"There’s a lot we need to consider before labeling a neighborhood as gentrified"

PC: CDMA, Unsplash

Michael Shields has dedicated his academic career to studying how neighborhoods change in big cities. 

Michael is working on his PhD in Urban Sociology at Northeastern University. For his thesis, he uses Big Data tools to show how neighborhoods have evolved in Philadelphia and Boston in response to changing social and economic conditions in these cities.

He also works with the Boston Area Research Initiative or BARI. BARI is a group of academic researchers from Harvard and Northeastern that produces high quality, digestible public policy research concerning about issues facing Boston. They hope their work will inform effective and responsive policymaking from City Hall.

Michael’s technical knowledge of the sociological forces driving the changes in Boston’s housing market give him unique insight into how people should define this issue. 

*This interview has been edited for clarity*

Q: How would you define gentrification?

The term originally comes from Great Britain, when upper middle-class urbanites began moving into working class neighborhoods in the later stages of the Industrial Revolution. These urbanites, the gentry, displaced the poorer folks living in those neighborhoods and the term ‘gentrification’ was born.

The original and most common definition of the gentrification means, ‘the character of a neighborhood changing’. That’s not specific at all!

So, when people use that word, they have no idea what they are talking about. This term is losing its use in the fields of public policy and research for that reason. It’s still useful as a rallying cry in politics, but not so much in research.

Q: Why do we have trouble coming up with a more concrete definition of gentrification?

Like I said, everyone has different conceptions of what the term means. This makes it hard to define the indicators of gentrification. For instance, everyone loves to talk about a new coffee shop opening, as though that’s the signifier of a neighborhood being gentrified. But what about a new coffee shop opening up in Beacon Hill? Is that gentrification? What about one that opens up in Roxbury or Dorchester? Context makes a difference.

Staying with the coffee shop example for a moment, think about the other factors at play. Who owns the shop? Who earns the profits? What kind of effect does this business have on the businesses surrounding it? There’s a lot we need to consider before labeling a neighborhood as gentrified. That’s why finding a more concrete definition of gentrification is so important and why I’m focusing my research on this topic.

I did an exercise with students at Northeastern that I think summarizes this issue well. I showed them two images of streets from Google Maps Street View and asked them to determine which one was in a gentrified neighborhood. After hearing their arguments for a while, I’d show them one of the neighborhoods in Street View. Then I’d show them the comparison street. But all I needed to do was spin the camera around 180 degrees. The two neighborhoods were just two sides of the same street!

Q: What’s a better way to think about this issue?

First, we should take a step back and consider why we are discussing this issue. Clearly, neighborhoods can change in positive ways that help the folks living there. Not all change is bad change!

But we should really consider two things when we discuss this issue. One is how geographic factors shape how neighborhoods change. The population and physical space a city contain are key here. Philadelphia is a city with a large housing stock and big geographic area. So, neighborhood changes look a lot different than in Boston, which is really limited in terms of geographic expansion. In Boston, developers have focused on building up to meet new housing demand. It seems that there’s a new feature of Boston’s skyline every time I go back. On the other hand, developers in Philadelphia have bought up entire neighborhoods and renovated them to meet the needs of a growing population.

Demographics come into play here too. Boston is one of the most redlined cities in the US, this makes poverty and income inequality much worse for people of color. We need to remember that when we discuss changing neighborhoods. Every action taken to develop a city can have unintended adverse impacts on marginalized groups.