There Goes the 'Hood: Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up

There Goes the 'Hood

Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up

Lance Freeman

Interview with NPR, 20 July 2006
"There Goes the 'Hood reveals the complexity of the gentrification process, particularly in terms of the meaning the process has for indigenous residents and the disparate forms it takes. Using a refreshing methodological approach, Freeman offers a nuanced lens to understand conceptualizations of gentrification and weigh its differential impact."
—Michael Maly, author of Beyond Segregation: Multiracial and Multiethnic Neighborhoods in the United States
In this revealing book, Lance Freeman sets out to answer a seemingly simple question: how does gentrification actually affect residents of neighborhoods in transition? To find out, Freeman does what no scholar before him has done. He interviews the indigenous residents of two predominantly black neighborhoods that are in the process of gentrification: Harlem and Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. By listening closely to what people tell him, he creates a more nuanced picture of the impacts of gentrification on the perceptions, attitudes and behaviors of the people who stay in their neighborhoods.

Freeman describes the theoretical and planning/policy implications of his findings, both for New York City and for any gentrifying urban area. There Goes the 'Hood provides a more complete, and complicated, understanding of the gentrification process, highlighting the reactions of long-term residents. It suggests new ways of limiting gentrification's negative effects and of creating more positive experiences for newcomers and natives alike.