Introduction
Introduction
This chapter introduces the concepts of gentrification and social preservation. For more than three decades, sociologists, planners, and policymakers have paid attention to gentrification: “an economic and social process whereby private capital (real estate firms, developers) and individual homeowners and renters reinvest in fiscally neglected neighborhoods or towns through housing rehabilitation, loft conversions, and the construction of new housing.” Importantly, gentrification is also supported by public investment of funds preceding or following the moving in of the gentry: typically young, highly educated individuals. Social preservation is in some ways analogous to environmentalism. Like environmentalists, who seek to preserve nature, social preservationists—those who adhere to the preservation ideology and engage in related practices—work to preserve the local social ecology.
Keywords: gentrification, social preservation, private capital, public investment, environmentalism, social ecology
Chicago Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
