Multiple articles about gentrification seem to spring up every week, and Jane Jacobs inevitably haunts nearly every one. Yet writers never seem to mention Jacobs’ own perspective on gentrification.

The other week, two more articles appeared, one in Jacobin and a reply on The Baffler, which finally provoked me into writing this post. In particular, Gavin Mueller’s denunciation of the patron saint of urbanism bothered me (“Behind every Jane Jacobs comes Rudy Giuliani with his nightstick”) not so much because I worship at her feet, but because recently this kind of strategic blasphemy has become a popular device to gain attention or to prove one’s street cred as a progressive urbanist (see Ed Glaeser and Sharon Zukin).

Jacobs did address the issues of affordability and displacement in her vision of the city, though admittedly only in some obscure interviews and the endnotes of her final book does she do so directly. I hope this collection of Jacobs’ thoughts on the subject will help reassert her voice in the discussion of her legacy.

Good Gentrification, Bad Gentrification

As a form of reinvestment, Jacobs believed that gentrification has a bright side—but only in limited doses.

“In poor neighborhoods, a little gentrification, the start of gentrification, is usually quite constructive. It’s akin to the improvements in a district where people are finding their feet, doing better, and staying there. That’s internal gentrification [what she calls “unslumming” in Death and Life, and what others now call incumbent upgrading], which is really the most heartening. But external gentrification is also useful to start with because it brings in new blood, new disposable income, and often helps the pride of the neighborhood because some things are visibly improved, the same as occurs in internal gentrification” (Chavez et al, “Urban Economy and Development”).

In other words, gentrification can bring in new customers for existing businesses, new investments of time and money to tired buildings, as well as the free time and civic literacy to engage in community organizing efforts. Jacobs wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities as her neighborhood of Greenwich Village enjoyed this early stage of gentrification, and it clearly influenced her ideas about cities. Critics like Sharon Zukin have argued this is only a temporary stage, however, and that “good gentrification” inevitably begets “bad gentrification,” which saps the streets of their soul by displacing residents through rising costs and outright discrimination.

To Jacobs, gentrification goes bad when it begins to stamp out diversity, and it often does just that. In Death and Life, she describes this dynamic in the Chapter 13, “The Self-Destruction of Diversity.” However, unlike some of her latter day critics, Jacobs seems to believe that it’s worthwhile for cities to pursue the diversity and affluence brought by small amounts of gentrification, and that cities can mitigate or even prevent the inequitable second stage of gentrification.

Develop responsive affordable housing.

In the only mention of gentrification by name in her major writings (to my knowledge), Jacobs calls for a more nimble approach to affordable housing as one method of mitigation:

“By the end of the 1990s, gentrification was under way in what had been even the most dilapidated and abused districts of Manhattan. Again, the poor, evicted or priced out by the higher costs of renovating, were victims. Affordable housing could have been added as infill in parking lots and empty lots if government had been on its toes, and if communities had been self-confident and vigorous in making demands, but they almost never were. Gentrification benefited neighborhoods, but so much less than it could have if the displaced people had been recognized as community assets worth retaining. Sometimes when they were gone their loss was mourned by gentrifiers who complained that the community into which they had bought had become less lively and interesting” (Jacobs, Dark Age Ahead, 214).

In her interview with the World Bank, Jacobs cites Vancouver as an example of where this strategy has worked. When developers build in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods there, the planning process enables the City to negotiate a percentage of new affordable units in exchange for additional building height or other zoning relief.

Encourage ownership.

Jacobs also advocates for a number of other proactive measures against displacement to complement a reactive affordable housing regime. Citing Hernando de Soto Polar‘s book The Mystery of Capital, Jacobs says in an interview with the World Bank that a lack of secure tenure “is what makes gentrification so dangerous” (Chavez et al). What’s more, this affects workplaces and shops as much as housing. “Gentrification hits workplaces and shops too,” Jacobs says, “with exorbitant rent increases causing moves or failures” (Chavez et al). This often leads to a monoculture of upscale restaurants and chain stores punctuated by banks on the most valuable street corners.

Referring to a stretch of Bloor St W near her house in Toronto’s Annex neighborhood, Jacobs observes:

“Our street has fared somewhat better for an interesting reason. The independent bookstore survived and flourished even though big box bookstore chains were driving out many independents in the city. The local hardware and paint store, survived even though the city was greeting big Home Depot hardware chains. Not only did the local hardware stay, it doubled its space. A Hungarian delicatessen and butcher shop [now replaced by a bar], with fascinating European products stayed. Of course, the three banks stayed.
Now, how were these three others able to survive and prosper? They owned their buildings. They were thus impervious to abruptly raised rents, but so many other convenient shops and services vanished.

It made me reflect that the only security for small businesses like these is ownership of their own buildings, or else of their own space, as if they were condominiums or else members in a cooperatively owned building” (Chavez et al).

Jacobs recognizes that like residents, not all businesses want to or need to own their space, but considering America’s remarkable 67.4% home-ownership rate—the highest in the world—more business owners certainly could. She observes, “the devices making that possible, long-term mortgage loans, low-interest rates, government guarantees to lenders, are not available for small businesses properties. Couldn’t they be?” (Chavez et al)

Jacobs offers the example of Artscape, a nonprofit in Toronto that offers affordable housing and workspace to artists, protecting them from the very gentrification they help to sow in soon-to-be-up-and-coming neighborhoods. In Providence, RI, AS220 offers an even more robust example. Founded on firm principles of equity, AS220 offers affordable exhibition, performance, living and studio spaces for artists, and as a byproduct they became the landlord of two entire blocks of downtown real estate. As the surrounding area evolved from a haven for crime in the ’80s to a reviving downtown in the oughts, AS220 not only protected the artists it serves, but also the other legitimate businesses that occupy those blocks, like a locksmith, a barber, and a gay bar. Without secure tenancy, such niche conveniences often feel the first pangs of the self-destruction of diversity.

Avoid property taxation based on market value.

However, Jacobs also points out that the wrong tax policy can make ownership or secure tenancy moot.

“People who own buildings in a neighborhood becoming fashionable may decide that it’s most profitable to them.
But sometimes tax policies force them to sell. If a city raises the taxes on buildings based on their increased values if they were to be sold, that can throw people out as surely as if the buildings had been sold. Taxes should not be based on market value unless you want to evict people” (Chavez et al).

In downtown Toronto, where the hot housing market has led to a constant stream of new high-rise condo developments, taxation based partly on the sale value of a property means that a single-story building with one retail tenant could effectively be paying the equivalent of a 36-story luxury condo tower on the same lot. This may be an extreme example, but the same principle applies in any neighborhood with above average real estate values in Toronto.

Other countries may offer models of property tax untethered from the real estate market, perhaps based on aspects of a property’s use-value, like land use, location, material costs, age of construction, etc. Alternatively, Jacobs also advocated for the right of Canadian cities to levy income tax partly because of the detrimental effects of their over-reliance on property taxes.

Rectify supply and demand.

“There is a widespread belief that americans hate cities. I think it is probable that Americans hate city failure, but, from the evidence, we certainly do not hate successful and vital city areas. On the contrary, so many people want to make use of such places, so many people want to work in them or live in them or visit in them, that municipal self-destruction ensues. In killing successful diversity combinations with money, we are employing perhaps our nearest equivalent to killing with kindness” (Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 255).

At base, Jacobs suggests that gentrification results from an unbalance between supply and demand. “The supply of such places is not sufficient to meet the demand,” she tells the World Bank, “That’s why prices soar and the people are evicted.” (Chavez et al).

After recommending some of the measures above to alleviate gentrification, she concludes, “But more important, because more fundamental, is to bring demand and supply into better balance. Try to divert excessive gentrification from areas where it’s getting too heavy and into areas that need some gentrification” (Chavez et al). (In his article in The Baffler, Jordan Fraade comes to a similar conclusion.) Once again, Jacobs cites Vancouver’s planning policy, which attempts to inject a diversity of uses and people into as many neighborhoods as possible, theoretically spreading out the impact of gentrification.

Of course, last year Vancouver’s cost of living ranked the highest in North America. So what happened? Jacobs could be wrong here. However, it’s also possible that the city executed the policy inadequately, that other factors outweighed their efforts in this regard, or that they altered this policy since the 2002 interview. This would be worth investigating further.

The Long View

Jacobs often took the long view of urban issues, and gentrification was no exception. As Richard Florida often recalls, she once told him in an interview, “When a place gets boring, even the rich people leave.” I have heard some people take issue with this idea, pointing out that many gentrified neighborhoods show no sign of abating in cost even as they become more homogenous and sterile. However, I believe Jacobs had a different time-scale in mind than Florida presents. In the World Bank interview, Jacobs expands on this observation:

“A city district or a neighborhood that’s all high income does not have good staying power. We can see this from so many slums that have what were once very grand mansions and ambitious buildings. It’s surprising how many slums have them, much declined and dilapidated… They probably appealed to the people that built those mansions, but not to their children or grandchildren or other heirs who abandoned them” (Chavez et al).

Living off Broadway in Providence, RI, this rings true. Though many of the mansions here have now been restored, more than a third of the wealthy families that built those mansions fled for the suburbs in the 1950s. This lack of “staying power” in exclusively wealthy areas manifests over a generation or two—not with the same swiftness that a neighborhood can become fashionable. Thus, the “creative class” may not be as fickle as Florida suggests, promptly disinvesting in a neighborhood as it shifts from “good” gentrification to “bad.”

So, will the gentrified neighborhoods of today similarly lose their cool and fall back into affordable disrepair? If Jacobs is right, yes—but not soon enough.