Urban Displacement in New York City and Gentrification as City-wide Strategy, 2019-2024

Abstract

This thesis examines the causes and catalysts of urban displacement in contemporary New York City. More than a physical relocation urban displacement is understood as a spatial and ontological effect of intertwining socio-spatial forces driven by neoliberal economic practices. As the commodification and financialisation of housing and urban space intensifies gentrification becomes a city-wide strategy rather than a neighbourhood-bounded phenomenon. This research highlights the complexities of the reproductions of social spaces that result in urban displacement drawing on Lefebvre’s concepts of the spatial triad and abstract space to demonstrate how gentrifying urban space is produced and maintained. By analysing changes to city and state policies aimed at addressing the city’s housing crisis – before during and in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic – this research shows how the political and legal strategies its residents rely have shifted. The research is primarily concerned with renters who given the history of uneven development in the city are more vulnerable to displacement and the structural forces behind gentrification than homeowners. As displacement extends beyond the home public space is also at stake. Differing political conceptions of how to maximise the use value of urban spaces pit competing groups of local actors against each other. This research shows how the local is heavily dependent on the political context within a social space. Resistance to urban displacement becomes essential in city-wide movements for spatial justice and this research shows how resistance is always also politically and spatially contextual and justice itself is an ongoing process never completely realised. Through fieldwork and an in-depth study of policy law and media this research highlights how political and legislative wins secured by housing justice actors contain imperfections and openings through which institutional actors can perpetuate displacement.