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Positive aspect gentrification Joris Hermans

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Positive aspect gentrification Joris Hermans

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When Amal had stopped crying, she apologised. "I wake up so sick, you know? I have to go to study but I feel so sick." A victim of domestic violence and now a single mother, she lives with her three young children in grimy temporary accommodation in Tooting, south London. She was telling me that Wandsworth council, which has a legal obligation to house the family, tried sending them to a rented flat on the outskirts of Newcastle, then suggested West Bromwich. She'd never heard of either place. "I said to them, 'I already told you, I have a job interview in London, I am studying in London, my children are at school in London, my ex-husband visits every week to help with the children.'"

West Bromwich, the council insisted, was her last chance. Otherwise she would be declared "intentionally homeless", and be put out with her young children on the street. "They said, 'just one option: West Bromwich.' If I said no, they wouldn't give me another chance."

This was one London council's response to the housing crisis - to spend £5m on properties for their poorer families, hundreds of miles away, while across the borough, the Meccano scaffolds rose up for the £15bn development of Nine Elms, where most flats will cost more than £1m.

The same year I met Amal, in 2014, on the other side of London the now notorious Focus E15 Mums were stepping up their campaign to remain in the city where they'd been born. "Nine billion pounds on the Olympics and they're telling us and our babies we have to go live in Hastings," lamented 19-year-old Adora Chilaisha during their occupation of East Thames housing association offices, as the hokey cokey played out in the background. "There's no way I'm going anywhere," she said. "My boy Desean is one, and I don't want him to grow up away from his family, from his home. I don't know anyone in Hastings."

Two years later, both Amal and Adora and their children are still in London after a long and exhausting struggle against the authorities to simply stay where they are. Meanwhile, those same authorities prostrate themselves before luxury property developers, Chinese business conglomerates and buy-to-let rentiers.

Opposition to gentrification is rapidly becoming less marginal, and more organised

Gentrification is an intensely emotive issue with almost endless potential for argument. That shouldn't be in the least bit surprising - it speaks to fundamental questions of home, identity and community, how those places define us, and how we define them. The process of displacement of society's poorest members is, of course, not a new thing. You can trace it back centuries, to a time when there was a literal gentry responsible for social cleansing; when the bailiffs were on horseback and "artisanal" was a descriptor of a pre-industrial social class, rather than vogueish hipster branding.

Nonetheless, there is something of the zeitgeist about gentrification. Until a few years ago, only academic geographers and housing campaigners used the term. In recent years, however, the subject has entered the mainstream, and the word has become increasingly ubiquitous in what seems like almost every city across the world. But it is not only the debate that has intensified: opposition to gentrification is rapidly becoming less marginal, and more organised. While it is easy to locate historical rent strikes and neighbourhood uprisings to what you might call gentrification avant la lettre, for the first time, gentrification itself is a serious point of political contention - and resistance.

The tipping point in the UK came last autumn, when members of Class War's so-called Fuck Parade, flaming torches in hand, daubed "SCUM" on the windows of east London's quintessential hipster cafe, Cereal Killer. The restaurant was already castigated by Channel Four News for serving £4 bowls of cereal in a borough in which thousands of poor families can't afford to feed their children. Although several people, myself included, argued that the bearded cereal entrepreneurs were hardly gentrification's true villains, the news was reported around the world - not just as a riot that launched a thousand hot takes, but as the expression of a rising tide of anger. The issue had leaped into the mainstream.

Last month, the pre-Christmas episode of This American Life featured an astonishing segment about a San Francisco dad going to see his six-year-old daughter in her school play, and discovering that the entire show was a fierce polemic against the malign influence of tech companies making the city "a sterile playground for the rich". The play culminates in a huge demonstration outside city hall, with the young children holding placards reading "resistance = love of community" and singing that the city is not for sale.

So why now? The short answer is demand and supply: demand for well-positioned urban space is higher than ever, while the supply of housing options for the urban poor, and the strength and willingness of the state to provide them, is weaker than in decades. In urban policy, we are witnessing the triumph of the market and the capitulation of the state. If an area becomes desirable to those with money - regardless if it was hitherto undesirable or dominated by public housing - then sooner or later, the wealthy will get what they want. "The problem," said Yolande Barthes from Savills estate agents at a Guardian Live debate last month, "is the area of London that people want to live in hasn't expanded at the same rate as the population."

As London's affordable housing crisis deepens - spurred by the collapse of new social housing construction, and the sale of hundreds of thousands more social flats under right-to-buy - the galvanisation of the British capital's local communities has been astonishing. This customised Google Map, created by Action East End, drops pins on the map for each hyper-local campaign. From Save Chrisp Street Market in the east to Save Portobello Road Market in the west, the campaigns - many formed only in the last year - range from demands to protect existing social housing, to protests against new luxury flat developments or against the destruction of community assets such as much-loved markets, nurseries, pubs and small businesses. At the time of writing, there are 53 different campaigns.

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Focus E15 Mums fought eviction from the Carpenters Estate. Photograph: Jess Hurd/Guardian

One is Reclaim Brixton, who formed in March 2015 in opposition to the rapidly accelerating gentrification of the south London area. Co-founder Cyndi Anafo's mother used to run a Ghanaian grocery in the covered market that has recently been rebranded Brixton Village, a target destination for food tourists and wealthy Londoners. Via social media, Anafo and friends arranged meetings, leading to a carnival-cum-demonstration in Brixton town centre that drew thousands and attracted widespread national media attention. "For about 20 years it's been on the edge of gentrification," Anafo says. "But the last five or six years it's all come to the fore - Reclaim Brixton came about chiefly through frustration."

'Middle-aged, middle-class dinosaurs ... determined to keep London shitty'

Giles Coren on anti-gentrifiers

While the transformation of Brixton is visible in the proliferation of more expensive shops, bars and restaurants, and the influx of a non-resident, affluent demographic visiting places like Champagne + Fromage, Anafo is clear that the cultural and commercial changes are not the main event. "It all comes down to housing," she says. "Being a kind of 'accidental activist', and getting to know all the existing housing groups, made me realise the severity of the situation on the ground in Brixton, meeting people who are on eviction lists. People moan about particular types of businesses or shops, or estate agents like Foxtons, but my feeling is that rent stabilisation is something that could help everyone."

Last June, Berlin made headlines when it began enforcing rent controls for all, limiting landlords to charging new tenants more than 10% above the local average. The previous year rents had gone up by more than 9%. "We don't want a situation like in London or Paris," said Reiner Wild of the Berlin Tenants' Association. Such strident legislation to protect poorer citizens does not just drop out of the sky, of course. It emerges from a history of equally robust civic campaigning on housing, gentrification and the right to the city.

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The Tacheles in Berlin was formed in the 1990s as a squat by artists seeking to save the building from demolition. It closed in 2012. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty

Nottingham University geographer Alex Vasudevan, author of a recent book on the subject, Metropolitan Preoccupations, says Berlin is in a sense diametrically different from London - it's a very poor city, where wages are one-third lower than its western German neighbours. "In the wake of unification Berlin has seen waves of gentrification, while remaining very poor by German standards," says Vasudevan. "Before the fall of the wall, there were subsidies given to squatters to renovate buildings, and they would be legalised as a result - a kind of compromise. But that programme ended in 2002, and since the wall came down Berlin has become this laboratory of neoliberal urban governance."

The architects of gentrification are extremely careful not to talk about it

As in London, Vasudevan says, funding for social housing collapsed, and simultaneously thousands of what used to be social housing properties were privatised. "Berlin tried to become a financial centre. It failed. So then they went with the whole 'creative city' agenda, or at least a version of it, connected with touristification and this kind of 'Airbnb urbanism'. There's a great Aibrnb map of Kreuzberg: until recently there was only one property in that neighbourhood that was available on the normal rental market - everything else was Airbnb."

Grassroots resistance in Berlin has revolved mostly around "very local geographies", such as saving one particular building, park, housing project, or even fighting the eviction of a much-loved Turkish grocery store. Nonetheless, Vasudevan explains that each victory has galvanised the city as a whole, and made gentrification even more of a common talking point than it is in London. The challenge now has been scaling up, making connections, and sharing information between neighbourhoods, and even internationally.

"They've managed to get the rent cap by just being incredibly well-organised, and absolutely dogged - and they are also good at talking to each other. You have local working-class Germans who remained in Kreuzberg, and Turkish migrants collaborating; so everything is written in both German and Turkish, they're all networked."

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The gigantic crocheted tribute to Wes Anderson which appeared at Bushwick Flea Market in Brooklyn. Photograph: London Kaye

They're also talking to the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) in Spain, the grassroots group whose phenomenal success of blocking thousands of evictions propelled its spokeswoman, Ada Colau, to become mayor of Barcelona. Spain's housing crisis has been so destructive that the PAH's use of community self-organisation and support, and direct action to block evictions, has been copied across the world. I've seen Spanish parents in tears in PAH meetings, being comforted by their foreign-born (often Latin American) neighbours, before rallying to take on the banks trying to evict them. I've also seen Sí Se Puede, the PAH documentary, screened to housing activists in London. The international sharing of both tactics and inspiration highlights globalisation's double-edged sword: property developers and investors may be operating simultaneously in Berlin, London and Barcelona, but the people resisting gentrification in these cities are beginning to network themselves, too.

What remains to be seen is whether campaigning against gentrification will grow into any city-wide protests. Certainly, the "G" word has been tapped as the new culprit for a lot of urban tensions emerging from the influx of younger, whiter, wealthier people into city cores. After a "yarn-bombing" artist, with the support of the hipster Bushwick Flea market, put up a 15ft crochet homage to Wes Anderson on the exterior wall of his family home in Bushwick without asking for permission, New Yorker Will Giron wrote: "Gentrification has gotten to the point where every time I see a group of young white millennials in the hood my heart starts racing and a sense of anxiety starts falling over me."

***

The argument that gentrification represents a kind of urban neocolonialism is hard to miss. Spike Lee made it clear with his viral rant against "Christopher Columbus syndrome" in Brooklyn. Indeed, after decades of "white flight" to the US suburbs, since 2010 American cities have seen increases in white populations. Protests in 2014 targeted Microsoft's corporate shuttle buses in Seattle; not only did they raise rents, went the argument, they didn't integrate, adding to social tensions in a city where working-class African-Americans were being pushed out. That same year, a video went viral of (older, whiter) Dropbox employees trying to get rid of mostly Latino young people from a football pitch in San Francisco's Mission district. (The Latinos protested, and won.)

It is surely the higher-profile, less sensitive invasions that get the headlines, but they speak to a deeper malaise of newly arriving communities with no interest in connecting with the existing populations they are displacing. "Don't let the door hit you on the way out," they seem to say.

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Gentrification X: how an academic argument became the people's protest

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In the first of a special series on the impact of gentrification on cities around the world, Dan Hancox meets victims and beneficiaries of this highly emotive issue - and finds that the anger is real, and resistance is coming to a head

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Gentrification isn't a benign process: it forces people from their homes | Dawn Foster

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Few things are more likely to make your latte taste bitter than being confronted with the human reality of gentrification.

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Across the country in Brooklyn's rapidly gentrifying Crown Heights neighborhood, locals lashed out over a new restaurant with decor that included fake bullet holes and a menu that offered a drink called "40 ounce rosé" (malt liquor and wine) served in a paper bag.

Over the past few decades, gentrification debates have migrated from the pages of academic journals into the streets and the mainstream press.

The word, in many ways, is tinged with negativity. And for good reason. In tight real estate markets, it can lead to development that privileges profits over community and shuts people out of neighborhoods they have lived in for decades.

But what about cities struggling to overcome the threat of bankruptcy like Hartford, the capital of Connecticut? How does gentrification look in New South cities like Austin and Nashville, where mid-century urban planning destroyed residential communities and left downtowns largely unoccupied?

While doing research on the economic health of Hartford, one of us asked the head of a downtown Hartford nonprofit about gentrification.

"We could use some of that. But we are so far away from it, it's not even an issue."

If residential patterns and urban areas vary, so too must the story of gentrification. In other words: Have big cities hijacked the gentrification debate?

The origins of gentrification

"Gentrification" is a term coined by the British sociologist Ruth Glass in 1964 to explain the return of the middle class to London's center city.

In the US, academics and urban planners first started extensively talking about and debating gentrification in the 1970s. Between 1950 and 1970, urban manufacturing went overseas and white middle-class city-dwellers moved to the suburbs.

Concerns over blighted urban centers grew. Sociologists, planners and geographers found new cultural and economic trends to study related to the rise of artist and middle-class loft living and the return of capital investment to urban centers.

Today, the meaning of gentrification no longer refers to the "return to the center." Instead, it usually means that new and affluent residents or developers are investing in a neighborhood.

This infusion of capital changes the relationships within and between communities. Demand increases and property values rise; poorer residents are displaced as wealthier people move in; new shops appear and the public image of the neighborhood changes. High demand can incentivize landlords to evict residents, at times using egregious practices -- like hiring someone to harass renters -- in order to escalate rental prices.

Extreme gentrification takes place in the highest-rent, highest-demand places like San Francisco or New York's Greenwich Village. Rents in New York's once-booming Bleecker Street have become so astronomical that vacancy is now a problem of too much demand, rather than not enough: Property owners now keep their storefronts empty, hoping a major chain will want to locate in the high-visibility district.

Gentrification isn't all negative. In an influential and counterintuitive study, Lance Freeman and Frank Braconi, who study urban development, found that poorer residents were less likely to move out of gentrifying neighborhoods than non-gentrifying neighborhoods. Safety improves with gentrification, and so can services and amenities.

While some neighborhoods experience positive outcomes, gentrification studies are mostly concerned with access to housing, public space and the loss of community. It seems impossible not to view New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles or Boston through the lens of skyrocketing real estate and displaced residents.

What about other kinds of places?

The urban in between

When cities experienced population and economic decline decades ago, some, like New York and Boston, found ways to rebound. Others, like Detroit or Connecticut's largest city, Hartford, did not.

Hartford continues to experience unusual and difficult financial circumstances. The city has low home-ownership rates and high poverty rates. But maybe more significant is that the city is the state's capital. Half of the city's real estate is made up of government buildings, educational facilities or hospitals -- all of which are nontaxable. With a $65 million deficit, Hartford is now on the verge of bankruptcy.

Where is Hartford's gentrification? Or, more precisely, is there a kind of gentrification that would be welcomed in a place like Hartford? A place like Hartford could learn from smaller cities, which are less afflicted by the bloated real estate and speculation that plague places like New York and San Francisco.

In a de-industrialized small city like North Adams, Massachusetts, for example, gentrification is welcomed. The old mill city near the Berkshire Mountains had its sprawling electrical manufacturing plant, Sprague Electric, transformed into a contemporary fine art museum, MASS MoCA. The museum, in turn, helped transformed the city from a shrinking post-industrial community into an arts and cultural destination. The museum injected $34.4 million into the local economy in 2015, drawing tourists, lowering unemployment levels and creating opportunities for new businesses.

Tourism jobs are not the skilled union jobs Sprague Electric once offered. But without other opportunities, the community welcomes this kind of gentrification. The town was built for 20,000, but only has 13,000 residents. The community wants -- indeed, it needs -- more people.

There is also what we could call "empty lot" gentrification. Gentrification doesn't always displace existing populations. Consider cities like Nashville, Tennessee and Austin, Texas, where suburbs bloomed in the postwar era. The center cities never housed the heavy manufacturing of northeastern and Rust Belt cities; until recently, they remained sites of light manufacturing, parking garages and empty lots.

In the early 2000s, former Austin mayor (and real estate entrepreneur) Will Wynn sought to build more residential properties in downtown Austin, and Austin has since seen dramatic residential growth. Empty lot gentrification has its own issues: It can create downtowns for elites. Concerns over gentrification beyond Austin's city center have grown, and Austin's famed music venues are getting priced out.

A tale of two kinds of cities

In bloated real estate markets like New York or San Francisco, critics of gentrification see even the smallest changes -- a new park or a new coffee shop -- as harbingers for inevitable neighborhood ruin.

For cities needing gentrification, the issues are different. The conversation about popular cities has made academics and policy analysts timid about gentrification. Ailing small cities need to increase visibility to attract more people and develop a stable tax-base.

Hardly a call for free market-driven housing policy, there is no reason policies that minimize the negative effects of gentrification -- rent control, mixed income housing and limited equity cooperatives -- cannot be combined with efforts to attract the middle class.

The gentrification debates should also not blind us to what made New York and San Francisco attractive cities in the first place. The principles of urban activist Jane Jacobs for healthy city life still hold: diverse uses of streets and public places, mixed-use buildings, a variety of economic and commercial opportunities and local excitement about community building.

But simply getting people into the city cannot be overlooked.

In North Adams, new opportunities come from investing in the arts. In Pittsburgh, an openness to technical innovation, museums, universities and a dynamic restaurant culture are creating national buzz about a city that continues to lose population. Detroit just hired the nation's first chief story-teller to help move the narrative away from stale stereotypes. Throughout European cities, night mayors are charged with inspiring excitement around urban nightlife.

Hartford will never become New York. But why not look to North Adams, Pittsburgh or Columbus for examples of a different kind of gentrification?

Weird Wave Coffee, in other words, might be welcomed in Connecticut.

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Gentrification? Bring it on, say some cities

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Across the country in Brooklyn's rapidly gentrifying Crown Heights neighborhood, locals lashed out over a new restaurant with decor that included fake bullet holes and a menu that offered a drink called "40 ounce rosé" (malt liquor and wine) served in a paper bag.

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Why is gentrification a problem?

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Teds Talk Stacey Sutton

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What we don’t understand about gentrification | Stacey Sutton | TEDxNewYork

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"Here gentrification happens very quickly. Every month some 'nice' restaurant or shop opens. The old name of my neighbourhood (Kinkerbuurt) was changed and rebranded to 'Hallenkwartier'. I would enjoy many of the changes if I knew others could enjoy it as well. But poor people have to leave, social housing is sold off, and rich people and tourists move in.

"Here gentrification happens very quickly. Every month some 'nice' restaurant or shop opens. The old name of my neighbourhood (Kinkerbuurt) was changed and rebranded to 'Hallenkwartier'. I would enjoy many of the changes if I knew others could enjoy it as well. But poor people have to leave, social housing is sold off, and rich people and tourists move in.

There was a squatting action, a demonstration and protests against the rebranding of the neighbourhood. I have seen posters and banners on houses. But the city council is just selling off social housing. Waiting time for a house in this neighbourhood used to be eight years, now it is 18 years. The biggest ruling party has even worse plans; they want to give the social houses only to working people, saying jobless people should leave the city.

I can't believe what Amsterdam has become, it was very different 10 years ago (I've lived here for 22 years). Generally rent is easier to control with rent caps than housing prices, so this ideal of having property should be discouraged. We have a great tradition of social housing corporations in the Netherlands - some cities had 50% social housing. Now the whole way of thinking is about extracting money, not creating communities. When prices go up, they say 'the market is doing well'. When scarcity is applauded, that is very wrong." (Pieter Voogt)

Montreal, Canada: 'New restaurants can't be located near existing ones'

"Various parts of Montreal have been experiencing gentrification. In Saint-Henri, a former manufacturing neighbourhood, urban renewal has been very contentious, particularly with regards to the commercial strip, Notre-Dame Street, becoming well known as a restaurant district. The borough council has just introduced a new bylaw restricting the number of restaurants on the strip, imposing a 30-metre restriction, whereby new restaurants cannot be located within 30 metres of an existing restaurant." (Giovanni Paquin)

Silicon Valley, US: '$1,000 a month rent hikes are not uncommon'

"Gentrification has been business as usual for Silicon Valley for decades. My entire family has left over the years to more affordable places for the working class. Today gentrification is even more extreme thanks to Google headquarters being here. Every time there's a boom in Silicon Valley, something like six times more jobs are created than homes built. People are casually displaced every day and $1,000 a month rent hikes are not uncommon. We have hundreds of people living on the streets now in RVs.

In the end gentrification will create huge social unrest and we shall all - rich and poor - suffer the consequences

Mountain View should implement policies that restrict office growth unless it correlates with commensurate housing growth. City councils are hesitant to advocate that way because they're scared a company like Google would leave and go to another city. The Mountain View Tenants Coalition is now campaigning for ballot measure V, which is a rent control law. We collected 7,311 signatures in a monumental community effort." (Daniel DeBolt)

Bath, UK: 'Gentrification will create huge social unrest'

"In Foxhill, 544 homes are being threatened with demolition by a 'social housing landlord' who is also a developer: their plans would result in a loss of 241 social homes. Owners would be forced out of the city. Tenants would be rehoused in the area but probably with much higher rents. The prospect of seeing our lovely peaceful village-type estate being demolished and replaced with upmarket homes at top market prices is creating anxiety and illness. A petition by our Foxhill Residents Association opposing the demolition was submitted to Parliament. A lot of residents hope the project will not receive planning permission.

There are 6,000 people on the housing waiting list in Bath, so a project that would create a loss of social homes is not acceptable. The people who keep our city running are needed and need homes: what will Bath do if the dustmen, the waiters, the chefs, the nurses, the childminders, the recyclers are forced to live outside of this expensive city? In the end gentrification will create huge social unrest and we shall all - rich and poor - suffer the consequences." (Frieda Buckley)

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'Lisbon's historic centre has suffered a growing gentrification process.' Photograph: Alamy

Lisbon, Portugal: 'Landlords evict people to start tourist businesses every day'

"I live in Lisbon's historical centre, which has been suffering a growing gentrification process in the last four years with rising tourism and no regulation for short-term rentals. Rent prices are now completely unaffordable. Entire blocks of homes are being converted to short-term rental apartments and hostels. Landlords are evicting people to start a touristic business every day.

We need new laws that encourage landlords to choose long-term renting, instead of short term or leaving apartments vacant. We should also have rent controlled apartments and a centralised office, like in Paris, that decides a price ceiling for every rental apartment in the city.

This is a turning point. The city is becoming an entirely segregated, exclusive place. Local and national governments are doing nothing to stop this happen. The issue of gentrification has been dismissed or called collateral damage. Some activist groups have been stirring the waters, but it is very difficult to fight the power of money especially when it's supported by government." (Catarina)

Newcastle, UK: 'I want to believe that cities can be both regenerated and inclusive'

"Twenty-five years ago there were riots near where I live, in the west end of Newcastle. Fifteen years ago there was talk of demolition. Now, after regeneration efforts, we've got cleaner streets, reduced crime, and a revived local economy - due in no small part to immigration, by the way. The housing crisis is a scandal. But conflating it with regeneration, and damning cafes, cycle lanes, enterprise and opportunity as 'gentrification' runs the risk of undermining efforts to make places better. It also lets our policy makers, whose actions are making matters worse, off the hook. I want to believe that towns and cities can be both regenerated and inclusive." (Jo Ellis)

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'What does it mean to build a new Chicago? There is already a Chicago here.' Photograph: George Rose/Getty Images

Chicago, US: 'I'm afraid of the day when the stores, the people, the library are all gone'

"You can't live on the north-west side of Chicago without talking about gentrification. There is a lot of action being taken to counteract it. From civil disobediences on the luxury towers being constructed on Milwaukee Avenue to rallies against evictions throughout the neighbourhood, gentrification is one of the most contentious issues facing our city.

The push for affordable housing is coming from the community, not elected officials. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has a slogan called 'Building a new Chicago'; what does that mean? There is already a Chicago here. There is obviously an agenda to gentrify and attract tourists to make Chicago a 'global city'. We should be subsidising affordable housing, instead of downtown hotels. We need rent control and eviction laws. As a lifelong resident of the north-west side of Chicago, I'm afraid of there coming a day when I don't recognise my neighbourhood, when the stores, the people, the library are all gone. That gets to the root of gentrification: this loss of familiarity and home." (Lynda Lopez)

Buenos Aires, Argentina: 'Most people have to move away when they start a family'
"Vivo en un barrio (Palermo), que se fue transformando de un barrio familiar hace 20 años atrás a una atracción turística y muy caro, donde un apartamento es prácticamente incomprable. El gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires no hace absolutamente nada por esto, y en todo el perímetro de la ciudad existe una aumento del valor muy superior al del ingreso, lo que origina que la mayoría de la gente cuando forma una familia deba mudarse lejos ... o vivir amontonada en pocos metros cuadrados. La existencia de vivienda social y la construcción de casas construidas especfícamente para familias en vez de apartamentos de lujo, ayudaría evitar la gentrificació." (Raùl Enrique Rodriguez)
("I live in a district (Palermo) that has transformed from a family district 20 years ago to a tourist attraction and is very expensive, where an apartment is practically unaffordable. The city government has done absolutely nothing for this, and the surrounding areas of Greater Buenos Aires have increased in value far exceeding people's incomes, meaning that most people have to move away when they start a family, or live piled up into a few metres squared. The existence of social housing and the construction of family homes instead of only luxury apartments would help prevent gentrification." Translation by Natalie Pilato)

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These #boycottairbnb posters in Berlin complain that the service is contributing to gentrification. Photograph: Agata Lisiak

Berlin, Germany: 'Rent caps and Airbnb restrictions need to be more strictly enforced'

"While gentrification in Berlin is harder to recognise than in New York or London due to the low base from which rent prices started at, the percentage increases are extreme. The city has taken some steps to keep prices down (for instance by capping rent increases) but this has also ignited the popularity of Airbnb and similar sites, where renters can take advantage of these laws by paying low rents themselves, but making huge profits through short-term rentals. This then takes a number of apartments off the market, increasing rent prices and shortages.

An acquaintance has rented four flats at a low rate, and rents them all out through Airbnb. It's become a very profitable full-time job for him. The city has put some restrictions on the amount of days you can rent your property, but these are apparently easy to evade and not well enforced. The city is still catching up to the use of new technologies. Rent caps and restrictions on Airbnb are a start, but they need to be more strictly enforced." (Daniel)

Somerville, US: 'We need more community control of land'

"Gentrification is out of control here in Somerville, Massachusetts. Property values are increasing at an average of 10% per year, condo conversion and rent increases are rampant, and new development is pricing out small businesses and contributing to displacement of low-income and immigrant residents.

I'm part of Union United, a broad-based coalition of residents, businesses, churches, unions, and community organisations. We are fighting for a voice in new development, so that we can have decision-making power over the future of our neighbourhood and ensure affordable housing, good jobs, small business protections, and other amenities. A binding community benefits agreement between community members and developers would be a great first step. Longer term, we need more community control of land through land trust and public housing, along with rent control and a real living wage." (Anonymous)

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Mexico City: 'La voz de Polanco is rejecting the transformation of local houses into commercial uses.' Photograph: fitopardo/Getty Images

Mexico City, Mexico: 'Nothing can stop gentrification in my city'

"My neighbourhood is called Polanco. Recently shops and restaurants have been moving into the old mansions and their occupants have moved elsewhere. I believe gentrification is a positive and natural mechanism in the city. Some organisations such as 'La voz de Polanco' are rejecting the recent transformation of houses into commercial uses and land development in general, but I don't support them.

I think nothing is capable of stopping gentrification in my city. Its negative effect such as displacement of people should be tackled by a housing plan that includes affordable apartments for rent inside more expensive buildings, sponsored by the state. Displacement of poor people out of gentrified neighbourhoods is a serious issue here: people have to move to housing projects that are located 50km away from the city centre. But land developers are not to blame, they respond to the free trade economy. Their effects expose the irresponsibility of the state in providing affordable housing to those in need." (Lorenzo Rocha)

Gentrification is a global problem. It's time we found a better solution

London, UK: 'It has created a class and race divide'

"I have a council flat that I was given after 15 years of being homeless. I'm from a working-class background and have always worked. Affordable housing has always been an issue for my friends and family. No one wanted to live here when I first moved in, but now it is considered a highly desirable area. We have seen the mass selling-off of council flats on the estate to property developers, the private and buy-to-rent markets. This has put a lot of pressure on tenants like myself, with our homes constantly under threat as the council tries to find ways to evict or move you out of the area to free up properties to sell, creating anxiety and vulnerability.

What gets forgotten is that we have a diverse community of people in my block who know each other and help each other out. My experience of people who have bought flats is that they don't actually want to live in a diverse community. Shop prices have gone up locally, expensive coffee shops and restaurants have opened. It has created a class and race divide that didn't exist here before. The tenants' association has been good at campaigning to stop flats from being demolished to make space for luxury apartments - but they've been unable to stop the sell-off of flats. My issue is not with areas being improved, it is how gentrification is about one demographic of our society changing an area for themselves and not for the benefit of everyone." (Anonymous)

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'We are building our way to hell': tales of gentrification around the world

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"Here gentrification happens very quickly. Every month some 'nice' restaurant or shop opens. The old name of my neighbourhood (Kinkerbuurt) was changed and rebranded to 'Hallenkwartier'. I would enjoy many of the changes if I knew others could enjoy it as well.

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Docu

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As demographic data from the 2010 census starts to come in, it will show a startling trend - cities that have long been the African American capitals of the US are undergoing drastic change. On the south side of Chicago, in New York's Harlem, across New Orleans and in Washington DC, the black population is in rapid decline.