Home to nearly 2,000 of Richmond’s 3,255 public housing units, the city intentionally created a concentrated pocket of poverty in the East End. Like many urban areas, my neighborhood was designed to fail. Shifting neighborhoods: Gentrification and cultural displacement in American cities However, Richmond’s East End neighborhood isn’t a “new place.” Instead, in Richmond, gentrification is colonization, where colonizers “discover” inhabited spaces and supplant their power, culture and economies with their own. In 2013, the Executive Director of Richmond Redevelopment & Housing Authority was quoted as saying, “We need urban pioneers.” Pioneers are explorers – people discovering new places for the first time. For my community, Richmond’s East End neighborhood, the latest manifestation of this lingering legacy is gentrification.
These realities linger in the DNA of this city and our country. From slavery and Jim Crow to highway construction and mass incarceration, there is no shortage of tools in the social infrastructure that contribute to advancing oppression, stifling mobility and exacerbating inequity.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of NCRC.Īs the former capital of the Confederacy, Richmond’s history is steeped in racial oppression, inequality and injustice.
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This essay is part of a series that accompanies NCRC’s 2019 study on gentrification and cultural displacement.
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