Surveying the Academic Findings about Gentrification and Displacement

Gentrification is neither a quick nor an easy study—as many Planetizen readers know. But what has been discovered thus far, and what obstacles to more understanding need to be overcome?

1 minute read

September 20, 2015, 9:00 AM PDT

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Emily Badger examines the conflation of the terms gentrification and displacement, following the lead of a "thorough recent paper [pdf] published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, written by academics at UCLA and Berkeley, corrals everything we've learned about who — and how many people — gentrification may harm into a single unsatisfying lump."

After surveying some of the literature that's often quoted in describing these two processes, Badger picks up a big question: "what happens to the people who do leave, and how different their paths would be if their neighborhoods didn't change at all." As Badger describes, there are several challenges involved with finding and interpreting, scientifically, data to support any conclusions in response to that question.

Monday, September 14, 2015 in The Washington Post - Wonkblog

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