Thread by @IDoTheThinking

The truth that gentrification anthropologists will never explicitly admit is that the anti-housing growth movement in the 70s was 1,000,000 times more successful at displacing Black residents than urban renewal ever was.

Urban renewal displaced and ruined the lives of many Black residents but it did not succeed at making neighborhoods attractive for white newcomers nor did it really add any whites but the preservationist stuff absolutely did everywhere it was applied here.

I see some writers more or less state this but the big lesson from the redevelopment era was that the successful way to gentrify districts wasnt with destructive freeway and public housing projects but themed districts, population limits, expensive anti-blight maintenance rules.

It's important to understand tho that the preservationist stuff would've likely never happened without the slum clearance programs in the first place. But underlying it all is how the migration of Black residents to urban areas was seen fundamentally as urban blight.

I havent see a book that talks about this but what inspired this take is the subtext which very clear if you're in the Oakland/Berkeley area:
Walker "Oakland Dark Star": geog.berkeley.edu/PeopleHistory/…
Clavel, "The Progressive City" (1986)
(Recent) Zoned Out: grist.org/cities/zoned-o…

Oakland Dark Star is pretty fascinating because the author is quite proud of Berkeley's preservationist movement and laments Oakland not doing the same. But subtly hints at what the preservationist movement did to Berkeley in the end.

Lincoln Park, Chicago as written by @DanielKayHertz. Same thing. Probably the same everywhere.