What is Gentrification?
We once got into an argument in class about whether
gentrification
was a good thing or a bad thing, and it wasn't the typical trickle down vs. displacement argument that I'm used
to, but rather a dispute about what the word even meant.
To get to a deeper understanding of the issue,
I decided to lean into my social sciences background, and design tools for research.
This tool was used to talk about values, and how they relate to how you see gentrification. Some people slid
sliders towards a right to stay or preserve local culture as a means of describing their resentment of new
people moving into their communities, while others took neutral, almost libertarian perspectives.
We found that place mattered a lot, so to investigate this subject, we decided to build maps.
I
printed simple maps of the various cities my participants were from, then we used simple map pieces made
from
colored vellum, based on the gerrymandered voting districts.
These tools helped access the term in a more deep way than conventional research would allow, and brought
community engagement to the research process.