With a growing population and the spread of culture and work through globalization, the need to build and improve upon cities, or rural areas surrounding them, has become a point of contention within the communities existing within. Gentrification, a term widely debated for definition, merit, and consequence, has a long history within the working class, and is a purposeful shift of the population type to best benefit the global expansion of the economy. Through the establishment of popular chain stores, more modern architecture, and more accessibility to goods and services that were not previously available to the initial population, the amalgamation of improved structural and social groups acts as a magnet to the specific people for whom would benefit the government and agenda at hand. Gentrification, encouraged by globalization, has shifted the power and dynamic of the classes who live, and are targeted to live, within these affected communities, for the benefit of an expanded economy.

The history of gentrification is thought to have been established with the redlining of districts in the 1930s by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC). Redlining ensured that businesses would avoid establishing themselves in these red-marked areas, and, as such, would leave homes within these spaces worth little in value as those in the middle-class would not seek to live in a place with little amenities. Cheaper areas allowed those in the poorer-class, typically minorities, to buy homes and create communities for themselves. Linking minority communities with “failed business”, segregated them from non-minorities-now associated with “good business”. Thus, minorities, themselves, began to represent what an expanding company would want to avoid if they wished to be successful.

Redlining developed more consequences than sectioning off communities for businesses. The representation began to define minority spaces, actively obstructing minorities from moving up in class, or establishing themselves, through loans: “In the wake of the 1919 race riot, the Chicago Commission on Race Relations determined that African Americans faced significant barriers in securing mortgages, with some lenders completely avoiding areas where African Americans lived. The Mortgage Conference of New York was also involved in redlining, sharing block-level maps as early as 1932 and encouraging member banks to avoid areas with concentrations of African Americans” (Hillier, 398). Living without the opportunities of city growth, minorities built communities centered around their struggles. Now, encroaching on the areas that were redlined for so long, gentrification ensures those previously living in these areas are again forced to move, and live, in areas where their communities are not wanted, among people who did not care for them before they were not the key to opportunity.

With the rise of globalization, the operation of business and economy on a global scale, gentrification is found in several different countries, with similar experiences. Wherever there is an economic boom and a call to foreign investment, gentrification will occur to ensure those who can benefit a state may find themselves a home. One such instance was in Barnsbury, London, an area of Britain that had found itself gentrified, and re-gentrified, until it suited the needs of the foreign corporations that wished to settle there. As stated by Butler and Lees in their study Super‐gentrification in Barnsbury, London: Globalization and Gentrifying Global Elites at the Neighbourhood level: “Deregulation of the Stock Exchange in 1986 brought about a big expansion in City employment...In the 1990s, because deregulation had been insufficient to invigorate the rather conservative British finance houses, these firms were taken over, largely by foreign, mainly US-based financial mega-players... which now make up about a third of City employment” (475). Deregulation ensured competitive players, who wished to take advantage of lax government intervention, would move their businesses to become a significant and successful actor on the world stage. It opened the country to further globalization and, as such, expansion of the financial sector of Barnsbury. The developments changed the population of the city, shifting the culture from its pre-corporate state, to a gentrified area that sent a boost through the city’s economy.

Globalization and a country’s expanding economy act as a catalyst for a country’s shift in cultural outlook. As a country’s worldview expands, the general population changes in attitude, and deviates from conservatism. For the middle- and upper- classes, there is optimism in the future, and the small towns that confined them become the past, and the newly expanded, economically rich areas, become the focal point of liberation and change.

This is observed in 1968, where Canadian cities developed into centers for new expression and liberalization, a newer, more diverse area for the population that followed the change, there: “This occurred in the context of a laissez-faire state, a rapidly changing industrial and occupational structure welfare retrenchment, a real estate and new construction boom, the advent of postmodern niche-marketing and conspicuous consumption” (Atkinson and Bridge, 43). Cultural change is created by opportunity. Globalization provides economic opportunity and societal relief for the middle- and upper- classes, whose ease, generated by this expansion, seek out their place within these new opportunities. However, with this search for new opportunities, comes the hunt for a community that fits the middle- and upper- class expectation of a fitting home. Thus, minority communities, who had previously been marked off from previous economic help, faced a “real estate and new construction boom” that built itself directly into, and on top of, their communities, driving up the price of homes, and driving them out of newfound opportunity.

Colonization is redefined through gentrification. Those who lived in an area pre-gentrification and those who helped to gentrify the community, experience a shift in power and dynamics. Original residents become a threat to the stability and richness of the new community attempting to plant roots in the developing area. They maintain the community bond of those suffering under the red line, a people who do not fit the middle- and upper- class preference of modernization and economic success. As the state, or city, encourages gentrification, power and preference is given to the privileged class, displacing those who originally lived there. Housing prices skyrocket, communities, previously a cohesive unit lending support to those who had lived there for years, break apart, buildings to meet social needs of gentrifiers, such as coffee shops and other popular chain stores, are built to fit the wants of gentrifiers over the needs of the original community. In this way, underdeveloped areas are the “frontier”, with city and corporate expansion in the name of economy acting as the settlers, believing they must improve upon what is already existing within a space (Atkinson and Bridge, 2-3).

With a rise in demand for better housing in gentrified neighborhoods, renters who have lived in these communities can no longer support themselves or their families without a college or graduate degree. So great has the demand for space within these communities grown, that initial gentrifiers are forced to look for cheaper residencies, unable to survive the second wave of gentrification. A study of Greenpoint, Brooklyn found significant differences in education level between long-term residents and gentrifiers who had recently moved into the community. Women who were new to the community were more likely to: “have college or graduate degrees and presently work or have worked in professional jobs”. In comparison, previous residents were: “Less educated” and “occupied relatively lower paying jobs” (Desena, 247). This disconnect changes the cohesiveness of a neighborhood. As the demographic shifts, so does the targeted advertisement, and help by the state. Those who can afford to pay for the amenities, presenting demand for the luxuries not previously afforded to these neighborhoods, are given priority over the lower educated and lesser paid residents who cannot be the squeaky wheel needed to enact change within a community. The lack of unity within a neighborhood creates a disconnect between children, parents, and opportunities. Parents with higher paying jobs have the ability to shop for schools, while those who cannot afford a more expensive education for the child must send them to state schools within the community. These schools often lack the many programs or connections that would grant students better prospects to branch out and seek further education. Their neighbors, then, are given a greater chance at life, with a more expensive and driven education that presents them with a better curriculum, newer supplies, and more opportunity to grow. (245). The power then lies with the parents and children who can attain more knowledge, creating a rift through opportunity, with long-term residents remaining on the bottom, and gentrifiers on top, with higher long-term success rates.

Gentrification, driven by free markets and globalization, displaces those most in need of housing. It creates rifts between the gentrified and gentrifiers for the sake of expansion, displacing those who have lived within the community for years. Gentrification has waves, gentrifying and regentrifying areas of cities until it is fit for the demographic a state hopes to bring in. It is colonization in a different form, granting power to those who are in the middle- and upper- class at the expense of the poorer classes. States, encouraging globalization, have created a catalyst for gentrification. As the world grows more connected, the need for well-preserved space becomes imminent. Drawing in investors by bringing up the cost of an area and effectively ridding a community of the redline that had been drawn in years past, shifts the redline, so that it encompasses a different area, not yet needed by them. Then, when it is most efficient and demanded, the redline will shift again, until original communities are left on the fringes of society Gentrification is a term reliant upon globalization and state action. With the widening of the global market, gentrified communities bring in the new horizon of economic success on an international scope, while simultaneously harbingering in the displacement of the poorer classes through gentrification.