Liberalism and Gentrification
by Gavin Mueller
Gentrification isnt a cultural phenomenon its a class offensive by powerful capitalists.
1866 Mitchell Map of Washington, DC
When I want to examine the limits of liberal ideology, I look for class struggle; when I want to find some class struggle, I simply step outside my door. You dont have to live in Washington, DC, like I do, but it helps.
Like a lot of cities, Washington is really two cities in the same space. Weve got Washington, the place of popular imagination, gleaming white marble monuments and Aaron Sorkin speechifiers, the mostly-from-out-of-town professional class keeping the rusty wheels of state administration turning.
Weve also got DC, the city distinct from the operations of the federal government, made up of residents, who are mostly poor and mostly black. These two cities are locked in a one-sided war of attrition, with affluent newcomers and their local allies conducting clear-and-hold operations against their less well-heeled neighbors. I can watch from what Forbes magazine, that barometer of bohemianism, has labeled the sixth-hippest neighborhood in the US, where I live.
This is gentrification, which, if youre reading this and live in a city, is a process youre caught up in. Theres a violent side of gentrification think Rudy Giuliani and his broken windows alibi for crackdowns on petty crime. But theres a softer side to this war as well, the liberal project of city governance whose patron saint is the activist Jane Jacobs, author of Death and Life of American Cities.
remainder: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/liberalism-and-gentrification/