A couple miles north of Georgia Tech’s campus, an assortment of sleek, residential high-rises and designer department stores distinguishes itself in the Atlanta skyline, marking the neighborhood now known as “Atlantic Station.” But rewind 25 years and that site was nothing except the financially struggling Atlantic Steel Mill. After it was closed in 1998, the private sector, with help from city tax dollars, began converting it into the upscale community the area is today.
To some, Atlantic Station is an urban wonderland in the center of Midtown Atlanta. To others, it’s a triumph of redevelopment. But to many, it represents a larger trend in urban planning and design.
Cities across the nation, especially former industrial centers, have adopted this style of redevelopment. Columbus, Georgia, previously a mill town on the Chattahoochee River south of Atlanta, is now advertised as a chic, historic riverfront city. One recent listing for a studio apartment in the former mills has an asking price of just short of a quarter of a million dollars. Similarly, Greenville, a regional hub for upstate South Carolina and the one-time self-proclaimed “Textile Center of the South,” began revamping its image in the 1960s to include its present day collection of swanky hotels, restaurants, and a riverside park.
It could perhaps be said that for many of these towns and neighborhoods, redevelopment initiatives were borne from a need to reestablish identity. Whether it be Columbus, Greenville, or Atlantic Station, all of these communities saw their respective industry as integral to who they were. So, once these industries had dried up, communities had to redefine themselves – if nothing else, to stay alive. This has led to the, often controversial, phenomenon of redevelopment that is gentrification.
WHAT IS GENTRIFICATION?
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Policy Development and Research defines gentrification as: “a form of neighborhood change that occurs when higher-income groups move into low-income neighborhoods, increasing the demand for housing and driving up prices … Market pressures associated with gentrification have the potential to force longtime residents with low incomes to move out, challenging communities that want to create or retain economic diversity.”
BUT WHY DOES IT HAPPEN?
In some ways, there may be a fairly obvious, practical explanation to this trend. The Uprooted Project, based out of the University of Texas at Austin, explains that “a core driver of gentrification in the U.S. has been the strong and growing demand for central city living by more affluent households, which in turn drives up housing prices in central city neighborhoods.” The effects of gentrification have also been well-observed, particularly in its consequences for specific groups.
It’s one thing to talk through the infrastructure, economics, and demographic effects of gentrification — it’s another to pinpoint the sociocultural aspects of it. Perhaps the more fitting question to premise this section, and the more contentious one in the public consciousness, is: why does gentrification happen in the way it does?
Gentrification is a uniquely social phenomenon, lying at an intersection of race, class, community identity, cultural value of aesthetics, and societal understandings of “authenticity.” These factors are deeply intertwined with “why” and “how” cities gentrify, which are often overlooked by academic treatments of the issue. But these cultural aspects cannot be ignored — in fact, they are critical to understanding the problem. To dismiss them is to neglect the root of the issue.
It’s one thing to talk through the infrastructure, economics, and demographic effects of gentrification — it’s another to pinpoint the sociocultural aspects of it. Perhaps the more fitting question to premise this section, and the more contentious one in the public consciousness, is: why does gentrification happen in the way it does?
Gentrification is a uniquely social phenomenon, lying at an intersection of race, class, community identity, cultural value of aesthetics, and societal understandings of “authenticity.” These factors are deeply intertwined with “why” and “how” cities gentrify, which are often overlooked by academic treatments of the issue. But these cultural aspects cannot be ignored — in fact, they are critical to understanding the problem. To dismiss them is to neglect the root of the issue.
THE SOCIAL FACTOR
Fortunately, media may provide a window into the collective cultural understanding of gentrification and its effect on community and identity. There is no shortage of media artifacts that address the impacts of gentrification, directly or indirectly — TV shows, social media, and the like.
Many outlets, for example, have used satire to emphasize what they see as problems or excesses of gentrification. Both South Park, the longrunning, ever-irreverent animated series, and Saturday Night Live, the late night comedy show, have taken stabs at the social issues underpinning gentrification and the cultural markers that make a town or neighborhood “gentrified.”
A 2015 episode of South Park entitled “The City Part of Town” follows the creation of the gentrified “SoDoSoPa” district (a long-winded acronym intended to recraft the neighborhood’s image), in a bid to attract a Whole Foods Market to the town. The episode largely tackles issues of poverty, class, and the subtle signs of wealth that have taken on significant cultural meanings in gentrified communities.
Similarly, in a 2019 episode of Saturday Night Live, comedian Eddie Murphy performed a revival of his “Mister Robinson’s Neighborhood” skit (a spoof of the popular children’s show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood), that focuses on the racial discrepancies that often widen as cities gentrify. Murphy begins with a “definition” of gentrification, which he sardonically describes as being “like a magic trick. White people pay a lot of money, and then poof, all the Black people are gone.” The skit continues with an interaction between Murphy and his neighbors, “Damien and Mikka from 7F,” who Murphy notes paid “$1.2 million for an apartment where Mr. Robinson’s friend Franky used to cook crack.”
Internet culture has also found its own humor in the sociocultural landscape of gentrification. A wealth of content and memes can be found lampooning the aesthetics and attitudes associated with gentrification. These, like the ones below, can often be found poking fun at the stale decor and overpriced food at the “unique, quirky” restaurants that often sprout up in gentrified communities or at the (almost cliched) concept of the “arts district” being a guise of sorts for high-end developments
.Other examples of media, however, have perhaps portrayed gentrification through a rosier lens. There is an entire genre of “young people in the city” television shows that implicitly endorse the lifestyle choices and values that often drive gentrification. From the urban coffee shop coziness of Friends to the live-in-your-industrial-style-loft and make-it-in-the-world attitude of New Girl, media can certainly impact the values that lead cities and neighborhoods to gentrify.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GENTRIFICATION: THE VALUE OF “REALNESS”
No form of media has seemed to have quite the impact on attitudes toward gentrification as social media. Though some corners of internet culture have been a source of criticism for gentrification, social media and gentrification appear to share a particularly insidious, symbiotic relationship. But what does that mean?
It wouldn’t be fair to say that there is a direct causal relationship between these two things, but they certainly aid each other’s cause. Social media creates an endless cycle of promotion for gentrifying communities, while gentrification in turn generates content for the social media platforms and companies to benefit from. Aesthetic-driven social media platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest have made the idea of “authenticity,” or “realness,” an invaluable social commodity. In these picture-perfect worlds, creating an “authentic” and aesthetic image is seen as the most desirable outcome. Particularly in gentrifying communities, this makes social media a great marketing tool, serving as a perfect outlet for these communities to demonstrate their “rustic” charms while also presenting themselves as hip, modern, and aesthetically pleasing. It pays for these cities to adopt the style of social media “influencing.”
David A. Banks, a lecturer at State University of New York at Albany and author of the book The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America, described influencing as “seeking of attention” by concentrated groups of “very powerful, private companies,” because “if you get attention, you can get some of that money.” But, as he explained, “it’s not like a mayor or an economic development professional looked at their favorite reality TV star or Instagram influencer, like ‘I’m just going to act like them and then my city is going to go great’” — instead, they “just have to act that way because they’re under the same pressures as celebrities and everything else.”
THE “SELF-DRIVEN” COMMUNITY
For many, gentrification seems to be inevitable. So long as those with money are willing to spearhead these redevelopment projects, they say, communities will continue to experience this phenomenon. But that may not necessarily be the case.
There are a number of potential solutions to help build sustainable, growing communities. These have taken a number of approaches, ranging from housing policies, to community access to capital, to deeper structural and institutional changes.
In this regard, Banks offers unionization and employee ownership as viable alternatives. The latter, he said, “means that workers have direct ownership and some means of control over the company.” He suggested that both ways may direct profits to “keep it the community where that value was created through labor,” allowing for more sustainable economic growth in these communities.
However, another solution could involve broader changes in social values. Cultural understandings of “authenticity” and changes in how communities define themselves could upend the concept of gentrification as it is now known.
“We need to stop chasing the authenticity rat-race and instead just live life,” Banks said. “Living that life will produce the things that we think we want from reality TV or Instagram.”