"Gentrification From Below"

According to C.W. Nevius’ article in The San Francisco Chronicle this Saturday gentrification is no longer a dirty word. Unlike the giant planned redevelopment projects of the 1980s in which enormous glass eggs were laid by multinationals in American downtowns, the changing nature of some of San Francisco’s poorest neighborhoods is apparently a new kind of gentrification, something to be celebrated. The wholesale displacement of the urban poor is excusable, in other words, if its done tastefully and with an ironic wink.

So after decades of under-investment, tax revolts, racism and neglect the final tragedy is that poor inner city neighborhoods in places like San Francisco are being buried beneath a slow, sticky tsunami of organic Kale, moustache wax and ukuleles. In “preserving the feel of unique neighborhoods” (to quote the article) gentrifies are turning poverty into exquisite ambience. Nevius’ example is the Dogpatch neighborhood in San Francisco, a previously industrial working-class enclave that now boasts fashionable restaurants, cheese shops, a French butcher shop and a store that sells custom messenger bags. He quotes an artist and long time-resident who is in raptures about the changes in her neighborhood writing, “don’t try and tell her that upscaling of the neighborhood is a bad thing.” Well of course not! Unlike other long-time residents of Dogpatch, she is clearly rich enough and artistic enough to eat fifteen dollar hunks of Brie.

According to Nevius gentrification is taking place “from below” in San Francisco. Below what, exactly? If this really was gentrification from below it wouldn’t be gentrification at all… just… well… people moving house. If it was actually taking place from below the gentrifiers would be even poorer that inner city residents it is displacing. The reality is that the burbling twiterati, the narcissistic art dealers and the over-educated baristas that live in neighborhoods that are, in Nevius’ words “uber hot” come, for the most part, from backgrounds that are just as rich, just as white and just as impeccably educated and entitled as the 1980s “fat cats promoting ugly skyscrapers.” They are just younger and hotter.

A few days ago I visited Temescal Alley in North Oakland. Temescal Alley is nothing short of a gated community for hipsters (with an actual gate!) situated in a largely impoverished African American part of the Bay. Described at the time by the SF Chronicle as a “mini-utopian commune”, if this street was a public school in the 1950s it would have been de-segregated by the Supreme Court. I struck up a conversation with a stranger wearing a lurid bright blue shirt pattered with yellow cartoon canaries sporting a preposterous razor sharp moustache. He was sketching a gaunt woman’s face in a spiral ring notebook – it was 3pm on a Monday afternoon. He said, “this street is great, its like a shopping mall… but for real people!” Reality, it turns out, is different to what I imagined. Contrary to Nevius’ claims this is far from “gentrification from below” and wearing a stupid hat does not make class difference magically disappear.

In short, I would argue that not only is gentrification a dirty word, but that it is not dirty enough! Its hard to tell which is worse the spectacular set-piece redevelopments of the 1980s or the more subtle artsy process we are seeing today with its paper-thin veneer of respectability. To quote the Philosopher Slavoj Zizek – they are both worse.