Jackson Heights Gentrification Analysis

Jackson Heights is a neighborhood with a plethora of diversity and multiculturalism, hence there’s wide coverage of Gentrification in the media and literature. Jackson Heights is skyrocketing economically like many other local neighborhoods, with the looming possibility of becoming out of reach for the average American family. Redevelopments of infrastructure have rapidly progressed causing a rise in house price and rent, this ultimately resulting in the neighborhood to become financially unreachable for most. This is an example of the term that was first coined in 1964 by German-British sociologist Ruth Glass as ‘gentrification’. Ruth Glass wrote, "Once this process of 'gentrification' starts in a district, it goes on rapidly

until all or most of the original working-class occupiers are displaced, and the whole social character of the district is changed," and this is clearly evident New York. In numerous pieces of literature published by Glass, gentrification is described as catastrophes of eviction and displacement for the middle-class in order to capitalise on the urban land market.

Another noteworthy urban sociologist that’s invested significant research and time into gentrification is Saskia Sassen, among other topical analysis including globalization. “Gentrification was initially understood as the rehabilitation of decaying and low-income housing by middle-class outsiders in central cities. In the late 1970s a broader conceptualization of the process began to emerge, and by the early 1980s new scholarship had developed a far broader meaning of gentrification, linking it with processes of spatial, economic and social restructuring.” (Sassen 1991: 255). This account is an extract from an influential book that extended beyond the field of gentrification and summarizes its basis proficiently. In more recent and localized media, the release the documentary-film ‘In Jackson Heights’ portrayed the devastation that gentrification is causing as it plagues through Jackson Heights, Queens. One of the local businessmen interviewed is shop owner Don Tobon, stating "We live in a

capitalist society. This is a country where private property is the most important thing. The landlord has all the rights. The right to raise the rent as high as he wants."