Tonyaa Weathersbee (tonyaa.weathersbee[@]jacksonville.com) wrote an article titled Gentrifying Springfield good, bad. It’s obvious to me that Springfield is gentrifying, it’s all around us.

Take a historic neighborhood close to Downtown. Mix in the current trend of suburban flight to urban living. Add a healthy heaping of upper to middle class whites moving into a traditionally low-income, black neighborhood and you have all the ingredients for a good ol fashioned case of gentrification.

Wikipedia defines gentrification as:

the process whereby dilapidated neighborhoods are restored and refurbished, usually in conjunction with changing demographics and an influx of wealthier residents.

For each argument for gentrification there is another argument against gentrification. So what I wanted to do was look for solutions. Tanyaa’s article touched on one solution:

“It would be nice if some of the developers could give back to the community by trying to work in some affordable housing into it,” Watkins said. “That would be a wonderful way to give back. But the reality is that now, there is money to be made here. Unfortunately, that takes precedence over everything else.”

Solutions for Gentrification in Springfield
Or anywhere for that matter

  1. Create persistent affordable housing, non-profit housing or cooperative housing
  2. Control land for community development
  3. Income and asset creation through more jobs in the community
  4. Encourage equitable development. It emphasizes the positive effect of mixed-income communities, and helps residents to have a voice in decision-making and to acquire the skills and resources needed to stay anchored in their neighborhoods.
  5. Residents could organize grass-roots efforts to fight the effects of gentrification
  6. Inclusionary zoning - Developers are either required or provided with incentives (such as higher build-outs) to develop a certain percentage of affordable housing units.
  7. Introduce legislation the would require developers to set aside 15% of their properties as affordable.

Sources:
Beyond Gentrification: Strategies for Managing Community Change
Resisting Gentrification

The more I researched the issue the more I discovered there are no easy solutions. To prevent the bad effects of gentrification, forcing out low-income residents, the community and the government have to take an active role.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 27th, 2006 at 8:53 pm and is filed under Best, Springfield. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.