Matters: Displacement, Gentrification, Residential Mobility

H. Jacob Carlson - 14 April 2020

Scholarly studies of displacement resulting from gentrification are inconsistent in what they measure, and omit...

From the Field

Unlikely Inter-Class Cooperation in Urbanizing Rural Colombia

Sebastián F. Villamizar Santamaría - 25 February 2020

Sebastián F. Villamizar Santamaría examines a case of rural gentrification outside of Bogotá, Colombia, and shows how...

From the Field

Understanding the Causes of Eviction-Based Urban Displacement: Bringing Critical Urban Theory Back In

J. Revel Sims - 24 September 2019

Close analysis of eviction patterns in Dane County, Wisconsin, between 2000 and 2016 suggests that tenant poverty is...

Reviews

Whose Bronx?: Decade of Fire Looks Back at a Complicated History of Neighborhood Abandonment and the Rise of Community Control in the South Bronx

Aly Hassell - 2 July 2019

Decade of Fire, a new documentary film by lifelong South Bronx resident and first-time filmmaker Vivian Vázquez...

Essays

Organizing Against Projet Gentrification: Housing Activism in a White-Supremacist Landscape in Montreal

Pierce Nettling - 27 November 2018

Housing activists in Montreal and Quebec have successfully sought to secure tenant rights and social housing for over...

Reviews

New York’s Soul for Sale: Raising the Rent on Lunch Counters and Counterculture

Benjamin Terrall - 13 February 2018

Vanishing New York is Jeremiah Moss’s loving chronicle of the neighborhoods, characters, bars, and corner...

From the Field

“People of Color Are Not Props”: Black Branding and Community Resistance in Gentrifying Brooklyn

Maura McGee - 6 February 2018

When a new white-owned upscale bar-restaurant in the gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights advertised...

Essays

The Happy Few and the Unhappy Many: Endangered Artists in Global Cities

Boris Grésillon & translated by John Barrett - 15 June 2017

While participating or having participated in reshaping urban spaces, artists seem to be increasingly driven away...

Reviews

Trends Global, Impact Local

John Shapiro - 23 May 2017

Global wealth, immigration and capital flow have profoundly influenced local retail districts in world-class cities....

From the Field

The Evolution of New York City’s Black Neighborhoods

John Mollenkopf - 9 May 2017

Especially in the central cities of the Northeast, neighborhoods that were once identified with black politics and...

From the Field

Estate Regeneration in London: Politics and Protest

Gerald Koessl - 31 January 2017

Gerald Koessl describes dilemmas facing social-housing providers in London, where social housing often serves as the...

Reviews

Closed Quarters

William Helmreich - 13 December 2016

As we contemplate an era marked by official hostility to fair-housing laws, we would do well to heed the distinction...

Essays

Remaking Black Political Spaces for Black Liberation

Akira Drake Rodriguez - 1 December 2016

What are the political implications of the redistribution of the Black population in the US? Akira Drake Rodriguez...

Reviews

Filming Ethnic Diversity in New York

Stéphane Tonnelat & translated by Christina Mitrakos - 21 October 2016

Frederick Wiseman’s fortieth documentary film, In Jackson Heights (2015), returns to an urban theme explored in...

From the Field

“We Are the Scene”: Alternative Art Economies in Bushwick

Mary Kosut - 13 September 2016

Artists and art communities are essential to the cultural life of cities. In New York City, artists have created...

Essays

The Wrecker’s Pick. The Rationales and Hidden Agendas of Urban Renewal in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Alain Faure & translated by Christina Mitrakos - 7 June 2016

Alain Faure, a scholar of the social history of cities, puts urban renewal into perspective. He questions the...

Reviews

Neighborhood Change and the Right to the City

Adam Tanaka - 29 March 2016

New York City’s Stuyvesant Town is the largest housing development in Manhattan, and also one of the most...

From the Field

The Hollowing-Out of New York City’s Industrial Zones

Tarry Hum - 16 February 2016

At a November 2015 press conference, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio vowed to take action to ensure that firms in the...

From the Field

Social Diversity in Gentrified Neighborhoods: Child’s Play?

Jean-Yves Authier & Sonia Lehman-Frisch & translated by Christina Mitrakos - 4 December 2015

How do children develop relationships? Do they meet children from socio-economic backgrounds other than their own?...

Debates

Artists and Industry: Friends or Foes?

Paul Parkhill - 3 November 2015

Anti-gentrification activists have castigated artists’ lofts as the vanguard of gentrification, while cities have...

Debates

The Endangered Enclave

Mike Owen Benediktsson & Brian Lamberta & Sarah Van Norden - 6 October 2015

While most gentrification studies focus on residential displacement, businesses also suffer from rising rents and a...

From the Field

Taking Research to the Streets

Jonathan R. Wynn & Richard E. Ocejo - 9 June 2015

Residents of iconic neighborhoods in New York City have grown accustomed to walking tourism in their midst—clumps of...

Reviews

All the Gayborhoods are White

Marcus Anthony Hunter - 19 May 2015

The urban “gayborhood,” the place where gay men and women found refuge for their sexuality from bigotry, is gradually...

Debates

Precarity and Gentrification: A Feedback Loop

Samuel Stein - 14 April 2015

How do rent hikes and labor precarity conspire to reinforce each other against tenants and workers? Samuel Stein...

Essays

“Portlandia” in Portland: Curated Life in the Utopian City

Jeff London - 7 April 2015

From the Field

The Future of Asbury Park: Gentrification and Youth in a Coastal Community

Alicia Raia-Hawrylak - 31 March 2015

Once known as a successful beach community, with a lively boardwalk and thriving rock music scene, the city of Asbury...

Other resources online

Partners