Gentrification

Gentrification, simply stated, concerns the process by which richer (and almost always whiter) residents, property owners, developers, and speculators take up land in otherwise previously poor areas. Though most of the land in poorer areas is already owned by either the State or landlords, this process further destabilizes and disrupts patterns of life and community networks in already depressed areas. It tends to make these neighborhoods unaffordable and impossible for poor folks to live in, forcing them to move farther out of urban areas. It is one more example of the rich taking what they want, and the rest of us having to hope for scraps. The urban dynamic of gentrification tends to involve a process by which areas get more and more white, more and more wealthy. Though white tenants (students, young workers, etc.) play an initial role in the process by necessity of seeking affordable rents, the driving fuel of this process is the profit seeking of landlords, developers and land speculators, ever intent on squeezing more money out of tenants or flipping properties for a quick buck.

Nowhere has this process been more clear than in the neighborhood of Northside, in Chapel Hill, where anarchists and other residents and churchgoers have battled gentrification (and in particular the development of Greenbridge) for years. Stories about this can be found in the archive of this site. Anarchists have also been actively fighting gentrification of the neighborhood of Glenwood in Greensboro, spearheaded by developments owned by UNC-G.