Urban Land, Housing, and Labor Markets:

Links to Social and Cultural Change in North American Cities

Post-WW II Changes in North American Cities

• Deindustrialization

• Rise of service sector

• Shift in role of government

• Gentrification

• Urban social movements

• Shift to consumption-based urban cultures

How Urban Land Markets Work

• “Highest and best use”• Competition, instability, and change• Role of “speculator-developers”• Role of state actors• Role of housing consumers• Role of finance capital• Real estate agents/brokers• Builders• Appraiser, title companies, others

Gentrification and the “Rent-Gap”

• Suburban vs. inner-city investment and consequences for the inner-city

• The emergence of “rent-gaps”• Narrowing of gaps in suburbs, widening of

gaps in inner-city, make reinvestment in inner-city “rational”

• Changes in the nature of demand (economic restructuring, social movements, new demographics)

Example and Interlinkages:Rise of “Gay Gentrification”

• Expansion of job opportunities for gays and lesbians

• Pre-existing geography of gay/lesbian social and institutional life

• Tradition of link between property ownership, spatial concentration, and political-economic power

• Non-traditional class and cross-class conflicts and alliances

Gentrification andGay Community Development

• Types of neighborhoods impacted• Claiming and marking space• Place-based political organizing• Spectacle• Commodification of identity• Commodification of sex and sexuality• Commodification of lifestyle• Change in urban landscape & culture

Types of Neighborhoods Impacted

Claiming and Marking Space

Place-Based Political Organizing

Spectacle

Commodification of Identity

Commodification ofSex and Sexuality

Commodification of Lifestyle

Changes in UrbanLandscape and Culture

Bringing it All Together:Gay Gentrification in New Orleans

• A neighborhood called Faubourg Marigny

• Pre-gentrification Marigny

• Early gentrification (early 1970s) and neighborhood-based politics

• The arrival of speculator-developers (mid-to-late 1970s)

Significance and Conclusions

• Despite everything, class interests prevailed

• Speculators mobilized the gay community!

• Role of state actors in restoring traditional distribution of power and profits

• More than just capital accumulation is at work