gentrification

noun

gen·​tri·​fi·​ca·​tion ˌjen-trə-fə-ˈkā-shən 

: a process in which a poor area (as of a city) experiences an influx of middle-class or wealthy people who renovate and rebuild homes and businesses and which often results in an increase in property values and the displacement of earlier, usually poorer residents

a neighborhood undergoing gentrification

"This week, we're talking about gentrification. Middle-class people move in. Property values and rents rise. Things change and improve but not for everyone. …"

—Lulu Garcia-Navarro

Opposition is also stoked by fear of gentrification—displacement of longtime residents through higher rents or property taxes.

—Steven Litt

The construction of luxury housing and gentrification of neighborhoods is pushing families out of communities they have called home for years.

—Heidi Romanish and David Snyder

In an effort to keep gentrification from creeping in the same way into the 30th Ward … Jessica Gutierrez wants to keep a lid on property taxes and inform residents about affordable housing.

—Alexandra Arriaga

Examples of gentrification in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Before recent pockets of shoreline gentrification appeared, some of the city’s former bars, notably the National Club, were the stuff of coastal legend. —C.j. Chivers James Patrick Cronin Elena Hecht Anna Diamond Quinton Kamara, New York Times, 6 June 2024

In the early 1990s, when this book was being created, the heart of Manhattan was undergoing a mass gentrification. —Hazlitt, 5 June 2024

But the broader reason Asher flies away into the sky, the subtextual reason, is that The Curse was invested in raising all sorts of questions and probing at troublesome themes about gentrification, reality TV, and the self, and had absolutely no idea what to do with any of those things. —Vulture Staff, Vulture, 12 Jan. 2024

Despite the very real threats of gentrification, inflation, and rising seas, Black people in Charleston are still innovating, not only paying homage to the traditions that allowed their ancestors to survive but also using their imaginations in ways their predecessors didn't have license to. —Latria Graham, Condé Nast Traveler, 30 May 2023

Word History

Etymology

gentry + -ification

First Known Use

1964, in the meaning defined above