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Abstract
In this study, I deploy an ethnographic approach to analyze the detrimental effects of gentrification on longstanding residents in New Orleans’ Tremé neighborhood. I focus on conflicts between long-established residents and gentrifiers over the use of neighborhood space on a day-to-day basis as a means for examining the consequent changes in neighborhood life. As their neighborhood gentrifies, long-term residents of Tremé must contend with greater policing, the erosion of place-based knowledge, practices, and cultural traditions, the loss of social networks, and the closure of vital neighborhood institutions. These changes in neighborhood life provide a starting point from which to begin to understand the broader effects (beyond displacement) that longstanding residents experience as a result of gentrification.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful for valuable advice and constructive comments from Elvin Wyly and Helen Regis.
Notes
1. For additional insight into post-Katrina shifts in Tremé, see Gladstone and Préau (Citation2008), Barrios (Citation2010), and Sakakeeny (Citation2010).
2. The Lafitte public housing project was in the process of being redeveloped into what is now Faubourg Lafitte by the Housing Authority of New Orleans. Consequently, the population of tract 44.02 was 0 in 2010. The tract’s population decline of 2,496 represents slightly more than half of Tremé’s overall population decline since 2000. On the demolition of Lafitte and its redevelopment into Faubourg Lafitte mixed-income housing, see Graham (Citation2012).
3. Pseudonyms are used throughout this paper to protect the identities of interviewees.
4. Examples of brass bands that are well known include: Tremé, Rebirth, and Dirty Dozen.
5. Presentation at Historic Tremé Community Alliance Meeting held at St. Augustine Church Hall, New Orleans, 6 June 2005.