Upscaling Downtown: Stalled Gentrification in Washington, D.C.

by Brett Williams

Overview

In Upscaling Downtown, anthropologist Brett Williams provides an ethnography of a changing urban neighborhood that she calls "Elm Valley." Located in Washington, D.C., Elm Valley was one of the first neighborhoods to draw middle-class property owners back to the inner city, but a faltering housing industry halted what might have been the rapid displacement of the poor. As a result, Elm Valley experienced several years of stalled gentrification. It was a period when very unlikely people lived side by side: black families who had migrated to the nation's capital from the Carolinas decades earlier, newly arrived refugees from Central America and Southeast Asia, and more prosperous whites. For Williams, a ten-year resident of Elm Valley, stalled gentrification offered a rare opportunity to observe how people 'with varied cultural traditions and economic resources saw and used the neighborhood in which they lived.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801421068
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	02/26/1988
Series:	The Anthropology of Contemporary Issues
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.81(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

BRETT WILLIAMS is Director of the American Studies Program and Associate Professor of Anthropology at American University.

What People are Saying About This

Karen Bordkin Sacks

Upscaling Downtown is a clear, marvelously insightful analysis of the cultural dynamics of gentrification.

Editorial Reviews

A very good ethnographic study of a small community in Washington, DC.... Students of the new cultural studies, field research, and social theory will find the work to be strongest in its presentation of data.

Choice

"Upscaling Downtown is a clear, marvelously insightful analysis of the cultural dynamics of gentrification."

Karen Bordkin Sacks

Anthropologist Williams, a former resident of ``Elm Valley,'' in Washington, D.C., traces the evolution of the community from the 1950s, when it sheltered mostly black familiesnew home and shop owners with shared moresthrough the influx of refugees from other cultures, affluent white home buyers, and outside investors. An uneasy, segmented community structure has replaced the earlier rich, cohesive relationships. Williams places the transformation of Elm Valley in national perspective and considers the extent to which a group's attitudes and beliefs about another are shaped by media images. General readers and academics will find this thoughtful and provocative. Suzanne W. Wood, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Alfred

Library Journal

A very good ethnographic study of a small community in Washington, DC.... Students of the new cultural studies, field research, and social theory will find the work to be strongest in its presentation of data.

-- "Choice"

From the Publisher