This has been something I have struggled to grapple with as someone who spends a lot of time in far left spaces as well as urban planning spaces. Hopefully you guys can correct me if I'm being a lib or even worse, a neolib.
On one hand one I love cities and one of the things I love is how dynamic they are. Each building and street tells a story about the city and the people that live there and how they have changed over time. I don't think we can stop that process from happening and since I believe cities to be our best chance to fight climate change they must change. We need more housing, more transit, and we need to invest in our cities to make them better places to live for everyone. I believe that means making it easier to build more housing. You might even call me a YIMBY. That means there is probably going to be a lot more a lot more 5 story buildings with a coffee shops on the first floor, bike lanes, and inevitably breweries, but what is the alternative? If we don't build those yuppie apartments then yuppies will just move into existing apartments which will accelerate displacement. If we don't invest in the most disinvested parts of the city we will just recreate places like the south side of Chicago or Detroit that essentially had no investment in generations and creates extreme segregation. That's not good for anyone.
Of course if I were dictator for a day I would just make all housing public but since I can't do that I think we have no option but to embrace the YIMBY strategy while simultaneously fighting for realistic housing reforms to protect current residents, like rent control, with the long term goal of decommodifing housing. I live in Minneapolis and I'm involved in a few Socialist/Left orgs and I can't believe there are people that were against the plan to get rid of single family zoning in Minneapolis because it was supposedly a handout to developers. Single family zoning is one of the most reactionary policies in America that entrenches a white petite bourgeoisie, and socialists are opposing eliminating it? People just seem to hate developers more than solving actual complex problems.
The real problem isn't gentrification, but capitalism. As long as housing and land, the things we all require to live, are commodities cities with opportunities will always be expensive because demand to be there will always outpace supply of land and housing. I just feel like so much of the gentrification discussion on the left is purely reactionary and doesn't have any actual solutions that could actually help people in our lifetime.
Am I just a lib?
I think socialists don’t account for assimilation when it comes to gentrification. My dad’s neighborhood was Swedish 100 years ago, became Polish in the 40s, in the 60s - 70s it was Puerto Rican, Polish, and Black. The first 80 years, the neighborhood had strong immigrant poor/working class roots.
80s and 90s broke artsy hipsters came in and started the process of changing the neighborhood to what it is now, basically a wealthy yuppy/hipster neighborhood. While the last 10-15 years are definitely the result of Capitalism concentrating wealth in inner cities I think the first 80 years was just the demographics changing as different people migrated into and out of the city.
It has always been a trend of a generation or two, but capitalism has shifted it to be FAST. Gentrification has turned from a 10 year process into a 2-3 year one. A lot is also cities in the US have at least 80 years of being considered inferior to the suburbs for raising families, ownership and AMERICAN DREAM.
City living became considered much cooler as the ability to have a family seemed harder and harder.
There are so many things that need fixing.
I think a good pair of steps under our current model would be a form of rent control and altering taxes to be less punishing on renters as so many people buy homes “as you’re throwing your money away renting.” We need to make home ownership not a far superior option to long term renting.
I have no idea how to actually fix it.
But I do see that when new development hits an area, existing rents go up.
We can start by building trains and public transportation. Dense housing is usually built along public transpo routes and US cities are all in desperate need of more transpo that isn't another damn freeway.