What's in a Word?

Some of the disagreement about gentrification stems from a disagreement about its meaning. Here are a few alternate definitions from various sources:

Maureen Kennedy and Paul Leonard in a 2001 report for the Brookings Institution (a nonprofit, bipartisan Washington think tank):

the process of neighborhood change that results in the replacement of lower income residents with higher income ones (emphasis added)

Loretta Lees, Tom Slater, and Elvin Wyly in Gentrification (Routledge, 2008):

the transformation of a working-class or vacant area of the central city into middle-class residential and/or commercial use

Neil Smith, one of gentrification's foremost scholars and critics, in the Dictionary of Human Geography (2000):

the reinvestment of CAPITAL at the urban center, which is designed to produce space for a more affluent class of people than currently occupies that space (emphasis in original)

While these definitions are indeed very similar, there is an important difference. Kennedy and Leonard (Brookings Inst.) define gentrification as the 'replacement' (read 'displacement') of lower-income residents. On the other hand, the other definitions do not explicitly equate gentrification with displacement. Instead, displacement is seen as a frequent byproduct of gentrification.

It is difficult to take a stand on an issue that is defined so ambiguously. Therefore, further discussion on the topic will concentrate on the issue of equitable development, defined by Kennedy and Leonard as

the creation and maintenance of economically and socially diverse communities that are stable over the long term, through means that generate a minimum of transition costs that fall unfairly on lower income residents

This is certainly a concept that I can get behind, and I think most would agree, despite your political persuasions. This begs the question: is development in Cincinnati equitable? I will be revisiting this question through further posts. Stay tuned.