Understanding Gentrification

NIH (National Institute of Health) Report on Gentrification

Breaking Down and Building Up: Gentrification, Its drivers, and Urban Health Inequality: 

In this paper, we define gentrification, provide examples of the different gentrification processes identified in the literature, discuss its impact on health and health inequity, and present implications for both research and policy. Although these processes have implications in other contexts, we focus on cases in the Global North and particularly on cities in the USA and Europe because those are the contexts where we have conducted research and we know best.

Environmental Law Institute

The Problem of Green Gentrification

Green gentrification occurs when city planners implement green amenities such as parks and gardens with the intention of improving environmental conditions and community aesthetics, while often overlooking increases in property values and the subsequent displacement of low- income, often marginalized, community members. 
The foundation of green gentrification itself is complicated, as it is difficult to perceive additional green space as a negative policy decision. The problem lies in the fact that developing green space is not solely for the benefit of the common people, but also for the economic advantages it may bring—making it so greening projects can serve as a harbinger of environmental justice issues.

How well do we know green gentrification?
A systematic review of the methods

An emerging justice issue has been green/environmental/ecological gentrification, which is concerned with displacement, exclusion, or marginalization of residents in areas surrounding sustainable/green urban (re)developments as they attract wealthier in-movers. The following subsections provide a brief overview of how green-gentrification research has emerged from the fields of gentrification, environmental justice, and political ecology.

What are the alternatives to gentrification? 

The greatest asset a neighborhood has is its people. 
Empowering individuals is all about allowing them the opportunity to shape their community through the power of incremental growth. Small, human-scale investments that transform one small parcel of land at a time are a powerful anti-gentrification approach that avoids the trap of needing more and more money to create a built-out "Disneyland" type project at a premium cost - a cost that gentrifies the most vulnerable members of our cities.