“There Goes the ‘Hood” analyzes the experience of gentrification for residents of two predominantly black New York City neighbourhoods. It thereby adds an important yet often overlooked perspective to debates on gentrification – the residents of formerly disinvested neighbourhoods themselves. Their perspectives suggest that neither gentrification is neither entirely threatening or redemptive for urban neighbourhoods. Rather, it can both offer a better life and threa… More >>
There Goes the Hood: Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up
When a young brother paints a picture about the past, will anyone one see it? Dr. Freeman is a young brother and he has the attention on many. Not only are people seeing it, but they hear him loud and clear. For years people were afaid of the “hood.” Now they want the “hood.”
Lance does an excellent job telling the story of how others want what African America’s have failed to take care of. The hood is now for sale! Thanks Lance for writing such an insightful book.
Rating: 5 / 5
Freeman’s book, first, is brilliant methodologically. Oral testimony has been used redundantly in gentrification studies, but not in this same way. Perhaps his work is a critical account of academic understandings of gentrification, in which case, interviews with locals in a gentrifying neighborhood reveal that the process, on this level, is hardly articulated in terms of “uneven development” or “new frontier consumption”. In this work, Freeman sets out to emotionally and mentally map gentrifying neighborhoods: How do the residents feel pre- or post- gentrification? What are they thinking will happen? How are they making sense of it? The answers, in interviews, show that understandings of the phenomenon range from conspiratorial to economic to optimistic, crossing class and racial lines, blurring the white-urban-invader and the middle-class-revenge paradigms. Furthermore, augmenting these with an deep history of the two neighborhoods, Freeman points out, gentrification in Harlem and Clinton Hill did not produce this same displacement of the working class. In a sense, he’s a bit optimistic about its changes. It’s written in fantastic prose, extremely articulate and clear. The interviews just add a personal dimension to a field that has often been reduced to bricks and numbers.
The downside of this work is Freeman’s obscure optimism. He discredits the “working-class displacement” understanding of gentrification as generally inapplicable, yet suggests that Smith’s “Revanchist City” is somewhat accurate. His apparent explanation for this is that economic studies of gentrification seem to wield more pessimistic conclusions than social or cultural studies. Odd. Nonetheless, a genius and highly recommended work!
Rating: 4 / 5
There Goes the Hood provides a historical look at both Harlem and Clinton Hill and then moves into their current day status with all of the attendent challenges and benefits. Though Freeman notes that he is a quantitative researcher his ability to conduct a qualitative study that speaks to academics, policy makers, and the general public is no small feat. His illumination of the voices of the community could only be enhanced by adding in more perspective from the gentry themselves(particularly the white gentry). Overall I thnk the book is a must read for those who are interested in gentrification and communities of color.
Rating: 5 / 5