What the City Heard: A Radio Program on Gentrification
by Jeremy Dalmas and the Bit 'n Brace Collective, Summer 2006
posted 10/15/07
This is a radio program that I have put together about Gentrification. It is intended to be a primer for those who know some basics about the process but are interested in learning more.
Here is a little bit of background information: In the summer of 2006 I was involved in putting on a performance and subsequent discussion about gentrification in Washington DC with a group called the Bit 'n Brace collective. It featured a puppet show and dance piece which was accompanied by a prerecorded soundtrack that included dialogue, ambient sound and music. The dialogue clips were from interviews done with members of the local community about how gentrification has affected their city and their lives. This audio essay comes from those interviews. I edited those tapes down to this piece, but the interviews themselves were conducted by Amina Baird, Lily Hughes, Kathryn Hutchinson and Hunter Jackson.
The program is taken entirely from the talks with DC residents, and the background sounds are (with a few exceptions) taken from around the DC area. We wanted to have those with direct experience with gentrification talk about the process in their own words. Those interviewed include: Nat, a recent graduate of Howard University who is involved in local politics; Natalie, a local community organizer who is also active in local youth radio; Sylvia, the owner of a local arts collective who has a great knowledge of local history; Nigel, a DC native who has worked for Men Can Stop Rape; and Margaux, a performance artist and activist now living in DC.
While the interviewees are talking about their direct experiences in the DC area and occasionally mention DC specific things, it is important to know that this is a process that is happening in every major city in the country as well as internationally. Look at New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, Vancouver or London and around Europe - you will find the same story that is told here but with different communities and different individuals. Washington is going through a dramatic transformation. If you were to climb to the roof of your apartment and look out across DC skyline you would see a dozen cranes across the landscape slowly remaking the city with very little input from the people who are the most directly effected by these changes. It is an excellent example of a process that is fundamentally changing the identity and the culture of our cities; a process that is deciding who gets to live in these urban hubs and who is pushed out.
But while it is a contemporary phenomenon, it is fundamental to understand that gentrification is a modern manifestation of an old problem. Those with money and power often get to decide where resources get used and those without are often ignored. Sometimes neighborhoods change naturally, but often politicians and real estate developers actively change neighborhoods for the benefit of prospective groups of people who do not currently live in those neighborhoods. Gentrification did not suddenly appear. It is a process that is a direct result of white flight from the 50s and 60s when resources were pulled out of our cities as middle class (and mostly caucasian) families moved to suburbs. Now that same demographic is returning to the cities and so is the money. Those who lived in the deteriorated urban neighborhoods for decades are being deliberately pushed out so that those neighborhoods can be cleaned up for people who can afford higher rent or who can afford to buy property. The issue is infinitely complex and there are no easy answers or solutions. I personally think that understanding what is going on is important; gentrification is a word that is often used but not always well understood. I also think that listening to those who are victims of gentrification is even more important. People who are directly effected by a problem know best how to solve that problem.
If you have an interest in learning more about gentrification, http://members.lycos.co.uk/gentrification/ really explores the problem in depth. Two good resources that use my home city of San Francisco as a setting are the film "Boom: The Sound of Eviction" by Francine Cavanaugh, A. Mark Liiv, and Adams Wood (which focuses on the Dot Com boom of the late nineties) and the book "Hollow City" by Rebecca Solnit (which focuses on how art and culture is effected by gentrification). Seth Tobocman's "War in the Neighborhood" is an excellent graphic novel about the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1980s. "The New Urban Frontier" by Neil Smith is a good general overview book, but can be a but academic.
A big thanks to the whole Bit 'n Brace collective: Kathryn, Lily, Amina, Ben and Amy and a special thank you to Hunter Jackson. You're great Hunter!
-Jeremy Dalmas
