jane jacobs on gentrification

the self-destruction of diversity can happen in streets, at small node of vitality, in groupings of streets, or in whole districts. The last case is the most serious.

Whichever form the self-destruction takes, this, in broad strokes, is what happens: A diversified mixture of uses at some place in the city becomes outstandingly popular and successful as a whole. Because of the location's success, which is invariably based on flourishing and magnetic diversity, ardent competition for space in this locality develops. It is taken up in what amounts to the economic equivalent of a fad.

The winners in the competition for space will represent only a narrow segment of the many uses that together created success. Whichever one or few uses have emerged as the most profitable in the locality will be repeated and repeated, crowding out and overwhelming less profitable forms of use. If tremendous numbers of people, attracted by convenience and interest, or charmed by vigor and excitement, choose to live or work in the area, again the winners of the competition will form a narrow segment of the population of users. Since so many want to get in, those who get in or stay in will be self-sorted by the expense.

... Thus, from this process, one or few dominating uses finally emerge triumphant. But the triumph is hollow. A most intricate and successful organism of economic mutual support and social mutual support has been destroyed by the process.

... [gentrifying forces] were making the same mistake as a family I know who bought an acre in the country on which to build a house.For many years, while they lacked the money to build, they visited the site regularly and picnicked on a knoll, the site's most attractive feature. They liked so much to visualize themselves as always there, that when they finally built they put the house on the knoll. But then the knoll was gone. somehow they had not realized they would destroy it and lose it by supplanting it with themselves.

... so many people want to live in the locality that it becomes profitable to build, in excessive and devastating quantity, for those who can pay the most. These are usually childless people, and today they are not simply people who can pay the most in general, but people who can or will pay the most for the smallest space. Accommodations for this narrow, profitable segment of population multiply, at the expense of all other tissue and all other population. Families are crowded out, variety of scene is crowded out, enterprises unable to support their share of the new construction costs are crowded out. ... The admired and magnetic knoll is destroyed by its own new occupants, by the act of occupation.

... It is more fruitful, I think, to approach this as a problem of malfunction in cities themselves.

First, we must undertsand that self-destruction of diversity is caused by success, not by failure.

Second, we must understand the the process is a continuation of the same economic processes that led to the success itself, and were indispensable to it. Diversity grows in a city areas because of economic opportunity and economic attraction. During the process of diversity growth, rival users of space are crowded out. All City diversity grows, in part at least, at the expense of some other tissue. ... During the growth period, much of the new diversity occurs not merely at the expense of uniquely low-value tissue, but also at the expense of already existing duplications of use. This result of economic competition for space is net increase in diversity.

At some point the diversity growth has proceeded so far that the addition of new diversity is mainly in competition with already existing diversity. Relatively little sameness is being subtracted, perhaps none. This is the case when a center of activity and diversity has reached a peak. If the addition is really something different ... there is still no net loss in diversity.

Here is a process, then, that operates for a time as a healthy and salutary function, but by failing to modify itself at a critical point, becomes a malfunction. The analogy that comes to mind is faulty feedback.

The presence of an end product in the milieu of a cell causes the machinery that produces the end product to slow down or to stop. This form of cell behavior Dr. Potter characterized as "intelligent." In contrast, a cell that has changed or mutated behaves like and "idiot" in that it continues without feedback regulation to produce even materials that it does not require.

... Suppose we think of successful city areas, for all their extraordinary and intricate economic and social order, as faulty in this fashion. In creating city success, we human beings have created marvels, but we left out feedback.

                            --- Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

(emphases mine in the quote above.)

Comments

[Tom Carden]

It's a great passage from a great book, for sure, but I'm wondering why you posted it with only minimal emphasis and illustration...

I assume from the included photos you think that it applies to The Mission in San Francisco. I'm curious as to how exactly - do you percieve the kind of malfunction Jacobs identified? Or are you worried that it's inevitable?

[claire]

the malfunction is already starting to be perceivable in the mission. if you live in SF or the bay you know that the (constantly decreasing) amount of affordable living in the mish is only owing to rent control. even in a recession, even the slumlord-owned buildings can command amazing rents from new tenants.

this owes directly to the mission's popularity as a playground for moneyed white hipsters.

cheaper groceries, dollar stores, import goods stores, various types of diners and bakeries, wedding dress stores, martial arts supplies, hardware stores, locksmiths, plumbers, gas stations, garages, cheap day care centers, and so forth are still around. but they're actually being driven out by a level of commercial enterprises which contains within it a lesser diversity.

i'm talking about the "level" of commercial enterprise that serves the fairly homogeneous group of interstate, white, cultural-capital-possessed "hipsters" who are gentrifying the mission: clothing boutiques in which the clothing is designed by owners who meet the description directly above; design stores whose purpose is to provide furniture and home decoration items of a particular style; shops of various stamps whose ultimate purpose is to provide gift items that match with a particular lifestyle (indigenous art, refrigerator magnets with feminist slogans, woman-centered sex toys, etc.); wifi coffee shops; upscale down-home, cali cui, or international fusion restaurants--all starting at $35 per person; themed bars that permit the fantasy that they are "neighborhood bars"; and gallery/performance spaces.

every time a older shop of ANY type of use closes, it is replaced by something from one of the above categories ... something that is less of a basic service and more of a lifestyle enterprise, and requires its patrons to belong to a higher tax bracket to afford.

already most of the residential hotels in the mission have closed. don't know if you were around to remember this, but there was a slew of fires in mission residential hotels during the dot com boom because the owners needed simultaneously to get rid of their downscale tenants and acquire enough insurance cash to upgrade the building so they could start offering basically the same crappy rooms to white dot commers desperate to live in the mission, for outrageous sums.

so already two things are happening: the diversity of use is moving backward and the diversity of population has been severely curtailed.

the mish is still fun, but that's because affordable basic services can still be found there. as the gentrification marches on and it gets harder for the poorer hipsters, who run the cool galleries and so forth, to find afforable basic services, they'll move out and take a lot of the fun culture with them. this already started during the dot com boom, but the dot com bust put a halt to it for a period of time. but it's moving again, only more slowly, and soon people will REALLY start to notice that the mish isn't any more fun. then flight and blight.

[Tom Carden]

Thanks for balancing out the quote with your own thoughts, much appreciated!

I guess "playground for moneyed white hipsters" is exactly what I was worried was implied by your illustrations, and exactly the kind of loaded language that I find hard to get past in your otherwise thoughtful explanation. I don't doubt you have a point though.

[Michal Migurski]

Claire,

"Flight And Blight" is one possibility ... though isn't that just a return to the way things used to be before the Mission became cool, according to Jacobs? When I first became aware of the neighborhood 13+ years ago, it was commonly understood to be a scary, dangerous place that you didn't want to get lost in.

Underneath that protective layer of bad reputation, all the things you seem to value found cover and may do so again. Then again, you may be nostalgic for the opening glimmers of a cool, artsy Mission, in which case I wonder if it's even possible to maintain such a liminal state for very long. The transition from pure-ethnic neighborhood to ethnic + artsy is almost by definition the opening salvo in de-diversification, when there's any kind of money present nearby.

I guess the thing I'd like to hear you explain is what you mean by "fun", because it seems at-odds with your wish for a pre-gallery, pre-boutique Mission. Maybe you meant "poor" ?

[claire]

michal, when i wrote "fun," I was taking the point of view of those future hipsters who will flee the mission if it gets more gentrified. that wasn't an expression of my opinion, it was me snarkily putting words into their mouths.

naturally, i'm one of those who helped raze the knoll, no question. and i do have a bit of a hypocritical attitude about it in general.

but i didn't add commentary to the quote in this post because i didn't intend the post as criticism at all. i think it's pretty clear to anyone who's observed the sf mission for more than a couple of years what's happening there.

we generally tend to talk about it as a bad thing because people tend to move into a neighborhood at the moment when the neighborhood becomes comfortable for them, and then complain when the neighborhood gets even more comfortable than that. doesn't mean they're right.

i put the mission pics in there because that's the neighborhood i know that best demonstrates exactly what jacobs was writing about in her gentrification chapter.

[claire]

"Flight And Blight" is one possibility ... though isn't that just a return to the way things used to be before the Mission became cool, according to Jacobs? When I first became aware of the neighborhood 13+ years ago, it was commonly understood to be a scary, dangerous place that you didn't want to get lost in.

actually, although i didn't live there at the time and only visited once or twice, apparently the mission was a neighborhood like boston's north end that jacobs talks about in the book: one that is constantly referred to as a dangerous slum, but is actually a vibrant community transforming itself.