What Do 'Newcomers' Mean For A Neighborhood? The History Of Gentrification In The U.S.

Gentrification has touched cities across the United States, from New York and the Bay Area, to Pittsburgh and Albuquerque.

The rapid transformation of some urban neighborhoods has become an incendiary cultural topic, attracting fierce opposition from anti-gentrification activists.

But Matthew Schuerman, author of “Newcomers: Gentrification and Its Discontents,” has looked at the decades-long trajectory of gentrification and argues in his book that it’s not an inherently negative phenomenon — unlike the displacement that accompanies it.

Gentrification is “really just a process by which a neighborhood goes from being, say, a little [below] the median income for the area to above,” he says. “You’ve got to think of it as a neutral phenomenon like gravity, or wind, or rain. They can get you really wet and be really damaging … or if you figure out how to harness those elements, then you can actually, , turn