Everybody, it seems, welcomes the arrival of new restaurants, cafés, food trucks and farmers markets.
What could be the downside of fresh veggies, homemade empanadas and a pop-up restaurant specializing in banh mis?
But when they appear in unexpected places – think inner-city areas populated by immigrants – they’re often the first salvo in a broader effort to rebrand and remake the community. As a result, these neighborhoods can quickly become unaffordable and unrecognizable to longtime residents.
Stoking an appetite for gentrification
I live in San Diego, where I teach courses on urban and food geographies and conduct research on the relationship between food and ethnicity in urban contexts.
In recent years, I started to notice a pattern playing out in the city’s low-income neighborhoods that have traditionally lacked food options. More ethnic restaurants, street vendors, community gardens and farmers markets were cropping up. These, in turn, spurred growing numbers of white, affluent and college-educated people to venture into areas they had long avoided.
This observation inspired me to write a book, titled “The $16 Taco,” about how food – including what’s seen as “ethnic,” “authentic” or “alternative” – often serves as a spearhead for gentrification.
Take City Heights, a large multi-ethnic San Diego neighborhood where successive waves of refugees from places as far away as Vietnam and Somalia have resettled. In 2016, a dusty vacant lot on the busiest boulevard was converted into an outdoor international marketplace called Fair@44. There, food vendors gather in semi-permanent stalls to sell pupusas, lechon (roasted pig), single-sourced cold-brewed coffee, cupcakes and tamarind raspado (crushed ice) to neighborhood residents, along with tourists and visitors from other parts of the city.
A public-private partnership called the City Heights Community Development Corporation, together with several nonprofits, launched the initiative to increase “access to healthy and culturally-appropriate food” and serve as “a business incubator for local micro-entrepreneurs,” including immigrants and refugees who live in the neighborhood.
On paper, this all sounds great.
But just a few blocks outside the gates, informal street vendors – who have long sold goods such as fruit, tamales and ice cream to residents who can’t easily access supermarkets – now face heightened harassment. They’ve become causalities in a citywide crackdown on sidewalk vending spurred by complaints from business owners and residents in more affluent areas.
This isn’t just happening in San Diego. The same tensions have been playing out in rapidly gentrifying areas like Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights neighborhood, Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, New York’s Queens borough and East Austin, Texas.
In all of these places, because “ethnic,” “authentic” and “exotic” foods are seen as cultural assets, they’ve become magnets for development.
Why food?
Cities and neighborhoods have long sought to attract educated and affluent residents – people whom sociologist Richard Florida dubbed “the creative class.” The thinking goes that these newcomers will spend their dollars and presumably contribute to economic growth and job creation.
Food, it seems, has become the perfect lure.
It’s uncontroversial and has broad appeal. It taps into the American Dream and appeals to the multicultural values of many educated, wealthy foodies. Small food businesses, with their relatively low cost of entry, have been a cornerstone of ethnic entrepreneurship in American cities. And initiatives like farmers markets and street fairs don’t require much in the way of public investment; instead, they rely on entrepreneurs and community-based organizations to do the heavy lifting.
In City Heights, the Community Development Corporation hosted its first annual City Heights Street Food Festival in 2019 to “get people together around table and food stalls to celebrate another year of community building.” Other recent events have included African Restaurant Week, Dia de Los Muertos, New Year Lunar Festival, Soul Food Fest and Brazilian Carnival, all of which rely on food and drink to attract visitors and support local businesses.
Meanwhile, initiatives such as the New Roots Community Farm and the City Heights Farmers’ Market have been launched by nonprofits with philanthropic support in the name of “food justice,” with the goal of reducing racial disparities in access to healthy food and empowering residents – projects that are particularly appealing to highly educated people who value diversity and democracy.
Upending an existing foodscape
In media coverage of changing foodscapes in low-income neighborhoods like City Heights, you’ll rarely find any complaints.
San Diego Magazine’s neighborhood guide for City Heights, for example, emphasizes its “claim to authentic international eats, along with live music venues, craft beer, coffee, and outdoor fun.” It recommends several ethnic restaurants and warns readers not to be fooled by appearances.
But that doesn’t mean objections don’t exist.
Many longtime residents and small-business owners – mostly people of color and immigrants – have, for decades, lived, worked and struggled to feed their families in these neighborhoods. To do so, they’ve run convenience stores, opened ethnic restaurants, sold food in parks and alleys and created spaces to grow their own food.
All represent strategies to meet community needs in a place mostly ignored by mainstream retailers.
So what happens when new competitors come to town?
Starting at a disadvantage
As I document in my book, these ethnic food businesses, because of a lack of financial and technical support, often struggle to compete with new enterprises that feature fresh façades, celebrity chefs, flashy marketing, bogus claims of authenticity and disproportionate media attention. Furthermore, following the arrival of more-affluent residents, existing ones find it increasingly difficult to stay.
My analysis of real estate ads for properties listed in City Heights and other gentrifying San Diego neighborhoods found that access to restaurants, cafés, farmers markets and outdoor dining is a common selling point. The listings I studied from 2019 often enticed potential buyers with lines like “shop at the local farmers’ market,” “join food truck festivals” and “participate in community food drives!”
San Diego Magazine’s home buyer guide for the same year identified City Heights as an “up-and-coming neighborhood,” attributing its appeal to its diverse population and eclectic “culinary landscape,” including several restaurants and Fair@44.
When I see that City Heights’ home prices rose 58% over the past three years, I’m not surprised.
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Going up against the urban food machine
Longtime residents find themselves forced to compete against what I call the “urban food machine,” a play on sociologist Harvey Molotch’s “urban growth machine” – a term he coined more than 50 years ago to explain how cities were being shaped by a loose coalition of powerful elites who sought to profit off urban growth.
I argue that investors and developers use food as a tool for achieving the same ends.
When their work is done, what’s left is a rather insipid and tasteless neighborhood, where foodscapes become more of a marketable mishmash of cultures than an ethnic enclave that’s evolved organically to meet the needs of residents. The distinctions of time and place start to blur: An “ethnic food district” in San Diego looks no different than one in Chicago or Austin.
Meanwhile, the routines and rhythms of everyday life have changed so much that longtime residents no longer feel like they belong. Their stories and culture reduced to a selling point, they’re forced to either recede to the shadows or leave altogether.
It’s hard to see how that’s a form of inclusion or empowerment.
FAQs
How is food related to gentrification? ›
Gentrification can change the mix of food outlets in a neighbourhood, and their inventory and prices, thereby reducing food access and food security for residents.
What is the answer to gentrification? ›Some argue that we must build new housing in gentrifying neighborhoods to take pressure off the market and to accommodate rising demand. Many urban planners promote greater density and large-scale development as a solution to gentrification.
What does it mean to gentrify food? ›Food gentrification reframes a food that is an affordable, familiar form of sustenance for members of a particular culture into an often unrecognizable form that is elevated, carefully sourced, reinvented, healthier—take your pick of adjectives that connote the original is cheap, unhealthy, trashy food.
What are the good things about gentrification? ›- A reduction in crime rates in the newly gentrified area.
- Higher incentive for property owners to improve the quality of life in the gentrified area.
- New food, retail, business, and housing opportunities, as well as cleaner neighborhoods.
- Economic stabilization of low-income or disinvested areas.
Causes of Gentrification
Some literature suggests that it is caused by social and cultural factors such as family structure, rapid job growth, lack of housing, traffic congestion, and public-sector policies (Kennedy, 2001).
Effects of food insecurity
Food insecurity can make it more difficult for a child to learn and grow. Food insecurity can lead to difficult decisions like choosing between food and rent, bills, and transportation.
Gentrification usually leads to negative impacts such as forced displacement, a fostering of discriminatory behavior by people in power, and a focus on spaces that exclude low-income individuals and people of color.
Why gentrification is good for the poor? ›The benefit of gentrification is that these more mixed income neighborhoods lower the exposure to poverty for all residents. Brummet and Reed estimate the average poverty rate of neighborhoods that gentrified declined by 3 percentage points.
What is an argument for gentrification? ›The primary argument is that renovating certain areas increases property value and forces the low-income residents to relocate. When an area is gentrified, the local and city government first approves and promote the renovation of old neighborhoods and areas (Bryant, Laura, 2003).
What are examples of gentrified? ›Increased investment in neighborhood amenities, like transit and parks. Changes in land use, for example from industrial land to restaurants and storefronts. Changes in the character of the neighborhood as community run businesses are replaced by businesses catering to new residents' needs.
What is an example of gentrification? ›
Brick lane is one of the prominent examples of gentrification ruining local businesses. Brick lane is a neighborhood located in East London. The place is popularly referred to as the ”Banglatown” due to historic businesses run by Bangladeshi and Bengali communities.
What is gentrification and what are some examples of it? ›Caption Options. In brief, gentrification happens when wealthier newcomers move into working-class neighborhoods. New businesses and amenities often pop up to cater to these new residents. Potholes might get filled; a new bus line might appear.
What are three positives to gentrification? ›On the positive side, gentrification often leads to commercial development, improved economic opportunity, lower crime rates, and an increase in property values, which benefits existing homeowners.
What are 5 pros of gentrification? ›- Pros:
- It Improves Property Values.
- It Increases Local Tax Revenue.
- It Draws In New Businesses.
- It Often Disproportionately Affects Marginalized Communities.
- It Brings An Increase In Community Conflict.
- The Cost Of Living Rises.
Gentrification, the influx of wealthy individuals into a neighborhood, allows the wealthy to put their children in their own well-funded public schools while leaving low-income families and students concentrated on their own, usually under-resourced schools.
What are the biggest issues with gentrification? ›- Displacement through rent/price increase.
- Loss of affordable housing.
- Community conflict.
- Homelessness.
- Loss of social diversity.
- Housing demand on surrounding poorer areas.
- Expansive Gentrification. ...
- Concentrated Gentrification. ...
- Limited Gentrification. ...
- Nascent Gentrification.
Economic shifts
The economic changes that occur as a community goes through gentrification are often favorable for local governments. Affluent gentrifiers expand the local tax base as well as support local shops and businesses, a large part of why the process is frequently alluded to in urban policies.
A shortage of food may happen when not enough food is produced, such as when crops fail due to drought, pests, or too much moisture. But the problem can also result from the uneven distribution of natural resource endowment for a country, and by human institutions, such as government and public policy, he said.
Who is most affected by food shortages? ›Food insecurity rates are highest for single-mother households and households with incomes below the poverty line.
When did gentrification become a problem? ›
The history of gentrification in America starts in the 1960s, when the term was coined. Over the next five and a half decades, communities have wielded varying tools and strategies in response to gentrification's challenges.
What is the most gentrified city in the US? ›San Francisco-Oakland tops list of most gentrified cities in the United States, study shows. A new study claims San Francisco and Oakland are the most "intensely gentrified" cities in the United States.
Is gentrification good or bad for economy? ›As a neighborhood gentrifies, the economic opportunity that it represents increases. More people move into the area to take advantage of those opportunities, and then the desirability of that area increases even more. Developers begin to tear down old housing to build new.
How can we solve gentrification problem? ›- Consider code enforcement policies that assist residents with home improvements.
- Consider implementing rent controls.
- Preserve federally subsidized housing programs.
From its inception, gentrification has been understood as a form of neighborhood change, resulting in the displacement of incumbent residents of one social class and culture by another more affluent class, linked with an increase in property values.
Does gentrification cause homelessness? ›Throughout this paper I will explore the root causes of homelessness and argue that the overwhelming population of homeless is due to two major things, which have a chance to be controlled. These two contributors are gentrification along with the reduction of low skilled minimum wage job availability.
What are 5 cons of gentrification? ›- It changes the cultural standards of the neighborhood. ...
- Gentrification can sometimes make a community poorer. ...
- It raises the cost of rent when it happens. ...
- Gentrification replaces the people who built the community. ...
- It causes the rich to get richer, while the poor may or may not benefit.
- The type of local services alters and the price increases. - Increased crime. - A loss of social diversity occurs; from the socially disparate to rich ghettos. - Under-occupancy and population loss to gentrified areas occurs.
What is an example of gentrification in the US? ›New York City is a common example of gentrification, especially when it comes to discussions about rising rents and low-income residents moving out.
What are changes made by gentrification? ›Gentrification is a process of neighborhood change where higher-income and higher-educated residents move into a historically marginalized neighborhood, housing costs rise, and the neighborhood is physically transformed through new higher-end construction and building upgrades, resulting in the displacement of ...
Is gentrification still a problem? ›
Gentrification is a highly contested issue, in part because of its stark visibility. Gentrification has the power to displace low-income families or, more often, prevent low-income families from moving into previously affordable neighborhoods.
Does gentrification reduce crime? ›An increase in demand for housing by the higher income residents drives up the cost of housing which, in turn, forces out the lower income residents. Higher income residents generally have lower crime rates, so the crime rate falls as the lower income residents with higher crime rates move.
How did gentrification begin? ›The term gentrification emerged in 1960s London when a German-British sociologist and city planner, Ruth Glass, described the displacement of the poor in London as upper-class people moved in to refurbish houses in previously working-class areas.
What are the elements of gentrification? ›Rehabilitation, housing development, new shops and restaurants, and new, higher-wage jobs are often part of the picture.
Does gentrification make communities safer? ›Finally, gentrification may reduce crime because rising rents may force local criminals to relocate, while increased local economic activity may induce incumbent criminals to partake in legitimate employment.
Does gentrification increase cost of living? ›Increased Housing Costs and Rent: Gentrification leads to an increase in property values, which drives up housing costs and rent. This increase in housing costs and rent can make it difficult for many people to afford to live in the area, particularly low-income families and individuals.
Does gentrification create more jobs? ›Preliminary results suggest that gentrifying neighborhoods on average do not experience consistent, meaningful gains in local employment, compared to other comparable low-income neighborhoods that are not undergoing economic upgrading.
Does urban agriculture lead to gentrification? ›Research, however, indicates that racialized gentrification tends to accompany urban agriculture, similar to a phenomenon documented with other green space.
What are issues related to gentrification? ›Gentrification usually leads to negative impacts such as forced displacement, a fostering of discriminatory behavior by people in power, and a focus on spaces that exclude low-income individuals and people of color.
How is gentrification related to homelessness? ›As areas have gentrified, families in poverty cannot afford rent, which pushes them into homelessness. High rental costs also prevent them from bettering their situation once they lose housing.
What are the negative economic effects of gentrification? ›
The negative affects of gentrification include the loss of small businesses, reduced salary for low-income families, and the loss of homes in urban neighborhoods, as written in Hyperallergic. Several of...
Who is most affected by gentrification? ›A new study by a Stanford sociologist has determined that the negative effects of gentrification are felt disproportionately by minority communities, whose residents have fewer options of neighborhoods they can move to compared to their white counterparts.
Does gentrification increase economic growth? ›As a neighborhood gentrifies, the economic opportunity that it represents increases. More people move into the area to take advantage of those opportunities, and then the desirability of that area increases even more. Developers begin to tear down old housing to build new.
What are 3 factors of gentrification? ›Causes of gentrification can include rapid job growth, tight housing markets, preference for city amenities, and increased traffic congestion.
What are examples of gentrification? ›New York City is a common example of gentrification, especially when it comes to discussions about rising rents and low-income residents moving out.
Does gentrification benefit the poor? ›The benefit of gentrification is that these more mixed income neighborhoods lower the exposure to poverty for all residents.
Why is gentrification good for society? ›The effects of gentrification
On the positive side, gentrification often leads to commercial development, improved economic opportunity, lower crime rates, and an increase in property values, which benefits existing homeowners.
Increased Housing Costs and Rent: Gentrification leads to an increase in property values, which drives up housing costs and rent. This increase in housing costs and rent can make it difficult for many people to afford to live in the area, particularly low-income families and individuals.
How can we prevent gentrification? ›- Consider code enforcement policies that assist residents with home improvements.
- Consider implementing rent controls.
- Preserve federally subsidized housing programs.
- Pros:
- It Improves Property Values.
- It Increases Local Tax Revenue.
- It Draws In New Businesses.
- It Often Disproportionately Affects Marginalized Communities.
- It Brings An Increase In Community Conflict.
- The Cost Of Living Rises.
How common is gentrification? ›
While intense gentrification may be relatively rare across the U.S., it is most concentrated in the populous cities of the coastal regions, and a considerable number of people live in the neighborhoods most impacted by it.