Urban Magic + the Promise of Positive Integration

Gentrification doesn’t just happen all of a sudden. It’s a process of urban transformation in historically disinvested areas – mostly Black and brown neighborhoods – that occurs in stages over time. The classic gentrification process looks pretty much like this:

First, artists, writers, musicians and others of modest means but rich in cultural capital are attracted to the neighborhood’s affordability and ethnic diversity and relocate there.

In Stage 2, middle-class white people and others drawn by the neighborhood’s hipness and affordability move in. This second-stage is driven by private individuals looking to make a life for themselves and their families (if they have one) in the neighborhood. They (and those interested in their disposable income) may begin to transform some of the commercial and social spaces in the community but there is relatively little displacement; the influx of second-stagers, though visible, is not destabilizing to the established community culture.

Stage 3 ushers in the speculators – those not necessarily interested in the neighborhood and its culture per se but who see housing there as a good “investment.” The speculators may or may not actually live in the homes they own: They are placing a bet, not place-making, after all.

This stage 3 change in ownership and worldview marks the tipping point, beyond which the newcomers see the neighborhood as ripe for “improvement” and set about reshaping its character and appearance. Their efforts are abetted by development money, municipal grants, and national and local tax incentives that do not factor in the value of cultural and residential preservation. New apartment complexes, with floor plans unsuitable and unaffordable for most pre-gentrification famillies, replace buildings along the commercial corridor. Sidewalk traffic grows whiter. Home prices and rents overall rise dramatically, which accelerates exclusion and displacement of long-time residents and commercial tenants.

Stage 4 turbo-charges the movement toward increased economic and cultural polarization, with the newest comers at one end and those thus-far able to remain in their neighborhood at the other. In Stage 4, those Stage 1 and 2 integrators who sought housing and placed a value on cultural diversity are eclipsed by the gentrifiers and the destabilizing power of amoral investment capital.

The effect is a cruel irony because now the neighborhood that was once redlined – meaning it suffered the policies and practices that denied Black people access to well-resourced and opportunity-rich neighborhoods elsewhere while denying the neighborhoods they did live in access to resources and investments – is now victim of a kind of reverse redlining but with the same financially exclusionary results. The neighborhood, now increasingly homogenized, is deemed “safe” (for white people).

Perhaps Jay-Z described the phenomenon best in his tribute to Crenshaw icon Nipsey Hussle:

“The neighborhood designed to keep us trapped / They redlined it so property declines if you live by Blacks / They depress the asset then take the property back/ It’s a ruthless but a genius plan, in fact.”

It’s not usually called out as such but gentrification acts as a powerful force of (re)segregation: not only does the process displace Black and brown people from their own neighborhood, it then tends to accelerate the concentration of low-income former residents of that neighborhood in high-poverty neighborhoods elsewhere. According to a groundbreaking 2021 study by UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute (OBI), in every metropolitan region in the United States with more than 200,000 residents, 81 percent of them were more segregated as of 2019 than they were in 1990.

The American story of slavery, failed Reconstruction, and segregation – you know, the one that increasing numbers of Republican-led statehouses are trying to silence⁠ – is one of opportunity foreclosed to millions of Americans born Black. Take as just one example the nation’s financially crippling legacy of redlining: A family’s wealth is derived mostly from home ownership, but because of redlining and other discriminatory housing policies Black families have been concentrated over generations in less desirable areas. The accumulated economic loss is stark: According to the Federal Reserve, the average Black family had less than 15 percent of the wealth of white families in 2019 – $24,100 vs. $188,200. At the current rate, it will take more than a century to catch up.

Meanwhile, segregation’s destabilizing influence bleeds beyond Black neighborhoods and into the body politic of the American experience as a whole: Regions with higher levels of racial residential segregation have higher levels of political polarization, an important implication in the context of gerrymandering and voter suppression, according to OBI.

The good news is that gentrification and resegregation are not inevitable. Between Stages 2 and 3 of the gentrification process intervention is possible. Access to capital by socially conscious developers who care about the community is key. So is the empowerment of residents to democratically and strategically guide the process before Stage 3 solidifies the gentrification trajectory. There are political, planning, and policy safeguards that can be put in place to protect a district’s cultural integrity while promoting its economic development. Such an intervention has the potential to produce a “positively integrated” rather than an “incompletely gentrified” community – one where household incomes have increased enough to attract development projects and improved goods, services, and jobs to the neighborhood but in ways that benefit everyone and not just the speculators.

A book that breaks it down and builds a case for Black prosperity

In Urban Magic: Vibrant Black and Brown Communities Are Possible, L.A.-based architect Michael H. Anderson makes the case that “positively integrated” communities (my phrase, not his) are not just possible but, in fact, essential to successful modernization in historically Black and brown areas. As Anderson makes clear in Urban Magic, he’s a firm believer in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of creating a balanced community with different economic and cultural backgrounds living in a neighborhood known for Blackness.

In 1992 Anderson, who is Black, was already in the trenches trying to improve Black neighborhood prospects in his adopted city of L.A. when four cops were acquitted of savagely beating Rodney King. He drafted the comprehensive Crenshaw Economic Development Proposal after civil unrest erupted and much of Crenshaw’s commercial corridor was looted and burned. Then Anderson watched, year after year, as his vision to modernize Crenshaw’s quality of life by growing businesses for its local market economy was thwarted while other ethnic enclaves in L.A. rebuilt and thrived.

There are many reasons for lagging development in Black areas, including racist urban neglect, bureaucratic bungling, and lack of vision or even planning on the part of local and city government officials – many examples of which Anderson recounts in gruesome detail in his self-published and ultimately hopeful how-to book.

But Anderson also calls out those whose fear of negative change – frequently articulated at community meetings with arguments that a proposed development project would destroy the Black culture and make rents go up – have kept any change from happening. Black folks fearful that their community is disappearing fail to acknowledge that the community is actually eroding, Anderson says.

I’d like to stipulate here that white and Black opposition to integration is not morally equivalent. There’s a difference between prejudice and efforts to protect oneself and one’s community from unjust harm. But the effect on Black communities of what Anderson calls “Black Archie Bunker types” is continued urban neglect and disinvestment: “The loudest people who do not know what change looks like, and the ones living in the past, are effectively preventing their community from becoming a place where people want to live and work,” he says.

With more than three decades’ worth of acrimonious community meetings under his belt, Anderson has earned the right to his opinion on the dynamic: In places like Crenshaw, he writes, folks want a “modern community” and all the amenities it affords but are unaware of the building blocks needed to create the “economic chemistry” that would ensure that all members of the community have the chance to prosper.

“[N]o one had ever explained nor acknowledged in the various committees what attracts businesses – that they are components of a larger local market economy. The larger business market and an increase in household incomes of the surrounding community are what creates the quality of living and provides the economic resources that attract business like Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, etc., that the people of Crenshaw wanted and want.”

Anderson continues, “If only, over all those years in all those meetings, any department or task force had created renderings, illustrations, photos, market or economic data that showed what a new, improved, modernized Crenshaw community needed to look like in the future! That would allow residents and business owners to see how and where new buildings could fit next to the significant existing buildings and how the improved sidewalks and streets could look. This would help them understand how things could fit together, improving the overall quality of life. This could also remove the fear of displacement.”

So, here’s where we’ve been and where we stand today: Rodney King was beaten by members of the LAPD more than 30 years ago and the city went up in flames when his attackers were acquitted. A push ensued for economic development in places like Crenshaw. Yet, for almost 30 years after the uprising, Krispy Kreme at the intersection of Crenshaw and MLK was pretty much all there was to show for that effort.

That’s changing.

The Crenshaw/LAX metro line, slated to open in part in late 2022, has spurred development along the boulevard. At least 16 projects, including the highly-contested redevelopment of the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, are in the works – with many of them market-rate apartment buildings. There is some affordable housing, but it’s fair for South LA residents to fear a turbo-charging of displacement and gentrification. What now?

Is it possible to build a “positively integrated” rather than an “incompletely gentrified” neighborhood in historically disinvested Black communities like Crenshaw, a community at the tipping point between Stage 2 and Stage 3 in the gentrification process? We think it has to be.

In the spirit of Anderson’s Urban Magic approach, at this point in the Crenshaw district’s long and storied life positive integration would be preferable and perhaps even essential, not least because it would help preserve the place’s cultural integrity and promote a strong sense of interracial solidarity while celebrating group difference. It would also help attract well-paying local employment for residents, and eateries/entertainment venues so community-proud residents could circulate their dollars and enjoy themselves close to home. As the local entrepreneur and icon Nipsey Hussle said: All money in, no money out.

With vision and conscious capital, community-first architects and developers could manifest projects that enhance and celebrate rather than destabilize “the heartbeat of Black Los Angeles.”

Author Michael Anderson is a pragmatic visionary and his book is recommended for those feeling that gentrification is unstoppable. He’s been to the endless community meetings. He’s been in the bowels of planning departments. He’s had his heart broken by incompetent city officials and malefactors over and over again. But the guy is tenacious. He’s an inspiration. He has a plan to foster the kind of integration that brings a mix of ethnicities, income levels, and affinities while maintaining a pro-Black vision and vibe. What’s also wonderful about what Anderson calls “economic chemistry” is that the sum of its parts is more than scientific formula or the bottom line of a typical cost-benefit analysis. His vision creates space for the kind of alchemy that happens in good relationships – when souls are transformed by proximity, care, and love. He creates space for magic.