Perspective
Does Innovation Equal Gentrification?
Fears of displacement often accompany efforts to create urban innovation districts. They shouldn’t.
There it was: the gentrification question, in at number five.
It gets asked at nearly every event at which I speak about innovation districts. Sometimes it feels like an accusation, underpinned by a somewhat paradoxical assumption that innovative economic growth in cities will inevitably have a destructive impact on poor residents.