Urban Land, Housing, and Labor Markets:

1
Urban Land, Housing, and Labor Markets

• Links to Social and Cultural Change in North
  American Cities

2
Post-WW II Changes in North American Cities

• Deindustrialization
• Rise of service sector
• Shift in role of government
• Gentrification
• Urban social movements
• Shift to consumption-based urban cultures

3
How Urban Land Markets Work

• Highest and best use
• Competition, instability, and change
• Role of speculator-developers
• Role of state actors
• Role of housing consumers
• Role of finance capital
• Real estate agents/brokers
• Builders
• Appraiser, title companies, others

4
Gentrification and the Rent-Gap

• Suburban vs. inner-city investment and
  consequences for the inner-city
• The emergence of rent-gaps
• Narrowing of gaps in suburbs, widening of gaps in
  inner-city, make reinvestment in inner-city
  rational
• Changes in the nature of demand (economic
  restructuring, social movements, new demographics)

5
Example and InterlinkagesRise of Gay
Gentrification

• Expansion of job opportunities for gays and
  lesbians
• Pre-existing geography of gay/lesbian social and
  institutional life
• Tradition of link between property ownership,
  spatial concentration, and political-economic
  power
• Non-traditional class and cross-class conflicts
  and alliances

6
Gentrification andGay Community Development

• Types of neighborhoods impacted
• Claiming and marking space
• Place-based political organizing
• Spectacle
• Commodification of identity
• Commodification of sex and sexuality
• Commodification of lifestyle
• Change in urban landscape culture

7
Types of Neighborhoods Impacted
8
Claiming and Marking Space
9
Place-Based Political Organizing
10
Spectacle
11
Commodification of Identity
12
Commodification ofSex and Sexuality
13
Commodification of Lifestyle
14
Changes in UrbanLandscape and Culture
15
Bringing it All TogetherGay Gentrification in
New Orleans

• A neighborhood called Faubourg Marigny
• Pre-gentrification Marigny
• Early gentrification (early 1970s) and
  neighborhood-based politics
• The arrival of speculator-developers (mid-to-late
  1970s)

16
Significance and Conclusions

• Despite everything, class interests prevailed
• Speculators mobilized the gay community!
• Role of state actors in restoring traditional
  distribution of power and profits
• More than just capital accumulation is at work