Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies

by Leslie Kern

How Gentrification is killing our cities, and what we can do about it

What does gentrification look like? Can we even agree that it is a process that replaces one community with another? It is a question of class? Or of economic opportunity? Who does it affect the most? Is there any way to combat it? Leslie Kern, author of the best selling Feminist City, travels from Toronto, New York, London, Paris and San Francisco and scrutinises the myth and lies that surround this most urgent urban crisis of our times.

First observed in 1950s London, and theorised by leading thinkers such as Ruth Glass, Jane Jacobs and Sharon Zukin, this devastating process of displacement now can be found in every city and most neighbourhoods. Beyond the Yoga studio, farmer's market and tattoo parlour, gentrification is more than a metaphor, but impacts the most vulnerable communities.

Kern proposes an intersectional way at looking at the crisis that seek to reveal the violence based on class, race, gender and sexuality. She argues that gentrification is not natural That it can not be understood in economics terms, or by class. That it is not a question of taste. That it can only be measured only by the physical displacement of certain people.

Rather, she argues, it is an continuation of the setter colonial project that removed natives from their land. And it can be seen today is rising rents and evictions, transformed retail areas, increased policing and broken communities.

But if gentrification is not inevitable, what can we do to stop the tide? In response, Kern proposes a genuinely decolonial, feminist, queer, anti-gentrification. One that demands the right to the city for everyone and the return of land and reparations for those who have been displaced.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Urban Planning, Urbanism, Urban Studies, Audiobook, Cities

258 pages, Paperback

First published September 6, 2022

About the author

Leslie Kern is an associate professor of geography and environment/women's and gender studies and director of women’s and gender studies at Mount Allison University. She holds a PhD in women’s studies from York University. As an academic, Leslie writes about gender, gentrification, and feminism and teaches urban, social, and feminist geography. Her research has received a National Housing Studies Achievement Award and a Fulbright Scholar Award. Leslie currently lives in the territory of Mi’kmaqi in the town of Sackville, New Brunswick with her partner and their two senior cats. She runs an academic career coaching service and blog at https://www.lesliekerncoaching.com/ and tweets about all things feminist, academic, and urban on Twitter @LellyK.

Reviews

[Jillian B · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who knew very little about gentrification going into this book (beyond a vague sense that it was a bad thing!), I really appreciated how clearly the writer laid out her arguments. I also liked the focus on the often unseen ways gentrification affects specific communities, like women, elderly people and LGBTQ+ folks. And as a longtime Toronto resident, I of course loved all of the references to my city!

[Nils Jepson · Rating 3 out of 5]

i do agree with a lot of folks on here asking who this is for. because i'm not sure. the whole point of this book is that it writes against myths and lies told about gentrification: that it's inevitable or only about class or only about money or only about displacement. and sure -- these things are a lot more complicated.

but everyone involved in these movements know this! and i would bet folks outside of housing justice movements know this as well! and i think it actually does tenant organizing a disservice to pretend as if these concepts are separate. we know gentrification is gendered and that capitalism distinguishes race as a tool for accumulation. and you know this because you feel it and see it and fight against it. Kern acknowledges intersectionality but her arguments often seem very silo'ed; it feels like she's comparing tomatoes to potatoes. her main gripe with gentrification discourse seems to be the over-emphasis on class which is sort of hard for me to wrap my head around because gentrification is, in fact, a class-structuring process. sure there's lots of other elements and socio-emotional implications but Kern's attempt to almost pit class against race against gender against sexuality seems like some weird, unhelpful vendetta. gentrification is not a metaphor and it is a material process, and i don't think its materiality or class dimension undermines the fact that gentrification is a continuation of colonial dispossession or racial discrimination or nuclear home life. i do think ignoring this materiality, especially in organizing for solutions against displacement, can be dangerous. at the end of the book, Kern proposes the usual liberal framework of "doing what you can!" to stop gentrification, whether that's art or activism or research. sure! but to compare her besties drag king performance as a hysterical gentrifier to Moms 4 Housing or landback movements or, hell, even CLTs seems weird and distorting. art is, of course, a part of the solution and my short experience in LATU has shown me that it's constantly playing an important role in struggle. but don't disrespect those organizing on the front lines by pretending like me donating to an org or shopping at the local liquor store or even attending the Woman's March is the same thing.

maybe i'm just not a part of this book's audience. and that's ok! but i'm also not sure who is and the whole time i was reading this (over the last two days lol) i kept feeling like Kern was an outsider looking in, taking a very far away view of gentrification process and anti-gentrification activism. the people already actively organizing against gentrification are not only not participating in the myth-making she's critiquing, but building more analytical frameworks of dispossession than the willy-nilly ones Kern overviews in this book.

[Morgan Schulman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review

I read this book on a Friday afternoon, at the end of a week when I started taking hot-girl walks on my lunch hour through Brownstone Brooklyn, and had been counting and ratioing “colonizer” vs “Old Brooklyn” sightings. Ratio not looking good for Brooklyn. I read this book on the balcony of my apartment in Queens in a neighborhood that is undergoing a settler but still significant gentrification, thinking about how lucky I was that my landlord had not raised the rent to market rates, while recognizing my arrival 11 years ago may have spearheaded those rates. I ate my organic. arugula and goat cheese while thinking about how I as a mother, social worker and renter fit into the paradigm this book lays out. Like the author, I am white middle mom who made this place my home to find a cheaper way to raise my kids in an expensive city, opening the flood gates for yoga studios, drag brunch, and oat milk lattes. I see the violence of gentrification each day as a New Yorker. She’s right about everything, and this is a great book for people who may not have already been thinking on this path, but it doesn’t present much of a solution for those of us in the “first wave” who are barely hanging on as it is. I can’t tell if I’m her ideal reader, or not her audience at all. This arc will definitely go to check out her other books, so there’s that.

[Gabriella · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is something I might recommend to very clueless planners, but anyone who has lived through gentrification firsthand, or had an Urban Studies/similar undergrad background, will find little new content here. Leslie Kern is mostly preaching to the choir, or attempting to convert the academics in her field who are reluctant to be on the right side of history, instead clinging to technocratic denials of gentrification as an “iMpReCiSe tErM.” If you want a comprehensive overview of the colonial narratives and logics that justify gentrification, and a compassionate look at why people do use this term to mean many different things (spoiler: because it applies!!!), I’d recommend reading this whole book. If not, I might skip to around Chapter 8, which I imagine is where most people want to focus—approaches to anti-displacement, and that age-old discussion of the role of structural forces vs. the responsibility of individual decisions.

Gab corner/my interests in reading this now
I’m reading this book at a time when my girlfriend, sister, and I are hoping to move to Philadelphia in the next year (please say a prayer for us!) It’s a place I grew to love during undergrad, and now some of my closest friends are either already there, or planning to move there in the coming years. We would like to be in the same part of Philly that my girlfriend grew up in, which is where her parents, neighbors/family friends, and other relatives still live. At the same time, these intentions and connections don’t exempt me from the gentrification that is plaguing Philly, and many other cities across the world.

This also impacts my present-day life. I don’t live in a gentrifying neighborhood in Durham, but I have contributed to the population trends that are causing gentrification everywhere I look in NC. When I lived in Raleigh, my local CAC included historically Black neighborhoods like South Park, where people can identify gentrified homes by their paint colors. South Park is a 4-minute drive from where my grandma and her siblings grew up, but no one in my family owns that house anymore. In these parts of Raleigh, it’s mostly white families buying the homes today. I currently deliver produce boxes as part of a community program in Durham, and the ranch homes on my route are being eclipsed by 3-story new builds. Many of the seniors in this neighborhood are grieving the connective fabric of “old Durham”, where entire branches of a family could live within a 3-block radius. This sense of community, along with general housing stability, is being ruptured by real estate interests.

After a typical volunteer shift, I go back to my job in affordable housing finance, where I see how few resources are available to support equitable development, AND how many inequitable policies exist within the world of affordable housing itself! So, I hoped this book would be a good way to think more critically about this topic that is one of the greatest moral issues of our time.

Identity and overlooked impacts of gentrification
Like I said, most of what I connected with in this book came at the very end. However, I was drawn to Kern’s early points about how gentrification is more than a class-based process, but also something that “needs to be understood alongside careful attention to factors like gender, race, heteronormativity, age, and colonialism.” I think most people understand this about race, unless they are just being very obtuse. But, the points about gender, age, and heteronormativity were a helpful refresher for me. Another one she doesn’t call out in this quote but does in the book is ability—seniors and disabled people, who are often most in need of walkable and affordable living, also have their life patterns disrupted by gentrification!!

Some of the ways that Kern focuses on gentrification uniquely impacting women include: escaping domestic violence becomes harder with rising housing costs, sex work can have a higher risk of incarceration when an area starts being targeted for police crackdowns or clearing, and parenting can become more isolating when communities that allow for robust care networks (like public housing) are demolished. This is another area where I see the failures of the affordable housing world—many issue-focused orgs (such as those that support DV survivors) have narrow definitions of their service population, meaning that while a mother and her minor child may be housed through a program, the family’s child who just turned 18 might not be eligible for the same assistance. Even more, many of the public housing redevelopments include much fewer units, much smaller unit sizes (less conducive to families with kids), or age-restricted options like senior housing, which restrict opportunities for intergenerational living and further disrupt care networks. As Kern notes, whether this is by accident or design, it has a damaging outcome that further entrenches comphet:

Given its ability to both exploit and exacerbate gender inequalities, gentrification is a process that reinforces women’s subordinate position in the home and shores up heteronormativity. With constrained options in the housing market for single women and women-headed households, women are structurally compelled to form traditional domestic partnerships, despite the violence and exploitation of domestic labour that typically accompanies these relationships. Gentrification can thus be seen as a prop for what feminist scholar and poet Adrienne Rich called “compulsory heterosexuality,” a system that leaves women few choices but to rely on the nuclear family. (31)

Speaking of comphet, I thought Leslie Kern did a great job of showing how queer people often have contradictory relationships to gentrification. Many queer people are complicit in bringing the “first wave” of gentrification to a community, and do not always own up to this when they too are displaced by people with more means (some of whom are also queer.) For those more “homonormative” queers who can benefit from the exclusion of others, Kern’s advice is somewhat similar to Jules Gill-Peterson’s in A Brief History of Transmisogyny: we need less monuments to martyred Black trans women in corporate gayborhoods, and more real-time support for the very-alive Black trans femmes who are losing their homes, livelihood, and communities because of gentrification. We need to realize when queer culture—just like many ethnic cultures—is being used as a branding device for the most privileged among us to stay in certain neighborhoods, while everyone else gets priced out and literally policed out/incarcerated in these newly “capitalized” areas.

Kern also talks about how my people (lesbians) often lose a lot more gathering space in gentrification than bars/other establishments catering to cis gay men. If you want to read more about this, I’d definitely recommend A Place of Our Own: Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women's Culture by June Thomas! In the meantime, check out this paragraph from Kern:

“The gentrification of gay neighbourhoods has not resulted in wealth accumulation or the consolidation of spatial power for women as it has for others in the queer community. Rather, women have been further excluded from the territorial power of the “gaybourhood.” Gieseking notes that the neoliberal transformation of these spaces in line with a narrow vision of acceptable queerness has proven hostile to many who no longer feel as though spaces like New York’s Greenwich Village are “safe.” Gentrification has both taken advantage of and intensified long-standing divisions and inequalities within the queer community. Here, it relies not only on the class inequalities among, for example, women and men, cis and trans people, white and racialized queer people, but also on the boundaries of social tolerance for gender and sexual difference. In other words, gentrification firms up and depends on homonormativity: a version of queer life that largely conforms to the institutional, political, familial, and sexual norms of heterosexuality, for example, monogamy, marriage, parenthood, property ownership, and nationalism. Queer life that does not fit into, or in fact deliberately exceeds, these norms is being gentrified, sometimes literally, to death. In this way, gentrification supports a liberal agenda of gender and sexual tolerance that accepts and even celebrates a thin slice of the queer community at the expense of others. It also benefits from these social and political dynamics in that it capitalizes on the desire for acceptance by some by offering pathways to normativity through property ownership, consumption, and lifestyle choices.”

So yes, I think the identity sections really are crucial for showing how it actually IS that deep. I think the gentrification deniers or wafflers will hopefully come away from this being more clear on why everything really IS connected to gentrification. You could argue that people are joking when they say things like veganism or drag or tattoos are being “gentrified”, and it’s not that serious. But then you remember that the vegan restaurants and bars for drag performances and tattoo parlors are taking their physical form in gentrifying neighborhoods! As Kern shows, issues of appropriation and tokenism really are very serious, and tied to both the social and physical erasure of the actual people who made that culture.

Alternatives: better late than never
Okay so as I noted, we’re like 2/3rds of the way through this book before we begin talking about solutions, starting with Moms 4 Housing in Oakland. I understand WHY Kern built up the book in this way, but if you’re already are bought into how evil gentrification is, and want to hear more about alternatives/personal accountability, you’ll need to wait all the way until Chapter 8. Once you get there, it is worth the wait!! Kern first is correct in noting that many of the solutions and communal knowledge about anti-displacement is underreported in academic circles. Fortunately though, you can find evidence of the successes in your local community orgs, and in some niche publications (for instance, I really like Shelterforce’s coverage of community ownership and other anti-displacement efforts in the housing world.)

Kern also spends a lot of the end of the book focusing on WHY the powers that be benefit from the narrative that gentrification is inevitable. She encourages her fellow researchers to be “aware of the danger of ceding the cause”, and encourages them to do more than writing memorials for long-gone places, but instead using their analytical training to produce rigorous studies on successful anti-displacement efforts. In other words, researchers’ work should give people something to show up for!!! I love how she says it in this paragraph:

…assumptions of inevitability also ignore long histories of tenacity, perseverance, and growth. Indigenous cultures have survived centuries of the ultimate form of displacement, colonization, and its ongoing forms of dislocation and dispossession, including gentrification. Black communities carry the strength of ancestral struggles against displacement through land theft, segregation, environmental racism, urban renewal, and more. Immigrant and working-class communities have fought back against being un-homed through squatters’ movements, direct action, and political organizing. Declaring gentrification unstoppable renders previous resistance movements ineffective and risks the loss of knowledge passed down within communities about how to stay put. (185)

This next quote is a helpful reminder about not requiring success to meet capitalist norms of productivity/scale. We need to have as many anti-displacement efforts as possible, but that doesn’t mean something that supports one family isn’t worthwhile, or that a development typology can’t immediately fit into the narrow funding streams for traditional affordable housing development is a lost cause. The process of preventing displacement, building solidarity economies, decommodifying housing, crafting promiscuous care networks, and so on are LIFELONG pursuits—honestly they take multiple lifetimes. And so, I appreciate Kern’s notes about continually making that commitment:

The truth is that no one is going to hand us the gentrification- proof city we want. We have to imagine it, we have to believe in it, and we have to do it. Even if the doing is simply an action that saves one family from displacement, keeps one affordable food supplier open, or maintains one bench where seniors can gather, it is a necessary piece of the puzzle. The story that we have been fed—that gentrification is natural, that it is inevitable, that there are no good alternatives—is false and designed to make us feel powerless. It is not always easy to notice or learn about the local, everyday sites and practices of resistance around the world, but they are there if we care to look. Another city is possible. (206)

Final thoughts
I’m glad I read this, even if it took a while to get where I wanted it. Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies succeeds in persuading Kern's field to reckon with their failings to take gentrification seriously. I will be thinking about how to use this sort of approach to laying out your argument/countering prevailing industry narratives in my own professional life! In terms of my life as a human/resident/volunteer, I will continue to appreciate Kern’s notes about needing to move from blame to responsibility. Her end request of readers is really that we each ask, what am I doing to live in more mutually supportive ways with the people close to me (emotionally and physically)? Answering that question requires so much work that you might not even have time to get into the virtue signaling and Twitter wars!!! So yes, let’s leave this with a quote from the author:

For me, the purpose of this work is in shifting the focus from blame (at least at the individual level) to responsibility. Blame involves looking backwards; responsibility orients us to the now and the future…So, if you want to move toward an answer to the “am I a gentrifier” question, you might start to consider whether you are fulfilling your ethical obligations and responsibilities to live in mutually supportive ways with your neighbours (broadly defined, human and otherwise). Although you did not create the economic system or cultural norms that you might currently benefit from, what are your capacities right now, today, to act in ways that do not cause harm, or that uplift and support others? (230-231)

P.S. I like how the audiobook narrator actually lists off the endnotes— helps me go back and forth between my audio and written version and find things more easily.

[Jared · Rating 3 out of 5]

I ADORE Kern's other work but this text didn't do it for me. Kern's argument is very vapid and totalizing but doesn't have enough data. The gentrification process becomes all-encompassing and therefore pretty empty. Which is, perhaps, Kern's point (she says at one point to take a deep breath before continuing). But an all-encompassing gentrification model ultimately means nothing if it is impossible to define.

[Victor · Rating 2 out of 5]

leuke intersectionele aanpak, en ook interessante dingen over macht, maar ik bleef toch een beetje op mijn honger zitten.

ik heb uiteindelijk niet echt een antwoord gekregen op de vraag of gentrificatie onvermijdelijk is. Kern beweert van wel, maar alle voorbeelden die ze geeft vermijden gewoon elke vorm van verandering, stadsvernieuwing of investering. maar dat is ook niet echt de oplossing denk ik dan. beetje te conservatief voor mij...

ze maakt ook de lijn tussen feiten en meningen heel vaag, waardoor uitspraken als "abolishing the police and the criminal justice system is integral to fighting gentrification" (???) een beetje misplaatst overkomen.

ok, nu stop ik met zagen en zoek ik verder naar iemand die me uitlegt of en hoe we stadsvernieuwing kunnen organiseren zonder gentrificatie. doei x

[Carrie Callaway · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 rounding up

made some good points but the writing was not great and overall very repetitive. when she got into the actual meat of feminist / decolonial / anti racist anti-gentrification it was fairly interesting, but overall still felt very ivory tower and lacked a certain authenticity (which i think could have been remedied by incorporating interviews / scenes on the ground of anti-gentrification work instead of just constantly quoting other scholars). seemed to fall into the trap of “if the activism isn’t perfectly intersectional it’s not worth doing” at times, which i struggled with. lastly, have you ever read a book that should have been an article?

really hope this author doesn’t read their goodreads reviews but if so i think your heart is absolutely in the right place but this just felt somehow both inaccessible in its language and yet too surface level to be particularly insightful or novel

[Sonia Bertran Claravall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una anàlisi molt completa i aclaridor de les diferents maneres com opera la gentrificació i els principals afectats d'aquest (no tan) nou model de fer ciutat.

Molt important i necessari per entendre no només la seva dependència del racisme, colonialisme i rols de gènere, sinó per imaginar eines de lluita i prevenció, que permetin limitar el creixement d'aquesta nova força de destrucció d'espais, lligams i connexions emocionals amb l'entorn i la gent que en forma part.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book discusses gentrification through examples from all over the world. There are personal tie-ins I liked, but this is definitely coming from an academic place—not memoir, journalism, narrative nonfiction, opinion, etc. I read it more slowly than I expected to because of the formal, sometimes guarded, tone. But I wanted to spend time marinating in these issues, which are often adjacent to other stuff I encounter, but rarely central to it, so I got what I wanted out of the read and do recommend.

[Miska · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some parts of the book (Gentrification is about taste, class, metaphor) were really enjoyable, otherwise I’ve found it unnecessarily long (even though it’s a short book), as the author keeps going around the same issues. Too many references to other authors in the text made it at times a bit of a mash-up: other views could have been more often integrated more elegantly with a footnote referring to the authors. This format bears the style of a scientific essay, which is not an issue per se, it is just not what I was hoping to read.

[luna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think that this book serves as a well-written and digestible introductory text into gentrification and the various factors that affect it. However, I also believe that this book is repetitive, and it detracted from the overall effectiveness of it. I don’t think it went into enough depth with most of its sections, but for a text that comes off as introductory, I guess that’s alright?

*3.25 stars

[Pixelschmelzen · Rating 2 out of 5]

keine richtige theoretische ausarbeitung, viel literaturereview, ein sonderbares bedürfnis bloß nicht die ökonomischen faktoren der gentrifizierung als gewichtiger anzuerkennen gegenüber anderen (ja ökonomismus ist eine tendenz, gegen die es anzugehen gilt, anti-ökonomismus ist aber schlimmer imho, vor allem bei diesem thema, wo ökonomische faktoren einfach überwiegen) und alles in allem einfach null tiefgang

[ursu :p · Rating 2 out of 5]

bueno abandone este libro pk lo tuve k devolver a la biblioteca y ya asumí k no iba a acabarlo jaja me pareció un poco repetitivo pero bueno hasta dnd leí me sirvió para aprender algunas cosas asik me llevo algo positivo!!

[Hank Hansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Impressively dense with research, references, and examples. Sometimes slow going but informative and thought provoking.

[Shá]

Rtc

[Soleil · Rating 5 out of 5]

“It is difficult to find a glimmer of hope, let alone comprehensive case studies of successful struggle. We have to be aware of the danger of ceding the cause, which ultimately lets those in power off the hook and solidifies the apparent inevitability of capitalist modes of development and inequalities it produces. Not only is this bound to create a sense of hopelessness, assumptions of inevitability also ignore long histories of tenacity, perseverance, and growth.”

Let us remember the perseverance of the past louder and longer than the doom of our present.

As the fires in LA come with increased warnings of ICE raids, and populations are being systematically wiped out by overt violence, or economic ruin, is it the least shocking that our western cities play out the same aims, and create the same results throughout our neighbourhoods. They aren’t even our neighbourhoods.

When Kern says gentrification what she is really describing throughout the novel is colonialism and imperialism dressed in, well nothing. She tells us it is blatant, it is obvious and it is not hiding. The antagonistic behaviour enabled by government policy making is artificially creating culture/ressource/housing vacuums to fill with recycled and stolen emptiness. That displacement is the foundation of our modern existence. And yet.

We argue over which city has the best culture. As someone deeply entrenched in the Toronto/Montréal cultural debate, it has always rung hollow. My generation will not know true culture in the way we are still attempting to recreate it, for advertising (and gentrifying) purposes. We must make ourselves immune to nostalgic pandering, it is what partially makes us complicit.

And yet, as the title of the book relievingly promises, this is not inevitable. But it is hard to see otherwise, because as Kern presents, gentrification is barely real as a concept itself, it is really just another way to set dress the imperial foundations of our social/political/economic world.

It is a well researched book, it is simple to read and lays out all the information simply and with respect. It is current and does not allow the reader the distance of “that was the past” that our history books offer. If you live anywhere you should read this.

And if you only read one part, read the last two chapters. We need a some pragmatism after all the fear. There is information, and precedent, available to us (cooperative ownership in the form of community land trusts etc., large scale housing coops, mutual aid programs, “anchor institution” models, POLICY, etc.)

“It only takes one successful resistance to show that gentrification is not inevitable.”

“Activist coalition building requires an intersectional understanding of power in the city, and the ability to see that there really are no single-issue battles, just as there are no single-issue lives. An inability to find nutritious affordable food is connected to the lack of safe spaces for drug users is connected to the glut of Airbnb rentals on the block…anti-gentrification struggles are interwoven with other concerns…”

“Responsibility is not a burden. It is an opportunity to use our capacities and resources, whatever form those take, to work toward building cities and neighbourhoods that support human and non-human flourishing, nurture relationship of care, and give all of us what we universally need: a home.”

[Marius · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dieses Buch ist durch und durch Ausdruck postmoderner, sich als kritisch verstehender Ideologie. Es setzt der Ideologie der neoklassischen Ökonomie die eigene entgegen. Kern formuliert den Anspruch, „verschleierte Machthierarchien“ (19) aufzudecken, verdeckt durch Ideologie aber selbst den Hintergrund der bestehenden Verhältnisse.

Durch das Vorgehen, vor allem Geschichten zu erzählen, bleibt es insgesamt oberflächlich. Kern argumentiert dabei historisch und aus der Empirie heraus. Der Fokus liegt auf der Akteursebene und die Erklärungen bleiben allgemein auf ihr beschränkt, was innerhalb ihrer identitätspolitischen Prägung nur konsequent ist. Es werden mit privaten Bauträgern, Vermietern und Immobilienspekulanten die vermeintlich klaren Schuldigen benannt. Über einen Begriff von Spekulation verfügt sie dabei nicht.
Gegenübergestellt wird die „idyllische altmodische Gentrifizierung“ von früher, während heute Kräfte wirken würden, die „ein Vielfaches gewaltiger sind“ und von „Investor*innen oder „Spekulant*innen“ betrieben würden. Die Verbindung zu der Annahme einer guten sozialen Marktwirtschaft und schlechtem Finanzkapitalismus drängt sich an vielen Stellen im Buch auf. Sie scheint vielmehr ein Problem mit dem Ausmaß und der Art und Weise zu haben und nicht mit den Verhältnissen an sich. Ihre Kritik an der bestehenden Gesellschaft beschränkt sich deshalb auch auf das „Wohlstandsgefälle“ (20). So macht sie selbst, was sie anderen vorwirft: für die Gefahr zu sorgen, die Möglichkeit von Veränderung im Keim zu ersticken (24f.).

Sie unterliegt der Illusion, dass Politik nur eingreifen müsste und sich Missstände so beheben ließen (23). Es wird zwar der Vorstellung begegnet, dass Gentrifizierung ein natürlicher Prozess sei und es ist gut, dass sie vor der Verwendung biologistischer Vergleiche und Metaphern warnt, aber statt diese Überlegungen konsequent weiterzuführen, auszuweiten und zu radikalisieren, bietet sie mit wohnungspolitischen Maßnahmen Lösungen innerhalb eines Systems an, das ihr unreflektiert zur zweiten Natur geworden ist. Deshalb will sie den Kapitalismus auch nur bändigen, statt ihn abzuschaffen (192). Schuld an den Missständen sei der Neoliberalismus statt der Kapitalismus (193). Das offenbart ein unzureichendes Verständnis von Kapitalismus, dessen Kern „Individualismus, Egoismus und Profitstreben“ (39) sei - das ist fehlgeleitete moralisierende Kapitalismuskritik. Die Erklärungen für Gentrifizierung sind auch personalisierend, mindestens aber zu akteurszentriert. Mit personalisierender Kritik mischt es sich, wenn von
„skrupellosen Immobilienmakler*innen“ (200) geschrieben wird.

Der Fokus liegt generell auf den Erscheinungsformen der Gentrifizierung. Sie relativiert diesen Fokus dann - aber nicht etwa, um systemische Erklärungen zu liefern, sondern ersetzt „Gentrifier“ mit „milliardenschweren Immobilienentwickler*innen“ und „mächtigen transnationalen Konzernen“ (54). Der Fokus soll bei der Kritik auf der „Kapitalistenklasse“ (87) liegen. Besonders verheerende Formen der Gentrifizierung liefen „unter der Regie mächtiger Finanzakteure“ (81) ab. Da ist nur logisch, dass sie auch Naomi Klein zitiert. An vielen Stellen im Buch findet sich das Muster, dass sich treffende Punkte finden, die aber direkt im nächsten Satz relativiert und ins Negative aufgehoben werden.

Generell wird oft Sprachkritik geübt. Inkonsequenz ist ihr dabei ebenso wie bei dem Anspruch, scheinbar natürliche Gegebenheiten infragezustellen, gerade bei materialistischen Aspekten vorzuwerfen, wenn sie von „Gegenden, die von Armut heimgesucht wurden“ (14) spricht und sie einen unausweichlichen Vorgang suggeriert.

Wie sie die Erklärungen für Gentrifizierung zusammenstellt, erinnert an bürgerlichen Individualismus. So haben alle Erklärungsansätze etwas Recht (65) und haben alle ihre Daseinsberechtigung. Das blendet die Widersprüche aus, die sich zwischen ihnen ergeben.

Insgesamt ist das Buch ein Paradebeispiel postmoderner Ideologie und dementsprechend anstrengend zu lesen. So zieht sich ihr Intersektionalitätsfetisch durch das gesamte Buch und vergleicht sie Gentrifizierung mit Kolonialismus. Dazu würde der Vorgang, eine Erklärung für Gentrifizierung allein im Kapitalismus zu suchen, „Kolonialismus, Imperialismus, Rassismus, Heteronormativität und das Patriarchat“ (89) als weniger relevant erscheinen lassen. Statt jene Phänomene innerhalb des Kapitalismus einer Kritik zu unterziehen, macht sie daraus einen Kampf um Aufmerksamkeit. Kern behauptet, eine intersektionale Analyse von Gentrifizierung sei notwendig, berücksichtigt aber unzureichend den universalistisch-materialistischen Aspekt der Gentrifizierung, der natürlich mit Diskriminierunsformen einhergehen kann. Letztlich wundert nicht die Verklärung von Prostitution zu Sexarbeit oder die krampfhaft erscheinende gezogene Verbindung von Gentrifizierung mit kultureller Aneignung, was zu Blüten führt wie „Ein Brathähnchen ist ein Lebensmittel mit einer komplizierten, vorbelasteten Geschichte“ (173) oder der Behauptung, dass Gentrifizierung White Supremacy sei (218). Jene postmoderne Ideologie führt auch zu absurden spirituellen/mythischen Äußerungen wie „Schwarze Communitys bewahren die Kraft der Kämpfe ihrer Vorfahren gegen Verdrängung“ (188). Man gewinnt den Eindruck, die Sprechorte der Akteure seien relevanter als der inhaltliche Gehalt ihrer Äußerungen zu Gentrifizierung.

Ihre Aussagen zum Widerstand gegen Gentrifizierung implizieren, dass Aktivismus etwas an bestehenden Verhältnissen ändern würde, das über Abwehrkämpfe hinausgeht. Diese Abwehrkämpfe werden zu „erfolgreichem Widerstand gegen Gentrifizierung“ (13) verklärt, was ebenso wie die Annahme, künstlerischer Aktivismus könne Gentrifizierung entgegenwirken;
Ausdruck bewusstloser Praxis (Adorno) ist. Später heißt es, der Kampf gegen Gentrifizierung sei nur ein Problem des Wissenstransfers zwischen Anti-Gentrifizierungsaktivisten mit einem vermeintlichen Erkenntnisprivileg einerseits und den „offiziellen Erzählungen“ (186) des Wissenschaftsbetriebs andererseits.

Kern sagt, wie auch dem Titel ihres Buches zu entnehmen ist, dass Gentrifizierung nicht unausweichlich sei. Das stimmt, aber nur außerhalb des bestehenden Systems. Solange sie die gesellschaftliche Totalität nicht im Blick hat und stattdessen dem gesellschaftlichen Schein verhaftet bleibt, kann ihre Absicht nicht Realität werden.

PS: Unabhängig vom Buch überrascht es nach den Schilderungen nicht, dass sie aktuell die antisemitisch motivierten Desinvestitionen sowie Apartheid- und Genozid-Vorwürfe gegenüber Israel unterstützt, die in ihrem Umfeld ohnehin en vogue sind.

[Bruno Rodrigues · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good for beginners on the theme.

It's nothing new to realize that the main causes of gentrification are class conflicts and capitalism, but this book delves into the details of this factor and explains how multifaceted it actually is when talking about racial inequalities.

I was also shocked by the parts where it talked about pro-gentrification researchers use an evolutionary tone to make it into an inevitability, really eye-opening.

[stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

reading this in various silverlake coffee shops........ im sorry leslie kern

[Kelsey Weekman]

deeply researched an insightful, this is a must-read for people moving into new, developing neighborhoods. a great guide through an issue people often ignore because it's uncomfortable.

[Anaum Virani · Rating 5 out of 5]

​The political dilemma inherent in assuming gentrification as a natural and inevitable outcome of urban development lies in the significant undermining it causes, particularly in the disenfranchisement of marginalized communities and the efforts to resist displacement. By analyzing the intersectionality that exists between economic forces, public policy, and historical social dynamics, Kern makes a compelling argument on the political dimensions of gentrification as one of the major social battlegrounds of our times and how to understand the phenomenon in order to pave an alternative egalitarian future.

[Colm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to find anything objectionable in the book, and it corrects some very prevalent misconceptions. Despite that, somehow it feels as though the author fails to get to the core of gentrification. Rather than firmly grasping it, gentrification remains an apparition that recedes just before she can catch it.

[Sveta Mobile · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of thoughts after reading this book

[y. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Between the Lines for the ARC!

An insightful read on gentrification, capitalism, 'white privilege', and many things I haven't really thought about before, such as the gentrification of 'yoga', 'tattoos', and more. After a few chapters, it felt more of a heavy scholarly read, but still interesting enough to keep going. I like the takeaway messages and what we can do as an individual in the last chapter.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kern attempts to expand our understanding of gentrification by pointing out its ties to multiple systems of power. However, I feel that her extension of gentrification to encapsulate so many things (colonialism, displacement, appropriation, neoliberalism, capitalism, whiteness) is so sweeping that the term is ultimately a bit meaningless.

Obviously intersectionality is critical to understanding gentrification and these systems ARE inherently linked, but we never get a definitive definition of any of the systems of power about which she is speaking, which is a critical flaw for a work of theory. In making these terms fit under one umbrella of gentrification, the reader is given very little detail regarding their relationship to one another, which is asking a ton of the audience, unless they are already well informed (but the book is so basic in its coverage it seems to be targeted towards those new to gentrification literature). We also don’t gain insight into why it’s more productive to link these things into a single universalizing term than to flush out what makes them distinct.

In trying to cover so much, we get very little depth into anything at all, and as a result Kern fails to provide a more nuanced or informative understanding of gentrification than what one could get from scrolling through TikTok for a while.

I spent all 200 pages of this book so frustrated by the lack of clarity in her arguments that I very nearly DNF-ed this book.

[shiloh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked FEMINIST CITY, but this book felt methodologically shallow. Many arguments felt like they didn't have enough evidence behind them. In a local context, I disagreed with some of her assessments of Toronto in particular -- building dense housing is a net good in an expensive city with low housing supply!

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book helped me understand gentrification a little better. However, I'm not quite sure it convinced me of it's central premise- that gentrification is not inevitable and can be stopped. I did very much appreciate the intersectionality of this book.

[Mónica Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una lectura muy enriquecedora, porque es muy fácil caer en la trampa del "progreso" vendido detrás de la gentrificación.

[Sofía · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me quedo con ganas de leer más de esta autora. Superinteresante y esclarecedor.

[Salvador Ramírez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este libro de Leslie Kern es un buen texto que se centra en desmitificar varias ideas populares sobre el fenómeno de gentrificación. Para ello divide su libro en nueve capítulos cortos. Los primeros 8 se dedican a explicar la gentrificación, desmitificar visiones comunes y establecer distintas relaciones que la impulsan. Su principal tesis es señalar que la gentrificación no es un fenómeno natural (del capitalismo) ni uno que sea inevitable (por las dinámicas del mercado). Es un fenómeno guiado diversos intereses de empresas, individuos y hasta de gobiernos locales. En este sentido, al establecer que no es "natural", sino un fenómeno producto de las decisiones humanas, es entonces evitable y, por lo tanto, es posible oponerse al mismo.

Mientras el noveno capítulo se enfoca en historias de cambio y adelantar una pequeña agenda política basada en el feminismo y lo queer, en el anti racismo y en una perspectiva decolonial. En palabras de la autora " el propósito de este libro es hacer estas y otras conexiones entre la gentrificación y los múltiples sistemas de poder y opresión más visibles al darle más espacio a las historias mencionadas por investigadores, formuladores de políticas públicas, planeadores, reporteros y activistas".

Esta última parte sin duda es la más débil de todas, pues en la mejor de las tradiciones liberales, trata de sumar distintas perspectivas bajo una misma lucha dentro de los marcos del capitalismo. En otras palabras, reconoce que la gentrificación es un generada por del capitalismo, pero la agenda que plantea más que ser abiertamente capitalista, juega con soluciones dentro del mismo capitalismo y de baja escala (desde lo local). Por lo cuál difícilmente puede lograr tener las escalas de cambio para enfrentar un fenómeno que se presenta en muchas ciudades del planeta.