Gentrification is all about supply and demand rather than demographic structure. Investors play a big role in the production side of housing since they make choices on the number of houses the real estate has to invest in the production of residential condominiums. The supply-side focuses on the amount of housing and the demand side focus on the behavior of consumers based on what’s available to them for the community to become gentrified, which implies the bigger picture of gentrification on how it’s all viewed under the demand side of consumption.

 Gentrification reflects capitalism. The supply-side theories focus on the property owner and the demand-side arguments focus on both the owners and the gentrifiers which explain how the supply aspects introduced demand into the community in which gentrifiers are the causing demand and the supply to be given to the residents. 

The demand for housing creates a positive shift into the economic activity for production to services by high wage geographic areas to low wage areas.  Government reduces the public expense in major areas of abandonment while increasing them in areas of gentrification which is a good thing for the real estate as well as for the community because the government is helping them both. Gentrification causes tax revenue to increase which favors policy leaders that cause them to invest even more.

https://lissette.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/14504/files/2020/12/research-paper-2-3.pdf

Gentrification in Harlem has occurred for a long time and is still going on today since the 1970s demographic and economic realignments over the past few decades. Harlem has been redeveloping many of its old buildings and building new developments for future residents since many of those abandoned buildings are own by New York City and being sell to the real states for a good price and building them for middle-class residents or people that can afford these new developments. Harlem stretches for more than two miles north of Central Park in Manhattan. Gentrification involved a symbiotic change in social class and physical housing stock, giving indicators from the US census, the most sensitive indicators of gentrification have involved a combination of income and rent data.

The abandonment and destruction of Harlem lead to gentrification because many people were dying and the overdoses of drugs, no educational understanding as well as people having little help to treat all the bad things happening. Crack is a devastating effect on young people in the community. Many people spend all their savings on crack.

At first, I was really confused about gentrification and the whole aspect of it. I didn’t want to learn about Harlem and why it changed because it was a lot of reading and writing to do. But later on, I started to understand the whole thing behind gentrification that made me curious to learn more about it. I started asking more questions and participating that made me enjoyed learning about a community I lived in for a long time. I never really asked myself or anyone about the change in Harlem and what was it cause for it. I was uneducated about its change and didn’t know that it has been doing so for a long time. Due to this class and all the assignments as well as the professor’s lesson I was able to learn about gentrification and what aspects it brings to a community as well as the people behind it. Now I am able to educate and see a community changing and being able to have explanations on why the community is being redeveloped. This class helped me think critically as well as learn how to read and write well-developed essays and sentences since I learned new things each week and putting them all together at the end. It went from step to step and how at the end it all connects to make a strong well-written project/essays. All the things I learned in this class also helped me in my other classes.

I have seen Harlem change a lot in the past four years since I moved into the neighborhood. I didn’t know about the whole thing behind its change until now that I learned about gentrification. Now I know more about how my neighborhood has changed. Back then I only used to see people of color and Hispanics — I barely saw any white people. But now there are people of all colors and backgrounds. There have been many changes in the community from the way it looks and what it has. There are more residential and commercial buildings. Trendy shops and restaurants are opened which consist of a variety of food and clothes, not only that but also health centers and more people as well.