COLUMN: Battle for the soul of University City

From Ronald Kim's, "The Wretched of the Earth," Fall '00 From Ronald Kim's, "The Wretched of the Earth," Fall '00Earlier this month, I flew to Portland, Ore., to present a paper at a conference. Walking around the famously sanitary city, I was impressed by its newness relative to the Northeast -- and how little individuality it exuded. Two weeks later, I was walking around New Brunswick, N.J. , the place of my birth. Only my best friend and I weren't sure that it was the New Brunswick we knew. Since the new year, at least three new upscale restaurants had opened, squeezing out the few remaining greasy pizzerias and low-income stores. For many residents, the end was near for the George Street of just a few years ago. Only after encountering the same sense of dislocation at home as I did 3,000 miles away did I realize the magnitude of this accelerating phenomenon. Although most people around the country have heard of it, few of those not directly affected understand what gentrification is doing to cities across the U.S.: erasing their identity, wiping away any sense of local pride, effacing physical monuments to history and creating prefabricated landscapes for recreation for the wealthy. Why does gentrification succeed? Most observers point to the rise of a mobile urban professional class, twentysomething yuppies who freely pack up and move from one city to another as they switch employers or schools. This crowd can afford high rents for plush apartments. They prefer to spend money at fancy ethnic restaurants and clubs. They like the familiarity that comes with chain stores. Residential hypermobility and social fragmentation may be the driving forces behind gentrification, but they're only part of the story. The sheer weight of corporate interests or unopposable "outside forces" do not explain why gentrification succeeds in displacing old, "run-down" neighborhoods. It succeeds because those neighborhoods lack the cohesive community organization for which University City is famous -- and which makes the neighborhood a source of pride for so many of its residents. Last fall, I was a bit nonplussed when a woman from my block watch came to my door to scold the house for not putting out the recycling. But that level of caring -- and concern over a new renter's forgetfulness -- is what maintains a community. True, yuppie chain stores and big-time corporate money can force their way into close-knit residential neighborhoods to a point. One obvious example in University City is Penn's recent takeover of the dog park at 43rd and Locust streets against considerable local opinion. But it's no accident that the area where Penn has had its greatest impact -- the 4000 block of Walnut, site of a soon-to-be supermarket and movie theater -- was already effectively an extension of campus, with its series of apartments for undergrad rental. It's more difficult to uproot block watches, neighborhood civic associations and homeowner alliances. For over three years, University City has been lauded as a model of cooperation between town and gown, a case of a major university having a positive effect on its neighbors. Having heard enough rumblings about the rising cost of living from 45th to 48th streets from unemployed artists at the local hangout, I take a somewhat less sanguine view of this relationship. But after having seen just how quickly an old, grimy, yet familiar and comfortable street in my hometown can become transformed into a nightmare of overpriced "exotic" restaurants and upscale bars, I believe University City has an even greater significance. Its continued existence proves that the forces promoting gentrification are not invincible when confronted by the people who live in and love a neighborhood -- a community -- and do something about it. While growing dissatisfaction with social injustice manifests itself in large protests in Seattle or Washington, D.C., the everyday struggle of ordinary citizens to defend and promote their way of life may be more important in the long run. They are engaged in a battle for their future, and West Philly is one of their innumerable battlegrounds. More than Portland, New Brunswick, or most other cities, Philadelphia -- for all its pressing social problems -- is a city whose inhabitants are devoted to the communities in which they live. They respect the history and qualities, good and bad, that make each one unique. Contrary to those who gloomily foresee only an inexorable proliferation of Sansom Commons and new Billybobs, I predict that "the city of neighborhoods" will hold its own against homogenization, globalization and the other fleeting triumphalizations of our times.