November 8, 2010 | 12:22 PM | By

Gentrifying a Small Town like D.C.

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Gentrification

NCinDC

Blagden Alley - Naylor Court Historic District

One of you pointed me towards an interesting post on BaancBlog: Blagden Alley and Naylor Court Jesting. In it, blogger Alley Denizen discusses the controversial piece Megan McArdle wrote for The Atlantic last month (“The Gentrifier’s Lament“):

What bothered me was the “here’s how gentrification works” attitude of it when I had the feeling that the author hadn’t been to many community meetings in DC and hadn’t spent that much time here. It seemed rather an attempt to put an abstraction of the New York model, with reference to the West Village onto DC. It didn’t seem DC concrete.

DC isn’t New York for various reasons, which is obvious. One of them is that DC is in many ways a small town.

It is a collection of 40 or so neighborhoods. Most of those neighborhoods have a low density component, so you can know a lot of your neighbors. The New York (or big city) model seems like pounding a square peg into a round hole.

One of the matters I rarely see discussed in gentrification discussions is the cohesion of many of the communities which comes from going to the same church for a couple of generations, knowing your friends parents, going to the same schools. In short, a small town. The complaints about gentrification are often really complaints about the loss of this cohesion in a neighborhood. Whether it’s from outsiders coming in or insiders going out to the bigger world is an open question.

About the author

DCentric was created to examine the ways race and class interact in Washington, D.C., a city with a vibrant mix of cultures and neighborhoods. Your guides to the changing district are reporters Anna John and Elahe Izadi. View all posts by Anna →

  • Jdc

    Anna, I really like the focus of this blog and thank you for authoring it and thank you to WAMU for hosting it. I like that you hone in on news and conversations about race and class from around the blogosphere and from around the local news media. However, I wonder if you might consider doing more original content. I like the food truck interviews, but I’m not sure how much they connect to the blog’s objective. I wonder if it might be more revealing and compelling to interview average District residents in some of the “gentrifying” neighborhoods you so often discuss. It would be interesting to hear what fourth and fifth generation residents have to say about life in the District and then what first generation residents have to say. These interviews wouldn’t be meant to suggest they these individuals speak for an entire community, but it would at least help bring nuanced issues of gentrification to the surface. I would also love to see interviews with academics and experts at think tanks such as the Urban Institute or even the Urban Land Institute. Thanks again for your commitment to this issue!

  • Anonymous

    Jdc, thank you so much for your comment. I appreciate that you took the time to leave it and that you offered words of support and encouragement.

    The reason why I wanted to shine some light on Love Bites is because to me, the Food Truck trend is also touched by privilege– having the money to buy a $15 lobster roll, having the sort of job where you have the luxury of leaving and standing in line to procure one. Beyond that, Love Bites caught my attention because they are an African-American, Mother-Daughter team who are native Washingtonians serving a local recipe. It’s rare that I encounter a truck owned and run by women, let alone Black women. I mentioned this fact in the first piece I wrote but not the second and for that, I am at fault for assuming people had read both. Thank you for showing me that I should always include details which might help readers understand why I’m highlighting a story for them.

    I would love to do more interviews with District residents but I have one huge problem– and pardon me for the blunt words I am about to use– white people almost invariably refuse to be quoted or interviewed, citing the fear of becoming a “spokesperson” for gentrification, other white people, or whatever else they are worried about being linked to “in this age of google”. Sometimes they’ll speak to me on background, but I’ve had interview subjects shut their mouths the moment I open my laptop. With issues as fraught as race, class and privilege, this isn’t surprising, but it does make it difficult to speak to all sides.

    Again, thank you so much for the constructive, actionable feedback on how to improve the site. I will work hard to try and implement your suggestions– and I hope you keep commenting!