Positive Effects Of Gentrification

While gentrification initially occurs to make improvements to an area, it is extremely unsafe to live in areas under construction. The Center for Disease Control has confirmed that there are adverse effects of living in gentrified cities while it is in the middle of undergoing constructional changes. When a neighborhood is gentrified at a rapid rate, its current residents are subjected to increased “cancer rates, incidence of asthma, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease” because these residents are “priced out” of the wealthy neighborhoods that they cannot afford; away from safe housing, food, and environments. The neighborhoods that these people are pushed out to have the opposite living conditions: unsafe or unstable housing, “food deserts,
In a graph seen on a website called Oakland Local, it is shown that there are raised mortality rates for residents of all races during any stage of the gentrification process. It is, however, clear that while the mortality rates of Caucasian residents appear to have decreased, the mortality rate for African Americans remain extremely high in the final stages of the gentrification process. The people that have been continually living in gentrified areas inevitably suffer the health risks associated with the changes being made; specifically that of African American residents. It is this group in particular that is getting pushed out do to gentrification. So many residents have been suffering from adverse conditions because they are not benefitting from the “conditions they are living in” aren't benefiting from the “beneficial” development in their neighborhood. Gentrification hurts the public health of not only Oakland, but any other large city that is going through developmental
“Neighborhoods with 35 percent or more white people tended to gentrify over time, while “neighborhoods with 40 percent or more black people tended not to gentrify.” The same can be said for communities with a large percentage of latino inhabitants. Along with new, wealthy, upper class inhabitant taking over areas like these, there is a sense of economic and cultural shifts that are in occurrence. Sociologists have come to the conclusion that social class position is directly reflective of racial makeup of one’s neighborhood. Those that are gentrifying neighborhoods are shown to prefer neighborhoods already primarily inhabited by the white middle class. By gentrifying, they are bringing more and more white people into a neighborhood that already is lacking in diversity. Minorities are then forced to move out of their homes because of their status in the class, into a less safe area. Gentrification entirely revamps the makeup of various cities scattered about the country. It is because of the quest of money and power of the white upper-middle-class that drives people to gentrify, often pushing out the unwanted from their place in this world. There is both a problem of gentrification and racial inequality that is only further worsened by the development that comes with gentrification that further segregates neighborhoods by