Living with gentrification

Living with gentrification in Delaware, OH

This project explores and documents the lived experiences of gentrification in Delaware, OH. Displacement through gentrification disrupts and erases individual and communal ways of life. Once an urban center is gentrified, the record of what once was, lives primarily in the memories of the former residents, now dispersed. In collecting the life stories of those who live and lived and Delaware’s historically Black neighborhood, this project adds a human-dimension to profit-driven city planning the sustains gentrification.

This project is motivated by two goals. First, in the context of race relations in Delaware’s history, experiences of Blackness are contributed to the historical record. Delaware’s documented history is overwhelmingly visible through the lives and transactions of white, property-owning men. The erasure of Black experiences results in an incomplete record of the city’s history, and reproduces the latent racial tensions in Delaware. Second, research and practice in urban planning focuses on the economic logics and benefits of gentrification, ignoring how gentrification practices disproportionately impact communities of color. With an understanding of gentrification as a racist process, I will use the stories collected through this project to confront the economic and racist logics of gentrification by making visible what it means to live with and through gentrification, or, what happens to individuals and families after they are forced out of their familial neighborhood.