Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies

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Analyzing connections between gentrification and culture, money, class, communities and more, she challenges readers to dismantle the ‘common sense’ train of thought that it is inevitable.

The book may have just been not aimed at the lay-reader who only dabbles in feminist/socialist literature (and haven't read any anti-colonial literature. Too many references to other authors in the text made it at times a bit of a mash-up: other views could have been more often integrated more elegantly with a footnote referring to the authors. Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here. Hard to find anything objectionable in the book, and it corrects some very prevalent misconceptions.First observed in 1950s London, and theorised by leading thinkers such as Ruth Glass, Jane Jacobs and Sharon Zukin, this devastating process of displacement now can be found in every city and most neighbourhoods. Certain myths and lies mentioned in the book are not properly demystified, on which I hope the author had done a better job.

the people already actively organizing against gentrification are not only not participating in the myth-making she's critiquing, but building more analytical frameworks of dispossession than the willy-nilly ones Kern overviews in this book. when she got into the actual meat of feminist / decolonial / anti racist anti-gentrification it was fairly interesting, but overall still felt very ivory tower and lacked a certain authenticity (which i think could have been remedied by incorporating interviews / scenes on the ground of anti-gentrification work instead of just constantly quoting other scholars). Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies] examines the forces behind displacement in North America and beyond, arguing for an intersectional way of understanding gentrification, one that acknowledges the harms done to working people based not just on class but also on race, gender, and sexuality. But an all-encompassing gentrification model ultimately means nothing if it is impossible to define. Rather, she argues, it is an continuation of the setter colonial project that removed natives from their land.Inspired by the likes of Jane Jacobs and Sharon Zukin, urban scholar Leslie Kern proposes an intersectional way at looking at the gentrification crisis amid our current economic climate, based on class, race, gender, and sexuality. It emphasizes that gentrification touches everyone’s lives, and that everyone therefore has a responsibility to devote their specific skills to reducing its impact on vulnerable populations.

the "it's not just about housing" section leans into cultural exclusion to me in an unproductive way. She argues that gentrification is not natural That it can not be understood in economics terms, or by class. An excellent job of puncturing the myths and exposing the ideologies that make gentrification seem natural, inevitable, and desirable. And it can be seen today is rising rents and evictions, transformed retail areas, increased policing and broken communities.

art is, of course, a part of the solution and my short experience in LATU has shown me that it's constantly playing an important role in struggle. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. I learned a lot about the factors that influence gentrification and its relationship with other discriminations like misogyny and racism. Often, the language of gentrification mirrors the language of imperialism, discovery, and conquest but in ways that elide, rather than illuminate, the colonial structures underlying the process.

In a local context, I disagreed with some of her assessments of Toronto in particular -- building dense housing is a net good in an expensive city with low housing supply! Gotta say I don't think anyone there is worried about gentrification while they're scared of getting shot.her main gripe with gentrification discourse seems to be the over-emphasis on class which is sort of hard for me to wrap my head around because gentrification is, in fact, a class-structuring process. honestly I checked out a little when they used Tenderloin San Francisco USA as an example of a gentrified neighborhood. sure there's lots of other elements and socio-emotional implications but Kern's attempt to almost pit class against race against gender against sexuality seems like some weird, unhelpful vendetta.