Visualizing Gentrification's 'more Than Material': A Community-Based Qualitative GIS (QGIS) Method of Understanding the Impacts of Gentrification on Long-Time Residents

Background: Residents and activists in neighborhoods undergoing gentrification have been raising alarm bells about its impact for decades. The promises that state and private funders and developers make about the benefits of neighborhood redevelopment are often overemphasized and/or unmet according to many in the communities who have experienced this change. Much of the existing research into the effects of gentrification often leaves out the personal and communal effect on residents' psychological well-being, or the 'more than material'. Though some recent work incorporates resident perspectives of the gentrification process, the field of social work has only recently begun engaging in understanding the impacts of gentrification.This research project aims to address this key gap in the literature by exploring gentrification and associated neighborhood processes in partnership with residents from a Boston community undergoing gentrification.

Methods: In order to better understand the social and spatial context alongside the stories and lived experiences of residents, this community-based and participatory research study utilized primarily qualitative methods alongside an embedded geospatial analysis. This overarching approach relied on community-level input and participation through four interrelated methods: 1) a year-long ethnography, 2) walking interviews with 10 long-time residents, 3) a photovoice project with 7 long-time residents, and 4) a geospatial analysis of gentrification-related indicators using administrative data. These methods relied on the use of a rich array of data to better understand how community members communicate their experiences in their neighborhood as it gentrifies. Participants for the photovoice project and walking interviews were recruited with the assistance of community organizations who were partnered with me throughout the project. Community members also assisted in various levels of the analysis in order to better embed community voices and perspectives into the research.

Findings: Through the iterative analytic process of qualitative, geospatial, and community-led analysis, three major themes emerged. The first theme, 'Contested Spaces', was defined by the areas that presented the greatest conflict in who gets to "claim" ownership over public spaces, such as newly created parks. The next theme, 'Neighborhood Hauntings', explored the way residents and participants framed their relationship to the changing neighborhood as a series of 'lost futures', or feelings of alienation towards a future that they feel they know longer belong in. Finally, the theme of 'Defending the Community' arose through the descriptions of residents and participants as they attempt to push back against cultural and familial displacement in the neighborhood. Throughout the qualitative descriptions, geospatial analysis of both administrative and resident-gathered data provided a visual contextualization of the qualitative data that complicated the findings, showing discrepancies between where administrative data would define gentrification and how residents chose to define it.

Conclusion/Implications: Findings from this study highlight the need for including more resident voices into the research process when studying gentrification. The use of community-based and participatory research methods, alongside qualitative geospatial analysis, creates a more complicated story that allows us to visualize gentrifications true community impact. Implications for social workers, community organizers, and urban researchers are also discussed.