Gentrification and everyday democracy

Abstract

This article diagnoses a novel problem with gentrification: that it can hinder valuable forms of everyday democratic communication. In order to make this argument, I develop a democratic interpretation of Iris Marion Young's ‘ideal of city life’, according to which social differentiation is valuable because of the epistemic role that it plays in the production and circulation of diverse social perspectives. I then leverage that ideal to examine two kinds of spatial and demographic changes associated with gentrification: community disintegration in enclaves and homogenisation in public spaces. I argue that community disintegration in enclaves can make the production of social perspectives within disadvantaged communities more difficult. I then argue that homogenisation in public spaces can undermine the role of such spaces as sites of democratic performance for the wider circulation of social perspectives in the public sphere. Finally, I reflect on the reach of my argument for broader judgements about the permissibility of policies that foster or permit gentrification.

‘Gentrification’ has a negative valence. As Margaret Kohn (2016: 89) puts it, ‘city officials may promote mixed-income neighborhoods, livable cities, urban renaissance, revitalization, and renewal, but almost no one defends gentrification’. Political philosophers, however, have had relatively little to say about gentrification so far. Kohn is an exception; she identifies a number of different harms associated with gentrification, though her focus is largely on whether existing residents should be subsidised to prevent them from being displaced as rents rise (Kohn, 2016: 87–112). Others have similarly focused on the injustice of residential displacement, either by reference to individuals’ ‘occupancy rights’ to remain in a particular place (Hoffman, 2020; Huber and Wolkenstein, 2018), or by examining the ways in which landlords and gentrifiers dominate and exploit existing residents by inflicting or threatening the harm of displacement (Jenkins, 2022; Putnam, 2021; Zimmer, 2017). ¹

In this article, I open up a different line of inquiry. Rather than focusing on the injustice of residential displacement, I focus on another problem with gentrification: that it can hinder valuable forms of democratic communication. Drawing on the work of Iris Marion Young, I argue that background conditions of social differentiation are conducive to the production and circulation of social perspectives within a democratic society. Gentrification is objectionable when and because it undermines those background conditions, and thereby makes it difficult for marginalised social groups to produce and circulate their own social perspectives. I identify two ways that gentrification can have this effect: community disintegration in enclaves and homogenisation in public spaces. These processes do not take place in democracy's formal representative institutions but in its informal, everyday manifestations. One upshot of this argument is that we may have reason to object to gentrification not – or not only – because of its effects on those who it affects most directly through residential displacement, but also because of its broader effects on the everyday forms of democratic communication that we all have reason to value.

From the outset, it is worth making two clarificatory points. First, the considerations that I adduce are not the only ones at stake in the moral evaluation of gentrification. My argument does not provide the grounds for an all-things-considered judgement against policies that permit or foster gentrification. Rather, it identifies one defeasible – but underappreciated – reason to object to them. Articulating this reason helps us to get a more fine-grained understanding of gentrification's moral terrain. Second, my argument does not give us grounds to condemn all cases of gentrification. The argument that I develop depends upon a set of empirical claims about the consequences of gentrification. I do think – and seek to demonstrate – that those empirical claims are plausible in many contexts, but I cannot hope to establish them conclusively here. As such, my argument remains conditional: we have reason to object to gentrification insofar as certain consequences – community disintegration in enclaves and homogenisation in public spaces – do in fact follow from it. This limits the argument's reach, but this limitation is useful, in that it can help us to distinguish between cases of gentrification that we have reason to condemn and those which we do not – or at least, that we only have reason to condemn on grounds apart from those identified here.

The article proceeds as follows: first, I develop a democratic interpretation of Young's ‘ideal of city life’, which explains the epistemic value of social differentiation. Next, I clarify the concept of gentrification. Then, I leverage the democratic interpretation of the ideal of city life as a critical tool to examine community disintegration in enclaves and homogenisation in public spaces. Finally, I conclude by reflecting on the implications and limitations of the argument.

The democratic interpretation of the ideal of city life

One reason that we have to value democracy is that it functions as a method for identifying and motivating solutions to pressing social problems. This view of democracy has been articulated by Elizabeth Anderson (2006), who uses it to explain the epistemic value of diversity and deliberation. The diversity of citizens is valuable because it means that democracies can draw on ‘the fact that citizens from different walks of life have different experiences of problems and policies of public interest’, which has ‘evidential import for devising and evaluating solutions’. Deliberation – understood here in a wide sense – is valuable because it is a ‘means of pooling this asymmetrically distributed information’ (Anderson, 2006: 14).

The background conditions against which deliberation takes place can foster or fetter the production of the epistemic goods that help democratic inquiry to function as a method for collective problem-solving. Background social conditions can affect the quality of deliberation at different levels, and my focus here is on the level of ‘everyday talk’ (Mansbridge, 1999). As theorists of deliberative democracy have identified, the everyday processes of opinion-formation that take place in informal public spheres are an important part of the wider deliberative system of a democratic society (Habermas, 1996: 307–308; Mansbridge et al., 2012).

My suggestion is that the vision of cultural pluralism articulated by Young as the ‘ideal of city life’ models the background conditions of social differentiation that are conducive to the epistemic function of democracy. Young presents the ideal of city life as an alternative to liberal-individualist and communitarian visions of social relations. Unlike the communitarian ideal, the ideal of city life values the flourishing of group difference. At the same time, the ideal of city life values an openness to ‘unassimilated otherness’ that goes beyond mere liberal toleration (Young, 2011: 241). Young (2011: 238–239) describes the ideal of city life as follows:

In the ideal of city life freedom leads to group differentiation, to the formation of affinity groups, but this social and spatial differentiation of groups is without exclusion. The urban ideal expresses difference as … a side-by-side particularity neither reducible to identity nor completely other. In this ideal groups do not stand in relations of inclusions and exclusion, but overlap and intermingle without becoming homogeneous.

In a slogan, the ideal of city life consists in ‘being together with strangers’ (Young, 2011: 237).

The spatial aspects of the ideal of city life are more explicitly captured in another normative ideal that Young (2002: 221–228) sets out in Inclusion and Democracy: that of ‘differentiated solidarity’. Differentiated solidarity is an ideal of social and political inclusion, which Young proposes as an alternative to both segregation and integration. Differentiated solidarity ‘oppose[s] actions and structures that exclude and segregate groups’ whilst at the same time allowing ‘a certain degree of separation among people who seek each other out because of social or cultural affinities that they have with one another’. Differentiated solidarity ‘affirms a freedom to cluster’, but also contains a commitment to non-discrimination and, again, an ‘openness to unassimilated otherness’ (Young, 2002: 221–225).

In Young's articulation of these ideals, the value of social differentiation is mostly explained in terms of the kinds of relationships that it makes possible between citizens, which involves the affirmation of group difference and the emancipatory potential of reclaiming social group identities (see Young, 1989, 2011: 156–191). The bonds of affinity that exist within socially differentiated groups may be sources of value for their members, and in Young's view, those bonds of affinity are something to be affirmed and celebrated, rather than something that should (or can) be transcended. This view of the value of social differentiation, though, is not uncontroversial and is likely to be rejected by critics of multiculturalism or the ‘politics of difference’ (e.g. Barry, 2001). ²

The democratic interpretation of the ideal that city life that I develop here does not depend on any controversial claim that social differentiation is valuable in itself. Instead, it shows that social differentiation is instrumentally valuable for a flourishing democratic society. The relationships of group affinity amongst members of socially differentiated groups that Young celebrates are intertwined with the production and circulation of social perspectives, which are epistemically valuable at the level of the democratic system. The central idea of the democratic interpretation of the ideal of city life is that a social order which instantiates the ideal of city life will foster the background conditions that are conducive to a flourishing democratic society. At points, Young gestures towards this value. ³ But in order to fully understand the democratic character of the ideal of city life, we need to examine the role that social differentiation can play as an epistemic resource.

Young (2002: 114) argues that in socially differentiated societies, people who occupy different social positions ‘have particular knowledge that arises from experience in their social positions, and those social positions also influence the interests and assumptions that they bring to inquiry’. For example, Black women in the USA may have particular knowledge arising from their experiences of job discrimination, inadequate child support and inferior housing which is not captured in dominant frameworks for understanding social issues (Collins, 2000: 255). What such knowledge amounts to is a social perspective: a ‘point of view group members have on social processes because of their position in them’ (Young, 2002: 137). As Maxime Lepoutre (2020: 49) points out, social perspectives have descriptive components, which are the particular facts to which one has access as a member of a particular social group, and normative components, which are the evaluative judgements that emerge because of the salience of particular societal constraints for members of different social groups.

Importantly, we need not think that those in disadvantaged social positions have epistemic virtues that others lack in order to accept that social perspectives are epistemically valuable. As much as anyone else, they may misinterpret facts, display bias, or indulge in self-serving forms of motivated reasoning (Young, 2002: 117). Moreover, we need not think of this form of knowledge as infallible or complete: the knowledge that we get from our experiences as occupants of particular social positions is only ever partial (Young, 2002: 114). A multitude of social perspectives is epistemically productive, though, because it provides us with multiple distinct points of view from which to assess matters of public concern. An ideal exchange of social perspectives is one in which:

[e]ach group speaks from its own standpoint and shares its own partial, situated knowledge. But because each group perceives its own truth as partial, its knowledge is unfinished. Each group becomes better able to consider other groups’ standpoints without relinquishing the uniqueness of its own standpoint or suppressing other groups’ partial perspectives. (Collins, 2000: 270)

Together, the multiple overlapping standpoints of those who occupy different social positions can help us to develop better-informed judgements on matters of public concern.

The group clustering affirmed by the ideal of city life is helpful in terms of the production of social perspectives. Where those with similar experiences have discursive spaces in which they can come together, they can share those experiences with each other and develop common interpretive frameworks for understanding them. Various different models of such discursive spaces have been proposed, including Jane Mansbridge's (1999) ‘social enclaves’, James Bohman's (1996: 107–149) ‘subpublics’ and Nancy Fraser's (1990) ‘subaltern counterpublics’. Such spaces are particularly important for marginalised groups whose voices are not incorporated into dominant frameworks for understanding social issues (Afsahi, 2020; Karpowitz, Raphael, and Hammond, 2009). One classic illustration of the value of such spaces comes from the development of the term ‘sexual harassment’, where the experiences that women shared collectively in consciousness-raising meetings enabled the development of the interpretive frameworks needed to identify, name, and diagnose the phenomenon. As Miranda Fricker (2007: 148) points out, ‘the process of sharing these half–formed understandings awakened hitherto dormant resources for social meaning that brought clarity, cognitive confidence, and increased communicative facility’.

The openness affirmed by the ideal of city life is important for the circulation of social perspectives in a democratic society. In the ideal of city life, although groups are differentiated, their borders are porous and there are open channels of communication and exchange between them. Openness and exchange between different social groups enable the ‘interaction among cultures and sub-publics in a larger sphere of common citizenship’ (Bohman, 1996: 145). The circulation of social perspectives creates opportunities for the uptake of different ideas and perspectives. Where different ideas circulate in the wider public sphere, ‘different kinds of people pick them up and try them on’ (Mansbridge, 1999: 220). In pluralist societies, such discursive spaces are heterogeneous; they are spaces in which we ‘should expect to encounter and hear from those who are different, whose social perspectives, experience, and affiliations are different’ (Young, 2011: 119).

The democratic interpretation of the ideal of city life thus shows the epistemic value of both discursive spaces where group members can share experiences and develop social perspectives, and discursive spaces where such social perspectives can circulate and be taken up by broader publics. Most of the time, we treat the ‘space’ in such discursive spaces as a metaphor for the collective processes of opinion- and will-formation that take place amongst citizens dispersed across physical space. But as we will see, the spatial changes associated with gentrification can have real impacts on the democratic character of a society.

First, though, it is worth considering an objection to the democratic interpretation of the ideal of city life: that rather than being healthy, deliberation that occurs in socially differentiated spaces is actually damaging for democratic societies. We know that where group members share a tendency towards a particular belief or view, intra-group deliberation can exacerbate this tendency. Cass Sunstein (2000) calls this phenomenon group polarisation. Sunstein identifies a number of mechanisms through which group polarisation takes place, including the ‘limited argument pool’ available to participants and the desire of group members to be perceived favourably by others (Sunstein, 2000: 88–90). This latter mechanism is especially strong in contexts in which group members share affective bonds or perceive themselves to be unified by race, class, or geographical proximity (Sunstein, 2000: 91–92). As such, we might be concerned that fostering deliberation in socially differentiated spaces will only serve to create ‘echo chambers’ in which existing tendencies are amplified.

It is too quick, however, to move from the tendency towards group polarisation to the conclusion that deliberation in socially differentiated spaces is damaging rather than productive for democratic societies, as Sunstein himself recognises. For one thing, views that are ‘more extreme’ in the sense identified by Sunstein are not necessarily mistaken – they may well turn out to be normatively justifiable or to contain true beliefs (Karpowitz, Raphael, and Hammond, 2009: 581–582; Sunstein, 2000: 108). But perhaps more importantly, deliberation amongst disadvantaged groups ‘promotes the development of positions that would otherwise be invisible, silenced, or squelched in general debate’. Broader processes of deliberation tend to be dominated by ‘high status’ group members, whilst ‘low status’ group members tend to be excluded (Karpowitz, Raphael, and Hammond, 2009: 582; Sunstein, 2000: 111–113). Deliberation in socially differentiated spaces is an important way for otherwise disempowered groups to develop their own social perspectives. Finally, deliberation that takes place in socially differentiated spaces is part of a wider deliberative system that includes discursive spaces in which the social perspectives are tested, refined, and moderated by exposure to competing views. So long as socially differentiated deliberation occurs within a broader deliberative system, it need not lead to the development of extreme views (Sunstein, 2000: 113–114).

Gentrification

The democratic interpretation of the ideal of city life developed above provides us with a critical tool to diagnose two problems associated with gentrification: community disintegration in enclaves and homogenisation in public spaces. But before examining each of these problems in turn, it is worth examining the concept of gentrification a little more closely.

In its familiar colloquial usage, gentrification refers to the process of spatial and demographic change that occurs within the city as less affluent areas are transformed into more affluent areas. One succinct definition characterises it as ‘the production of urban space for progressively more affluent users’ (Hackworth, 2002: 815). There are, however, some important questions about precisely how the concept should be understood and its boundaries demarcated, which this definition leaves unanswered. Three aspects of the concept of gentrification are particularly relevant here.

The first aspect relates to the particular patterns of change that the concept of gentrification picks out. Gentrification is a dynamic process, which takes place over time and space. But urban spaces inevitably develop and change over time, and there is some disagreement about precisely which patterns of change count as gentrification. Influential models of gentrification understand it as occurring in several distinct ‘stages’ (Lees, Slater, and Wyly, 2013: 30–35). Early-stage gentrifiers may be those with high cultural capital, such as artists and students who are attracted by the affordability of an area. Next, come the professional classes, attracted by the area's ‘bohemian’ culture. Then come the speculators and real estate agents, seeking to capitalise on the reputation of the area and to make it amenable to the tastes of the more affluent. This account is crude and schematic, and actual processes of gentrification are a lot more ‘chaotic’ than this formula suggests (Rose, 1984). For instance, the state as well as the market has often played an important role in the processes of gentrification (Lees and Ley, 2008; Zuk et al., 2018). There are also competing causal explanations of gentrification, and some see it as a symptom of a broader set of pathologies of unequal capitalist urban development (Jenkins, 2022; Stein, 2019). ⁴ For our purposes, however, this schematic characterisation of the dynamics of gentrification will suffice.

The second aspect concerns how broadly the concept of gentrification should be applied. Paradigmatic cases of gentrification are processes of change that occur within historically disinvested residential neighbourhoods in the central city. But the term ‘gentrification’ is also sometimes applied to other spaces in the city, such as former industrial zones and public spaces (Hamnet and Whitelegg, 2007; Zukin, 1995). Here, I adopt a fairly broad view of gentrification, which includes processes of change that occur in public spaces as well as residential neighbourhoods, for two reasons. The first is that it captures the way that the concept of gentrification is conventionally used. It would be difficult to understand the gentrification of King's Cross in London, for example, without referring to the transformations that have taken place in its public spaces such as Coal Drops Yard and Granary Square. The second is that, as we will see, changes in public spaces are often bound up with more paradigmatic cases of gentrification, for example because they make adjacent neighbourhoods more attractive to higher-income groups. If we want our analysis of gentrification to inform our judgements about such cases, then it is useful to adopt this broader view. Those who think that this overextends the concept of gentrification can still go along with my argument, but they must take the second part of my argument to apply not to gentrification itself, but to gentrification-adjacent transformations in urban space that are also objectionable on similar grounds. In my view, it is simpler to understand such transformations as part of the process of gentrification, but nothing substantive in my argument hinges on this conceptualisation of gentrification.

The third aspect concerns the role of displacement in gentrification. Gentrification is commonly associated with displacement, but there is some disagreement about whether it is a necessary part of the process. If displacement were conceptually tied to gentrification in this way, then processes of urban change in low-income neighbourhoods that occur without displacement would not be cases of ‘gentrification’ at all. Some have argued that displacement is a necessary part of gentrification, either because they wish to stress its centrality in the process (Slater, 2006), or because they wish to distinguish more benign processes of ‘revitalisation’ from gentrification (Kennedy and Leonard, 2001). Most, however, treat the question of whether or not displacement is associated with gentrification as an empirical, rather than a conceptual, one. Here, I follow those who treat the relationship between gentrification and displacement as an empirical question. To stipulate that displacement occurs as a result of gentrification, and that any case that does not involve displacement is not really a case of gentrification at all, would load the dice against it.

Gentrification is a complicated and dynamic process that can unfold in different ways. Despite this complexity, we can identify some common ways in which gentrification tends to hinder democratic communication. But it is important to be clear about the empirical and evaluative claims that I am making here. My empirical claim is that gentrification has a tendency to lead to community disintegration in enclaves and homogenisation in public spaces. By this, I mean that there are fairly reliable mechanisms that lead from gentrification to community disintegration in enclaves and homogenisation in public spaces. But this does not mean that those mechanisms will always be operative: they may be defeated or pre-empted by other mechanisms or depend on background social conditions that do not obtain in all cases (Elster, 2015: 23–39). Overall, however, my suggestion is that just as the better football team tends to win, gentrification tends to lead to community disintegration in enclaves and homogenisation in public spaces. ⁵ My evaluative claim is that insofar as gentrification does in fact have these outcomes, this typically gives us a reason to object to it. This reason need not be conclusive, but it should figure in the balance of reasons that inform our judgements about gentrification. I return to the implications of these limitations below.

Community disintegration in enclaves

The first way in which gentrification can hinder democratic communication is through community disintegration in enclaves. In gentrifying neighbourhoods, there are three mechanisms – which I call displacement, exclusion, and disempowerment – that hinder the production of social perspectives. Through these mechanisms, gentrification has a tendency to disrupt the valuable epistemic function that enclaves play.

The idea of the enclave comes from the work of Peter Marcuse (1997: 242), who characterised it as ‘a spatially concentrated area in which members of a particular population group, self-defined by ethnicity or religion or otherwise, congregate as a means of enhancing their economic, social, political and/or cultural development’. Marcuse was particularly focused on recent immigrant communities, but the idea of the enclave has been picked up more broadly. Edward Soja (2010: 55), for example, characterises enclaves as spaces in which people from a similar background ‘live together for many different reasons, from creating identity and community to eating preferred food and obtaining other forms of nourishment and cultural sustenance to helping new arrivals to find jobs and housing’. Enclaves, then, are spatially concentrated areas in which those who occupy a similar social position live alongside one another and create local benefits and goods which would otherwise be unavailable to them.

Marcuse and Soja both distinguish the enclave from the ghetto, which is a form of spatial segregation ‘used to separate and to limit a particular involuntarily defined population (usually by race) held to be, and treated as, inferior by the dominant society’ (Marcuse, 1997: 231; Soja, 2010: 55). But of course, enclaves and ghettoes are ideal types, and the lines between them may be blurred in reality. Those forced together and segregated from broader society may well form local networks of solidarity that create and sustain important benefits for themselves. So although my focus here is on gentrification in enclaves, ghettos may also display the relevant features of enclaves, and insofar as they do, then my argument will apply to them as well – though clearly, my argument here is not the only consideration at stake. ⁶

Enclaves can play an important role in the production of social perspectives. By congregating in spatially concentrated areas, those outside of the mainstream or majority can form the critical mass needed in order to sustain important local institutions which provide sites for the exchange of experiences and the production of social perspectives. Tommie Shelby (2016: 61), discussing Black residential clustering in the United States, notes that living in neighbourhoods with a Black critical mass can ‘enable black social networks to flourish and black institutions to be sustained’. As he points out:

Where there is a greater residential concentration of blacks there will also be a greater array of establishments and associations that cater to blacks’ preferences and interests …. Their status as a numerical minority (13 percent of the U.S. population) makes it rational for blacks to cluster in neighbourhoods so that they can benefit from local organizations that cater to their distinctive tastes and preferences. (Shelby, 2016: 62)

Black barber shops in the United States, for example, have historically provided spaces for the exchange of information, critical discussion of social issues, and community mobilisation (Mills, 2013). Similarly, we might think of neighbourhoods such as Chinatowns in cities such as Boston and New York, or the gay villages of Manchester and San Francisco. In Boston's Chinatown, Chinese immigrants and their descendants living alongside one another and patronising the same businesses have identified shared interests and experiences, and have formed local associations in order to represent their perspectives. The Chinese Progressive Association, for example, fights for better working conditions and against wage theft, issues which are particularly salient for immigrant workers (see https://cpsboston.org). Or consider the Castro District in San Francisco, which became a prominent gay neighbourhood in the 1960s. The critical mass of LGBTQ + people living in and frequenting the Castro district sustained institutions such as gay bars and street fairs, and those coalescing around these institutions shared experiences of police repression and social exclusion. These institutions provided spaces for developing shared social perspectives and political organising; spatial clustering enabled the formation of a distinct political and social movement of gay liberation (Castells, 1983: 138–170).

These examples illustrate how enclaves can become the spatial correlates of ‘sub-publics’, ‘social enclaves’, and ‘subaltern counterpublics’. Walter Nicholls has examined the ways in which place-based relations can encourage the formation of collective political identities, arguing that they can ‘translate general sociological attributes (i.e. class, race, gender, etc.) into meaningful political values, dispositions and interests’, and that ‘solidarity derived from place-based relations makes collective action possible’ (Nicholls, 2009: 80). It is not merely sharing the same space that makes this possible. It is the ‘ties and solidarities built up in particular places over time’ which make the production of shared social perspectives, and the forms of political action that stem from them, possible (Nicholls, 2009: 82). Enclaves function as sites for the production of social perspectives because they enable those in similar social positions to congregate, share views and experiences, and build up ties over time.

Gentrification can hinder the production of social perspectives in enclaves. I call this process community disintegration (I adopt this term from Betancur, 2011: 399). The democratic interpretation of the ideal of city life gives us good grounds for criticising processes of gentrification that involve community disintegration: they disrupt the valuable epistemic-democratic function that enclaves serve. There are three main mechanisms through which community disintegration can occur.

The first mechanism is displacement. Displacement is the most straightforward way in which community disintegration can take place: when existing residents are displaced from a neighbourhood, for example because of rising rents, it becomes more difficult to maintain the local networks that foster the production of social perspectives. Similarly, when small businesses and other local institutions are displaced, sites that facilitate the production of social perspectives may disappear. Residential displacement has received significant attention in the literature on gentrification, but the evidence actually presents a mixed picture of its extent (Brown-Saracino, 2017). Some quantitative research has found little evidence of residential displacement in gentrifying neighbourhoods (e.g. Freeman and Braconi, 2004; Gould-Ellen and O’Regan, 2011; McKinnish, Walsh, and White, 2010; Vigdor, 2002), whereas others have criticised the methods used to generate these findings and have found evidence that displacement is linked to gentrification (Atkinson, 2000; Chum, 2015; Newman and Wyly, 2006). In general, quantitative research in this area is marred by a lack of good data, the application of different spatial and temporal scales, and competing methods for selecting gentrifying neighbourhoods and measuring displacement (Easton et al., 2020). Much of the disagreement, however, is not about whether displacement ever occurs as a result of gentrification, but is rather about its true scale. Where displacement does occur, it can make it more difficult for those from a similar social position to come together in ways that are conducive to the production of social perspectives.

The second mechanism through which community disintegration can occur is exclusion. There is a normal cycle of population turnover in all neighbourhoods, and the evidence suggests that higher-income newcomers disproportionately ‘succeed’ or ‘replace’ low-income residents in that cycle in gentrifying neighbourhoods – indeed, those who are sceptical of the impact of gentrification on displacement often appeal to exclusion to explain the changing the demographic composition of gentrifying neighbourhoods (Freeman, 2005; Hamnett, 2003). Lower-income residents who would have otherwise moved to the neighbourhood are excluded by rising housing costs, in a process that is sometimes (somewhat unhelpfully) referred to as ‘exclusionary displacement’ (Marcuse, 1985). Exclusion is another way in which community disintegration can occur, even in the absence of any direct displacement. Through exclusion, local social networks that foster the production of social perspectives amongst those from similar backgrounds are eroded over time, as the composition of neighbourhoods shifts.

The third mechanism through which community disintegration can occur is disempowerment. An influx of new residents with different values, priorities and social expectations can result in a decline in the capacity of existing residents to form distinctive social perspectives and mobilise around them. Qualitative research on gentrification suggests that residents who do manage to stay in gentrifying neighbourhoods often feel alienated by changing social norms, perceive their social networks as eroding, withdraw from public participation and feel disempowered vis-à-vis incoming residents, especially in contexts where race and ethnicity intersect with gentrification (Betancur, 2011; Hyra, 2015; Martin, 2007). This seems to be borne out by some quantitative work, which suggests that voter turnout declines in gentrifying neighbourhoods and that gentrification leads to lower levels of social trust and political mobilisation amongst Black residents (Knotts and Haspel, 2006; Newman, Veliz, and Pearson-Merkowitz, 2016). This does not mean that residents always view gentrification negatively – many residents report a mix of both satisfaction and resentment (Freeman, 2006). But when residents feel disempowered as a result of the influx of new residents, then it will become more difficult for them to form and mobilise around distinctive social perspectives.

Through these three mechanisms – displacement, exclusion, and disempowerment – gentrification can hinder the production of social perspectives in enclaves. As the makeup of a neighbourhood changes, either through displacement or exclusion, existing networks and institutions can be eroded. The change in the makeup of a neighbourhood can make it more difficult to sustain the institutions which provide sites for the development of networks between members of particular social groups. Social norms may change, making existing residents feel alienated from the sites of the community that they have built over time. All of this can make the production of distinct social perspectives more difficult. From the standpoint of the democratic ideal of city life, gentrification is objectionable when its tendency to lead to community disintegration is realised and it hinders the production of social perspectives in enclaves.

One objection to this argument is that even if gentrification does hinder valuable forms of democratic communication in enclaves, it may not hinder democratic communication overall. Proponents of gentrification sometimes suggest that the ‘social mix’ that it creates in neighbourhoods will lead to greater social cohesion (Lees, 2008). Similarly, we might think that there are epistemic benefits to be gained from the new opportunities for democratic communication that arise between those with different social perspectives in gentrifying neighbourhoods, which could outweigh any losses that result from community disintegration. If this is right, then community disintegration in enclaves may only hinder democratic communication locally, rather than overall.

It is true that gentrification will not always lead to an overall loss in terms of valuable forms of democratic communication (a point to which I return below). But we do have good reason to think that gentrification has a tendency to hinder valuable forms of democratic communication overall. For one thing, the opportunities for deliberation that occur in enclaves are likely to be especially valuable from the standpoint of the deliberative system. Marginalised social groups typically have their voices excluded from the public sphere, which means that opportunities for the production of social perspectives in enclaves are particularly valuable. For another thing, the dynamics of gentrification are unlikely to create genuine opportunities for inter-group democratic communication that are of comparable epistemic value. The evidence on gentrification and social mixing suggests that although gentrifiers often profess enthusiasm for the diversity of the neighbourhoods in which they live, they tend to form social networks with those of the same class (Kohn, 2016: 108; Lees, 2008). And when there is communication between members of different social groups in gentrifying neighbourhoods, high-status incomers tend to wield greater social power, and so it is their perspectives that are typically dominant (Freeman, 2006: 125–156; Hyra, 2015). This makes it unlikely that gentrification will tend to be beneficial in terms of its effects on democratic communication.

Another objection to this argument is that it proves too much. I have focused here on community disintegration amongst marginalised social groups whose perspectives are underrepresented in the broader public sphere. But the enclaves that are affected by community disintegration need not consist only of such groups; they might sometimes consist of groups whose shared social perspectives are not underrepresented in the public sphere, or whose perspectives are highly discriminatory or intolerant. Does the argument that I have made also give us reason to object to processes of community disintegration that occur amongst the privileged – for example when a highly exclusive community of the rich is opened up by the expansion of affordable housing? Does it condemn processes of community disintegration that occur amongst the intolerant – for example when Black residents move into a white enclave inhabited by those who harbour racist views?

These conclusions do not follow if we recognise that there is an asymmetry – which can be defended in democratic terms – between communities whose social perspectives are marginalised in the broader public sphere on the one hand, and those whose social perspectives are either already well-represented in the public sphere or which are highly discriminatory or intolerant on the other. The main reason that we have to value the production of social perspectives in enclaves is that they play an important contestatory role in relation to the social perspectives that already dominate the public sphere. When those whose social perspectives already have an outsized influence in the public sphere – such as the perspectives of the affluent – are threatened by community disintegration, we have much less reason to be concerned. After all, the dominance of their perspectives typically hinders the process of democratic inquiry that a robust and pluralist public sphere should aim to facilitate. By contrast, when social perspectives that are marginalised within the public sphere are threatened by community disintegration, this has an important bearing on the quality of democratic communication in the broader public sphere.

This explains the why, from a democratic point of view, we should not be concerned with community disintegration as it pertains to those whose perspectives are already well-represented in the public sphere, such as the affluent. But it does not explain why we should not be concerned with community disintegration amongst those who hold highly discriminatory or intolerant views. After all, their perspectives may well be marginal within the public sphere – perhaps even because they are intolerant or discriminatory.

Here, two possible responses are available. The first response accepts that we have good democratic reasons to regret the disappearance of such enclaves but suggests that those reasons are outweighed by non-democratic reasons. Perhaps, for example, there is a Millian argument to be made that the public airing of those discriminatory or intolerant views serves as a check against dominant views becoming ‘dead dogma’ in the public sphere (Mill, 2015: 35), but that this reason is outweighed by the very real harm that is felt as a result of the expression of those views. This would allow us to say that we should not regret the disappearance of such enclaves all-things-considered. But it does come at an important cost: it suggests that we have at least one reason to regret the disappearance of enclaves of the intolerant, which is that such enclaves do serve an important democratic function. Many, I suspect, will find this implication implausible.

The second response, however, suggests that we do not have good democratic reasons to regret the disappearance of enclaves of the intolerant in the first place. On a broad pragmatist picture, democratic inquiry is a tool that enables citizens to solve collective problems through the use of social intelligence (Anderson, 2006). But this is entirely consistent with their being some perspectives – such as discriminatory and intolerant perspectives – that we have good reason to reject. To say that it would be democratically valuable to develop or preserve discriminatory and intolerant perspectives misconstrues the cumulative and progressive character of democratic inquiry. As Jeremy Waldron (2012: 195) puts it in a related discussion of hate speech: ‘It would be fatuous to suggest that it is the importance of our continuing engagement in a debate of this kind that requires us to endure the ugly invective of racial defamation in the marketplace of ideas. In fact, the fundamental debate about race is over – won; finished’. Of course, this does not mean that the problem of racism has been solved – clearly, it has not – but neither do we need to preserve discriminatory or intolerant views in order to maintain a healthy collective practice of democratic inquiry.

In fact, the development and preservation of such perspectives can hinder democratic inquiry. Genuinely collective democratic inquiry requires a robust and pluralist public sphere in which contributions can be made and evaluated by those from a variety of social perspectives (Anderson, 2006: 15). It presupposes that those from different social backgrounds should be treated as equal participants. Views that deny the equal status of those from a particular social group are inconsistent with this conception of democratic inquiry. When they have significant influence in the public sphere, they can block the contributions of those from other social groups – for example, through the propagation of norms that discount their perspectives or that have a ‘silencing’ effect on them (Dotson, 2011; Fricker, 2007; McGowan, 2019). They can thus undermine the openness to competing perspectives that are important for collective democratic inquiry.

How does this bear on the moral evaluation of gentrification? Gentrification typically affects enclaves made up mostly of those whose social perspectives are already marginalised in the public sphere. Indeed, their marginal status helps to explain why it is those groups that are affected by gentrification in the first place. In general, this means that we should expect gentrification to hinder democratic communication through community disintegration in enclaves: it will tend to affect those whose social perspectives occupy a marginal position in the broader public sphere. There may be some atypical cases in which gentrification involves community disintegration, but where this is not something we should regret from a democratic point of view – where gentrification affects relatively privileged communities or breaks up enclaves that harbour discriminatory or intolerant social perspectives. But in general, we should expect that gentrification will tend to hinder democratic communication through the mechanism of community disintegration.

Homogenisation in public spaces

A second way in which gentrification can affect the democratic character of a society is through the homogenisation of public spaces. Where enclaves serve the function of enabling the production of distinct social perspectives, public spaces serve the function of allowing different social perspectives to circulate within a broader society. In enclaves, a certain degree of homogeneity provides social groups with sites in which they can share experiences and develop common interpretive frameworks. In public spaces, by contrast, homogeneity operates so as to exclude some voices, most often the voices of the disadvantaged, from the broader public sphere. The gentrification of public spaces homogenises public spaces in ways that promote the perspectives of the more affluent at the expense of the marginalised.

There are myriad kinds of public spaces within cities: parks, town squares, plazas, mass transit systems, downtown shopping streets, spaces for commemorative public art, large boulevards and avenues, and so on. Though each of these spaces may perform different specific functions, they are all ‘public’ spaces in the sense of publicity affirmed by the ideal of city life. They are the kind of spaces which are (at least ideally) openly accessible to all, and in which we should expect to encounter those with different social perspectives (Young, 2011: 119; see also Anderson, 1993: 158–163). These spaces are the physical counterparts of the broader public sphere in which ideas and social perspectives, often developed in enclaves, circulate more broadly. They are where social perspectives are contested and revised in the face of countervailing views, where they are picked up, modified, and appropriated by others, and where they gather momentum and enter into the broader process of public opinion-formation.

To see the importance of physical public spaces, we can look to John Parkinson's (2012) dramaturgical understanding of such public spaces as sites of ‘democratic performance’. Parkinson argues that physical public spaces can act as ‘stages’, where different democratic roles can be performed. Such public performances can be more or less self-conscious and direct. At one end of the spectrum, disruptive forms of public protest are performances which actively capture the attention of their audiences, drawing their attention to new perspectives and ideas. On the other, merely ‘encountering’ others living different forms of life in public can play an important role in broadening our awareness and understanding of different social perspectives (McTernan, unpublished). It is through such public spaces that social perspectives can circulate throughout broader society, and as such they play a crucial role in a functioning democracy.

Consider first the role of spaces used for public protest, such as town squares and plazas. As Parkinson points out, such spaces are centrally important for ‘members of the demos itself to make public claims directly’. The particular spaces available to those making public claims ‘has an effect on the kinds of impacts they can have on particular audiences’. For example, public spaces outside of legislatures and other buildings associated with the formal public sphere can be strategically useful in ‘directly confronting the powerful in the places where they work’ and in ‘dignifying one's claims by linking them visually with the symbols of the state’ (Parkinson, 2012: 146–160). Overt political claims-making in public spaces such as these are one way in which different social perspectives circulate, and the particular characteristics of such spaces may enable or impede this process of circulation.

Social perspectives may also circulate through less direct and overtly political uses of public space. Consider public spaces such as parks and mass transit systems. As Parkinson (2012: 181) points out, parks (and mass transit systems) are generally governed by a norm of ‘public disattendability’ or ‘civil inattention’ (Goffman, 1963: 83–88) which ‘takes primacy over engagement’. Although we expect to encounter those from different social groups in such spaces, we do not expect active engagement with them. But the presence of those from different social groups, engaging in different practices and using public spaces in different ways, can invite the consideration of different social perspectives. Parkinson (2012: 184) argues that a lack of visibility can ‘reinforce a limited concept of who counts as a member of the demos, and thus who gets taken seriously’. Alexander Reichl (2016: 908) that heterogeneous public spaces matter not only as ‘spaces of representation’, but also because of their role in ‘nudging issues and conflicts into the realm of democratic politics’. For example, Reichl (2016: 908–909) argues that the presence of the homeless in public space – rather than their being hidden from public view – can keep the issue of homelessness on the political agenda. Even if encounters in public spaces such as parks and mass transit systems do not promote direct engagement with competing social perspectives, diversity in such spaces can still promote the circulation of social perspectives in these more everyday ways.

Gentrification can undermine this function of public spaces by rendering them more homogenous. We tend to think of gentrification as exclusively concerning the transformation of neighbourhoods, as examined above, but changes in public spaces can themselves be part of the process of gentrification. Indeed, in what has been called the ‘third wave’ of gentrification, municipal authorities are increasingly making active efforts to attract higher-income residents in order to increase their tax bases, partly by redeveloping public spaces within cities (Sassen, 2001: 256–262; Smith and Hackworth, 2011).

There are two main mechanisms through which the gentrification of public space can lead to homogenisation. The first is the forms of design that are used within gentrified public spaces. The gentrification of public spaces involves making those spaces more attractive to more affluent users, and this often involves using forms of design that discourage the presence of other social groups.

A good example of homogenising design can be found in Reichl's study of the High Line in New York, which found that the High Line is a ‘troubling outlier among comparable Manhattan parks for the lack of visible racial/ethnic diversity among visitors’ and that ‘lack of diversity cannot be explained by differences in neighbourhood composition or by available tourism data’ (Reichl, 2016: 917). Instead, he points out how aspects of the park's design may serve to deter visitors from some social groups. For example, the park's recreation of ‘the aura of industrial decay’ is likely to be more attractive to those who have benefitted from the post-industrial economy than those who have suffered from industrial decline. The High Line is elevated above street level and has few entrances, so that ‘uninformed passersby might be discouraged from venturing up into unknown turf’. The ‘daunting list of park rules’ and linear form means that strolling is the main activity and other uses of the space are discouraged. The High Line's design caters to the tastes and preferences of more affluent users, and in doing so, it homogenises an ostensibly public space. It provides ‘little opportunity for unmediated encounters among people from diverse backgrounds’ and so discourages people from encountering different social perspectives. As Reichl points out, this is in stark contrast to more heterogeneous public parks like Central Park, where visitors ‘picnic, sunbathe, play and listen to music, play ball, throw Frisbees, swim, skate, ride bikes, fish, climb rocks, watch birds, walk dogs, play in playgrounds, and more’ (Reichl, 2016: 907–920).

The High Line is one good example of the way in which the design of public space in processes of gentrification can be homogenising, but there are numerous other ways in which the design of public space can be a homogenising force – for example through ‘hostile architecture’ designed to exclude particular groups (homeless people, skateboarders, loiterers, and so on), forms of public commemorations which alienate or degrade some social groups, and aspects of the built and social environment that make public spaces inaccessible to disabled persons. When public spaces are designed to attract more affluent users, we have reason to be concerned that the forms of design that are employed will homogenise those spaces, and thus undermine their democratic function as a site for the exchange of social perspectives.

The second mechanism is the forms of control exercised in gentrified public spaces. Behaviour in gentrified public spaces is often controlled in ways that enforce the tastes and preferences of more affluent users, including by excluding the poor and marginalised. Sometimes, this is done by police forces, who use their powers to target those whose presence in public space is deemed unwelcome, such as the homeless (Kennelly and Watt, 2011), or to prevent behaviour that is deemed unbecoming, such as the public consumption of alcohol (Pennay, Menton, and Savic, 2014). But gentrified public spaces are also increasingly controlled by private authorities who can exclude certain forms of behaviour, often with little oversight. As part of their effort to redevelop urban public spaces, city governments increasingly enter into partnerships with private developers, who are provided with incentives to create and manage public spaces (Smith and Hackworth, 2011). This allows cities to attract more affluent residents without bearing the costs of creating and maintaining public spaces.

The privatisation of public space is not a new phenomenon and has itself been subject to important critiques (Kohn, 2004). But in the context of gentrification, developers have the incentive to retain control over publicly accessible spaces in order to make them amenable to the tastes of the higher-income users that they seek to attract. The powers that private management bodies have to control behaviour within and exclude particular people from spaces that ostensibly serve public purposes are often used to control the sorts of activities that make public spaces useful as sites of democratic performance.

For example, when Occupy London attempted to set up an encampment in Canary Wharf, which would have had obvious symbolic significance given the aims of the movement, the Canary Wharf Group's private ownership of the land meant that it was straightforward for it to ban protesters from their property. As Kohn points out, where the state is the ‘landlord’ of such public spaces, it can be held to account for its actions and is limited by legal provisions for the exercise of free speech (Kohn, 2013: 107). Private owners of public space do not face the same limitations. Restrictions on dramatic protests such as occupations are also not the only way in which private owners of public spaces exercise control: they may also use their powers to prohibit forms of political activity such as handing out leaflets, picketing, and even wearing t-shirts with political slogans (Kohn, 2004: 1–6).

Gentrification can play an important role in homogenising public spaces, through the mechanisms of exclusion by design and exclusion by control. In doing so, it makes it more difficult for the social perspectives of the marginalised to enter and circulate within the broader public sphere. The democratic interpretation of the ideal of city life, which identifies the importance of public spaces in which social perspectives can circulate, can help us to diagnose this problem with gentrification.

Conclusion

This article has argued that gentrification can undermine the background conditions of social differentiation that enable valuable forms of democratic communication. There are two principal ways in which gentrification can undermine democratic communication: first, community disintegration in enclaves can make it more difficult for marginalised social groups to produce distinctive social perspectives; second, homogenisation in public spaces can make it more difficult for the social perspectives of the marginalised to circulate in the broader public sphere. By way of conclusion, it is worth reflecting briefly on the possible implications, as well as the limitations, of the argument that I have set out here.

The considerations that I have set out here could be used as building blocks within broader arguments about the justifiability of particular policies designed to stop or slow the processes of gentrification. In particular, policies might be targeted to mitigate the effects of the particular mechanisms that I have identified. For example, policies of rent subsidisation or stabilisation might be justified as an anti-displacement measure. Expansions in the provision of affordable housing or inclusionary zoning policies might be justified as anti-exclusion measures. Special protections might be put in place for local community institutions that provide sites for the formation of social perspectives, as an anti-disempowerment measure. Requirements for stakeholder participation in the development of public spaces and limits on the powers of those who manage privately-owned public spaces might be justified as anti-homogenisation measures. Obviously, much more would need to be said in relation to each of these policies. The point, however, is that these problems related to gentrification that I have identified may have important upshots for the justifiability of particular policies.

We should not be too quick to jump directly from the arguments made here to these implications, however. This is because there are two important limits to the arguments that I have made. The first limit is that their application to the messy and complex real-world dynamics of gentrification will not always be straightforward. For one thing, I have only argued that gentrification has a tendency to undermine the production and circulation of social perspectives, not that it will always do so. This means that our judgements about any particular case of gentrification will need to involve an assessment of whether the general tendency that it has to hinder the production and circulation of social perspectives is realised in that particular case.

The second limit to the reach of the argument developed here is that it does not identify all of the morally relevant features of gentrification. As was noted in the introduction, the most significant focus in the literature on normative political theory thus far has been on the injustice of residential displacement, which I have not discussed here, except insofar as it bears on community disintegration. I make no claim that the problems associated with gentrification identified here capture all, or even the most important, aspects of it. Nor have I shown that there cannot be countervailing reasons that weigh in favour of processes of gentrification, which may even outweigh the considerations adduced here. After all, gentrification is a process of development that may well bring important benefits to the areas that it transforms – though, of course, one objection to gentrification is that such benefits are distributed unevenly.

All of this is to say that what I have done here is to articulate one, underappreciated reason to be concerned about processes of gentrification, rather than providing an all-things-considered judgement against it. To be sure, I do take the concern that I have articulated to be an important one. Insofar as we value the robust pluralism of a functioning democratic society, then this concern should have considerable bearing on our broader judgements of policies concerning gentrification. The value of articulating this concern is that it provides us with a more fine-grained way of understanding the moral stakes of gentrification. Whatever our ultimate judgement on the normative status of policies that foster or permit processes of gentrification, a thorough understanding of its effects on the background conditions of a democratic society enables us to see the trade-offs more clearly.