Comment by bogomipz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bogomipz | Hacker News Reader

The piece leads with:

"It started in Soho, then moved to Chelsea and the East Village"

As someone very familiar with these areas I can tell you this is wrong and inaccurate. The art scene in 80's become very hot in the East Village and the galleries moved out of the storefront galleries to SOHO because there was larger space there. When they were priced out of SOHO, the galleries moved to Chelsea.

Why is this important? Namely because it shows that the author's glaring disregard for basic fact checking and attention detail. Two qualities you might think that are important in writing a piece that deal with demography and statistics. To me this makes the whole piece suspect.

The pieces then goes on to site data that is now 25 years old?

"Sharkey took a close look at black neighborhoods that saw significant changes to their ethnic composition between 1970 and 1990."

Gentrification and Hyper gentrification are something that has become something of a phenomenon in the last 10 years or so. The author then goes on to site a study that is now 11 years old:

"In 2004, Columbia University economists Lance Freeman and Frank Braconi conducted a similar study of gentrification in New York City in the 1990s"

Then the authors drops this nugget:

"If gentrification occurs so infrequently—and if it may help rather than hurt existing residents—why are so many people so upset about it? ?"

Huh? Nice bit of editorializing there.

Journalism like this is dangerous as it is little more than a policy piece disguised(not very well) as real actual journalism.

As tired as I am on the ubiquitous gentrification conversation. I have also watched it unfold first hand in three different places I have lived. I doubt that I have somehow imagined this phenomenon.

I feel like this kind of fact-checking is one of the most important reasons for reading HN comments. Before I read this comment, I hadn't thought to question the age of the studies cited; my logic was that the author had cited something, and so had at least gone to that much effort. This gave me pause.

I tried to find something on 'hyper gentrification' with google scholar, but nothing came up?

Fact is gentrification is being researched for more than fifty years and it's ok to cite 10 year old research. Because the whole theory builds upon these studies and it might still take some years before enough data is available to cross-examine newer studies.

There are significant differences between now and the 1950's. For example traffic congestion has gotten far worse which has a lot of knock on effects. 'White flight' is another major and recent change. Thus, the further you go back the less relevant these studies become.

So, citing something that says "no evidence of displacement" is questionable when there is plenty of evidence that people are currently being displaced.

White Flight is not a recent change. It's primarily associated with the post WWII movemnt of white people from cities to the suburbs. If anything its inverse white flight that is driving gentrification now.

Most people White Flight it started in the 50's so if a 50 year old study looked at 1950's data it's not going to have inverse white flight data to look at. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight

No it is not OK to site 10 year old data to discuss a more recent phenomenon. The reason the word hyper is used is because the velocity at which these changes are happening is increasing.

There is plenty of more reason data that could be referenced.

What theory? There was no theory posited in this piece.

I have no idea what Google scholar nor do I see why the is relevant. If you type the two words in to Google search there will be no shortage of results.

In your first three paragraphs you take the author to task about their comment that gentrification started in SOHO and moved to Chelsea. You then validate his assertion by saying that yes, galleries moved to SOHO, and then to Chelsea, because of "larger space", and later cheaper space - two of the primary motivators behind gentrification!

  "If gentrification occurs so infrequently—and if it may help rather than hurt
  existing residents—why are so many people so upset about it? ?"
  
  Huh? Nice bit of editorializing there.

How is that editorializing? He's posing a question to begin explaining his position. People are upset about gentrification - just ask my brother, who was an anti-gentrification activist in DC for years. It is in no way controversial to state that.

Yes, the studies quoted are "old", but they are also highly valuable, because they come on the coat-tails of a major decline in the quality of life of ethnic communities in inner cities (read: crack epidemic). This time period is when gentrification would have begun to increase in earnest in many metro areas, and so the study has value. The last 10 years gentrification may have become more visible, but that isn't to say it didn't exist before then, or that the last 10 years were a flash point.

Another interesting study was between 1970 and 1990. This was a critical time in many metro areas, as the wave of whites fleeing instability post-MLK riots in '68 emptied out the cities, crushing the local economy, but also making it more affordable for latinos to move in, which then saw an upswing in opportunities for low-income black neighborhoods. Again, just because the study was old doesn't make it invalid.

I assumed the 'editorializing' accusation was targeted at the assertions behind the question: That gentrification is rare and helps existing residents.

I don't think the point of the article is that gentrification isn't actually happening. I think it's that while people often talk about gentrification as a bad thing - something that hurts the poor - gentrification is actually more often a good thing:

"McKinnish and her colleagues found that gentrification created neighborhoods that were attractive to minority households, particularly households with children or elderly homeowners. They found no evidence of displacement or harm. While most of the income gains in these neighborhoods went to white college graduates under the age of 40 (the archetypical gentrifiers), black high school graduates also saw their incomes rise. They also were more likely to stay put. In short, black households with high school degrees seemed to benefit from gentrification."

And while people, including myself before reading the article, think of gentrification as a widespread phenomenon that is happening all over the US, it's actually only happening in three cities: New York, Chicago, and Washington.

Setting aside the questions about material improvement (in the form of income, etc) which seem well addressed by others, this way of looking at the problem overlooks one of the most serious critiques of gentrification: it disrupts existing communities, forcing longtime residents into environments where they no longer feel a sense of belonging and ownership, and reduces cultural diversity.

Another way of looking at the point: "gentrification" is more than just the arrival of affluent people to a previously poor neighborhood. "Gentrification" also refers to the cultural changes that come to a neighborhood as a result of an influx of more affluent residents. The latter can happen (infrequently) without the former.

Of course, this doesn't mean that gentrification is necessarily bad. It may be that the improvements to safety, material wealth, etc. that often come with gentrification are worth the trade-off.

> It's actually only happening in three cities...

The article does seem to be trying to imply that, but I don't think the census data they cite support such a strong conclusion.

"just three cities—New York, Chicago, and Washington—accounted for one-third of all census tracts that saw poverty rates decline from above 30 percent in 1970 to below 15 percent in 2010"

The criteria and timing seem to suggest that we're looking at neighborhoods that were done gentrifying by 2010. Neighborhoods currently undergoing gentrification could be much more widespread.

And because of their size and demographics, those three cities would account for a large chunk of gentrification even if every single impoverished neighborhood in the US were to gentrify. https://xkcd.com/1138/

Gentrification is a scientific term which became very popular. I think it's important to discuss counterarguments, if only to make the term 'gentrification' clearer to a wider audience.

Finally I think the authors last point is important and overlooked in most online discussions of this 12 month old article: Gentrification has become a middle-class fear and does not help to address the problems of the poor. A discussion about rent subsidies would.

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