A revolutionary new study of gentrification ... and how to stop
it.
Cities around the
world are in the midst of a profound transformation as the wealthy
price out the remnants of the urban working class, especially people
of color. Displacement is neither accidental or inevitable. It
happens because a whole range of people and institutions profit
handsomely. Defying Displacement, focused on the US but
informed by global examples, investigates gentrification from the
perspective of the people fighting it, members of communities whose
survival is threatened by some of the most powerful institutions on
the planet. Andrew Lee names the names and identifies the actual
state and corporate forces that work together to enrich a very
specific group of people: property developers and real estate
investors who make a killing, politicians who watch their tax bases
grow, banks that write profitable loans for new businesses and
mortgages for new homeowners. Meanwhile, business districts are
planned, tax abatements unveiled, redevelopment schemes dreamed up,
corporate and university campuses expanded, and ordinary people are
driven from their homes.
The city has long
served as the stage for political life and popular revolt. As mass
displacement alters the composition of gentrifying cities, the
avenues available for social change become unsettled as well, forcing
us to reimagine our strategies for building a better world. Around
the world communities are pushing the struggle against forced
displacement in new directions, shutting down developments and
evictions and bringing cities to a halt, fighting militarized police
and the most powerful companies in the world. Activists and residents
in struggle--dozens of whom are interviewed by Lee to inform his
work--are charting the way forward to affordable and sustainable
cities run by the people who inhabit them.