Gentrification and the Middle Class

1
Gentrification and the Middle Class

• January 30, 2008
• Soc 205Y Urban Sociology

2
Outline

• Lecture based on readings
• Molotch, Harvey,  William Freudenburg and Krista
  E. Paulsen. 2000. History Repeats Itself, But
  How? City Character, Urban Tradition and the
  Accomplishment of Place.  American Sociological
  Review 65791-823 (Web) 
• Bourne, L.S. 1993. The myth and reality of
  gentrification a commentary on emerging urban
  forms. Urban Studies 30(1)183-189. (Web)
• Short Review for Test 2.  Practice Questions will
  be posted on the website.

3
Reading 1Molotch, Harvey,  William Freudenburg
and Krista E. Paulsen. 2000. History Repeats
Itself, But How? City Character, Urban Tradition
and the Accomplishment of Place.  American
Sociological Review 65791-823
4
History Repeats Itself

• Research question
• First, how do places obtain their character and
  second, how do they maintain it?
• In analyzing these two processes, the authors
  employ two terms
• Character
• Tradition

5
History Repeats Itself

• What these terms mean
• Place character refers to the mode of lash-up
  at a given time (i.e. its birth).
• Tradition refers to how that character moves
  across time how a mode of conjuncture at one
  point constrains or enables a particular mode of
  conjuncture at the next (i.e. its development).

6
Conceptual Framework

• Need for a conceptual framework to analyze the
  two processes simultaneously
• The authors argue that a conceptual framework is
  needed to explain these two processes, that is
• how unlike elements combine in giving rise to a
  places character, and
• how this character continues over time.
• In dealing with the first, the authors suggest
  actor-network theory. In dealing with the
  second, they suggest structuration theory.

7
Conceptual Framework

• Actor-network theory speaks to the mode of
  connection among unlike elements for example
  how the actions of individuals and organizations
  interrelate and combine to initiate a certain
  place configuration.

8
Conceptual Framework

• Structuration theory on the other hand, speaks
  to the mode of perpetuating these connections and
  links.
• Structuration theory was popularized by Anthony
  Giddens. He posits that as people take action,
  they make structures and every action is itself
  both enabled and constrained by prior structures.
  This self-enforcing dialectic of acting on what
  is produced and thus reproducing it, enables
  places to retain their characters.

9
Data

• To illustrate the importance of actor networks
  and structuration process in place-character
  making and reproduction, the authors examine the
  place formation histories of two California urban
  areas
• Ventura
• Santa Barbara.
• These places make for good comparative study
  because they are similar by standard
  socio-demographic indicators and other evident
  characteristics, and yet responded very
  differently to the same stimuli oil development
  and freeway construction.
• Both places reacted differently to these external
  developments and perceived them to be either
  helpful or detrimental to their respective
  tourism industries.
• The question is why and how?
• Ill focus on oil in this presentation.

10
About Ventura Oil first, beautification second

• Basically, Ventura welcomed oil development
  whereas Santa Barbara did not.
• Oil storage tanks and adjacent industrial
  facilities discouraged the settlement of affluent
  residents, tourist services, and upscale shopping
  that often accompany oceanfront development
  elsewhere along the Californian coast.

11
History Repeats Itself

• In their paper, the authors map out how
  cumulating path adjacencies gave rise to
  Venturas place character, as follows
• Here, then, are the cumulating path adjacencies
  that occurred in Ventura in response to oil
  development
• Early oil production yields physical
  infrastructures (e.g. oil tanks on the oceanfront
  and an industrial thoroughfare)
• Such infrastructures discourage recreational and
  affluent oceanfront development and help
  transform a donated oceanfront park into a
  fairground (contrary to the donors intent)

12
History Repeats Itself

• Continued
• The presence of the fairgrounds further
  diminishes orientation to the citys oceanfront
  as amenity, and a rare stretch of beachfront
  becomes a parking garage and franchise hotel
  their design reinforces the apparent
  insignificance of the coast in official planning
  policy and local social life.
• Oil is present even in seemingly unrelated
  events, including the migration of retail and
  government offices to the periphery.
• Notice how one thing leads to another and how
  each event is linked to the other. Notice also
  how subsequent events take reference from earlier
  ones, so that pre-existing patterns get
  reproduced unintentionally. Clearly then,
  actor-network theory and structuration theory are
  useful analytic tools.

13
About Santa Barbara Beautification first, oil
second

• When oil came to the Santa Barbara area, the city
  and the adjacent suburb of Montecito were already
  becoming tourist and retirement destinations,
  albeit on a rather small scale and well after
  tourism began in nearby Ojai.
• Santa Barbaras emerging orientation to amenities
  continuously generated tension between the locals
  and the oil industry (and other industries as
  well). While residents tolerated oil development
  in those parts of the country distant from the
  city and its affluent suburb of Montecito, the
  closer-in projects soon met with a different
  response.
• Continued

14
Continued

• Although Santa Barbara had, and continues to
  have, pro-development political elements that
  support business of virtually any sort, the
  hardware of oil (so visible in Ventura) would
  simply never be established in those parts of
  Santa Barbara valued for other purposes.
• The courthouse became the quintessential
  representation of the style and of Santa
  Barbaras commitment to beautification, with
  towers, tiled corridors, murals, and ornate
  ironwork an ongoing ceremonial space for local
  civic and political events, as well as tourist
  attraction and architectural feature used in
  television, movies, and on a variety of magazine
  covers.
• In effect, the county transformed oil money into
  physical forms that were to persist as an
  aesthetic and semiotic resource, emulated in
  still other structures and cumulating in an
  unusually dense stock of celebrated buildings.
• Constructed next to what had once been an oil
  field (Coal Oil Point), the university brought in
  students, staff, and faculty, who subsequently
  joined the anti-oil ranks, adding new levels of
  expertise and political energy to place
  increasingly known as the one of the countys
  environmentalist bastions.

15
Notice here, the cumulative path adjacencies of
Santa Barbara

• The Courthouse incident illustrates the path
  adjacencies making up the character of Santa
  Barbara Citizen groups limit oil impacts, in
  part by using oils tax contributions to build up
  the local ambiance (e.g. the courthouse) the
  local ambiance and social networks of its
  residents (e.g. Storke and his associates) induce
  the Universitys presence the University
  attracts the CEOs daughter the daughter (along
  with the ambiance) brings in the father, who
  locates the business the business gives back
  with its donation of lighting, further enhancing
  the ambiance, which strengthens the anti-oil
  posture which is where we started this tale of
  urban lash-up and structuration. Santa Barbara
  becomes even more like Santa Barbara.
• Again, notice how path adjacencies play an
  indispensable role in the place-making of Santa
  Barbara. Events and early decision-makings lead
  to other events, which lead to still others and
  so forth. Decisions from diverse social origins
  and time periods converge to shape the character
  of present day Santa Barbara.

16
Events nudge subsequent events

• The end results, then, are not just a matter of
  mere chance but stem from the way initial
  events, some of them chance, interacted with
  deliberate and coherent choices, which the
  initial events influenced but did not determine
  (see Arthur 1988, 1994).
• However much it may be that certain courses of
  development, once initiated, are hard to reverse
  (Pierson 1994181), they are not, as the term
  lock in might imply, utterly determinative. We
  prefer Haydus (1998353) image of nudge as
  opposed to his steamroller. Even freeways,
  after all, have in a few cases been torn down,
  especially with help from earthquakes and aroused
  citizen groups (as in San Francisco, Oakland,
  Boston, and Munich).

17
Why did Ventura not resist oil development?

• Why did oil development supersede tourism
  (aesthetic) development in Ventura but not so in
  Santa Barbara?
• The authors point to Venturas relative lack of
  voluntary organizations and networks for
  retaliative mobilization.
• Santa Barbaras voluntary organizational networks
  (on the other hand) were much stronger hence they
  could fight the encroachment of oil.

18
Final word

• So how do places acquire their character and
  perpetuate them?
• Short answer By cumulating path adjacencies
  that is, the intersection of seemingly unrelated
  events and choices.

19
Reading 2Bourne, L.S. 1993. The myth and
reality of gentrification a commentary on
emerging urban forms. Urban Studies
30(1)183-189.
20
Myth and Reality of Gentrification

• Purpose of this article
• This article is essentially, a critique of the
  extent and importance of gentrification in the
  inner cities of North America (in particular,
  Canada).
• But first, what is gentrification?
• Basically, gentrification refers to the emergence
  of an elite inner city.

21
Conventional wisdom

• The argument made by previous research is that
  gentrification causes a reversal of the
  traditional upward-sloping social status gradient
  from the city center to the suburban fringe. In
  other words, gentrification results in city
  centers regaining their high social status. The
  argument posits that if gentrification is allowed
  to continue, the social status of city centers
  will soon supersede that of the suburban fringe.

22
Bournes counter-claim

• But in this paper, Bourne (1993) argues against
  this claim.
• He makes the counter-argument that the extent and
  impacts of gentrification have been exaggerated
  in the urban literature of the 1970s and 1980s.
• Hence he states on page 185 What I am arguing
  here is that the pace, extent and impact of such
  changes, whether positive or negative, have been
  systematically exaggerated, presumably
  unintentionally.
• Bourne (1993) marshals evidence to show that
  inner cities in Canada are still on average much
  poorer than their suburban counterparts.

23
There is evidence that reversal has not happened

• Detailed analyses for urban Canada have shown
  that even in the (erroneously called)
  post-industrial cities, notably Toronto,
  Vancouver, Halifax and Ottawa, the impact of 30
  or more years of gentrification has not in itself
  been sufficient to reorder the longstanding inner
  city/suburban contrasts in social status
• Inner cities in Canada are still on are still on
  average much poorer than their suburban
  counterparts, and with the exception of three
  (out of 27) urban areas, have become more so over
  time.

24
Caveat

• To be sure, the most significant upward shifts in
  income levels and social status in Toronto took
  place in the downtown area and along the central
  harbour and waterfront -- these areas, formerly
  vacant or in non-residential uses, have witnessed
  extensive revitalization and new condominium
  construction. Yet redevelopment of such
  grey-field sites into new social spaces does not
  constitute gentrification, at least as it is
  traditionally defined.

25
Why gentrification is often over-estimated

• Bourne (1993) argues that the extent of
  gentrification is often over-estimated because of
  the way that gentrification indices are computed.
  
• Gentrification is indicated by occupation and
  education based indices.
• But as Bourne argues, these indices can be
  problematic.

26
The problem with occupation-based indices

• First, occupational categories are notoriously
  fluid and subject to frequent redefinition and
  reclassification over time.
• Second, they conceal a widening disparity between
  low and high skilled jobs, even in the service
  and professional categories.
• Third, occupation is an attribute of individuals,
  not households, hence they are not really
  representative of social status levels of broader
  bases of people.

27
The problem with education-based indices

• An education-based index is often inflated by the
  concentration of younger age cohorts, notably
  students and recent graduates of post-secondary
  institutions, in the inner city. These
  individuals typically have relatively low current
  incomes but high educational levels and similarly
  high long-term (or permanent) incomes. The
  Census only counts the former (as in income).
• The second cohorts of particular interest are
  those over age 55, including empty-nesters and
  more importantly, retired and semi-retired
  seniors. The latter are often asset-rich but
  income poor.
• The third group consists of recent immigrants who
  because of restrictive federal immigration
  policies have (on average) higher educational and
  occupational levels than the native-born
  population, but lower incomes. They also are (or
  were until recently) proportionally more
  concentrated in the inner city.
• The presence of these three groups in turn would
  obviously deflate any index of gentrification
  based on income levels while raising indices
  based on education and occupational status.

28
Therefore, under-estimation and exaggeration of
gentrification depends on what measure is being
used

• For many observers income variables may
  underestimate gentrification,
• while education and occupation measures clearly
  exaggerate it.

29
Implications

• These observations pose a series of questions for
  any future students of gentrification.
• One of these questions is whether the different
  types of bias introduced by each of the index
  variables would alter their interpretation of the
  relative extent and importance of gentrification.

30
Myth and Reality of Gentrification

• Bournes final conclusion yes, there is some
  evidence of gentrification, but not as
  dramatically as some research suggest
• To re-iterate, there is little question that the
  social status of a selected number of
  neighbourhoods in Canadian inner cities, as
  elsewhere, has improved over the last two or
  three decades, regardless of whether status is
  measured by occupation, education, income or a
  combination thereof.
• It is also true by definition that inner cities
  would probably have been significantly poorer
  places without gentrification.

31
Myth and Reality of Gentrification

• Nevertheless, gentrification has been limited to
  only a few major centres, and to a few
  neighbourhoods within those centres.
• It has not, on the whole, resulted in a
  dramatically new socio-spatial structure or an
  elite inner city, even in those urban centres
  favoured by its presence.
• Those urban areas that do display a reverse
  social status gradient (admittedly only a partial
  test of the hypothesis) are those that have had
  such a pattern for a long time.

32
A few practice test question

• Reviewed in class
• I will post a few more on our course website