Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies

Product Information

A concise but also comprehensive account of gentrification, offering solutions and understanding of one of the major social battlegrounds of our times.” I’d like to spend some time defining what gentrification is — because I think there’s a pretty stereotypical sense of what it is, and what it feels like, and who is included and excluded from it, and maybe that’s sufficient, but I’d also like to dig a little deeper into its sources and ripple-effects. And as a second question: how have we normalized the narrative that gentrification is “inevitable,” and why, as you put it in the intro to the book, is that a “dangerous narrative that strangles the possibility of change or justice?” I became interested in gentrification through another kind of feminist question. I’m from Toronto, and in the early 2000s, there was a massive condominium construction boom. A lot of the marketing hype proclaimed that young women were snapping up condos and finding liberation in a footloose urban lifestyle. This was wrapped up in a very Sex and the City inflected cultural moment that linked sexual freedom, consumption, and an urban lifestyle. But any good feminist killjoy had to ask: were condos really furthering women’s emancipation? To answer that question I had to learn about gentrification and its place in long histories of urban transformation. Can you talk a bit about how you decided to organize the book as, essentially, a rebuttal? (And does it make it easier when people start whatabout-ing you in interviews or casual conversations, that you already have their go-to arguments covered?) Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies challenges a number of well-entrenched perspectives on gentrification from the anticapitalist left as well as the market-minded right...Kern's book is thorough in its intersectionality."

These movies document the impact of such policies on neighborhoods like Harlem, Chinatown, and Fulton Street Mall, where seniors, single parents, small business owners, and long-time residents were being evicted or subjected to massive rent increases as changes steamrolled over their communities. These ripple effects mean that the very kinds of places that make New York, New York were being homogenized while low-income and racialized people were being pushed farther and farther out of the city. Drawing on research from Buenos Aires, Chicago, Toronto, and other cities, Kern documents neighborhoods in the process of change and those that have stopped or reshaped gentrification. She lucidly explains modern feminist and urban theories and brings fresh insights and a measure of hope to a vexing social issue. [A] searing yet inspirational polemic. Publishers Weekly Confronts gentrification with a multidimensional and intersectional critique, revealing the process of urban 'improvement' as an unending campaign of social exclusion and a biting metaphor for making money. She combines her own experience as a city dweller with extensive social research to provide both a call for creative collective action and a good read."

The Next City Podcast

My first forays into feminist geography were focused on women’s feelings of safety and fear in different urban environments. I think most women and other folks with marginalized gender identities instinctively know that these feelings are deeply rooted in a socially-prescribed geography of where we do and don’t belong. The safety rules that we’re taught (and then impose upon ourselves) have a lot to do with the kinds of places we’re not supposed to be in. I look at this in more detail in my last book, Feminist City . In this clear and smartly written book, Leslie Kern brings together some of the most recognizable and essential elements of urban gentrification, making this familiar and ubiquitous term strange, in the most effective and generative ways. Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies arms geographers, cultural theorists, planners, and the general public with an essential understanding of the myths, markings, and formation of global gentrification” In Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies, Leslie Kern travels to Toronto, Vancouver, New York, London and Paris to look at how gentrification is killing our cities and what we can do about it. She examines the often invisible forces that shape urban neighbourhoods, including settler colonialism, racism, sexism, ageism, ableism and how city lovers can work together to turn the tide." As a verb, though, queering is about more than including missing voices. It asks us to question, twist, explode, and betray some of the very foundational norms and concepts that inform our politics. Queering asks us to question the normative values that fuel gentrification: ideas about the home and family, the relationship between property and social acceptance, and what is required for liberation and empowerment. Queering also pushes an anti-gentrification politics to interrogate its own normative assumptions. These could include the unquestioned valorization of working-class identities and spaces, the notion of community, and the foundations of the right to the city. Leslie Kern proposes an intersectional way at looking at the crisis that seek to reveal the violence based on class, race, gender and sexuality. She argues that gentrification is not ‘natural’. That it cannot be understood in economics terms, or by class. That it is not a question of taste. That it can only be measured only by the physical displacement of certain people. Rather, she argues, it is an continuation of the settler colonial project that removed natives from their land. Gentrification today is rising rents and evictions, transformed retail areas, increased policing and broken communities.

You’re absolutely right that a lot of theory and research (inside and outside academia) is drawn from a small number of almost exclusively global north cities in the UK, western Europe, and the US. Toronto isn’t really an exception to that rule, but it is the place that my interest in gentrification began. Perhaps the Toronto and other Canadian examples help counter the idea that Canada is an egalitarian, multicultural, socialist utopia, a national and international myth that I’m always eager to dispel. In 10 succinct chapters, Kern defines and outlines the current arguments surrounding gentrification while focusing on the inability to adequately discuss it with each other or within communities. Each chapter contains solid examples of where, when, and why gentrification is appearing in communities, and what the impact is on each respective group. The impact of gentrification on race, class, gender, age, and Indigenous peoples are astutely explored...A first class analysis and tool kit."

Sign up for Newsletters

Kern is a wonderful writer, and this compelling, important, and highly original intervention in the gentrification debates is a staggering tour de force. At once a devastating critique of the limitations of established perspectives on gentrification and a convincing plea for an intersectional approach, this book offers sparklingly clear analysis and numerous possibilities for political action. Anyone who reads it will never forget it Tom Slater, author of Shaking Up the City: Ignorance, Inequality, and the Urban Question Not that the hipsters play no role, then, but their impact is infinitesimal compared to any given zoning commission. Yet taking gentrification as just another manifestation of neoliberal capitalism—a form of social engineering carried out under impersonal financial imperatives—can also make the changes look inevitable, hence irresistible. While making use of more or less Marxist analysis, Kern takes her distance from any narrowly conceived understanding of gentrification as an economic phenomenon. Leslie Kern, author of the best-selling Feminist City, travels from Toronto, New York, London, Paris and San Francisco and scrutinizes the myth and the lies that surround this most urgent urban crisis of our times. First observed in 1950s London, and theorised by leading thinkers such as Ruth Glass, Jane Jacobs and Sharon Zukin, this devastating process of displacement now can be found in every city and most neighbourhoods. Beyond the Yoga studio, farmer’s market and tattoo parlour, gentrification is more than a metaphor, but impacts the most vulnerable communities. Kern proposes an intersectional way of looking at the crisis that seek to reveal the violence based on class, race, gender, and sexuality. She argues that gentrification is not natural. That it cannot be understood in economic terms, or by class. That it is not a question of taste. That it can only be measured only by the physical displacement of certain people. Rather, she argues, it is a continuation of the settler colonial project that removed natives from their land. And it can be seen today is rising rents and evictions, transformed retail areas, increased policing, and broken communities.

Louisa Hann recently attained a PhD in English and American studies from the University of Manchester, specialising in the political economy of HIV/AIDS theatres. She has published work on the memorialisation of HIV/AIDS on the contemporary stage and the use of documentary theatre as a neoliberal harm reduction tool. She is currently working on a monograph based on her doctoral thesis. You can get in touch with her at [email protected]. Listen to more episodes on: As a feminist scholar I was always interested in how power works across intersecting systems and identities, but this was the first time I understood that geography was a crucial factor. If you think about ideas like “a woman’s place,” segregation, apartheid, anti-trans bathroom bills, settler colonialism, space is fundamental. How people are excluded, made vulnerable to violence, Othered, etc. is often accomplished through spatial processes of separation (e.g., “white vs. colored” bathrooms) and by assuming there are right or normal places for different groups of people to be and not to be. What does gentrification look like? Can we even agree that it is a process that replaces one community with another? It is a question of class? Or of economic opportunity? Who does it affect the most? Is there any way to combat it? In Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies(Verso, 2022), Leslie Kern travels from Toronto, New York, London, Paris, and San Francisco and scrutinises the myth and lies that surround this most urgent urban crisis of our times.

Become a Member

Strange to think it, but the word “gentrification” started out as a piece of social science jargon. The British sociologist Ruth Glass coined it in a book from 1964 to name a process underway in parts of London, where whole working-class neighborhoods were morphing into zones of a conspicuous poshness. The process, once underway, moved rapidly “until,” she wrote, “all or most of the original working-class occupiers [were] displaced, and the whole social character of the district is changed.”

Perhaps some of this emerged from my own struggle with feeling helpless. I’ve been living in a small town for over a decade, disconnected from many of the movements that I’m passionate about. I worried I was little more than an armchair commentator. Deepa Iver’s idea of social change ecosystems involving many different yet equally important roles helped me reframe my contributions. I wanted to include it in the book so that readers who didn’t necessarily see themselves as frontline, direct action warriors could conceive of roles for themselves, whether as storytellers, a caregivers, builders, healers, and more. I hope people come away with a little more hope, and a little more clarity about how they might be a part of building a different city and a different world.Drawing on research from Buenos Aires, Chicago, Toronto, and other cities, Kern documents neighborhoods in the process of change and those that have stopped or reshaped gentrification. She lucidly explains modern feminist and urban theories and brings fresh insights and a measure of hope to a vexing social issue. [A] searing yet inspirational polemic.” But if gentrification is not inevitable, what can we do to stop the tide? In response, Leslie Kern proposes a genuinely decolonial, queer- feminist anti-gentrification. One that demands the right to the city for everyone and the return of land and reparations for those who have been displaced. Inspired by the likes of Jane Jacobs and Sharon Zukin, urban scholar Leslie Kern proposes an intersectional way at looking at the gentrification crisis amid our current economic climate, based on class, race, gender, and sexuality. Fortune First observed in 1950s London, and theorised by leading thinkers such as Ruth Glass, Jane Jacobs and Sharon Zukin, this devastating process of displacement now can be found in every city and most neighbourhoods. Beyond the Yoga studio, farmer's market and tattoo parlour, gentrification is more than a metaphor, but impacts the most vulnerable communities. Kern proposes an intersectional way at looking at the crisis that seek to reveal the violence based on class, race, gender and sexuality. She argues that gentrification is not natural That it can not be understood in economics terms, or by class. That it is not a question of taste. That it can only be measured only by the physical displacement of certain people. Rather, she argues, it is an continuation of the setter colonial project that removed natives from their land. And it can be seen today is rising rents and evictions, transformed retail areas, increased policing and broken communities.