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Summary Of Is Gentrification Really A Problem By Kelefa Saneh

769 Words4 Pages

Gentrification is the process of improving a struggling neighborhood for affluent people. One of the main causes of this shown by Kelefa Sanneh’s article “Is Gentrification Really a Problem?”, is the real estate market. Things that affect the value of something in a certain neighborhood can end up having a direct influence in all of the neighborhood and can lead to gentrification. The construction of a luxury apartment building can attract more businesses and in turn, more high-quality living spaces which could eventually displace someone living three blocks away. Furthermore, a business leaving an area could cause the loss of jobs and lower the value of an area, causing it to be less desirable. The real estate market decides the value of a …show more content…

He includes the details of a program that moved children out of impoverished neighborhoods and into suburbs and caused positive effects on their earnings in life. This is presents the idea that worse of neighborhoods can be detrimental to the youth and gentrification could actually help kids in the long run. However, he also presents the idea that gentrification causes neighborhoods to lose their identities and displace people, which are both clear negatives. Sanneh does not really come out strongly in favor of either idea, instead he stays mostly in the middle in order to allow the reader to form their own ideas on the subject. By presenting both sides of the argument and staying mostly neutral, Sanneh is able to create a seemingly unbiased article. He does seem to be sympathetic to the people who are most needy in an area as he says, “The call to save a neighborhood is most compelling when it serves as a call to help a neighborhood’s neediest inhabitants. That might mean helping them stay. But it might also mean helping them stay.” (Sanneh). This quote is an example of Sanneh staying down the middle of the question that he poses in the title. He says it may serve people living in the neighborhoods best to stay, or to leave. Overall, Sanneh does not give an explicit answer to his question, instead opting to stay present all of the facts and allowing the reader to decide for

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