Many articles about neighborhood change or is it gentrification?

In the end, gentrification in Houston presents a remarkable example of the Rashomon effect: every participant in the debate has a different perspective; no single perspective is wholly right or entirely wrong. That's not to say that some concrete lessons can't be drawn. The greatest fear associated with gentrification is the fear of displacement — that people will be forced out of their homes by newer, wealthier residents. Yet in practice, that kind of displacement has been hard to find outside of the troubled Fourth Ward. Recent research in Boston and New York suggests the displacement concern may be more myth than reality. Text and Photo by JOHN BUNTIN. Governing Magazine.

1. Friday's New York Times has an article about Atlanta, "Gentrification Changing Face of New Atlanta". As someone wrote on the urbanists e-list, even a marginal increase in non-whites in formerly almost all African-American areas, is going to bring about changes that appear significant in demographic terms.



2. The excellent online magazine Maisonneuve has a piece about anti-upscale housing activists in a changing neighborhood in Montreal. See: "The Trouble With Saint-Henri: A Once-Poor Neighbourhood Is Facing Tough Choices About How to Handle Gentrification."

View of Saint-Henri from the sixth floor of a former chocolate factory, converted into student residences in 1990. Christopher DeWolf.

3. Governing Magazine has an article about change in the Fourth Ward of Houston, a traditionally black neighborhood now experiencing new housing development and new and different residents. See: "Land Rush: Inner cities are becoming hot places to live. Does government have any business telling developers to keep out?"



I'm not going to recap all that I have written before on this issue. One aspect that each of these places share are well-located neighborhoods that are now appreciated for their location, although in the case of Houston, perhaps not for their housing stock.

Index Keywords: urban-revitalization; housing