{"id":400,"date":"2021-02-16T19:37:51","date_gmt":"2021-02-17T00:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/invisible-violence\/?page_id=400"},"modified":"2021-04-16T11:07:22","modified_gmt":"2021-04-16T15:07:22","slug":"demos-historical-contamination-i-95","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/invisible-violence\/demos-historical-contamination-i-95\/","title":{"rendered":"Contextualizing Gentrification"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philadelphia’s neighborhoods are changing, and fast<\/h3>\n

Construction and demolition now characterize many of the neighborhoods and communities in the city. Practices of renovating historic rowhomes into posh, modern homes initially occurred in neighborhoods such as Graduate Hospital and Old City; however, gentrification has entered the Riverwards neighborhoods in the past 10 to 15 years (Maule 2016).<\/p>\n

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Photo provided by Professor Himpele and the VizE lab, depicting a construction site in Fishtown in 2021.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gentrification<\/span><\/strong> is usually discussed in terms of race\/ethnicity and income; it is a process that often occurs in neighborhoods with an abundance of relatively low-priced housing. This housing is commodified by (usually) upper-class white residents who have the mindset that with “changes,” they can re-make a “hardened” neighborhood into a “posh, cozy, or eclectic” atmosphere. Gentrification causes an abrupt increase in real estate and rental prices, which displaces the original neighborhood population. This process is currently happening in the neighborhood of Fishtown. New renovations, such as those depicted in the image below, raise the value of the housing stock to supersede the previous population. Not only is the practice of gentrification altering the historic landscape of Philadelphia, but it is altering the collective identities of each neighborhood. Occupants in homes in Fishtown were often third-generation homeowners. Now, an influx of professionals with higher education degrees occupies the neighborhood.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Juxtaposition of a renovated, modern rowhome to a historic rowhome in Philadelphia. Image taken from https:\/\/hiddencityphila.org\/2017\/06\/row-house-past-and-its-future\/The following visualization shows the drastic effects of gentrification in Fishtown from 2010 to 2018. It juxtaposes the amount of housing available at incremental value brackets in Fishtown against the nearby Kensington neighborhood.\u00a0<\/span>While Fishtown and Kensington share very similar histories in the rise of Philadelphia, their current narratives could not be more different.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>On average, the homes in Fishtown (represented by Census tract 158) are worth 4x those in Kensington (represented by Census tract 178), although they are of the same rowhome construction.<\/span><\/p>\n