Gentrification and the Grassroots: Popular Support in the Revanchist Suburb

ABSTRACT:

Most existing research on neighborhoods facing gentrification has portrayed residents as resistant or politically quiescent. Drawing from a year of fieldwork in Dundalk, MD, I argue that developers and the neoliberal state will probably find popular support for gentrification as they reinvest in the politically divided industrial suburbs of the United States. Local homeowners and community associations have emerged as gentrification supporters for three interrelated reasons. First, many of them have drawn from a resurgent national conservatism to explain decline as an effect of government subsidies and “people from the city;” their desire to reclaim suburban space—a “suburban revanchism”—although avoiding accusations of racism makes gentrification-induced displacement appealing. Second, the rebirth of urban neighborhoods and other industrial suburbs provides visual evidence of gentrification’s success. Third, the neoliberal state’s retreat from social programs and its emphasis on private-sector redevelopment allay suspicion of government and enable collaboration between the local state, developers, and homeowners. The redevelopment efforts of two local organizations illustrate how residents have become indispensable partners in Dundalk’s emergent pro-gentrification coalition.