Gentrification's Liberal Enablers

In setting the context for an extremely literate, and likely polarizing, discussion of gentrification, Gavin Mueller describes the conflict between two versions of the nation's capital. On one side is "Washington," populated by out-of-town professional class and the signifiers of popular imagination, i.e., "gleaming white marble monuments and Aaron Sorkin speechifiers." On the other side is "D.C.," or "the city distinct from the operations of the federal government, made up of 'residents,' who are mostly poor and mostly black."

Mueller writes that the two are locked in a "one-sided war of attrition" known as gentrification.

The article is ranging and, at-times, difficult reading, but it's recommended for a radical and erudite take on the racial and class conflict that sometimes gets lost in the contemporary discussion of gentrification. Here is a sample of the many compelling passages from this longish read (3,000 words):

• "One advantage to living in DC is that these liberal niceties are being quickly thrust aside: here the word 'gentrification' has lost its pejorative sense, ceasing to scandalize the yuppies who proudly reclaim the term as they 'reclaim' homes and neighborhoods from the communities who have lived here for decades."
• "Gentrification has always been a top-down affair, not a spontaneous hipster influx, orchestrated by the real estate developers and investors who pull the strings of city policy, with individual home-buyers deployed in mopping up operations."
• "Today, government-abetted gentrification has trickled down to small home buyers. Forget your fairy tales of urban pioneers bravely staking out territory in the urban hinterlands — at every point, this has been a takeover planned by large business interests who fund their projects with tax abatements."
• "Tying up your assets, your middle-class future, in home values does something to people. It alters their interests. It sutures a professional class, of liberal and even progressive beliefs, to the rapacious capitalist expansion into the city. The people who move to gentrifying areas tend to have liberal, tolerant, cosmopolitan sympathies. But they are aligned materially with reactionary and oppressive city restructuring, pushing them into antagonism with established residents, who do nothing for property values. Behind every Jane Jacobs comes Rudy Giuliani with his nightstick."
• "'What choice do I have?' ask the liberal gentrifiers, if you press them a bit. 'This is the only place I can afford to live!' This sums everything up perfectly, puncturing the bubble of individual choices that make up liberal politics."