The Ideology of Dense Neighborhood Redevelopment

The trend of central-city neighborhood reinvasion resembles a social movement and has undertones of ideology and utopia. The ideological content has certain parallels with the anti-urban suburban trend of a generation ago. There are also pro-urban values of cultural diversity and pluralism in the new movement, though they tend to be romantically distorted. Moreover, the values are ambivalently held and may fail to yield the alternative and transcendent community experience that some of the new settlers seek. The general trend nonetheless holds more promise than threat for central-city revitalization. In a few neighborhoods of many mature North American cities there is a clear resettlement, and sometimes a complete succes-sion, by middle-class people &dquo;reclaiming&dquo; old city neighborhoods (James, 1977; and items passim, in London, 1978). This phenom-enon of &dquo;gentrification&dquo; or &dquo;reinvasion&dquo; (London, forthcoming) is occurring principally in larger, older cities, especially those with a still vital core, many white-collar workers, and long commuting distances to suburbs (Lipton, 1977)