Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies

Confronts gentrification with a multidimensional and intersectional critique, revealing the process of urban 'improvement' as an unending campaign of social exclusion and a biting metaphor for making money. She combines her own experience as a city dweller with extensive social research to provide both a call for creative collective action and a good read.

From the forced removal of Indigenous people to the redlining of Black neighbourhoods, from the disenfranchisement of women through suburbanization to the expulsion of the LGBTQ+ community, Kern's writing is a rallying cry for the decolonization of placemaking and a blueprint for an urbanism rooted in social justice and fairness.

Kern is a wonderful writer, and this compelling, important, and highly original intervention in the gentrification debates is a staggering tour de force. At once a devastating critique of the limitations of established perspectives on gentrification and a convincing plea for an intersectional approach, this book offers sparklingly clear analysis and numerous possibilities for political action. Anyone who reads it will never forget it

In this clear and smartly written book, Leslie Kern brings together some of the most recognizable and essential elements of urban gentrification, making this familiar and ubiquitous term strange, in the most effective and generative ways. Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies arms geographers, cultural theorists, planners, and the general public with an essential understanding of the myths, markings, and formation of global gentrification

In 10 succinct chapters, Kern defines and outlines the current arguments surrounding gentrification while focusing on the inability to adequately discuss it with each other or within communities. Each chapter contains solid examples of where, when, and why gentrification is appearing in communities, and what the impact is on each respective group. The impact of gentrification on race, class, gender, age, and Indigenous peoples are astutely explored...A first class analysis and tool kit.

[Kern] ends with a decisive call to action, broken down into small, accessible, and implementable steps. It emphasizes that gentrification touches everyone's lives, and that everyone therefore has a responsibility to devote their specific skills to reducing its impact on vulnerable populations. Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies is a humane analysis of the many contributing and consequential factors of urban takeovers.

Drawing on research from Buenos Aires, Chicago, Toronto, and other cities, Kern documents neighborhoods in the process of change and those that have stopped or reshaped gentrification. She lucidly explains modern feminist and urban theories and brings fresh insights and a measure of hope to a vexing social issue. [A] searing yet inspirational polemic.

Inspired by the likes of Jane Jacobs and Sharon Zukin, urban scholar Leslie Kern proposes an intersectional way at looking at the gentrification crisis amid our current economic climate, based on class, race, gender, and sexuality.

Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies is an accessible read thanks to Kern's storytelling skills and her conscious intent to write for a broad audience outside of academia.

In Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies, Leslie Kern travels to Toronto, Vancouver, New York, London and Paris to look at how gentrification is killing our cities and what we can do about it. She examines the often invisible forces that shape urban neighbourhoods, including settler colonialism, racism, sexism, ageism, ableism and how city lovers can work together to turn the tide.

Leslie Kern dissects seven common myths about gentrification, asserting that any study of the urban phenomenon should be examined not only in terms of class but also through the lenses of queer-feminist, anti-racist, and decolonial points of view. The final chapter explores these three frameworks in depth, offering actionable steps toward a more equitable urbanism that centers such concepts as infrastructures of care, Land Back movements, reparations, and environmental justice.

Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies challenges a number of well-entrenched perspectives on gentrification from the anticapitalist left as well as the market-minded right...Kern's book is thorough in its intersectionality.

[Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies] examines the forces behind displacement in North America and beyond, arguing for an intersectional way of understanding gentrification, one that acknowledges the harms done to working people based not just on class but also on race, gender, and sexuality. The problem is vastly greater than the individual choices of the middle-class.

Kern makes an informed, engaging, and impassioned case.