Race and perceptions of revitalisation in the ‘District of Gentrification’

Abstract

Ethnographies of gentrification, by using interviews, suggest individual and group sentiments about it as a form of revitalisation are heterogenous, even within neighbourhoods experiencing it. Discerning variation and changes over time in citywide sentiments about gentrification, however, is a challenge. It requires city-level survey data, especially longitudinal data, which is scarce. We use novel data from Washington Post surveys of District of Columbia (i.e. Washington, DC) residents between 2000 and 2016 to test predictions of city-level gentrification opinions, deduced from neighbourhood-based ethnographies of gentrification. We observe and emphasise how, over time, race is consistently associated with opinion divergence about gentrification, including perceptions of its inequalities and consequences. Our findings demonstrate the value of citywide surveys for extending empirical findings from neighbourhood-level ethnographies of gentrification.