Gentrification Dirty Word

In recent years, urban analysts and developers always posed a question, “Is gentrification a dirty word?”. Before discussing the reason of posing this question, we should first define what is gentrification. Gentrification means different things to different people. Generally, gentrification refers to when an old neighbourhood, which gathered lots of low-income people, but after rebuilding it, the price of the lands and rent boost, thus, attract middle-class residents to move in. But because of the high living standard, the low-income workers needed to move to other places. Also, it can refer to upgrade of housing and retail business in a community (Chris, 1991). For the following paragraphs, I will briefly mention the background, causes and
The academic literature claims that the changing industry structures is one of the reasons. When a city changes to service-based industry from a manufacturing based industry, this will become a driving force, as the occupational class will be different at the same time. (Chris, 2005) Urban economies was revived from 1950s to the 1990s. Industries, like business services and technology were grown rapidly, they employed more workers at that time, therefore more University-educated-youth move into the cities. (The Economist, 2013) Furthermore, people working in service-based industries are more likely white collar, like professionals, but not the manufacturing workers. Their abilities of earning money are higher, thus they earn a higher income. Thus, more people in middle-class live in the cities and leads to an increase in living standard, which means gentrification. On the other hand, geographer, Neil Smith, used the rent-gap theory, which refer to the inequality between the possible price of a piece of land and the price of land at its current use. (Amanda, 2014) When developers discovered the gap was big enough, they tried to redevelop the city and tried to gain the potential profits by decreasing the rent gap, changing the land use patterns, thus, this leads to gentrification
(Dave Roos) Gentrification leads to a redevelopment of the neighbourhoods, thus, more stylish and modern housings were built, the transportation system was well-developed, the quality of education improved and the crime rates decreased. Although the low-income residents may benefit form these, the culture of both classes was different. On the one hand, the low-income residents may feel stressed to live with the middle-class, and their opinions and lifestyle may diverse, therefore community conflicts happened easily. On the other hand, the original cultural characteristics and the traditional custom disappeared and