There Goes the Hood: Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up

There Goes the 'Hood analyzes the experience of gentrification for residents of two predominantly black New York City neighbourhoods. It thereby adds an.
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Restaurants, cafes and small retail have moved in.

There Goes the 'Hood - Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up: Book Review — BUILDINGS ARE COOL

Crime has gone down. And it has quickly become the hippest neighborhood in Charleston. The African American population of this neighborhood has dwindled. Once primarily African American, the ratio has done a complete flip.

Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up

I am happy about the improvements and with the growing equity in my home, but am sorry about affordability and the folks that have been forced out. I had hoped that There Goes the 'Hood would have been a little more enlightening. I guess I was looking for some sort of secret weapon that would make gentrification positive for everybody. Freeman's book provided some very unique insights from the local population and for that Freeman should be commended.

Gentrification

This book sparked a great conversation at the Book Club and had us all thinking about Charleston. Urban planners, architects and great minds in all fields have all come up short with a solution to gentrification. If you'd like to buy the book and contribute to Buildings Are Cool you can purchase the book through the Amazon Link below. If you purchase the book I earn a small commission on the sale.


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This commission does not add any additional cost to your purchase. It is a free and easy way for you to show your appreciation and support for the blog. Creepy in its realness. I ride the buses and see people who obviously have a hood mentality. I look at hood folks on the bus and my mind often wonders what forces shape people to act as they do?

There is a unique blend of caring and hardness of heart that is difficult for me to understand as an outsider. There is an anger there that my systems are unable to fully understand and this book let me explore such things in more detail than I thought possible. Now I watch as the Hood Gentrifies and becomes the kind of place I'd like to live complete with coffee shops, book stores, artisan foods and upscale eateries.

The city is loaded with cheap houses that can be brought for next to nothing. If enough gentrifiers come into a place and start fixing up the neighborhood eventually it reaches critical mass and the coffee shops and other upscale places follow. The new residents are not racists but the power of their money draws a line between the haves and have nots no matter what this book says. Money isolates people by class in a capitalist society this book talks about this fact even if its conclusions are skewed in favor of the rich.

The book gives great insights but fails when it attempts to bend its conclusions to match the authors own prejudices.

The Bright Side of Gentrification

This is a good book that could have been better. Gentrification is a topic on which there seems to be no middle-ground. Freeman resists a black or white characterization of neighborhood change in NYC. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in urban housing and gentrification processes that are occurring in most major US cities.

The author uses data drawn from qualitative interviews to understand the experiences of local residents as their communities undergo new transformation. One person found this helpful. Freeman's book, first, is brilliant methodologically. Oral testimony has been used redundantly in gentrification studies, but not in this same way. Perhaps his work is a critical account of academic understandings of gentrification, in which case, interviews with locals in a gentrifying neighborhood reveal that the process, on this level, is hardly articulated in terms of "uneven development" or "new frontier consumption".

In this work, Freeman sets out to emotionally and mentally map gentrifying neighborhoods: How do the residents feel pre- or post- gentrification? What are they thinking will happen? How are they making sense of it? The answers, in interviews, show that understandings of the phenomenon range from conspiratorial to economic to optimistic, crossing class and racial lines, blurring the white-urban-invader and the middle-class-revenge paradigms.


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Furthermore, augmenting these with an deep history of the two neighborhoods, Freeman points out, gentrification in Harlem and Clinton Hill did not produce this same displacement of the working class. In a sense, he's a bit optimistic about its changes. It's written in fantastic prose, extremely articulate and clear. The interviews just add a personal dimension to a field that has often been reduced to bricks and numbers. The downside of this work is Freeman's obscure optimism. He discredits the "working-class displacement" understanding of gentrification as generally inapplicable, yet suggests that Smith's "Revanchist City" is somewhat accurate.

His apparent explanation for this is that economic studies of gentrification seem to wield more pessimistic conclusions than social or cultural studies. Nonetheless, a genius and highly recommended work!

Berkeley Planning Journal

There Goes the Hood provides a historical look at both Harlem and Clinton Hill and then moves into their current day status with all of the attendent challenges and benefits. Though Freeman notes that he is a quantitative researcher his ability to conduct a qualitative study that speaks to academics, policy makers, and the general public is no small feat. His illumination of the voices of the community could only be enhanced by adding in more perspective from the gentry themselves particularly the white gentry. Overall I thnk the book is a must read for those who are interested in gentrification and communities of color.

When a young brother paints a picture about the past, will anyone one see it? Freeman is a young brother and he has the attention on many. Not only are people seeing it, but they hear him loud and clear. For years people were afaid of the "hood. The hood is now for sale! Open Preview See a Problem? Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. There Goes the Hood: Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up 3. There Goes the 'Hood analyzes the experience of gentrification for residents of two predominantly black New York City neighbourhoods. It thereby adds an important yet often overlooked perspective to debates on gentrification -- the residents of formerly disinvested neighbourhoods themselves.

Their perspectives suggest that gentrification is neither entirely threatening nor There Goes the 'Hood analyzes the experience of gentrification for residents of two predominantly black New York City neighbourhoods. Their perspectives suggest that gentrification is neither entirely threatening nor redemptive for urban neighbourhoods. Rather, it can both offer a better life and threaten long-established communities. While residents appreciate the opportunities, they resent that it often takes full-scale gentrification to make their neighbourhoods nice.

The concluding chapters of the book suggest ways for limiting the negative aspects of gentrification and new ways of thinking about gentrification and the inner city. Paperback , pages. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

To ask other readers questions about There Goes the Hood , please sign up. Lists with This Book. Jan 05, Sidik Fofana rated it liked it. A balanced depiction of urban renewal. Feb 04, Elise rated it really liked it. This was an assigned text for a class I took on urban education, and takes a close look at gentrification in two NYC neighborhoods, Harlem and Clinton Hill.

I currently live in the latter, and it certainly was unsettling to see my apartment and the coffee shop across the street not only mentioned as an example of neighborhood change, but pictured! But, one of Freeman's central arguments is that gentrification is not either all negative or all positive--some changes can be good for all resident This was an assigned text for a class I took on urban education, and takes a close look at gentrification in two NYC neighborhoods, Harlem and Clinton Hill.

But, one of Freeman's central arguments is that gentrification is not either all negative or all positive--some changes can be good for all residents, both new and "indigenous," such as increased amenities and police protection, while other changes can be bad, as is the case when indigenous residents are priced out.

Freeman does a nice job of incorporating into his analysis perspectives from many different kinds of residents in both neighborhoods. On the whole, this is a worthwhile book for anyone who interested in urban spaces and renewal, and in the policies that shape who lives where. Nov 15, victoria added it. This book looked at what gentrification means to residents in two NYC neighborhoods. I found it very interesting to see unexpected perspectives as well as very relevant for anyone because the processes discussed in this book are happening everywhere -- this book focuses on interviews so gives some richness to the issues which are usually only described in academic research or newspapers.

May 27, Doug rated it really liked it. Since I've been contemplating urban planning as a profession, I decided I should research gentrification. After all, gentrification could be a harm urban planners cause, however indirectly, in their work. Author Lance Freeman is a professor of urban planning at Columbia University and moreover is black and lives in Clinton Hill. Freeman lays out the goal of more fully considering the perspectives of the poor residents of gentrifying ghettoes since they are frequently regarded as victims soon to Since I've been contemplating urban planning as a profession, I decided I should research gentrification.

Freeman lays out the goal of more fully considering the perspectives of the poor residents of gentrifying ghettoes since they are frequently regarded as victims soon to be displaced but seldom even asked for their opinion or considered as agents of change in their own neighborhood. I really like Chapter 2 which sketches the history of Clinton Hill and Harlem. Harlem is fascinating in that it became a predominantly black neighborhood partially by accident after a speculative real estate bubble burst and rentiers found they could only rent out their units if they loosened their discriminatory practices and open their buildings to black renters.

Of course, whites later tried to take back their hoity-toity development in by evicting blacks, but blacks organized and black realtor Phillip Payton Jr. So, as Freeman said: In other words, whites helped blacks more by mistake than they did on purpose. Red-lining and other forms of economic discrimination ended up reversing Harlem's fortunes in the postwar period and the neighborhood was ravaged with drug violence and arson and partly abandoned. Establishing the base of history, Freeman delved into the qualitative interviews he conducted with long time residents of Harlem and Clinton Hill.

He did see the backlash and resentment toward gentrification in his interviews, but there was also appreciation for the greater amenities gentrification brings and occasionally for a hope for a more heterogenous neighborhood. Among interviewees there was much anxiety about displacement but not many people had actually been displaced Partially, that poor residents could weather the tide of gentrification was particular to New York City advanced affordable housing policies including rent regulation and housing co-ops where poor residents are allowed to buy their apartment rather than just rent.

Seattle does not have such advanced and progressive practices and has seen many blacks displaced from its historically black neighborhood, Central District, to the point less than 20 percent of the neighborhood is now black. Consequently, it might not be possible to generalize the resiliency of New York City's black neighborhoods to the rest of the country.