Gentrification is caused by hipsters and artists. Artists have been categorized by some as “first-wave gentrifiers,” ushering in a new vibrancy, while hipsters’ particular tastes in coffee, craft beer, and organic products are blamed for changing the “vibe” of the neighborhood. But do these folks really have the capital or the clout to create the large-scale transformations that characterize gentrification today? Artists don’t build condominiums, and hipsters don’t tear down public housing. Yes, these groups signal changes that may lead to gentrification. However, we should be more concerned with the actions of landlords, developers, and city politicians. Gentrification happens at the neighborhood level. In the 1960s, the first observers of gentrification noticed that middle-class homeowners seemed to “tiptoe” into neighborhoods and gradually alter their social character. Today, this quaint picture has been erased by gentrification in the form of massive “urban revitalization” projects. These changes can bring rapid influxes of new residents, a completely new physical environment, and major cultural shifts. Neighborhoods are affected, yes, but the forces driving this are operating at city and even regional levels, pushed forward by powerful actors in industry and government.

Kern] ends with a decisive call to action, broken down into small, accessible, and implementable steps. It emphasizes that gentrification touches everyone's lives, and that everyone therefore has a responsibility to devote their specific skills to reducing its impact on vulnerable populations. Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies is a humane analysis of the many contributing and consequential factors of urban takeovers."A concise but also comprehensive account of gentrification, offering solutions and understanding of one of the major social battlegrounds of our times." A concise but also comprehensive account of gentrification, offering solutions and understanding of one of the major social battlegrounds of our times. Danny Dorling, author of Inequality and The 1%

A concise but also comprehensive account of gentrification, offering solutions and understanding of one of the major social battlegrounds of our times.” Our conversations about gentrification have grown more convoluted in recent years. To those who casually invoke the teBut if gentrification is not inevitable, what can we do to stop the tide? In response, Kern proposes a genuinely decolonial, feminist, queer, anti-gentrification. One that demands the right to the city for everyone and the return of land and reparations for those who have been displaced. In Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies, Leslie Kern travels to Toronto, Vancouver, New York, London and Paris to look at how gentrification is killing our cities and what we can do about it. She examines the often invisible forces that shape urban neighbourhoods, including settler colonialism, racism, sexism, ageism, ableism and how city lovers can work together to turn the tide. CBC, 60 works of nonfiction to watch for in fall 2022 First observed in 1950s London, and theorised by leading thinkers such as Ruth Glass, Jane Jacobs and Sharon Zukin, this devastating process of displacement now can be found in every city and most neighbourhoods. Beyond the Yoga studio, farmer’s market and tattoo parlour, gentrification is more than a metaphor, but impacts the most vulnerable communities. Kern proposes an intersectional way of looking at the crisis that seek to reveal the violence based on class, race, gender, and sexuality. She argues that gentrification is not natural. That it cannot be understood in economic terms, or by class. That it is not a question of taste. That it can only be measured only by the physical displacement of certain people. Rather, she argues, it is a continuation of the settler colonial project that removed natives from their land. And it can be seen today is rising rents and evictions, transformed retail areas, increased policing, and broken communities. Unfortunately, these kinds of changes are often portrayed as a natural evolution of city space, rather than as the result of deliberate policy making and sets of choices by powerful actors. We conflate the idea that cities change (of course they do!) with the idea that neighborhoods are inevitably taken over by wealthier, whiter residents. This is so dangerous, in my opinion, because it means that many people don’t question the nature of these changes or stop to ask who is really benefitting. It also means that even for those of us concerned about gentrification, we can end up feeling defeated because it seems like it’s an unstoppable force. What does gentrification look like? Can we even agree that it is a process that replaces one community with another? It is a question of class? Or of economic opportunity? Who does it affect the most? Is there any way to combat it? In Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies(Verso, 2022), Leslie Kern travels from Toronto, New York, London, Paris, and San Francisco and scrutinises the myth and lies that surround this most urgent urban crisis of our times.

Soon architects and urban planners in the United States were also discussing gentrification, frequently putting the term in quotation marks and flagging it as an imported neologism. So it was treated by The New York Times upon its first appearance in 1974 and for the first few years afterward. By early 1979, a Times columnist risked casual mention of “a Harvard Business School graduate putting his money in gentrification instead of pork bellies,” with reasonable confidence that readers would know the word; in the 1980s, it was in frequent use throughout the paper. Perhaps the clearest sign of its full incorporation into the vernacular came when an entry defining gentrification was posted to the Urban Dictionary, a crowdsourced reference mainly covering slang and idioms, with special attention to innovations in profanity. Louisa Hann recently attained a PhD in English and American studies from the University of Manchester, specialising in the political economy of HIV/AIDS theatres. She has published work on the memorialisation of HIV/AIDS on the contemporary stage and the use of documentary theatre as a neoliberal harm reduction tool. She is currently working on a monograph based on her doctoral thesis. You can get in touch with her at [email protected]. Listen to more episodes on: In 10 succinct chapters, Kern defines and outlines the current arguments surrounding gentrification while focusing on the inability to adequately discuss it with each other or within communities. Each chapter contains solid examples of where, when, and why gentrification is appearing in communities, and what the impact is on each respective group. The impact of gentrification on race, class, gender, age, and Indigenous peoples are astutely explored...A first class analysis and tool kit."

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Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies challenges a number of well-entrenched perspectives on gentrification from the anticapitalist left as well as the market-minded right...Kern's book is thorough in its intersectionality. Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed An excellent job of puncturing the myths and exposing the ideologies that make gentrification seem natural, inevitable, and desirable. And with incisive clarity, she develops an account of what a radical, intersectional anti-gentrification politics might look like." Kern is a wonderful writer, and this compelling, important, and highly original intervention in the gentrification debates is a staggering tour de force. At once a devastating critique of the limitations of established perspectives on gentrification and a convincing plea for an intersectional approach, this book offers sparklingly clear analysis and numerous possibilities for political action. Anyone who reads it will never forget it" A sweeping and fluid new book on gentrification. Kern expertly weaves theory, concepts, and up-to-date debates about gentrification together, making it accessible not only to urban scholars but to general readers too. A superb book I would have liked to have written but didn't. A must-read for anyone interested in gentrification. Loretta Lees, Director of the Initiative on Cities, Boston University, USA Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies is an accessible read thanks to Kern's storytelling skills and her conscious intent to write for a broad audience outside of academia."

Kern is a wonderful writer, and this compelling, important, and highly original intervention in the gentrification debates is a staggering tour de force. At once a devastating critique of the limitations of established perspectives on gentrification and a convincing plea for an intersectional approach, this book offers sparklingly clear analysis and numerous possibilities for political action. Anyone who reads it will never forget it Tom Slater, author of Shaking Up the City: Ignorance, Inequality, and the Urban Question So I guess my question is: when there’s a housing shortage, how can cities alleviate that without contributing to gentrification?First observed in 1950s London, and theorised by leading thinkers such as Ruth Glass, Jane Jacobs and Sharon Zukin, this devastating process of displacement now can be found in every city and most neighbourhoods. Beyond the Yoga studio, farmer’s market and tattoo parlour, gentrification is more than a metaphor, but impacts the most vulnerable communities. Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies challenges a number of well-entrenched perspectives on gentrification from the anticapitalist left as well as the market-minded right…Kern’s book is thorough in its intersectionality.” You write, in the conclusion, that “openness to different ways of thinking about and practising our relationship to the city and all of its human and nonhuman inhabitants is necessary.” Strange to think it, but the word “gentrification” started out as a piece of social science jargon. The British sociologist Ruth Glass coined it in a book from 1964 to name a process underway in parts of London, where whole working-class neighborhoods were morphing into zones of a conspicuous poshness. The process, once underway, moved rapidly “until,” she wrote, “all or most of the original working-class occupiers [were] displaced, and the whole social character of the district is changed.” First observed in 1950s London, and theorised by leading thinkers such as Ruth Glass, Jane Jacobs and Sharon Zukin, this devastating process of displacement now can be found in every city and most neighbourhoods. Beyond the Yoga studio, farmer's market and tattoo parlour, gentrification is more than a metaphor, but impacts the most vulnerable communities.