In San Francisco, the relatively affluent are vocal in their denunciation of the "gentrifying" effects of the more affluent. This debate clouds the city's fundamental problems in housing its poor and working class residents, says Ilan Greenberg.

In San Francisco, "the debate [over gentrification] is dominated by fierce new champions of the anti-gentrification cause who aren't concerned so much about the truly poor being forced from—or tempted out of—their neighborhoods," writes Greenberg. "In their view, the victims of gentrification are also affluent, just less so than the people moving in."
“Middle-class people being bought out by upper-income people—that may be a political issue, but it’s not what we would call gentrification,” says Robert J. Sampson, an urban sociologist at Harvard University. “The affluent moving in—that’s an urban battle, but not gentrification.”
But for Dawn Phillips, co-director of programs for Causa Justa, a neighborhood organization responding to resident displacement in Oakland, and other advocates for the disadvantaged, these debates among the relatively affluent obscure the city's more significant problems.
"In Phillips’s world, the urgent issue isn’t whether the Bay Area’s new wealth has the same perspective and experience as the old. Nor is Phillips losing sleep over where in the city middle-class people are supposed to live," notes Greenberg. "Rather, for Phillips, the gentrification problem concerns government policies that for decades disinvested in neighborhoods, only to turn around and encourage real-estate investment when richer neighbors moved close. This, Phillips argues, systematically pushed vulnerable, disadvantaged people to the geographic margins, where there is little work, community resources, or personal networks."
FULL STORY: I Left My Home in San Francisco: The rise of the white, middle-class anti-gentrifiers

Rethinking Redlining
For decades we have blamed 100-year-old maps for the patterns of spatial racial inequity that persist in American cities today. An esteemed researcher says: we’ve got it all wrong.

Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.

California High-Speed Rail's Plan to Right Itself
The railroad's new CEO thinks he can get the project back on track. The stars will need to align this summer.

US Senate Reverses California EV Mandate
The state planned to phase out the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035, a goal some carmakers deemed impossible to meet.

Trump Cuts Decimate Mapping Agency
The National Geodetic Survey maintains and updates critical spatial reference systems used extensively in both the public and private sectors.

Washington Passes First US ‘Shared Streets’ Law
Cities will be allowed to lower speed limits to 10 miles per hour and prioritize pedestrians on certain streets.
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.
City of Camden Redevelopment Agency
City of Astoria
Transportation Research & Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University
Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada
Toledo-Lucas County Plan Commissions