A Support for Gentrification (Essay Sample)

Instructions:

Gentrification has been happening for years, but only recently has this urban phenomenon begun to receive focused and sustained national attention. Typically, gentrification is portrayed—sometimes literally!—as a black and white social issue. However, when you begin to examine the various factors that cause gentrification, as well justifications of it, this current hot topic seems better cast in various shades of gray.
For this essay, I’m explicitly inviting you to join me and each other in further probing and exploring these gray areas. Throughout this unit, we’ll hear firsthand from proponents of gentrification as well as its opponents. In addition, we’ll review the history of gentrification—where the term first originated, the circumstances under which gentrification arose and continues, and how the process has or hasn’t evolved over time. We’ll also examine empirical studies of who actually benefits from gentrification versus who misses out and why and look for evidence of the impacts of gentrification in our own lives. Lastly, we’ll seek to answer the ultimate question of whether or not there’s a “right” way to gentrify, and if so, what would that look like?
Using the essential questions below as a guide, you’ll take a hard stance on gentrification (i.e., based on the class readings, your participation in our in-class activities and discussions, your own personal experiences with gentrification, and additional outside research you’ll each be doing, you’re deciding to be either for OR against gentrification). While you are allowed to attribute conditions to your stance (e.g., I am for gentrification in these instances OR I am against gentrification in these communities), you MUST choose a side. You must also support your choice with valid and appropriate proof and present your argument via a clear and organized line of reasoning. Your audience for this essay are the members of your own home community, who you are trying to convince to take your side. You are encouraged to identify and consider their unique needs and respond accordingly.
Essential Questions
Is gentrification always bad/harmful?YES Is there a way gentrification can be good/helpful? NO
Who does gentrification advantage/disadvantage? What’s gentrification really about (e.g., money, power, race, etc.)?
Can different people learn to truly live together? What responsibility do we have to each other/what role can we play in enacting mutual positive change?

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Content:

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A Support for Gentrification
Gentrification has long been a hotbed of racial tensions in the US. in fact, terms such as Ghetto and gentrified have morphed into a pervasive slur, owing to negative perceptions and experiences that locals, who are often minority communities, face amid the settlement of newcomers in the neighborhood. Admittedly, gentrification has led to the displacement of poor inhabitants of the vast majority of neighborhoods in US cities. Unhappy connotations of economic stratification, including spiraling house prices in black and Latino neighborhoods and myths of displacement of poor residents to pave the way for settlement of wealthy tech workers, expensive burger joints, and cereal cafes, are drivers of racial tensions around the gentrification debate. These supposed ills of gentrification often win the simplistic battle between plucky communities and greedy gentrifiers; however, there is more than meets the eye. Gentrification opens doors for upward social mobility in marginalized neighborhoods and lays the groundwork for integration and reinvestment, and those risks associated with such as displacement are myths rather than facts.
First, gentrification provides opportunities for engineering upward social mobility in the marginalized communities and disadvantaged neighborhoods and regenerating unused inner cities. Cities undergoing gentrification attract social amenities, including better healthcare services, education, and job opportunities for the locals. According to Joe Cortright, a director of City Observatory, gentrification positively linked to improved economic outcomes and higher income among longtime inhabitants of gentrifying neighborhoods. Cortright cites two separate studies in New York and Philadelphia, which showed that residents of improving neighborhoods see more incredible wealth and higher incomes; gentrifying cities in New York city see $3,000 to $4,500 higher household income, especially for residents of public housing. Similar findings have been discovered in other cities across the US. In New Jersey, public-housing residents in high-income or gentrifying neighborhoods report better living standards and outcomes, including higher incomes, lower crime rates and quality

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A Support for Gentrification (Essay Sample)

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