What Are The Impacts Of San Francisco Gentrification

San Francisco used to be a city defined by sunlight and the cool ocean breeze. However, the sunlight in the city by the bay is now over shadowed by skyscrapers, and the breeze comes not from the sea, but the speed of people evicted from their homes. The radical transformation that San Francisco underwent in the 1990s was the result of rapid gentrification. At one point in time gentrification was equated to “urban rebirth” or “urban pioneers that pushed for “moving back into the city” (Lees 2000). Nowadays gentrification is more closely related to destructive synonyms such as “urban guerrillas” and “class warfare”. This may be due to the fact that that actual process of gentrification causes a sharp distinction between the poor and working class
Its force was so strong that the entire region from the southern tip of San Jose to Napa valley in the north was altered. Cities like Los Angeles in the 1990s were the epitome of “urban decay, open welfare, segregation, despair, injustice, and corruption” (Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000). Therefore, the economic benefits brought about through the technology industry seemed like the saviour for San Francisco. The unemployment rate at the middle of the 1990s reached up to 8 percent of the total population with an estimated 89,980 person under the poverty line (Usfca.edu 2015) At the onset of the new decade, poverty rates decreased down to 2.4 percent to a reduction of 3.9 percent to 86,585 of persons below the poverty line (Usfca.edu
They argued that the money brought about by the tech boom helped beautify the city in neglected neighbourhoods plagued by crime (Lees 2000). However, according to Lees (2000), gentrification “subverts the dominance of hegemonic culture and creates new conditions for social activities leading the way for the developers that follow.” Capitalist ideology expresses that economic development creates a “new kind of space” that allows for a mix of productive and positive advancements by individuals who will allow for more “tolerance” (Lees 2000). This tolerance theoretically allows individuals hailing from of various classes, ethnicities, and background to live alongside one another in a place that is “pleasant and liberated” (Lees 2000). Is this really true? Lees claims that is not the case. With the increase of unfamiliar migrant into a city centre causes the natives to hold a more “pessimistic view of encounters with unknown and anonymous urban others. Far from being liberating, urban encounters of strangers is suggested to be threatening and full of anxieties” (Lees 2000). The community atmosphere where these encounters would take place are now being replaced by consumption. According to Solnit and Schwartzenberg (2000), “civic and cultural life are in decline because of the acceleration