January 21, 2015:

Gentrification

Gentrification is the result of an urban pattern usually triggered by good intentions to boost, economically, a perceived disenfranchised neighborhood or area.  In a society and system such as in the United States, private ownership of land and the concept of “best use and value” for your investment are key factors.  To understand gentrification it’s also important to revisit the US government’s urban renewal and development policies in the 1950s and onward.

My first personal introduction to urban renewal, before my architectural education and subsequent architectural and planning work, was in the City and County of Honolulu’s model city program funded by the federal government.  I worked under a city planner named Leonard Moffett, a free-thinker within the statist and rigid bureaucratic system -- Moffett believed in reducing the destruction of older buildings on smaller parcels and promoting in-fill housing and commercial uses for vacant spaces.  He was critical of the consolidation of lots into larger parcels for massive scaled development.  Essential he was anti-modernism and reacted against modernism’s vision for compartmentalized, de-humanized trends.  At an early age, decades ago, I was made aware of the impact of governmental, private and economic mandates on places defined as “blighted”.  This experience influenced later professional years while working on projects with redevelopment agencies in Boston, Cambridge, Massachusetts and even San Francisco. 

I have no idea where Leonard Moffat is today but this program is dedicated to his early awareness of complex urban changes and socio-cultural implications.  Clearly the debate over gentrification is not new to the early 21^st century.

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