Is Gentrification Really A Threat?

"With urban living regaining popularity, reinvestment has spread to some of the smaller markets, as has the concern about displacement or gentrification.

...The social virtues of urbanism and the cost-benefit discussion of new investment in cities tend to get washed out in the hue and cry over "gentrification" when some local activists, CDCs and armchair liberals assume the heroic mantle of protectors of the poor. While their outrage at urban developers is no doubt self-gratifying, it presents the existing residents of urban neighborhoods a very distorted picture of the costs and benefits of potential redevelopment."

John Norquist is President of the Congress for the New Urbanism, which holds its annual Congress in Pasadena from June 9-12