Gentrification is a process of neighborhood change in which higher-income, more highly educated residents move into historically disinvested, lower-income neighborhoods. Gentrifying neighborhoods experience rapid new private and public investments that transform them with higher-end residential and commercial construction. Given their long history of segregation and disinvestment, urban neighborhoods that are home to communities of color and immigrants are those most likely to gentrify.
For established residents and small businesses, gentrification can result in physical or cultural displacement. Residents and businesses are physically displaced when they can no longer afford rising rents or property taxes, or their customers disappear, and they must move out of the area or close. They are culturally displaced when cultural practices, social norms, and political power of longer-term residents or businesses are displaced or suppressed by those of newcomers — often White residents and larger commercial chains.
Gentrification is reshaping cities across the United States and internationally, displacing vulnerable residents and small businesses and changing the character of communities. High levels of gentrification are evident in rapidly growing metropolitan areas such as Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Chicago.
For more on gentrification, see our Research.