How We Use the City: A Critical Phenomenology of Gentrification Threat

Purpose and Background

Neighborhood-based community practice contends with the shifting ways in which private entities, philanthropic institutions, residents, and the state vie for access and place-based power (Emejulu, & Scanlon, 2016; Fisher, 1994). One manifestation is in gentrification and its ominous, ongoing threat to many communities. Recent community practice scholars in social work have responded from environmental, political-economic, and equity based lenses (Krings, & Schusler, 2020; Thurber, et al., 2021). This study extends this work to explore experiences of gentrification threat among interdisciplinary community practice professionals, administrators and experts, and resident-civic leaders.

Two main research questions guided the study:

1. What is the experience of Gentrification Threat at various levels of social and institutional power?
2. How do residents and community practitioners collaborate in communities experiencing gentrification threat?

Methods

Critical phenomenology analyzes experience relative to social conditions and institutional political contexts (Kinkaid, 2020; Melacon, 2014). Results move “beyond a description of oppression, developing concrete strategies for dismantling oppressive structures and creating or amplifying different, less oppressive, and more liberatory ways of being in the world” (Geunther, 2020 p. 16). Researchers used ethnographic methods and critical phenomenology to explore the experiences of gentrification threat among, (1) experts (policy makers and administrators), (2) interdisciplinary professional community practitioners, and (3) resident/civic community leadership in a single locality.

Based on existing literature, the criteria below guided geographical selection of the area(s) under study. Any selected locality must be undergoing:

1. Municipal wide banding campaigning, either current or within the last 10 to 15 years.
2. Ongoing zoning changes within the neighborhood in the last 5 to 10 years.
3. Publicly and/or privately funded incentives (e.g. direct proffers, small business grants, tax breaks, and direct mailings).

All data were generated from three neighborhoods in one Mid-Atlantic city utilizing a combination of purposive and snowball sampling from semi-structured interviews (N= 14), focus groups (3), and ethnographic notes from public meetings.

Results

Findings show four key interconnected categories of experience. Each also contains subcategories and interconnected patterns. (1) Complexity: “No Magic Bullets”, identifies how the gentrification’s complexity contributes to the phenomenon of gentrification threat. (2) The Divide, Fear, and Division directly addresses the embedded contradictions of working to bring about the conditions that may, “drive us out”. (3) Practice Wisdom: Experiences, Solutions, and Approaches links practice wisdom and practitioner learning to potential solutions. Finally, (4) How we use the City: Dismantling Systemic Barriers discusses proposed barriers and key insights for practitioners in mitigating gentrification threat.

Discussion and Implications

Gentrification threat, its impacts on community well being, as well as its effects on how practitioners engage leaders and solve problems remains understudied in social work. This study modestly contributes by providing adaptable, transferable knowledge in addressing the complexities of working in neighborhoods experiencing gentrification threat (Boller, & Helfrich, 2019). It also offers potential directions for future social work, community practice and engagement in this area in the form of practical adaptable strategies based on data from the field.