This post looks at Weld's approach to gentrification, points out some blind spots, critiques the response by those promoting gentrification, and provides some data that highlight the downside of neighborhood change.
First, there seems to be little in terms of displacement in census tract 24, home to Avondale and parts of Crestwood. There has been only a 5% change in terms of the demographics in the census tract. However, property values have risen dramatically, to the tune of 61% over the past ten years. This is more than the increase in property values of Homewood and Mountain Brook, but less than the increases in downtown Birmingham. If this trend continues, widespread displacement will be inevitable, particularly of low-income residents. One of the Weld series' largest blind spot is the lack of voices representing low-income renters. They have almost exclusively interviewed privileged white residents. Are low-income residents' rents increasing, are they contemplating moving to a cheaper zip code, and are landlords attempting to push them out?
(In fairness, I'm not under any illusion about how difficult it may be to develop the connections necessary to get an interview with renters who may not want to get caught up in a political fight.)
As an artifact of this blind spot, the response to the most recent gentrification series post "Leaving Crestwood" displayed an incredible amount of privilege and entitlement. Posters wrung their hands and navel-gazed about a privileged white resident leaving the community- all of these lamentations coming from other privileged whites.
In an earlier article by Nick Patterson, "New Students, New Parents, New Reality, and Change," the author documented how white residents make decisions about school choice. Tellingly, the residents highlighted in the article consulted other whites when deciding about which schools their children should attend. (The Bigas stated that they changed their mind after consulting with Reverend Brandon Harris, a white man.)
Does this really look like integration, a situation in which white residents' community looks not unlike the community that s/he would have in Homewood or Mountain Brook? Maybe this is untrue, but the articles, with a dramatic lack of black protagonists, portray a lily-white community within a larger black neighborhood. The articles give the distinct impression that gentrification and neighborhood change are driven by a small cadre of privileged, white advocates of a type of economic development that can best be termed municipal trickle-down economics.
I'm quite pleased with the gentrification series from Weld, and this critique is just an attempt to make it better. The series has spurred conversation in Birmingham that otherwise never would have happened. However, there are blind spots that need to be addressed in future articles in the series, and the number one blind spot is "are there people experiencing displacement pressures?"
