In Gentrifying Neighborhoods, 'Diversity' Can Be Decorative

If you look up my D.C. neighborhood on Craigslist or AirBnb, it's often going to be tagged with the word "diverse." Mexican and Salvadoran restaurants are sprinkled around, and you frequently hear Spanish on the streets. Over the last few years, trendy little cafes and gourmet pizza places have cropped up on the street corners. Apart from the Hispanic and African American families that have lived here, young professionals—myself included—have moved in.

Sound familiar? That description fits a lot of gentrifying city neighborhoods around the country. Héctor Tobar identifies L.A.'s Highland Park as one such example in his recent op-ed in the New York Times. But rather than taking a negative view of the change there, Tobar argues for a silver lining of gentrification, saying it's unintentionally become an antidote to racial segregation: