11.4: City Life

Where you live or grew up, is an element of your identity. “Where’s your hometown?” is a common question you might hear if you went on vacation or moved away. If you’re from a large city, what side of town, or what neighborhood you come from is another source of identity formation. Exactly what defines a “neighborhood” is open to debate. The US Census Bureau does not define “neighborhood” because they are vernacular regions. Each person has a sense of where neighborhood boundaries are, but those boundaries are largely in the imagination of individuals. Census tracts and ZIP codes sometimes function as proxies for neighborhoods, but they are often arbitrary as well. In some parts of the city, citizens have very specific ideas about neighborhood boundaries. Gangs often use graffiti to mark specific locations to notify others about their opinion on neighborhood boundaries – territories (see Politics Chapter). In some cities, like Los Angeles, the designation of unofficial neighborhood boundaries has been the source of angry debates because property values are greatly affected by the simple perceptions of where neighborhood boundaries exist.

Figure 11-21: Canoga Park, CA - Gang graffiti marks the edges of neighborhoods as gang members perceive the vernacular region – or neighborhood.

Neighborhoods

Most neighborhoods don’t have organized gangs, but still, people with long-term commitments to homes and neighbors do engage in numerous group behaviors to protect their “turf”, and indirectly, the value of their property. Most of the time, these behaviors are benign – things like keeping weeds out of the yard, ensuring that local authorities enforce zoning laws about signs, junk cars, or residency restrictions. Neighbors may work together to improve local schools, parks, and hospitals. Homeowners may band together to accomplish other goals that might be deemed unsavory. They might want to keep certain businesses, like liquor stores, payday lenders, factories or nightclubs from their neighborhoods. They may even work together to prevent specific individuals, like sex crime offenders or the homeless, from moving in the neighborhood. Because many of these same individuals are less concerned when factories, stores or homeless people come to other neighborhoods, the term “not in my backyard” or “NIMBY” was coined to characterize the militant protectionist attitude. Generally, neighborhoods with wealthier people who are politically active, and have long-term residency patterns exhibit NIMBYism. Wealthier neighborhoods may erect gates and hire guards to prevent easy access to homes. Some have even created small, gated towns to keep undesirables out. Geographer Mike Davis called this process “the militarization of space” in his well-received book City of Quartz.

Figure 11-22: Calabasas, CA This wealthy suburb of Los Angeles has multiple gated areas, some of which encompass large recreation areas.

When residents in a neighborhood lack money, political organizational skills, or the motivation to protect themselves from disamenities, significant neighborhood degradation is possible. When that degradation affects the health of a local population of an ethnic minority, the term environmental racism is sometimes applied to describe the situation. What is racist is often hard to discern because cause and effect are not always obvious. Was a neighborhood polluted before minorities moved there, or did polluters move in after the minorities moved in? Did minorities populate a polluted neighborhood because that was all they could afford or were they forced to live there by law or precedent? Poverty is frequently at the root of these issues. Poor people of all ethnicities rarely can afford to live in neighborhoods that have outstanding schools, parks, air quality, etc., and so they are often able to afford to live only in the most dangerous, toxic, degraded neighborhoods.

Neighborhood Life Cycle

How people come to occupy specific neighborhoods is a complex process that evolves over time and involves thousands of individual and institutional decisions. A number of these processes such as steering, blockbusting, etc. (see Ethnicity chapter) are rooted in systemic ethnic discrimination. However, economic decisions also factor prominently in the lifecycle of a neighborhood. As housing ages, it tends to become less desirable. People with enough money tend to move away and buy newer homes elsewhere. The lower classes move into the older homes, frequently as renters. Often poor people wind up occupying older, multi-family dwellings or apartments. Roofs and pipes leak, heating and cooling systems are often inefficient, neighborhoods are congested, etc. Sometimes, entire neighborhoods are abandoned. This process is known as the neighborhood life cycle. It’s very common, however, in the last 50 years or so, some neighborhoods’ life cycle is occasionally changed because wealthier people chose to move into older housing – or gentrification.

Suburbanization

Suburbs first appeared in the United States in the mid-1800s as trolleys and other types of light rail extended beyond the limits of the pre-industrial, pedestrian-oriented cities. Light rail allowed middle-class families to move out beyond the city limits into communities called streetcar suburbs. When automobiles became affordable in the 1920s, suburbanization expanded. The Great Depression and World War II slowed suburbanization in the US, but during the 1950s, suburbs exploded on the American Landscape. The rise of suburbs in the post-WWII era brought profound changes to American cities. Many families found themselves able to exchange an old house in the crowded city for a new one with a bigger yard, near new schools, malls, parks, and hospitals. It was the culmination of the American dream for loads of people. The US and many local governments were eager to help people achieve those dreams, and created numerous financial incentives to make suburban dreams inexpensive, but government policies also created multiple unintended consequences.

Figure 11-23: Toronto, Canada - A street car alongside an early automobile in 1923. Note the dense housing development created by the public transport, but the car would undermine both the density and the streetcar. Source: Wikimedia.

FHA

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA), created in 1934 as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Depression-Era New Deal, was tasked with encouraging banks to make inexpensive loans to people seeking to buy new homes while ensuring that housing was built up to new safety standards. The FHA was part of a grand scheme to stimulate the housing sector of the economy during the Great Depression while extending federal oversight to the home loan industry. The program worked has worked. Overall homeownership was around 40% at the start of the Great Depression and it has been around 70% in recent years. The biggest jump in homeownership came shortly after World War II after the economy recovered and millions of veterans took advantage of the G.I Bill to help them secure a mortgage. However, the criteria upon which the government judged the desirability of insuring mortgage loans incentivized buying a new home in the suburbs, or rehabilitating old ones in the inner city. Faced with the option of buying a cheaper new home in a new suburban neighborhood or staying in the expensive, crowded inner-city, most people moved to the suburbs – if they could. Since many of those who qualified for loans were white and not in poverty, the FHA and related government programs helped increase the residential segregation of minorities by encouraging white flight from the cities. Minorities who were often poor and regularly prohibited from moving to new suburbs by discriminatory deed restrictions, found themselves stuck in the city, where the FHA’s mortgage assistance programs were far less helpful.

Redlining

Some argue that FHA policies encouraged several discriminatory mortgage and insurance practices, known as redlining. During the Great Depression, the federal government refinanced more than a million mortgages to stem the tide of foreclosures, but not everyone was eligible for this help. Neighborhoods with poor terrain, loads of old houses, or those with an abundance of “foreign-born, negro or lower grade population” were judged to be too risky for the government to help. Such neighborhoods appeared on mortgage risk maps outlined in red, which is where the term “redlining” evolved. For years afterward, banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions also mapped out where not to do business. Residents living within the boundaries of a “redlined” neighborhood found it difficult to get loans to buy, sell, repair or improve housing. Even individuals with good credit histories and a middle-class income could find it impossible to buy homes in specific neighborhoods. Some couldn’t get insurance on what they already owned. If they could, the terms of the loan or the insurance rates were higher than those outside the zone, a practice called reverse redlining. Redlining could be a death sentence to neighborhoods because of the destructive effect the practice had on property values. Most of the people suffering from the ill-effects of redlining are people of color. African-Americans appear to have been harmed most often. Because family wealth is often built generationally upon property ownership and passed down generationally, redlining has been a factor in the systemic impoverishment of many minority families. Billions of dollars in property equity have been denied to people of color via redlining since the 1930s.

Figure 11-25: Los Angeles - Government made map of loan desirability from 1933. Consider the lasting effect of this government policy today. Source: Mapping Inequality

Figure 11-25: Los Angeles, CA - Interactive Map. Click on the image above to open a Google Map of the map on the left. See how government nearly 100 year ago affects neighborhoods today Source: KQED

In 1968, the Fair Housing Act was passed in order to outlaw redlining and other forms of housing discrimination, but additional laws have strengthened that landmark law over the years. Unfortunately, by the 1970s, the damage done by redlining was evident in inner cities across the United States. Many neighborhoods never recovered. Although it’s illegal to discriminate against minorities (or anyone really) for non-economic characteristics, there is ample evidence to suggest it still occurs. Studies continue to show that people of color regularly

Urban Renewal

As age and federal policies tore away at the fabric of America’s inner cities, the US government launched an effort known as urban renewal in an attempt to reinvigorate the urban cores of large cities. The Federal Government launched several programs to provide funds to cities to buy up land in degraded parts of the city, to build public housing projects for the displaced, to bulldoze old neighborhoods, and to incentivize investors to rebuild on the vacated land. The idea was partly driven by a mistaken conviction that the visual elements of urban blight, were largely responsible for the problems of inner cities. Legislators believed that because old parts of cities were ugly, demolishing thousands of buildings would create a clean slate upon which new investment would pour in, and new businesses and housing would rise up. The displaced would be housed in new, high-rise housing projects that were clean and efficient. In a few instances, it worked. In some places, new businesses with good-paying jobs replaced abandoned old factories and warehouses. New apartments replaced dilapidated houses. Displaced folks moved to newer, cleaner safer housing elsewhere.

Figure 11-26: Fargo, ND - These houses, and much of the adjacent neighborhood were demolished in 1959 to make way for urban renewal projects. Most of it became parking lots for businesses or civic buildings.

However, the failures of urban renewal appear to have outnumbered its successes by a wide margin. Frequently, thousands of residents, most of them poor and minority, were displaced from their homes and their neighborhoods only to be herded into overcrowded, poorly built public housing projects. Within a decade, the word “projects” became synonymous with segregation and crime (see the Ethnicity chapter for additional information). Urban redevelopment efforts often turned out to be driven by unscrupulous deals made between land developers and corrupt civic leaders, who funneled millions into projects that were unnecessary, half-completed or doomed to failure. Perhaps worst of all were the numerous cities that found themselves with acre upon acre of empty lots; untaxable wastelands with only sidewalks where neighborhoods once thrived. Some urban renewal neighborhoods were also dissected by new highways or other transportation corridors, effectively rending the social fabric of those communities and cutting off traffic to businesses that remained. Boyle Heights in Los Angeles is a classic example.

In Los Angeles, perhaps the best example of urban renewal gone awry is the Marlton Square redevelopment project. Set within the mostly black Crenshaw District, the neighborhood had gone through a long cycle of decay punctuated by the 1992 Rodney King uprising/riots. Numerous promises of redevelopment came from politicians and a few high-profile sports stars who focused on a massive shopping district just west of Crenshaw Blvd that was once hosted a thriving series of shops and services. Millions of dollars were spent and rumors of corrupt bargains between land developers and local politicians swirled around a series of unsuccessful starts and bankruptcy proceedings. For more than a decade, the property remained empty (Google Streetview – use the timeline tool to see its evolution!). In 2012, the Kaiser foundation, a health care conglomerate, launched a new effort to build something of use to the community on the massive vacant lot. After several decades something is there!

Interstate Highway System

The other important Federal program that sped forward suburbanization after World War II was the Interstate Highway System. The construction of a national network of high-speed roadways was originally intended to help the US military convoy troops and equipment rapidly in time of war. It was proven as early as 1919 that the existing highway system was grossly inadequate for the rapid deployment of forces. Additionally, President Eisenhower, who had served as the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II, was impressed with how the German Autobahn aided the mobility of the German armies and material. So in 1956, at the urging of Eisenhower, Congress passed the Federal Aid Highway Act, which dedicated billions of dollars to upgrade America’s highway transportation. As soon as stretches of these new, high-speed freeways opened, it became clear that they would have a significant impact on the function of cities and suburbs they connected.

Figure 11-27: Los Angeles, CA - This photo of the infamous Sepulveda Pass on Interstate 405 is regularly traversed by nearly a half million cars per day, but when it opened in 1961, it was relatively free of traffic, allowing commuters in the San Fernando Valley quick access to the Los Angeles Basin, thus encouraging massive suburbanization.

Most folks consider one-hour the maximum desirable commute time. This was true when people walked to work and also when they ride public transit. When the interstates were first built, they were largely free from traffic congestion. People working in the inner city soon realized they could move further from their jobs without increasing their commuting time. Some found their commute faster after moving to a distant suburb. Combined with FHA incentives, suburban housing was plentiful, cheap and convenient. As a result, entire towns, often with little to no industry, began to emerge on the edges of larger cities. Suburbs without much commercial activity are sometimes called commuter towns or bedroom communities. If they are more distant from the city, beyond the suburbs, these areas are known as exurbs. The distinctions get blurry because cities and their suburbs seem to sprawl ever outward, gobbling up any undeveloped spaces on the edge of the suburbs. Exurbs become suburbs and bedroom communities grow large and begin attracting industry.

Over the years, as suburban populations exploded and women entered the workforce, the highway networks became overloaded, failing to convey commuters quickly to work in the inner city. Employers began putting offices and factories in the suburbs, much like commuters, drawn to cheap land served well by highways. Eventually, people found they didn’t need to commute to the inner city. Some people found themselves living in one suburb and driving to another; those people are known as lateral commuters. Eventually, even people living in the inner city began finding jobs in the suburbs, commuting in the opposite direction of suburban commuters. Those who commute in the opposite direction of the traditional suburban commuters are called reverse commuters. So numerous are reverse commuters in Los Angeles that on some highways (US 101, e.g.) traffic is slower flowing into the city in the evening than the traffic going away from the city!

Edge Cities

The industrialization of the suburbs, aided by affordable land, efficient highways, and an ample workforce attracted really exploded in the 1970s. Some suburban regions attracted so many employers that they emerged as significant new commercial nodes, or nuclei, competing with historic urban cores for business supremacy (see the multiple nuclei model above). Joel Garreau, a non-geographer who thinks very spatially, called these places edge cities. They are almost the opposite of bedroom communities in that edge cities have many businesses, but very few residents. Garreau defined an edge city as a location that:

1. Has at least 5 million square feet of office space
2. Has at least 600,000 square feet of retail space
3. Has more jobs than bedrooms
4. Is recognized as a vernacular place by locals, but not necessarily by outsiders
5. Did not exist in the 1960s.

Figure 11-28: Tysons Corner, VA – A perfect example of the suburban industrial complex, where the daytime population far exceeds the nighttime, or residential population. Source: Wikipedia

Tysons Corner, Virginia is a great example of this new urban form recognized by Garreau. In the 1960s, this location was essentially rural. Today, this “census designated place” remains unincorporated with a population of only around 20,000 people. Still, it has 46 million square feet of office space, two super-massive malls, and functions as the central business hub for much of Northern Virginia. In terms of business activity, Tysons Corner ranks among the top 20 cities in the United States. All the locals know exactly where “Tysons” is, but hardly anyone outside of Northern Virginia has even heard of the place. You will pass it if you travel from Dulles Airport to Washington DC.

Suburban Disfunction

Overcrowding in the suburbs has become a problem. Older suburbs, though rarely approaching the mega-density of the inner-city core, often come to match (or exceed) the density in the rest of the city proper. “America’s Suburb”, the San Fernando Valley, occupies much of the northern half of Los Angeles. It was sparsely settled prior to World War II (one popular wartime song called it “Cow Country”), yet today, it has several neighborhoods with population densities in excess of 50,000 per square mile. The Los Angeles area highway network, once a model of efficiency, was quickly overburdened by unchecked suburbanization. US Highway 101 which stretches across the southern San Fernando Valley exceeded capacity in 1974, but suburbanization along US 101 continues today with commuters regularly driving on US 101 for 40 miles before even getting to the western edge of the San Fernando Valley. The intersection of US 101 and Interstate 405, in the southeastern corner of the San Fernando Valley consistently ranks as the most congested in the US, at over 350,000 cars per day.

Figure 11-29: Map of San Fernando Valley. Click on this map to see an interactive map of America's Suburb where population densities sometimes exceed 50,000 person per square mile in defiance of traditional concepts of suburbs.

Land developers stand to make fortunes from buying up large patches of agricultural or rural lands surrounding cities and turning them into suburban communities. Large land development companies tend to be very well-connected politically and politicians are very responsive to the campaign contributions from developers and unions representing building trades, so there is often minimal resistance to pro-growth policies. As a result, poorly planned, sprawling suburbs regularly leapfrog outward from large cities. Occasionally, there’s a backlash from opponents who favor less development, or “smarter” development. These so-called “slow growth” coalitions advocate for in-filling laws to force developers to develop land adjacent to existing neighborhoods, thereby preventing checkerboard development. Checkerboard development is expensive because the road network, utility lines and public safety infrastructure must be extended over “empty” land to serve the remote residential developments. Taxpayers, most of whom don’t live in far-flung residential areas, eventually pay considerable external costs passed on by land developers and the residents of far-flung suburbs. Ironically, the burden for paying for exurban development falls partly on property owners in the inner city, diminishing the true value of housing there, and further stimulating growth in the suburbs.

Figure 11-30: Palm Desert, CA - Checkboard Development is clearly visible in this aerial photo. Several tracts are disconnected from the other parts of the suburb.

Capital Flight

Almost all neighborhoods suffer through a cycle of decay. Some of America's older suburbs are more than 100 years old now. As houses age, modern families often find the houses too small, in need of frequent maintenance, and out of style. People with enough money move away from these houses. Old houses often become rental properties and rental properties tend to suffer from disinvestment and poor maintenance. The government even encourages disinvestment, perhaps unintentionally, by providing lucrative tax breaks to rental property owners to compensate them for the depreciation of the value of their properties. Renters themselves often misuse the housing they occupy or fail to maintain properties they don’t own, especially if they plan to move soon. At some point, the value of rental properties falls to the point that even the minimal costs associated with necessary maintenance and taxes exceed the rent collected. At this point, rental buildings are abandoned, frequently becoming the property of the local city government via tax foreclosure. Abandonment accelerates the collapse of value for neighboring buildings, creating a sort of death spiral of home values. The net result can be ruinous.

Figure 11-32: Bronx, NY - President Carter visits an abandoned section of New York City in the mid-1970s. Source: Wikimedia

The geographic movement of investor money called financial capital can explain the lifecycle of any neighborhood. Banks and those looking to make money from real estate move investment money to places where the return on investment is perceived to be the greatest and financial risk lowest. After World War II, banks, the real-estate community, governments, and individuals moved most of their investment capital from the inner city to suburbs. Homeowners who could move, and were permitted to do so, naturally followed because they too sought profitable returns on their biggest financial investment. Because supplies of investment money are limited, inner cities got little or no (re)investment capital, and as a result, very quickly became decrepit. Still, not every inner-city fell into disrepair. Some older neighborhoods benefitted from an influx of immigrants, who often lacked ample financial capital, nevertheless brought significant human capital or sweat equity into older neighborhoods. Geographer Mike Davis calls the thousands of immigrant homeowners in Los Angeles “anonymous heroes” because they are willing to invest sweat equity fixing up housing in older neighborhoods abandoned both by the banking system and former residents.

Gentrification

Occasionally, a neighborhood in an inner-city region is radically redeveloped and renewed in a process known as gentrification. The term suggests that the “gentry” are moving to the city from elsewhere, but that suggestion is misleading. Rather, gentrification is a process that often begins with people of lower social status gradually improving a neighborhood through sweat equity until people from higher social status consider it a desirable location and begin moving there. Gentrification does not typically involve people exchanging homeownership in the suburbs for residence in an inner-city neighborhood. Instead, gentrification is often driven by people buying their first homes in the inner-city, or simply moving from somewhere else within the city to a gentrifying neighborhood.

There are many theories explaining the process of gentrification, which became noticeable in the United States in the early 1970s. Some theories point to the growth of high paying jobs in the CBD as the US economy shifted away from manufacturing toward high-tech and FIRE industries. Other theories suggest that changes in lifestyle and demographics drove gentrification. These theories suggest that baby boomers were prominent early gentrifiers, and they, unlike their parent’s generation, often delayed entry into marriage and parenthood. They also got divorced a lot. Therefore, baby boomers spent more years unmarried and enjoyed living closer to nightclubs and other “courting” hotspots, most of which were located downtown rather than in the suburbs.

Figure 11-33: Chicago, IL - Gentrified rowhouses line a street in the Pullman district of Chicago. Blocks away, neighbors await/fear gentrification.

The Organic Model

Sometimes it appears neighborhoods gentrify without significant assistance from the government or the banking industry. In this organic model, gentrification starts with a small group of bohemians, (artists, musicians, actors, etc.). Impoverished by their career choices, these “starving artists” seek cheap housing. Bohemians typically embrace cultural diversity, so they often attracted to minority neighborhoods. Bohemians, like immigrants, also bring sweat equity to older neighborhoods because financial capital is often unavailable. Unlike immigrants or poor minorities, their lifestyle choices frequently make bohemians ill-suited, and often unwelcome, in traditional family-oriented suburbs. These facts tend to keep bohemians from considering buying a starter home in suburban neighborhoods. Instead, they chose to live in inner-city neighborhoods, where they become long-term residents with strong interests in community improvement and safety.

People in the LGBTIQ+ community (some of whom are also bohemian) often participate in the organic model as well. Though less likely to be poor than bohemians, LBGTIQ+ persons sometimes find the suburbs less than welcoming places to live. Gay men, for example, built safe enclaves in many large cities during the 1960s and 1970s where they could live in relative peace; largely free from both social scorn and violence directed at them by homophobes and law enforcement (see e.g., the Stonewall Riots). Alongside bohemians, who welcome diversity, the LBGTIQ+ community brings both sweat equity and long-term commitments to improving the quality of life in their neighborhoods. Alongside immigrants, poor people and bohemians, the LGBTIQ+ community helped build unusual neighborhoods, marked by eclectic mixtures of cultural amenities (restaurants, art galleries, theaters, e.g.) and a vibrant nightlife (discos, bars, live music, e.g.). Drawn by the excitement, entertainment and affordability of gentrifying neighborhoods, less bohemian singles and young couples (both straight and gay) move in too. Eventually, real estate speculators and city officials take notice and encourage further development.

Figure 11-34: Philadelphia, PA - The triangle, often a symbol of gay pride or power was incorporated into an early cell phone store in Philadelphia's gay friendly, gentrified, Society Hill district.

Economic Model –The Rent Gap Theory

Geographer Neil Smith offered a more strictly economic explanation for gentrification that he called the Rent Gap Theory. Rather than crediting bohemians and shifting demographics, Smith argues that the logic of real estate investing is mostly responsible for gentrification. According to Smith’s argument, gentrification is sparked when the housing stock in urban neighborhoods deteriorates to a point where the realized value of housing (what it costs) falls so far below the potential value that investors find risk-reward ratio too attractive to ignore, and they move capital into decrepit neighborhoods in order to turn a profit.

Certainly, there are instances where both individual, corporate and even municipal investors have sought to profit from renovating derelict houses in degraded neighborhoods, but it seems unlikely that economic motives can explain all gentrification. Also, numerous gentrification projects led by corporate real estate concerns (with significant tax incentives from the government) have been failures. Despite careful economic calculations, cultivating a hip, desirable neighborhood requires an element of style that appears to elude some developers.

It’s very likely that multiple forces act simultaneously encouraging gentrification. The author of this text advances a theory that TV shows airing in the early 1970s were a contributing factor in creating demand for gentrified housing. Attractive, young, endearing characters on TV were often shown living in gentrified housing, which in turn encouraged TV viewers to mimic the urban housing choices made by popular TV characters, and in the process reject both boring suburban options or glass-and-steel high rise apartments.

Figure 11-35: Los Angeles, CA. LA's decrepit Bank District has been gentrified and is now the "Gallery District". Many single room occupancy dwellings and homeless people have been displaced, but this region of downtown is revitalized.

Municipal governments, desperately seeking to rebuild crumbling tax bases, embraced gentrification wholeheartedly. During the 1960s and 70s, so many building owners abandoned decrepit rental properties that by the 1980s, many big-city governments had become the largest landowner in the city. Unscrupulous landlords were known to set fire to degraded buildings to collect insurance prior to abandoning them. Unable to collect any taxes from thousands of buildings, many cities faced serious fiscal challenges by the 1980s. New York City nearly went bankrupt in 1975, forcing severe cuts in public infrastructure projects, school funding and public safety, which in turn prompted more abandonment. Gentrification helped put a stop to the deterioration of many of America’s biggest cities.

To encourage urban redevelopment and gentrification, various levels of government created numerous incentive programs to get people to buy and renovate inner-city homes. Tax breaks were common, particularly for corporate investors. One inventive grassroots incentive used by several cities was to sell city-owned houses for one dollar. In return, buyers agreed to live in the house themselves for a period of several years. By forcing buyers to live in the house, homeowners were far more likely to repair and maintain the building. The idea was to offer low-income residents affordable housing and in return, the city could stem the tide of urban decay, and maybe, some modest tax boost over the long-run. In recent years, the program has made a comeback, especially in Rust Belt cities, this time sponsored in part by the federal government’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Figure 11-36: Downtown Los Angeles - A hipster coffee shop, a common marker of gentrification newly opened next to a Quinceañera dress shop in downtown marking the frontier of gentrification, culture, and commerce.

Displacement

City officials and their allies in the real estate industry often overlook the downsides to gentrification, and in doing so trample on the rights of the least politically powerful citizens. If done poorly, gentrification forcibly removes poor people from their homes and neighborhoods. Often the displaced are without means of securing viable, alternative housing. Generally, people living in gentrifying neighborhoods are forced out of their homes by increases in rent. This is especially true in places without rent control ordinances. Businesses with year-to-year leases on commercial spaces are also sometimes forced out if they cannot pay higher rents, or if the customer base in the neighborhood changes radically.

All too often, gentrification is cast solely in terms of race. Unobservant critics cast gentrification as simply a bunch of white people kicking brown people out of their neighborhood. Certainly, that happens, but it is rarely that simple. Gentrification can beget violence. Many suggest that the well-known Tompkin’s Square Park Riot in New York City was a product of tensions between gentrifiers and poorer, longtime residents of the area (some of whom were drug addicts, homeless, vagrants, etc.) who lived nearby or used the park frequently. During the riot, Police brutalized dozens of people, but the violence forced many to reexamine both the means and the ends of gentrification. There is some evidence emerging from new studies that gentrification done well does not result in a statistically significant increase in the displacement of local residents, and may actually improve the economic standing of those long-term residents who manage to stay in gentrifying areas.

Figure 11-37: Boyle Heights, California. The East Side of Los Angeles is perhaps America’s most famous Mexican-American neighborhood. It is "threatened" by gentrification. Mom and Pop stores like the Santa Ceclia’s (upper right) may give way to newer places catering to wealthier customers, who may not be long-time residents. There is resistance to gentrification in Boyle Heights, but it seems mostly directed toward non-local Anglo-American gentrifiers and less so toward than Latinx gentrifiers.

New Urbanism

Since the 1980s, many cities and private land development corporations have sought to reinvigorate urban cores and some deteriorating suburban areas through the construction of highly engineered urban spaces that feature a robust combination of business and residential amenities. Generally falling under the rubric of New Urbanism, such neighborhoods often mimic the dense intermix of spaces for work, play, and residency that characterized cities before the age of the automobile. Mall developers now frequently build retail districts, with housing, parks and night-life districts around and within what would have been a generation ago strictly retail space. Many of new urbanist neighborhoods are anchored by a subway or other public transportation node, earning these locations the title, Transit-Oriented Development. In Los Angeles, the North Hollywood Arts District is an excellent example of how access to efficient mass transit, like the Red Line subway terminus, can spur the growth of upscale housing, businesses, and nightlife.

Figure 11-38: San Diego, CA. This redevelopment project in San Diego's Little Italy District is an excellent example of how efficient public transit (rail) can help stimulate New Urbanism development.

Homelessness

Homelessness is another major concern for citizens of large cities. More than one half-million people are believed to live on the streets or in shelters. In recent years, about one-third of the entire homeless population are families. One-fourth of homeless people were children. In 2019, in Los Angeles County, there were nearly 60,000 homeless people, most living on the street. This figure has climbed by around 20,000 in recent years as rents have skyrocketed. Another 20,000 persons are listed as near homeless or precariously housed, living with friends or acquaintances in short-term arrangements.

Figure 11-39: Santa Monica, CA. The possessions of a homeless woman accumulate on this curbside location in Santa Monica, a city known for its large population of homeless and its exceptional tolerance of the downtrodden.

There are multiple reasons why people become homeless. The Los Angeles Homeless Authority estimates that about one-third of the homeless have substance abuse problems, and another third are mentally ill. About a quarter have a physical disability. A disturbing number are veterans of the armed forces or victims of domestic abuse. Economic conditions locally and nationally also have a significant impact on the overall number of homeless, not only because during recessions people lose their jobs and homes, but because the stresses of poverty can worsen mental illness. A vibrant economy can also spur on homelessness when the price of renting a home or apartment rises beyond people’s ability to pay. This has been the case in California and New York for some time.

The government plays a significant role in the pattern and intensity of homelessness. Ronald Reagan is the politician most associated with the homeless crisis. When Reagan became governor of California the late 1960s, the deinstitutionalization of mental patients was already a state policy. Under his administration, state-run facilities for the care of mentally ill persons were closed and replaced by private board-and-care homes. The policy was advanced to protect the rights of the mentally ill who were often detained against their will in government-run facilities that did not match the quality and cost-efficiency of privately-run boarding homes. Many private facilities, however, are badly run, profit-driven, located in poor neighborhoods and lack well-trained staff. Under new laws, patients could and did, leave these facilities in large numbers, frequently becoming homeless or incarcerated. Other states followed California’s example. By the late 1970s, the federal government passed some legislation to address the growing crisis, but sweeping changes in governmental policy at the federal level during the Regan presidency shelved efforts started by the Carter administration. Drastic cuts to social programs during the 1980s dramatically expanded the number of homeless people who were mentally ill. Funding has never been restored, though the Obama administration did aggressively pursue policies aimed at housing homeless veterans. Almost all of the homeless veterans in the US were housed in numerous communities across the country during the last years of the Obama administration thanks to ample funding of rent vouchers. About 3,000 homeless vets were housed in Los Angeles from 2010-2016, but a booming economy has pushed rent prices beyond what the government was willing to pay, and the rate of homelessness among veterans began to rise. Solutions -Shelters and Housing

Figure 11-41: Map of Los Angeles California by number of homeless people and number of sheltered homeless persons. Interactive map.

Solutions to the crisis of homelessness have been difficult to identify, and even more difficult to fund. Addiction, mental illness, and poverty are clearly the driving forces behind homelessness, and societies have rarely been able, or willing, to adequately deal with those root problems.

Temporary shelters are a common tactic used by officials to address homelessness, but it is only a short-term solution. Shelters are just that – shelters. They generally don’t have the capacity or funding to address the causes of homelessness, so they rarely help people get into permanent housings. The other problem with shelters is that, although homeless people come from many neighborhoods, homeless shelters are typically very concentrated in only a few neighborhoods. Many cities have a region known as Skid Row, a neighborhood unofficially reserved for the destitute. The expression originated as a reference to Seattle’s lumber yard areas where workers used skids (wooden planks) to help them move logs to mills. Today, many of the shelters and services for the homeless are found in and around a city’s Skid Row.

Los Angeles’s Skid Row is one of the most famous such areas in the United States. It began simply as a place near the railroad station with a concentration of inexpensive hotels in the late 1800s, but over it, time attracted a variety of other businesses that catered to the down-and-out; and to a few of the pastimes that cause or exacerbate homelessness: drugs, prostitution, and alcohol. Over the years, city officials in LA have attempted to “clean up” Skid Row, without much success. Protecting the homeless, and ultimately the public, from outbreaks of disease, such as typhus, is occasionally necessary. However, arresting people for living in abject poverty on public spaces remain illegal, but more importantly – those actions do not address the root causes of homelessness and tend to just make things worse.

Housing First

Most experts agree that some form of transitional housing is best for those who are made homeless by simple economic misfortune, and some form of supportive housing, the kind bundled with social services is perhaps a workable long-term strategy for the addicted and mentally ill homeless. The idea behind transitional housing is to provide some structure to people as they try to get their lives back together. That might include addiction recovery, medical recovery or just economic recovery. Many earlier efforts to provide housing for the homeless often required homeless people to be “clean” – off drugs/alcohol, or undergoing treatment for mental illness before receiving help getting housing. In recent years, homeless advocates have found addicts and mentally ill people are far more likely to seek treatment if they are housed first. These findings have been put into action in many cities in the US. In 2016, voters in Los Angeles overwhelmingly approved a bond measure to raise $1.2 billion for up to 10,000 supportive housing units, but by 2020 only a few units have been built. The hold-up seems to be the amount of bureaucratic red-tape associated with getting permits to build transitional housing, the constant threat of NIMBY backlash and the ever-rising cost of building housing. Recent audits of the bond funds for housing found that it will cost over one-half million dollars on average to build one unit of housing, although the City of Los Angeles remains committed to subsidizing the cost by $140,000. This is more than the price of many new condominiums being built and sold in Los Angeles! While it appears that the ever-increasing price of land in Los Angeles is partly responsible for the incredible cost of transitional housing for the homeless, there also appears to be some measure of corruption fueling significant cost overruns.

LANDSCAPES OF HOMELESSNESS

Geographers with a developed awareness of landscapes may be able to read the landscape of homelessness, even when homeless people themselves are not present. Some elements are obvious and others not. As you make your way through cities, see if you can spot landscapes designed to address or undermine the needs/wants of a group of people.

“Bum Proof” benches	Tarps and Cardboard Shelters
A long list of “don’ts” provided at public buildings	Abundant security cameras
Cardboard pieces littering sheltered locations, especially after a rain. The odor of urine can be powerful.	“No Trespassing” signs in public spaces

Table 1: The Landscape of Homelessness: Photos of Bunker Hill, a district in Downtown Los Angeles, where homelessness is largely invisible during the day, but many landscape features provide clues to the vigilance of officials to keep homeless people out of sight. Photos: Heather McDaniel, Jason Larson, Mark Barker.