SAVE ZONE 6

What is Gentrification?

From my personal experience, it appears that a lot of people think that gentrification is simply the beautification of once poor and dangerous areas of the city. The incoming gentry are generally white progressive neo-liberal hipsters (often queer) looking for lower rent prices and city living and are therefore deemed harmless. The telling signs are typically the same: an influx of coffee shops, white people, yoga studios, yogurt stands, etc. The cosmetic changes all have a similar aesthetic to gentrification happening in other parts of the country. On many occasions a cheap copy of actual culture, gentrification can easily transform East Atlanta into Anywhere, USA. This gross mishandling of East Atlantan heritage isn’t an accident, it is deliberate. Both from the gentry and from the powers-that-be. Gentrification is the 21st Century incarnation of “the white man’s burden.” The hoods and ghettos commonly compared to an untamed wilderness and its people as savages. While the US has always been obsessed with the idea of pioneering and capitalizing off what they find, the pioneers habitually fail to find the real value in the places they claim to trailblaze into and refuse to respect what was already built. Gentrification disproportionately affects black people and it is a race issue. While the white return to the city from the suburbs following the government-sponsored white flight of the 1940s and 1950s began as the action of select individuals, it is soon especially capitalized on. The return to the city is by capital, not by people.  

When fighting gentrification, it is important to understand why it happens and the process it entails. Many sociologists theorize that there are five phases of total gentrification of any American City. 

1. Outside individuals or “pioneers” move into standing communities. 

2. Outside individuals or “pioneers” start buying real estate in the community whether it be residential or commercial. 

3. Outside individuals take important positions of power in the community and become more important in the facilitation of growth in said communities. 

4. The gentrified neighborhood becomes more wealthy and starts to blend with the less gentrified places surrounding it. The poor get chased further and further away from their original home. 

5. Local developers chase cash with legislative assistance from the local government until the area ceases to be capable of producing normal lifestyles. 

Why does gentrification happen?

Gentrification has been happening in  East Atlanta for quite some time and it is rather far along in the process. This truth is addition to the exploitative nature of late stage American capitalism makes it very difficult to combat Gentrification and to in fact, Save Zone 6. The social character of East Atlanta has already been re-made and a plethora of people have been displaced in order to provide renovated condos. However, East Atlanta has not been completely homogenized into a growth machine incapable of providing housing or community for its people at a reasonable price the way places like New York City or San Francisco have. Atlanta is in phase 4 and it may be a number of years before it reaches phase 5 but it is important to begin the fight now because money does not get tired. It is now that we decide whether gentrification will be the genocide or East Atlanta or its genesis. 

Gentrification happens because of money, as many things do in a capitalistic society. There are easy ways to follow trends and see which areas are ripe for further gentrification. The primary indicator would be to look at the rent gap. When a developing region has low income residents, the rent is low. The low property values are a direct result of government divestment from black communities and white flight. The lower the current value of the rent, the higher it could grow and the higher rate of potential return each investment has. The rent gap is the motive for individual developers but the government looks to benefit as well. By moving out poor people and moving in rich people, the city can improve its tax base and further enhance its ability to fund itself. Local and state governments, just as individual people, have credit scores and poor cities are not allowed to get as much federal money for spending. This creates a need for the city to attract richer citizens in order to be sustainable. 

East Atlanta Gentrification

In Atlanta, the center of gentrification is the beltline. The East Side of the beltline is amongst the most gentrified areas of Atlanta. In fact, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, Atlanta is the 4th fastest gentrifying city in the United States. The City of Atlanta’s Department of Planning and Community made a color coded map of “Neighborhood Gentrification Pressure Areas” and shared it as a public service in the summer of 2019. There are five colors on the map, each color codifying the stage of gentrification: red (or untouched stage with gentrification not seen in the upcoming future), a light blue (or susceptible stage with gentrification not happening but in the possible future), a sky blue (or a dynamic stage with gentrification being an active movement), a cobalt blue (or a late stage with gentrification having been nearly finished), and green (or mature stage with gentrification and development having been completed). 

The entire East Side of the beltline is surrounded by either a cobalt blue or green zone. According to Census Data, from 2000 to 2010 the black population in East Atlanta and the neighboring Ormewood Park and Benteen fell from 57.8% to 38% while the white population rose from 36.5% to 54.8%. And in East Lake and Kirkwood, where I went to my all-black high school, the black population fell from 86.2% to 58.7% while the white population rose from 11.3% to 36.9%. Gentrification is pushing the black people out of the city and into the suburbs, without the resources to maintain a self-sufficient lifestyle. These are the same suburbs that benefited and grew from white flight and redlining and racial malpractice in housing. For example, in 1960, the white population in Kirkwood was 91% but by 1970 the black population was 97%. In the 50 years since then the white population has slowly crawled higher and higher, primarily since the area began gentrifying. This locational seesaw will eventually create the same segregation the civil rights movement sought to destroy due to the socioeconomic conditions that commonly determine the demographics of each region.

In order to turn the tide of our war against gentrification, it is important to look inwards and question what image a city is supposed to hold in our hearts. Are cities built to be places for cultures to be cultivated and for people to grow and  thrive as a community or are cities built as hubs to generate wealth for the wealthy and simply create jobs for the working class? If history has any say about our future, we will look to the first option and fight for our homes and our streets that we made with our sweat. As Atlanta goes through what some economists have called “an affordability crisis,” East Atlanta is the final frontier in the fight against gentrification. East Atlanta is in an intense identity crisis as the city overlooks the edge with anxiety about what it is and what it could be. There is an East Atlanta that we yearn for, a place that never existed. Then there is something new and unfamiliar that never was but will be. This tension is present everywhere we look, whole blocks pulling in opposite directions, some houses in the future and some in the past. This friction is a side effect of late stage capitalism, the growth machine digging its own grave. There is an inherent tension between the use value and the exchange value. The use value places the value of things on how useful they are while the exchange value places the value of things on its potential economic worth. It is a simple calculus that we make every single time we leave the house. Is the freedom of our time more important than the money we need to pay our rent? Is the destination we wish to travel to worth our gas money? When figuring out the answers, we have to remember our truth, the truth about who we are as a people and what we should do. There is a way to build equitably, there is a way to grow as a city for the people who are already here.

How to Fight Gentrification and Save Zone 6

Gentrification eats its own. It has many intersections and many different causes, but we can do a lot as a community in order to reverse its effects if we are well organized. I wish it were as simple as using the gentry’s own tricks against them, but opening a wing spot and a liquor store near every single high end loft on the East Side wouldn’t work. It may be impossible to stop gentrification without pulling the United States away from capitalism as a whole country, something our country is not privy to do. In the meantime, here are four (five) things you can do to help halt gentrification. 

1. Expand, Protect, and make accessible public lands.

   1. The more land and housing is privatized, the less regulations there will be on keeping the city affordable for the hardworking people that currently reside there. By preserving public land, the city could ensure that companies with private interests do not displace entire communities.     

   2. Mixed-use areas closer to the inner city have become coveted in Metro Atlanta, it is important to make those places real options for the people who were there first.

2. Increase communal decision making.

   1. The more power the people have in controlling their own fates, the less likely we are to be swept away in an involuntary transformation of our own space. Stay informed on who represents you and what views they have on housing. By taking a proactive approach in the way we live as a whole, we have more autonomy as individuals.

3. Heavily regulate housing. 

   1. Put pressure on politicians to regulate rent spikes, evictions, and discriminatory leasing practices in a more active way than done currently. 

4. Create community. 

   1. Keep an active hand in your community, know your neighborhood, and care about the small businesses in East Atlanta. Be vocal, we are stronger as a group. 

   2. Make accessible resources known throughout the community, demonstrate and apply knowledge as a collective.

5. Fire a few gunshots into the air every time you see a white person jogging in a gentrifying neighborhood.

   1. I’m kidding. Be safe out here. 

Zone 6 can be saved and East Atlanta could grow equitably. As a place, as a community, as a people, and as an idea. And if we can’t, buy a gun (just kidding). 

published October 17, 2020

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