Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
id591958855
Gentrification, the process of local demographic change by which the lower-income residents of under-resourced neighborhoods are displaced by wealthier ones, is one of the most studied subjects in sociology, economics, and urbanism.
id591958847
Gentrification is not an abstract moral failing—a kind of transplant’s original sin—or an imported aesthetic worked into the fabric of a neighborhood. It is a result of money and power—of the landlords, developers, real estate flippers, and investors who have it, and everyone else who does not.
id591958332
We in American society have been discouraged from thinking in terms of class. We fight with our neighbors, whether because of paranoid NIMBYism or dogmas of supply and demand, ignoring the fact that there are powerful interests and industries who are fine with letting us bicker, or who even use our real struggles to further their cynical ends.
✏️ As usual, those in power distract us by having us fight amongst ourselves and within our own classes, ignoring the systemic problems or the bigger, more influential perpetrators at hand. Just like with recycling, climate change, etc. 🔗 View Highlight
id591958275
The root of the problem is that housing is treated as an instrument of profit, one in which the exchange value is prioritized over its use value. The sole solution is to decouple housing from profit and make it a human right. The profit motive keeps all but the flippers, private equity firms, and management companies, the developers and landlords and the obscenely wealthy—whose economic freedom is unimpeded—in constant, virulent antagonism.