The following videos are a series of TedX talks that explain gentrification and its impact upon low-income urban communities. Each speaker defines gentrification, illustrates a different perspective on its implications upon neighborhoods affected, and offers unique solutions to eliminate the displacement and loss of agency experienced by previous inhabitants to the gentrified communities. I hope these videos give you additional insight to gentrification’s impact upon urban communities and how we can seek to alleviate the negative cultural effects it brings into urban spaces.

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“What We Don’t Understand About Gentrification” by Professor Stacey A. Sutton

In “What We Don’t Understand About Gentrification,” Prof. Sutton points out the difference between gentrification and revitalization, and she discusses the direct and indirect displacement that results from its entry into urban spaces. She ends her TedX Talk by calling gentrification a “social justice problem” and arguing for progressive policies including rent control, incremental land taxes, and acting early against gentrification and subsequent displacement. Stacey A. Sutton is an Associate Professor at the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago.¹

“Gentrification is Not Inevitable: Care and Resistance” by Winifred Curran

Winifred Curran’s TedX Talk refutes gentrification’s inevitability in urban communities and calls for more “care-full cities” that contain adequate resources and acting as a foundation for social justice. Central to Curran’s argument is calling for collective care and a passion for making one’s community a home for all neighbors-not just for an individual’s family. During her discussion, Curran uses her children’s Kindergarten as a perfect example in the power of collective care within a community. Parental activists at the school allied themselves with the Teachers Union in Chicago and challenged the school’s incoming principal to have a plan of maintaining the school’s diverse culture in the presence of gentrification.  Professor Curran in an Associate Professor of Geography and Sustainable Urban Development at DePaul University.²

“The Spatial Politics of Gentrification in North Brooklyn” by Brian Martinez

Brian Martinez speaks about his personal experiences in his neighborhood of North Brooklyn with gentrification and offers his own solutions to bridge the “artists and techies” entering the urban community with the neighborhood’s original inhabitants in his TedX Talk at Colby College. In “The Spatial Politics of Gentrification in North Brooklyn,” Martinez described the tension over neighborhood control between the gentryifying-group and the original inhabitants of the community. To better exemplify this, Martinez includes a video called “Mission Playground is Not For Sale” from San Francisco which highlights the different perceptions of community spaces among gentrifiers and low-income urban neighbors (this video is also available on the What’s the Problem page). He argues that in order to bridge all community members after gentrification, increased understanding, respect, and sensitivity is required from the gentrifiers coming into the urban space. Martinez is currently a senior at Colby College.

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