You Are Being Lied To About Gentrification | Leslie Kern | TMR

Emma hosts Leslie Kern, professor of geography, environment, women’s, and gender studies at Mount Allison University, to discuss her recent book Gentrification Is Inevitable And Other Lies. Emma is joined by Professor Leslie Kern, as she dives right into the nature of the monster of gentrification, first looking at the unnatural forces of modern neoliberalism that make it seem so inevitable today, with local and federal governments removing regulations and smoothing the path for capital and multinational organizations to turn housing into an asset class and use it as such. After diving deeper into this financialization of something necessary for life, taking spaces fundamental to the existence of urban communities and turning them into spaces of speculation and tourism built for outsiders, Professor Kern and Emma explore why the combination of a capitalist land market and mass disinvestment from certain communities will almost always point towards gentrification. Wrapping up, Professor Kern walks through the coining of the term in 1960s London to recognize a process that had been ongoing for a while, looking to explore the cultural drive that pushed certain middle-class homeowners away from suburban sprawl (not to mention the obvious economic elements), before the rise of neoliberalism in the ‘80s began to make urban centers a generally desirable investment for the rest of the middle-class, setting the stage for the third, finance-backed wave of gentrification that we see today.

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And we are joined Now by Leslie Kern professor of geography and environment at Mount Allison University in Canada. The author of gentrification is inevitable and other lies. Leslie thanks so much for coming on the show today. Thanks for inviting me. happy to be here. of course so your book details myths and lies about gentrification. and for our audience what would be the biggest overall kind of big picture umbrella lie that you'd want them to come away with from listening to this interview. well, I think the clue is in the title which is the idea that gentrification is inevitable and Unstoppable a kind of built-in feature of urban life. What I want people to come away with at the end of the book is the understanding that while gentrification is a powerful force and it's difficult to stop or even slow down, there are things that communities all over the world are doing and have done to take back some control of their environments. and to push back against the forces of gentrification. when you talk about that I mean what I I'm reminded of and we talk about this a lot on this program is how conservatives naturalize Injustice. and it's just when gentrification is treated as a process that is inevitable as you say it makes it just seem like oh you know Tides go in Tides go out you can't explain it right? that there's no force behind it. but we know in particular Urban spaces of course real estate developers are driving that as well as business owners. It's Capital. So I mean what are some of those major forces that you studied for your book that are making this not a natural process but one that is obviously actively being fostered.