Portraits of Gentrification: When Neighborhood Change Becomes News

The term gentrification was coined in the mid-1960s to describe the process by which neighborhoods were changing from predominately low-income to middle-class. While the term has expanded in usage in the academy since then, we know little about what gentrification means in its every day use and how that might vary depending on city size, demographic composition, and housing and labor market conditions. In this study, I investigate the representations of gentrification by one cultural institution, the media, to understand the depictions that contribute to public opinions, attitudes, and assumptions about what the term means, who is affected, what is driving the change, and how those representations vary by context. Using data from 4 newspapers published in Baltimore, Maryland and San Francisco, California between 1990 and 2014, as well as Census data, I found that the news media replicates and reinforces racial and class hierarchies in its representations of gentrification by reflecting the patterns of uneven (re)development of the past and present, and reinforcing stereotypes of racial and class groups./nHow gentrification was framed in the news unfolded through three mechanisms that are embedded in reporting. The news media associated race and class with gentrification through descriptions of neighborhood residents and recent in-movers, categorized certain types of neighborhood change as gentrification, and spun the changes as positive, negative, or mixed. All three of these mechanisms were shaped and influenced by the racial and class demographics of the gentrifying neighborhood and the larger context of race, class, and space of the surrounding city./nDespite distinct racial and class demographics, the Baltimore and San Francisco articles represented gentrification in similar ways. Gentrification was frequently associated with poor and black neighborhoods in articles from both cities. Changes in poor and black neighborhoods that were categorized as gentrification were most often about new and state-led development and given a more positive spin by the journalists and their sources. In contrast, residential and commercial changes were most often categorized as gentrification for working-class and white ethnic neighborhoods in Baltimore, and diverse and Latino neighborhoods in San Francisco and presented with a negative spin. These differences reflect both the history and current patterns of (dis)investment by racial and class demographics in the cities and the influence of racial and class-based stereotypes on the opinions of journalists and their sources. That is, poor and black neighborhoods have historically experienced less investment in infrastructure and amenities, which have made them spaces that need some form of structural investment. However, most modern-day processes of residential gentrification by which developers and higher income homebuyers invest in a community are not occurring in high poverty and majority black neighborhoods, but are happening in working-class and white ethnic neighborhoods in Baltimore and Latino and diverse neighborhoods in San Francisco. Thus, new development funded by and implemented by the City was more frequently occurring in poor and black neighborhoods. The actual patterns of (dis)investment and (re)development reinforce common stereotypes about poor and black neighborhoods as blighted, high in crime, and high in poverty./nThese findings demonstrate how the historical patterns of investment and decline by racial and class composition influence how neighborhood change is understood today. The neighborhoods we see as blighted, disinvested, and in decline are frequently the same neighborhoods that have been purposefully overlooked and ignored by developers, banks, city governments, and homebuyers. The differences in how gentrification was interpreted and spun in the media representations studied here suggest that policy responses to gentrification are likely to vary by the racial and class demographics of the affected neighborhoods, meaning that residents of some neighborhoods are more likely to experience protection than others. Thus, we are likely to see more demolishment of homes and continued large-scale dispersal of poor and black communities under the guise of “investment,” while residents of working-class, white, and diverse neighborhoods are more likely to be protected from having to leave their homes.

Advisor: Fischer, Claude
Weir, Margaret