Search Results

Social preservationists' practices fall into three general categories: (1) symbolic, as in the use of festivals, streetscapes, and artworks that celebrate old-timers or theater productions that criticize gentrification; (2) political, from protests against upscale development to membership on an affordable-housing task force; and (3) private, such as the decision to support old-timers' businesses and to resist selling property for profit. Of course, the lines between the categories sometimes blur. Symbolic practices are often overtly political. Private efforts often arise from political concerns, and political choices can be very personal. However, the categories isolate the medium through which preservationists work. This chapter first outlines the dimensions of each type of practice. Then it describes the practices typical of each site and how context shapes preservationists' strategies.

It is plausible that some of the very concerns that inspire social preservationists' attention to old-timers encouraged scholars to overlook social preservation or at least to leave it unexplored. Specifically, by emphasizing outcome and actors' economic positions, scholars forsook notice of a set of beliefs and practices that challenge the notion of the iconic pioneer whose culture and practices serve his economic interests and ensure gentrification's success. Paradoxically, those who wish to advocate for old-timers may have missed opportunities to join forces with preservationists or to take social preservation into account when formulating policy. These political concerns connect to an explanation for why social preservation was long unidentified: urban scholars' long-standing devotion to the study of political economy.

This chapter explores how those who articulated the social preservation ideology and engaged in related practices while the author was in the field are similar to and different from other gentrifiers. Specifically, it compares social preservationists' demographic and cultural traits with those of the other gentrifiers in the sample. In so doing, it provides a portrait of the social location of the preservationists the author interviewed as well as of the historical and cultural location of social preservation itself, and of its relation to other sets of ideas and practices.

This chapter introduces the concepts of gentrification and social preservation. For more than three decades, sociologists, planners, and policymakers have paid attention to gentrification: “an economic and social process whereby private capital (real estate firms, developers) and individual homeowners and renters reinvest in fiscally neglected neighborhoods or towns through housing rehabilitation, loft conversions, and the construction of new housing.” Importantly, gentrification is also supported by public investment of funds preceding or following the moving in of the gentry: typically young, highly educated individuals. Social preservation is in some ways analogous to environmentalism. Like environmentalists, who seek to preserve nature, social preservationists—those who adhere to the preservation ideology and engage in related practices—work to preserve the local social ecology.

This chapter documents the accounts social preservationists provide of the impetus for their relocation, which they typically locate in appreciation for ungentrified space, namely, space marked by old-timers' presence. It also explores social preservationists' vision of the future of the space in which they live, which emphasizes old-timers' sustained physical, cultural, and political presence, and their more general concern that gentrification will destroy the authenticity of their place of residence and, therefore, threaten the distinction between their home and other, less-authentic places. In concert with such concerns, social preservationists bemoan the cultural, social, political, and aesthetic implications of gentrification even as they acknowledge (and criticize) their participation in the process.

This chapter examines four questions about preservationists' selection process. First, which longtime residents do they seek to preserve? Specifically, whom do they believe has the greatest claim to authentic community and, therefore, to a place? Second, what beliefs, stereotypes, and political-economic factors influence their association of a place with a particular group? Third, of what consequence are notions of authenticity for authenticators? For preservationists, what are the effects of associating community with traits they do not share? Finally, if definitions of authenticity affect preservationists—those with the privilege to select not only their own identity, but also, to an extent, that of their place of residence—what does this say about the power of authenticity and of ideology?