Dog Parks and Coffee Shops documentary about gentrification in DC

On one of the NextDoor lists, filmmaker and research scholar Sonya Grier invited people to view her film, "Dog Parks and Coffee Shops," which she co-produced with fellow scholar Vanessa Perry, for free this weekend on Vimeo. (I don't know if the film is always open access.)

They also wrote a journal article, "Dog Parks and Coffee Shops: Faux Diversity and Consumption in Gentrifying Neighborhoods</>," published in the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing IN 2018.

The film was produced in 2014.

Yard signs created by a resident of Peabody Street NW.  "A D.C. resident hopes these yard signs can save his neighborhood from gentrifiers," Washington Post.

It focuses on demographic changes in three DC neighborhoods: U Street/Shaw; Columbia Heights; and Petworth.

 It's an interesting and provocative take on the community changes even if I think it starts from a false premise, that (paraphrased) "DC was a majority African-American city and now it isn't."

It's true DC was majority African-American, but only since the acceleration of white flight in 1954, with the desegregation of the school system in September 1954 after the Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education (man, we are far from those kinds of decisions by the Supreme Court!).

Later, the 1968 riots further increased outmigration

"Dog Parks and Coffee Shops" features extended interviews with three professors: Easten Law, intercultural communications at American University; Sabiyha Prince, anthropology, independent scholar; and Gregory Squires, sociology, George Washington University; as well as residents from the neighborhoods.

I definitely want to read Dr. Price's book, African Americans and gentrification in Washington, D.C. : race, class and social justice in the nation's capital.

There are some great comments by the many residents, including one who sums up the changes as "greater diversity, but still separate" communities.

I think that's definitely true.  The issue is how does one create community with people of such differences in income, race, and class.

In my own case, I believe it comes from shared experiences and actions.

Some of the people, including Dr. Prince, talk about the way the city was when they first were here, which was around the same time I came to the city, in 1987.  Dr. Prince describes Columbia Heights as a mix of all types of people, including professionals.

But I think if there was a kind of solidarity then (and let me tell you, in more troubled areas, it was different) it was over the fact that by and large, cities had been abandoned and the only people who lived there either had no other choices or wanted to (e.g., I chose to live in the city because I didn't want to live in the suburbs).

People came together across race, class, and income boundaries through neighborhood organizing around common concerns -- drug markets and crime; development; commercial district improvement; and other issues.

Once cities became "trendy" and people became displaced as those people with more money bought property, those old community ties began to unravel as new, higher income residents had little cause to join together with "legacy" residents to fix things, as things seemed to be better and didn't need fixing (except for the schools, given that crime and murder where it is a real problem tends to be in poorer neighborhoods outside of the frame of reference of newer residents).

One of the reasons that gentrification as an area of study is complicated, at least in DC, is because it is simultaneously associated with voluntary out-migration, as many African-American middle class households have moved to the suburbs in search of the American Dream of larger properties.

That is why Prince George's County, Maryland is majority black today which has been the case since 1990, and Charles County, Maryland is moving in that direction (it's 50% white, 40% black now)--demographers joke that Charles County is becoming a suburb not of DC but of Prince George's County.

I still remember opening up the Sunday New York Times Magazine in 1992, to read the cover story on Prince George's County, "The New Black Suburbs."

Without in-migration of new, largely non-blacks, DC's population would have continued to drop, rather than increased over the past 10 years.

Another thing is that while the film focuses on the racial changes in the city, and maybe this is just 'cause I'm white, it doesn't focus enough on the reality that income and wealth is the most important element, even more than race.

Plenty of white people who chose to live in the city when it was not trendy can't afford to buy houses that cost $800,000+.

BUT ALL IN ALL, "Dog Parks and Coffee Shops" is worth 40 minutes of your time.

Past blog entries on this topic include:

-- "The nature of high value ("strong") residential real estate markets," 2017; which discusses the supergentrification thesis of Loretta Lees and the concept of "capital deepening" of David Ley
-- "Exogenous market forces impact DC's housing market," 2012
-- "Applying the supergentrification thesis to San Francisco, Santa Monica, and other cities experiencing hyper-demand," 2014
-- "More about contested spaces -- gentrification," 2008 -- this is based on writings dating to 2002
-- "Is gentrification a racial or economic class issue?," 2015
-- "So much of the writing about gentrification is worthless," 2014