More than gentrification: geographies of capitalist displacement in Los Angeles 1994–1999

Abstract

Little is understood about displacement in urban contexts. While some of the difficulties are methodological, the more serious problem is conceptual. Outside of the rent gap hypothesis or the philosophy of property rights, there has been little theoretical inquiry into the causal dynamics of displacement. In this article, I present a study of evictions in Los Angeles that addresses these conceptual and empirical shortcomings. A spatial analysis of more than 70,000 georeferenced evictions between 1994 and 1999 documents the existence of four distinct geographies of displacement, each produced by separate types of causal circumstances. Gentrification explains only one of the four displacement geographies, while the other three are nongentrifying or pre-gentrifying contexts and more appropriately described through growth machine models, global city theory, and financial restructuring. The extent of displacement in pre- and nongentrifying areas reinforces Mark Davidson’s emphasis on Lefebvre’s production of space as a crucial framework for understanding displacement processes.

Keywords:

• displacement
• gentrification
• eviction

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the three referees who took the time to carefully review a previous draft of this work. Their critiques and suggestions strengthened the final version and I am indebted to their effort.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Four hundred and forty-one tracts were originally included within the area of study; however, some tracts around the boundary were clipped so that only a portion of their areas resided within the area of study. Those tracts with a majority of their total area residing outside the area of study were removed from the analysis.

2. Due to a lack of confidence in the data from 1990 to 1993, these evictions were removed from the analysis resulting in 70,607 evictions from 1994 through to the end of 1999.

3. After 1992, no high-rise buildings were built until 2003 when the Constellation Palace was constructed.

4. After Miracle on Broadway collapsed, Estella Lopez would then move on to become the executive director of the CCEA.

5. While the Toytown BID eventually expired on 31 December 2009 after property owners refused to renew it, other BIDs have been established in the area including the Chinatown BID in 2000, the Little Tokyo BID in 2003 (the only merchant-based BID in Downtown), the South Park BID in 2005, the Arts District BID in 2006 (which was recently forced to dissolve in 2013), and the Historic Downtown Los Angeles BID also in 2011.

6. As of January 2014, the website for the Hollywood Entertainment District reported that only 225 property owners fund the BID.

7. Using Integrated Public Use Microdata (IPUMS), a recent report states that Koreans make up the single largest national origin group within Koreatown (Sanchez, Auer, Terriquez, & Kim, 2012).

8. Light places the date for this parade in 1975 while Yu and his coauthors in 1974.

9. These figures, cited by Min and Kolondy as well as many other authors, were compiled by Radio Korea and published in Korea Times Los Angeles on 11 May 1992.

10. Park and Lee add that “Interestingly, Christopher Park, Chief Designer of Aroma Wilshire Center, was not only the owner of the Archeon international, a private development and planning company located in Koreatown, but also the Lead Planner for the Wilshire Center/Koreatown Redevelopment and Revitalization project. He is also the Chair of the Board of Zoning Appeals in the City of Los Angeles, which frequently put pressure to convert residential zones in Koreatown into commercial zones” (Park & Lee, 2007, p. 213)

11. SCAG is also the largest metropolitan planning organization in the country.

12. The Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980 and the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982.

13. The secondary market for mortgages was created in 1938 when the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) was established to provide liquidity in the housing market. In 1968, Congress split FNMA into two organizations, the Government National Mortgage Association (GNMA) and FNMA, with the latter becoming a private corporation with a special line of credit with the US Treasury. In 1970 Congress further expanded the secondary market by empowering FNMA and FHLMC to buy and sell both conventional and federally insured loans. In the same year, GNMA began a program for purchasing pooled FHA-insured loans, thus initiating the securitization of home mortgages.

14. Scheessele’s analysis was based on 1990 Census tract boundaries. Although the tract boundaries represented here from the 2000 Decennial Census are not the same, a close fit was achievable given the minor modifications between 1990 and 2000 in this area.