A century ago, upward mobility meant moving to the nice side of town. More specifically, it meant moving upwind of the smokestacks in the commercial district – generally west across a set of train tracks. But college reunion attendees no longer do that. We aren’t among the 25% of Americans that skew the mobility numbers by staying put. We move to multicultural urban neighborhoods real estate agents assign clumsy neologisms like “Sodomofo” or exclusive enclaves they just call “Town.” Often, we do it in that order. It’s almost as though we have no choice.
And, in a sense, we don’t. Because finding a place to live is not just about finding a place to live, but about finding a place to put money. Moving is not just about what moves us – natural wine bars, small class sizes – but what moves markets.
In 2008, The Onion ran an article with the headline “Nation's Gentrified Neighborhoods Threatened By Aristocratization.” The joke was rooted in the American understanding of gentrification as a process of racial displacement. After all, only the almost rich care about that kind of symbolic violence. But The Onion was reporting a real process – maybe even more real than gentrification itself, albeit it was doing so accidentally.
Gentrification is a strange subject because it’s constantly discussed in serious tones even though no one knows how it works or even if it’s real. There are plenty of studies suggesting it is not. The most notable of the bunch, conducted in Boston in 2002 by economist Jacob Vigdor, looked at neighborhood changes between 1974 and 1997 – anecdotally understood as a period of outrageous gentrification – and found no evidence supporting the idea that poor people left (or were “pushed out”) at a higher than normal rate. Subsequent studies have documented a bit more displacement – though rarely economic hardship – while also suggesting that gentrification is not one thing. The sleeve-tattooed creative directors who move to Black and Brown neighborhoods in search of room for their vinyl collections, Vitsoe shelving unit, and authenticity, behave absolutely nothing like the people that follow.
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