Neighbourhood improvement and gentrification

Interesting views from Brent Toderian on the issue of neighbourhood gentrification, following Richard Florida's question: "if all economic development and neighbourhood revitalization is gentrification, how do we grow and improve our urban areas?"....

As the renaissance of cities and urban areas in North America continues, more and more neighborhoods are struggling with the challenges of change. Although the market's rediscovery of inner-city, walkable, mixed-use communities is an excellent thing in many ways, the word "gentrification" inevitably comes up in almost every discussion. But one person's gentrification is another person's revitalization, so the debate is always complex and heated.
Can you have revitalization, reinvestment, renewal without some level of gentrification? Probably not, as any perceived improvement in the eyes of the marketplace changes the economics. I do though, continue to believe that in planning for community change, there are reasonable levels of gentrification, that gentrification can be strategically managed, and that we can have "revitalization without displacement." In fact, this phrase has been the vision for Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES) for years.
Gentrification that involves sweeping away the past, and the people, is by comparison easy - you often just have to let it happen. On the other hand, revitalization without displacement, protecting the low-income community as well as the built heritage in the context of change toward a more diverse community - that's much harder, and takes much longer. In every community where it's tried, and certainly here in Vancouver's DTES, it creates incredible tensions and struggles, and rightly so - vulnerable people's homes and lives are often at risk.

Seats as informal bump spaces

While in Auckland last week, I came across the fascinating blog of Denise and Dylan, who travelled around America in 2012, documenting their approach as they went. All with a strong neighbourhood focus - such as the following:

Seats as informal bump spaces

After great conversations with Ethan Kent (PPS) and Mike Lydon (Tactical Urbanism) I really started to notice the informal bump spaces in NY, and realised there had been many in the other cities we had visited too.


Take seats for example. Plenty of businesses provide seating of all kinds here. And not just cafes. Clothing shops, plant shops, design shops, even those catering for space cowboys! Often nestled in front of shop windows and accompanied by plantings and bowls of water for dogs, some are simply set against a wall, unchained, or designed to fit temporarily around the pavement trees. These pics are all from SoHo and they are colonised by people lunching, talking, resting and re-organising before being brought indoors at the close of business. Inviting eh?

It's got to be good for business I reckon and even cheaper and easier than reclaiming streets (esp if you don't ask permission! Can always seek forgiveness later if necessary :-)). Plus each seat provider gets to add a touch of their personality to the street (a form of street art even) and provide a small bump space for community connection too! 

Do no evil (at least consciously)

Thriving Neighbourhoods, of course, run the risk of pricing out the very people and process that made them "thriving". Tech Crunch reported on a recent event in California saw some direct action:

"Sick of high-paid tech employees driving up rent prices, protestors in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood held a “Anti-Gentrification Block Party” and beat on a Google bus piñata before cops broke up the crowd. The area has long been home to artists and Mexican-American families, but they’re being forced out as techies move in, their employers set up shuttle stops, and housing prices skyrocket.
Mission district blog Uptown Almanac’s Kevin Montgomery was on the scene. He describes 30 to 40 people assembled at the neighborhood’s 16th street Bay Area Rapid Transit station. The spot is one of the dirtiest in the city — in stark contrast to fancy Valencia street just one block over where software engineers frequent posh restaurants and pricey bike shops.Google, Apple, and Facebook all have shuttle bus stops in the neighborhood making it easy for their employees to live in the hip district while commuting south to Silicon Valley in style. The buses have become a symbol of gentrification. Dozens of police officers surrounded the rally, fearing it might devolve into violence. Last May a riot broke out in neighborhood with many businesses vandalized with “Yuppies Out” graffiti."

Partnerships in "handmade urbanism"

An excellent and thoughtful review of Handmade Urbanism: From Community Initiatives to Participatory Models by the Project for Public Spaces notes the importance of partnerships, especially cross-sectoral approaches:

The case studies, all of which were selected through the Urban Age program, highlight a wide variety of interventions in slums and favelas in Mexico City, Istanbul, Cape Town, São Paulo, and Mumbai. Presented together, they lead the reader on a journey through a potential place: a city where public spaces truly belong to the public, and everyone is encouraged to contribute. The analysis of these projects looks at each city through a five distinctly different lenses, discussing the role of citizen-led projects with community actors, government officials, academics, artists, and intermediaries, defined by the editors as “those operating at the middle level (between top-down and bottom-up interventions) intermediating scales, and different layers of knowledge and action.”
One of the book’s many detailed diagrams / Photo: Jovis 

Unsurprisingly, given this staunchly multidisciplinary approach, there is a heavy focus on the role of partnerships in driving success with bottom-up projects. The success of any public space relies heavily on a strong network of partners, from individuals to organizations. This is especially true of citizen-led projects because unsanctioned improvements often require substantial public support to avoid being dismantled for any number of bureaucratic reasons once they are discovered. Thus, almost every case study presented in Handmade Urbanism involves some interesting examples of people from different constituencies working together. More importantly, several illustrate the power of partnerships and collaboration to transform and expand the reach of the groups that participate.

Cultivating communities

A well-produced introduction to cultivating community by cultivating locally (albeit Canada):