Resisting the Politics of Displacement in the San Francisco Bay Area: Anti-gentrification Activism in the Tech Boom 2.0

Abstract

Since Neil Smith's works on the Lower East Side as " New Urban Frontier " 1 much has been said on gentrification processes and their contextual variations. The wide range of scholars who draw on the concept to refer to processes of social change, displacement, and dispossession, attests to its gains in legitimacy and applicability far beyond the American academic field. 2 Yet we need to point to the issues which this increased use of gentrification as a lens for the study of urban processes tends to provoke. As Anne Clerval puts it, " the voices that defend a 'positive' interpretation of gentrification are in reality contributing to a depoliticization of the analyses of urban transformations, in favor of an interpretation in moral terms. " 3