
What a City Is For
Remaking the Politics of Displacement
Matt Hern(Author)
MIT Press
Published on 23. September 2016
Book
Hardback
272 pages
978-0-262-03488-3 (ISBN)
Description
An investigation into gentrification and displacement, focusing on the case of Portland, Oregon's systematic dispersal of black residents from its Albina neighborhood.
Portland, Oregon, is one of the most beautiful, livable cities in the United States. It has walkable neighborhoods, bike lanes, low-density housing, public transportation, and significant green space -- not to mention craft-beer bars and locavore food trucks. But liberal Portland is also the whitest city in the country. This is not circumstance; the city has a long history of officially sanctioned racialized displacement that continues today.
Over the last two and half decades, Albina -- the one major Black neighborhood in Portland -- has been systematically uprooted by market-driven gentrification and city-renewal policies. African Americans in Portland were first pushed into Albina and then contained there through exclusionary zoning, predatory lending, and racist real estate practices. Since the 1990s, they've been aggressively displaced -- by rising housing costs, developers eager to get rid of low-income residents, and overt city policies of gentrification.
Displacement and dispossessions are convulsing cities across the globe, becoming the dominant urban narratives of our time. In What a City Is For, Matt Hern uses the case of Albina, as well as similar instances in New Orleans and Vancouver, to investigate gentrification in the twenty-first century. In an engaging narrative, effortlessly mixing anecdote and theory, Hern questions the notions of development, private property, and ownership. Arguing that home ownership drives inequality, he wants us to disown ownership. How can we reimagine the city as a post-ownership, post-sovereign space? Drawing on solidarity economics, cooperative movements, community land trusts, indigenous conceptions of alternative sovereignty, the global commons movement, and much else, Hern suggests repudiating development in favor of an incrementalist, non-market-driven unfolding of the city.
Portland, Oregon, is one of the most beautiful, livable cities in the United States. It has walkable neighborhoods, bike lanes, low-density housing, public transportation, and significant green space -- not to mention craft-beer bars and locavore food trucks. But liberal Portland is also the whitest city in the country. This is not circumstance; the city has a long history of officially sanctioned racialized displacement that continues today.
Over the last two and half decades, Albina -- the one major Black neighborhood in Portland -- has been systematically uprooted by market-driven gentrification and city-renewal policies. African Americans in Portland were first pushed into Albina and then contained there through exclusionary zoning, predatory lending, and racist real estate practices. Since the 1990s, they've been aggressively displaced -- by rising housing costs, developers eager to get rid of low-income residents, and overt city policies of gentrification.
Displacement and dispossessions are convulsing cities across the globe, becoming the dominant urban narratives of our time. In What a City Is For, Matt Hern uses the case of Albina, as well as similar instances in New Orleans and Vancouver, to investigate gentrification in the twenty-first century. In an engaging narrative, effortlessly mixing anecdote and theory, Hern questions the notions of development, private property, and ownership. Arguing that home ownership drives inequality, he wants us to disown ownership. How can we reimagine the city as a post-ownership, post-sovereign space? Drawing on solidarity economics, cooperative movements, community land trusts, indigenous conceptions of alternative sovereignty, the global commons movement, and much else, Hern suggests repudiating development in favor of an incrementalist, non-market-driven unfolding of the city.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass.
United States
Publishing group
MIT Press Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Interest Age: From 18 years
Illustrations
5 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder
5 b&w photos
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-262-03488-3 (9780262034883)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Book
09/2017
MIT Press
€19.00
Shipment within 10-20 days

E-Book
09/2016
MIT Press
€19.49
Available for download
Person
Matt Hern is Codirector of 2+10 Industries, teaches at multiple universities, and lectures widely. He is the author of Common Ground in a Liquid City.