For all the attention paid to gentrification by urbanists — and increasingly by popular media — there’s very little consensus around the term. There’s no clear way of defining or measuring it, and there’s even wide disagreement about whether it’s good or bad. Despite conventional wisdom that gentrification is always harmful, a good deal of research finds that it doesn’t cause widespread displacement and that it can even benefit existing communities.
There’s at least one area of general agreement: cities should develop policies that mitigate any negative impacts of neighborhood change (such as evictions, displacement, or rent-burdened households) while encouraging widely beneficial forms of population growth, economic opportunity, and local investment. But to apply those policies effectively, cities need to map where harmful change is happening — and according to new research, that’s yet another case of dramatic divergence.