ancient cities

esearch theme in more than half the 114 books,
papers, and items of gray literature examined.
A U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development survey prompted by widespread protest
over condominium conversion in the 1970s
remains one of the most thorough of its kind.
Households in 12 major cities with high levels of
conversion activity were surveyed. Between 1977
and 1980, 58 percent of the original households
were displaced. Of the incoming residents, 70 percent
were new owners.
Similarly, the combined results from two separate
analyses of the New York City Housing and
Vacancy Survey, which is conducted by the U.S.
Bureau of the Census every three years, revealed
that estimates of displacement rates for the years
1991 to 1993, 1996 to 1999, and 1999 to 2001
were 5.47 percent, 6.2 percent, and 9.9 percent,
respectively, reflecting a tightening housing market;
however, rents are either controlled or regulated
for more than half of all housing units in
New York City.
On the other hand, a larger study for the
National Bureau of Economic Research of 15,000
U.S. Census tracts, representing gentrifying neighborhoods
in 64 metropolitan areas, concludes that
there is no evidence of displacement of low-income
non-White households over the decade 1990 to
2000. Rather, the bulk of the increase in average
family income in gentrifying neighborhoods can be
attributed, first, to the retention of Black high
school graduates (33 percent of the income gain)
and, second, to the disproportionate in-migration
of college-educated Whites (20 percent of the
income gain). The out-migration rates of Black
residents who never finished high school proved
not to be significantly different between gentrifying
and nongentrifying neighborhoods.
In conclusion, the weight of gentrification
research points to the adverse effects of neoliberal
urban policies designed to revitalize the inner city.
Also, as the first years of the new century have
shown, booming housing markets intensify displacement
pressures. In these circumstances, the
only sure way to preserve class shares of space is to
permanently take housing in gentrifying neighborhoods
out of the market. One of the boldest
attempts occurred in the mid-1970s when the
Australian government purchased three historic
neighborhoods in inner Sydney and Melbourne to
Ghetto
309
demonstrate the efficacy of community preservation.
With affordable housing at a premium in
many inner cities, more governments are subsidizing
not-for-profits with a presence in vulnerable
neighborhoods and are requiring contributions
from developers where new investment threatens
low-rent accommodations. But this is costly intervention
and can hope to secure only a modicum of
affordable housing in gentrifying communities.
Blair Badcock
See also Creative Class; Global City; Neighborhood
Revitalization; Revanchist City; Social Movements;
Urban Culture
Further Readings
Atkinson, Rowland and Gary Bridge, eds. 2007.
Gentrification in a Global Perspective. London;
New York: Routledge.
Hamnett, Chris and Bill Randolph. 1988. Cities,
Housing, and Profits: Flat Break-up and the Decline
of Private Renting. London: Hutchinson.
Kendig, Hal. 1979. New Life for Old Suburbs: Post-war
Land Use and Housing in the Australian Inner City.
Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Ley, David. 1996. The New Middle Class and the
Remaking of the Central City. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
Smith, Neil and Peter Williams, eds. 1986. Gentrification
of the City. London: Unwin Hyman.
Van Weesep, Jan and S. Musterd, eds. 1991. Urban
Housing for the Better-off: Gentrification in Europe.
Utrecht, the Netherlands: Stedelijke Netwerken.
Zukin, Sharon. 1982. Loft Living: Culture and Capital in
Urban Change. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
GH e t t o
Ghetto has a specific historical reference to the segregation
of Jews within the Ghetto Nuovo in Venice
of the 1400s, from which the name is derived, and
to the segregated residential quarters that developed
in European cities in the following century. The
ethnic communities of Jewish immigrants in
American cities were also called ghettos. In more
recent times, ghetto has been used to describe