How Urban Planners Promote Gentrification

http://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/10/how-urban-planners-promote-gentrification/
Date Written:  2019-06-10
Publisher:  CounterPunch
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23665

A review of Samuel Stein's book "Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State" which looks at how private interests and government promote gentrification.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

Stein argues that property investments shadowed two Federal programs, redlining and urban renewal. "Municipal investment followed real estate investment" as it went from a secondary source to a primary source of urban capital accumulation. As a result, government encouraged gentrification as much as developers, despite attempts to wring concessions from developers. Programs marketed as neighborhood revitalization often resulted in physical displacement and social disruption of the urban working class. And planners, by not challenging land’s status as a commodity, promote public improvements that only deliver disruptive private investment opportunities.

The book ends with Stein trying to identify a plan for moving forward. It’s the weakest section of Capital City because his path to the future is vague at best. He admits that among radicals, like himself, there is little agreement "about the precise nature of a "good city". Although the radical planers have a strong sense of what is wrong today, he sees no "silver bullet" programs for unmaking the real estate state.