Abstract
As large cities become unaffordable, some people in the urban middle class are moving to small cities but risk replicating gentrification and its harms. Based on a qualitative research project on Newburgh, a small city north of New York City, this paper examines the narratives that middle-class urbanites construct to make sense of this migration, their new urban environment, and their place within it. These narratives describe their decision to move (migration) and their everyday lives in the city (settlement). Most importantly, their narratives are shaped by their social positions as both displaced residents and gentrifiers and as both consumers and producers of space. But despite being self-aware gentrifiers, their settlement narratives lack reflections on their own displacement from New York City, and instead emphasize how they try to mitigate gentrification’s harms. The paper concludes with a discussion of what makes gentrifiers in small cities distinct from those in large ones.
Introduction
“Corporate city” (Zukin 2010), “cappuccino city” (Hyra 2017), “elite city” (Busa 2017), and “branded city” (Greenberg 2008) are a few of the recent terms scholars have used to describe rising inequality and unaffordability in large urban centers. Each argues that city leaders have become too focused on catering to elite residents and businesses, investors, and tourists instead of addressing the needs and problems of existing residents. Even Richard Florida (2002, 2017), who as a scholar in the early 2000s famously examined the rise of the well-educated “creative class” and as an advocate urged city leaders to enact policies that would attract its members or risk decline, today talks about a “new urban crisis”: increasingly unaffordable housing for all but the elite and high levels of segregation and inequality in the world’s most successful cities. But while working-class and low-income groups, racial minorities, and the poor are usually—and understandably—the focus of such research on the consequences of rising inequality in today’s cities (e.g., Desmond 2016; Edin and Shaefer 2016; Wacquant 2007), the plight of the urban middle class under these conditions has often been ignored (see Woldoff, Morrison, and Glass 2016 for a recent exception).
A consequence of the revitalization of large cities has been the out-migration of the middle class—whose return to them as residents, workers, and consumers has been instrumental to the process (Hyra 2017)—due in part to their unaffordability (Shaw 2018). The urban poor and working-class are, in many ways, “stuck in place” (Sharkey 2013); they lack the resources to improve their circumstances and move out of their cities’ worst areas (Desmond 2016; Wilson 1987) and need easy access to the abundant low-wage job opportunities large cities provide for people without college degrees (Newman 2000; Wilson 1996). The well-educated, well-resourced middle class, however, especially those with flexible work arrangements and entrepreneurial pursuits, are—and have been—far more mobile. According to the Pew Research Center (2016), between 2000 and 2014, the middle class as a group declined in 203 of 229 metropolitan areas in the United States, with the smallest number currently residing in some of the wealthiest, most successful large cities with among the highest real-estate prices in the country: New York City, San Francisco, Boston, Washington, DC, and San Jose.
Most members of the urban middle class are continuing the long-time trend of voluntarily moving to suburbs (Kennedy and Leonard 2001; Paccoud and Mace 2017), while others opt for small towns and rural areas (Hines 2010). Many, however, are choosing to maintain their urban lifestyles in smaller cities that are more affordable to them (Henderson 2017). Some are “return migrants,” or people who move back to where they grew up, which is occurring in some small Rust Belt cities (Harrison 2017) (as well as in more rural areas—see Carr and Kefalas 2010). But some are moving to small cities with which they have little or no experience. While we know much about the experiences of middle-class people moving to gentrifying neighborhoods in large cities, or “gentrifiers,” both at the time of their arrival (Brown-Saracino 2009; Ley 1996; Lloyd 2006; Pattillo 2007) and over time (Kimelberg and Billingham 2013; Ocejo 2011; and see Schlichtman et al. 2017 for a comparison of both “early” and “late” gentrifiers), we know less about their experiences moving to and living in smaller cities. What narratives do urban middle-class newcomers to small cities use to make sense of their migration decisions and, upon arrival, of their settlement and place within their new city? And what social factors shape these narratives?
This paper is based on a qualitative research project on the people in Newburgh, a small, impoverished, minority-majority city located sixty miles north of New York City. Here, I focus on the city’s recent wave of urban middle-class newcomers, who mostly come from the large metropolis to the south. (They move from the “Big Apple” to Orange County, where Newburgh is located, as a local real-estate company catering to such migrants, Apple 2 Orange Realty, has put it. Hence this paper’s title.) These newcomers uniquely occupy four distinct social roles—which are often treated separately in the gentrification literature—simultaneously: They are both displaced (from their former city) and gentrifiers (in their new one), and they are both well-educated appreciators of cities and city life (consumers of urban space) and property owners and small-scale developers (producers of urban space), the latter being an especially rare role for “creative class” members in large cities (Bain 2018).
I analyze how they construct two narratives about their experience: moving to Newburgh (migration) and living in Newburgh (settlement). The two sets of contradictory roles that they occupy shape these narratives, but unevenly so. Their migration narratives emphasize their own displacement—economic, as well as social and cultural (Hyra 2015; Shaw and Hagemans 2015)—from their previous city, and their appreciation for distinct urban environments (i.e., role as consumers). But their settlement narratives include the more active social role of being experienced, savvy urbanites and self-aware gentrifiers with the potential to influence their new city (i.e., role as producers). They make sense of their impact on Newburgh by being skeptical that residential displacement there will be a result, by actively supporting the existing community, and by hoping for an equitable distribution of benefits from the city’s revitalization. Missing from this narrative are their own experiences as displaced urbanites from their previous city. These findings contribute to the gentrification literature by revealing how large city urbanites perceive their migration to a small city and role as small city gentrifiers who are in a structural position to have an impact on their new urban environment. These narratives are integral to understanding small city gentrification. I argue that small city gentrifiers are distinct from large city gentrifiers for simultaneously occupying these four social roles, which influences their perceptions and motivations.
Gentrifiers
Empirically and conceptually, the antecedents to Newburgh’s newcomers in the literature are “gentrifiers,” or people who choose to move to lower-income neighborhoods and either kick-start or follow the gentrification process (see Brown-Saracino 2010 for a discussion of this debate). Perhaps the most prevalent metaphor for gentrifiers is that they resemble “pioneers,” or a group that settles into the “wilderness” of the city as if no one lived there already (see Smith 1996). Indeed, as Japonica Brown-Saracino (2009) points out, much of the literature on gentrifiers portrays them as well-educated, middle-class people who want to transform their new neighborhoods and distance themselves from existing residents and cultures. And studies often focus on artists or other creative workers as the earliest newcomers to a gentrifying neighborhood (Deutsche and Ryan 1984; Lloyd 2006; Zukin 1982). They are usually depicted as young, childless, and aspiring in their careers. As oftentimes renters with low-to-moderate incomes in up-and-coming neighborhoods, they risk being displaced at the same time as they threaten to displace others (Schlichtman et al. 2017). Wealthier urbanites, such as professionals and financiers, who more directly shape the urban environment, tend to move to such neighborhoods at later, more advanced stages of gentrification as owners, investors, or high-end renters (Butler and Lees 2006; Lees 2003a; Ocejo 2014).
Many scholars have added nuance to this picture by analyzing gentrifiers’ identities, motivations, and behaviors, discovering marked variation in the process (Schlichtman et al. 2017). For instance, studies show that artists often make efforts to integrate into existing working-class communities rather than riding roughshod over them (Lloyd 2006; Ocejo 2014). Brown-Saracino (2009) identifies some gentrifiers as “social preservationists,” or people who are attracted to and wish to preserve a neighborhood’s old-timers, and others as “social homesteaders,” or people who are more concerned with building a home and improving quality of life in their new environment. Neither type intends to transform their surrounding community, although their actions may in fact help lead to its transformation. And countering the view that gentrifiers are solely consumers in their new neighborhoods, studies have also looked at the impacts middle-class newcomers have on their local institutions. For instance, Shelley McDonough Kimelberg and Chase M. Billingham (2013) and Katherine B. Hankins (2007) have looked at the active roles urban middle-class parents in gentrifying neighborhoods play in shaping conditions in their local public schools and in establishing alternative charter schools, respectively. In other words, middle-class gentrifiers have sometimes been portrayed as both consumers and producers of urban space.
Gentrification studies have looked extensively at the process’s implications for the displacement of existing low-income residents. There is significant debate over whether the process leads to the displacement of such groups and, if so, to what extent (see Brown-Saracino 2017a for a recent discussion of this debate). Both Michal Lyons (1996) and Kathe Newman and Elvin K. Wyly (2006) show how existing residents move as their neighborhoods gentrify—but short distances, sometimes within the same neighborhood and into alternative living arrangements, which complicates the answer to whether they are actually “displaced.” Kate S. Shaw and Iris W. Hagemans (2015) argue that existing residents get displaced socially and culturally from the “place” of their neighborhood when it gentrifies, even if they get to remain there physically (also see Hyra 2015). Meanwhile, Richard E. Ocejo (2011) has looked at gentrifiers who moved into their neighborhoods while in their 20s (as “pioneers”) and remained there into middle age. He finds that aging in place while the neighborhood continues to attract younger middle-class newcomers with different cultural tastes from their own leads them to take social action against what they see as their own social and cultural displacement. But compared with low-income groups, given their resources, the middle class generally has more options for where to live when their neighborhoods become unaffordable and/or change.
In short, urban middle-class gentrifiers are a heterogeneous group with a variety of motivations and actions that shift over time (Brown-Saracino 2009). Newcomers to Newburgh are no different in these respects, with ideological and behavioral diversity found among them, as I will show. But they are a different type of gentrifier from those found in the literature, and their differences revolve around the sets of seemingly contradictory social positions they occupy and the urban context they find themselves migrating to. First, they do not just leave their neighborhood when it becomes unaffordable and unrecognizable to them, but their entire city. And the population of the city they choose to move to is mostly very different from them socioeconomically. They are, therefore, both displaced from their city and gentrifiers in their new city. Second, Newburgh’s newcomers, who appreciate distinct urban environments, leave at a point in their lives when they are already established in their careers, which are mainly in the creative economy in some form. Unlike in their former, large city, in the context of their new small one, they have the resources to be property owners at both small (home, business) and large (investment properties, multiple businesses) scales. They are, therefore, both a first major wave of middle-class residents, who are often portrayed in the literature as pioneers at risk of eventually also being displaced as their neighborhoods become too unaffordable, and owners and developers, or producers of space, who are typically portrayed in the literature as wealthy financiers and professionals, not workers in the creative economy (Bain 2018). Newburgh’s newcomers, then, do not occupy one or the other of the popular binary roles in the gentrification process—displaced or gentrifier, new resident (specifically artist/creative worker) or owner/investor—but all four simultaneously. As I will show, these disparate roles help shape the narratives they construct to make sense of their migration and settlement in this small city.
Urban Middle-class Migration
Like gentrifiers in general, by definition, Newburgh’s newcomers are migrants, and their specific form of migration—that is, the middle class moving from a large city to a small one—has gone largely undocumented in the literature. Based on the behavioral patterns of previous generations of the urban middle class, the assumption is that gentrifiers will leave large cities as they get older, especially as they want more space to grow a family. Recent Census data show that suburbs remain the primary destination for people at this stage in the life course. Population growth in suburbs has been accelerating in recent years, especially in low-density suburbs and among millennials (Kolko 2017b). Meanwhile, Bureau of Labor Statistics data also show that these same areas have experienced the fastest job growth (Kolko 2017a). But people from the postwar, “white flight” era left cities for suburbs because of visible urban problems, escalating racial tensions, and race-based real-estate practices (Mele 2017; Woldoff 2011). A key difference today is that these conditions are no longer as prevalent or hold the same salience for most large, successful cities. While many urbanites still experience harsh urban problems, such factors as high crime rates and a diversifying population do not deter the middle class from moving to them, or explain why they leave.
Statistical analyses and economic explanations (i.e., the affordability of housing and employment opportunities) dominate the discussion of the factors and conditions for internal migration within a country. But there have been a few studies that examine the meanings people attach to the economic and noneconomic factors that lead them to leave large cities for places other than suburbs. J. Dwight Hines (2010) argues that urbanites leave for rural communities in search of what they see are more “authentic” experiences compared with the anonymous city, and to distinguish themselves from others in the middle class by avoiding both other cities and suburbs. Hoey (2005) examines an urban-to-rural “lifestyle migration” among middle-class people who want to “start over” in their search for a meaningful, fulfilling, and purposeful life. And Harrison (2017) finds that urban professionals and knowledge workers moved back to the small city of Youngstown, where they grew up, from large cities for reasons that are rooted in notions of place and place character: its culture of hard work and overcoming challenges, and the opportunities it presents to contribute to its revitalization.
The literature also indicates that the out-migration of the middle class from cities has been aided by economic shifts toward more flexible forms of work and work arrangements. Many of Hoey’s (2010) lifestyle migrants, for instance, left professional positions in cities (e.g., attorney, engineer) for more fulfilling, self-driven work (e.g., small-scale business owner). Affordable small towns provide such opportunities. Leonard Nevarez (2011, 2003) has documented how technological advances have helped the geographic mobility of what he calls “quality of life” migrants (typically well-educated and professional) in their pursuit of particular locales, while cities have become more quality-of-life-focused to attract and retain such residents. The expansion of the digital economy has also allowed workers who are no longer interested in fast-paced urban living and conventional career paths to pursue their passions while earning a living in remote locations, such as “digital nomads” who leave large Western cities for villages in Bali (Woldoff and Litchfield 2017). We can distinguish the people who have moved to Newburgh from the urban-to-suburban and urban-to-rural migrants depicted in the literature in that they do not want to opt out of city life but want to continue living an urban lifestyle in a different setting. And they differ from return migrants in that they are not originally from their new city, which means their conceptions of place are not based on personal experience there or the presence of family.
Methods, Participants, and Setting
This paper is based on an ongoing qualitative research project on small cities in the twenty-first century that I began in February 2017. My methods consist of both ethnographic fieldwork and interviewing. For my fieldwork, I have been focusing on several sites throughout Newburgh where residents from all backgrounds gather: cafes and eateries, co-working spaces, churches, arts spaces, and public parks, as well as the regular meetings of city government agencies and community groups and events. I have also joined several organizations—those founded by existing residents, returnees, and newcomers—as a volunteer. This work has granted me close access to people in Newburgh who come from a variety of backgrounds, and allowed me to observe and participate in their work in the city. I average three trips to the city per week and spend several hours in the field per visit.
I primarily base the analysis for this paper on data gathered through interviews, with fieldwork informing my findings. Of the seventy-one formal, semistructured interviews I have conducted in total with people who live and/or work in Newburgh, thirty-four are newcomers, or people who have moved there from other cities within the past 10 years, which corresponds with the gentrification process. 1 Of these 34, 26 moved directly from New York City, and seven moved from different cities. 2 While this paper highlights the narratives of people who moved from New York City, many of the findings can be applied to people who moved to Newburgh from other cities and cite rising unaffordability in those places, although there are also some differences since New York City is an extreme case.
Only four people in my sample have any personal ties to the region from having grown up there (one moved to Newburgh from New York City, two did so from other cities, and the fourth previously lived elsewhere in the county), which is how they learned about Newburgh, and one knew about it from visiting the region. Five learned about it from searching online for real estate in the region (the city’s affordability lured them), two first read about it in the media (specifically articles in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal), and two learned about it from their interest in history and architecture. The remaining 21 of the 34 people in my sample learned about Newburgh through personal connections and social networks, which indicates that newcomers have similar social backgrounds and characteristics. Many who lived in New York City also knew about the region because of Beacon, an even smaller city directly across the river from Newburgh with a world-class contemporary art museum they would make a day trip to visit, and the nearby area’s natural amenities, like hiking trails. But it was not until an online search or personal connections that they learned about Newburgh. Only two people in my sample moved to Newburgh specifically for a job, and two moved there to live near their business, but all four of them first learned about the city from social connections, online research, or their interest in history. Demographically, nineteen are men, fifteen are women, five are black (three women, two men), one is Asian (a woman), and the rest are white. 3 The youngest is 25, the oldest is 75, but the median age is 40 (the average age is 43.9). I obtained my sample from using both convenience and snowball techniques. 4
Each person in my sample has at least a college degree and/or formal arts education and training. While it is a problematic concept (see Markusen 2006), occupationally, most newcomers are members of the “creative class” (Florida 2002) and for the most part work in the creative economy in some form: photographers, artists, musicians, writers, artisans (carpentry, bookbinding, letterpressing, skin products, craft beer), and designers of various types (furniture, graphics, clothing). 5 They are not solely “artists” or at the start of their careers. Rather, they are fairly established and in some cases even quite well-known in their fields. Combined with the relative flexibility and/or digital nature of their occupations, their status allows them to live and work outside of a major metropolis like New York City, even though they live near it. Only three people in my sample commute to New York City for work with any consistency, which reflects the larger population. 6 In fact, most say they go to New York City far less often than they anticipated when they decided to move such a relatively short distance away, even though proximity to the city was a factor in why they chose Newburgh. Only four people in my sample of 34 do not own their home, several own more than one building (some for their own business) and have become landlords as well as owner-occupants, and a small number own several buildings, and have big plans for expanding their own business, attracting new ones, and/or adding housing. Many, especially those who did not own property in New York City, aspired to becoming a homeowner and connect homeownership with middle-class membership and lifestyle.
My interview questions have consisted of the reasons why people move to, remain in, or move back to Newburgh; their impressions of the city, its people, and its reputation; and their hopes for its future. Each interview lasted between one and two hours, and undergraduate research assistants, a transcription service, and I transcribed them. I alone coded them inductively and refined my categories and explanations while analyzing the data (Charmaz 2001). I used the NVivo qualitative data analysis software program.
The Case
Newburgh is an incorporated city of nearly 30,000 people on the west bank of the Hudson River in the mid-Hudson River Valley, a very scenic and historic part of New York State. Its story begins in the colonial era, and it played an integral role in the Revolutionary War. But for this paper’s purposes, I will provide a brief history of the city from the twentieth century to today. 7 Newburgh began last century as an industrial beacon, an important urban center for the region, and an immigrant destination. It already boasted many Italianate- and Victorian-style mansions and houses built by well-known architects of the day for industrialists and successful merchants, and added more in the century’s early decades. It reached its peak population of 32,000 people in 1950, and was named an “All-American City” by the National Civic League in 1952.
From this point, the city declined. The “Great Migration,” when African Americans from the rural south moved to northern cities, took place in Newburgh at the same time as deindustrialization began, with many manufacturing businesses ironically moving south. A budget shortfall in the early 1960s led to city leaders declaring a racially inflected war on welfare recipients, which became an international news story (Mencher 1962; Neubeck and Cazenave 2001; Ritz 1966), followed by race riots later in the decade. New developments—the construction of two interstate highways and a bridge across the Hudson River, the opening of a nearby shopping mall—created arteries and businesses outside the city limits, choking the commerce within. They also ended the city’s 220-year-old cross-river ferry service to Beacon, where residents could catch the closest train to New York City. 8 All of these factors led to “white flight,” suburban growth, and economic decline in the city, especially its downtown, main shopping district, and riverfront. From 1958 to 1970, the city took advantage of federal urban renewal programs and razed approximately 1,330 buildings, destroying its downtown and riverfront properties in the process. 9 A lack of financing and planning meant they did not start developing these spaces for decades (and most are still undeveloped today). But urban renewal led community activists to fight to protect old buildings, which resulted in the creation of the East End Historic District—the largest contiguous historic district in the state.
By the 1980s, the city was economically devastated; crime-, gang-, and drug-infested; severely blighted; and politically corrupt. In the 1990s, Newburgh, like other small cities in the Hudson Valley and elsewhere, became a new destination for immigrants, specifically from Latin America (Massey 2008; Miraftab 2016; Villarrubia–Mendoza 2016). These groups partially rejuvenated some of the city’s main commercial streets by opening businesses in their empty storefronts (see the following). Some recent statistics show the conditions of Newburgh today that residents and city leaders face. Demographically Newburgh is 48 percent Latino, 28 percent black, and 19 percent white. According to 2016 statistics, it has a violent crime rate of 18.64 incidents per 1,000 residents, which is more than four times the state average (4.1/1,000), and its overall crime rate is more than double the national average (although local police report that violent crimes declined in 2017, and are projecting to be lower in 2018). Newburgh has a poverty rate (i.e., residents with incomes below the poverty level) of 38.6 percent, and 27 percent of households are on food assistance. The median household income is $33,469 (compared with $73,025 for the county, and $62,209 for the state), and only 13 percent of the population has a BA or higher. In terms of housing affordability, 59 percent of renters (who make up 54 percent of the city) pay at least 30 percent of their income on rent (and 54 percent of all households do so, including homeowners), which is usually considered the maximum amount a household should pay for their home to be “affordable” (Schwartz and Wilson 2007; Tighe and Mueller 2013). Finally, the vacancy rate of Newburgh’s housing stock is 19 percent, and more than 700 buildings are abandoned or vacant, which means nearly every street is pockmarked with empty buildings and/or vacant lots, and only 7 percent of its housing was built after 1980. Newburgh, then, has a large population struggling with poverty, a mostly uneducated workforce, a higher-than-average crime rate, a considerable amount of blight and old buildings, and little investment in new developments.
But amid these severe urban problems are trends showing how some neighborhoods in Newburgh are gentrifying. Gentrification takes different forms (Halle and Tiso 2014), and both looks and operates differently and at varying speeds depending on the context (Brown-Saracino 2010). Despite its size, the early stage of gentrification in Newburgh closely resembles how the process has unfolded in New York City (Mele 2000; Ocejo 2014; Smith 1996) and other large cities (Lloyd 2006): well-educated, middle-class whites in the creative economy moving to low-income, “gritty” (Zukin 2010), and industrial-looking neighborhoods and making them more suitable for middle-class lifestyles, with a key difference being they are mostly buying their housing (Bain 2018; Zukin 1982). The areas where most newcomers are moving to are within the East End Historic District, which spatially takes up a quarter of the city, including its densest and most populous sections. Perhaps not surprisingly, this part of the city has several place characteristics that urbanites favor: walkability; old and historic architecture (Paccoud and Mace 2017); an industrial, gritty “feel” (Lloyd 2006; Zukin 2010); and access—physical and visual—to the river. Some newcomers have bought homes outside of the district, and much of its population remains poor and many of its streets blighted. For the most part, however, it is where newcomers have chosen to move, renovate homes and buildings, and open businesses.
Newburgh has seven Census tracts, three of which make up most of the historic district and riverfront. These have the highest percentage of people living below the poverty line and of African American residents in the city. Reversing a decades-long pattern of decline, in each tract, white residents increased between 2010 and 2016 (the most recent year for which data are available from the American Community Survey [ACS]) from 11 to 13 percent, 9 to 14 percent, and 13 to 15 percent (whites declined in each of the other four tracts during this period). Not surprisingly, the percentage of people with a bachelor’s degree or higher increased in these tracts as well. The number of African Americans declined in two of these tracts during this time period, from 23 to 18 percent and from 53 to 41 % in the third, the percentage of the population stayed the same (their population increased in two of the remaining four tracts, stayed the same in another, and declined in the fourth). The number of Latino residents increased in these tracts during this period, as it also did in the other four. However, Latinos in Newburgh come from a variety of nationalities and are spread throughout the city. Consequently, they did not become organizationally dominant, such as by controlling local real estate or unifying as a voting bloc, through the formation of ethnic enclaves. As Jackelyn Hwang (2016) argues in an analysis of twenty-three mid-size and large U.S. cities in the late twentieth century, early gentrification is more likely to occur in low-income neighborhoods that feature Latinos among a high share of African Americans (i.e., “diverse” places) as opposed to ones that are predominantly African American or ethnic enclaves. As in large cities, the degree of stabilization and renewal that Latino groups provided in Newburgh by occupying housing and storefronts, boosting economic activity, and providing diversity helped prepare some of its areas to gentrify. In other words, Newburgh presented urban middle-class newcomers with an ideal built and sociocultural environment, demographic balance, and cost of living to settle there.
In addition to these statistically measurable signs of Newburgh’s early gentrification, data from this paper’s larger project show how existing residents perceive and fear the process through their everyday subjective experiences. Neighborhood displacement is a remarkably difficult pattern to examine empirically (see Billingham 2017), and while quantitative studies tend to not find residential displacement to be a significant consequence of gentrification, qualitative studies tend to find that existing residents in gentrifying neighborhoods certainly feel like it is (Brown-Saracino 2017a). While there is some evidence for residential displacement already occurring in Newburgh (see the following), data show that existing residents are experiencing social, cultural, and political displacement (Hyra 2015; Shaw and Hagemans 2015) as newcomers from different social backgrounds begin to occupy and transform local spaces. An important example of this process in the city has been the opening of new businesses along specific streets that cater largely to newcomers (i.e., retail gentrification; see Zukin and Kosta 2004), which many media outlets—including the New York Times and New York magazine—have identified as signs of gentrification in Newburgh.
Migration Narratives
How do middle-class newcomers make sense of their decision to leave New York City, where they usually lived in safe and stable neighborhoods, and move to Newburgh, a place with ubiquitous urban problems? Migration scholars often talk about the factors that “push” and “pull” people away from and toward places of residence, with economic factors, like employment and housing cost, being most prominent. Not surprisingly, the urban middle class who left New York City for Newburgh mention the affordability of housing as a factor in their decision. But as Jill Ann Harrison (2017) shows, rational, economic considerations are not sufficient for explaining why middle-class newcomers to Newburgh, who have many options for where to live, choose to move there. Economic reasons combine with social and cultural understandings, such as ideas of place, lifestyle, and identity. As Merrill, a 58-year-old sculptor and art teacher, succinctly puts her choice: “It wasn’t as much a practical decision to come to Newburgh as it was an emotional and spiritual decision.” To understand this migration, we must examine the narratives people construct and use to make sense of their choice to leave their old city and move to their new one. As I will show, these migration narratives reflect their identities as people who feel they have been displaced and as consumers, or appreciators, of historic, industrial-era urban environments.
Leaving New York City
Many newcomers use the term priced out or its variants to explain why they left New York City, but only two actually left the city directly after rising rents and/or other pressure from the landlord 10 (Woldoff et al. 2016). Instead of residential displacement due to unaffordability, newcomers attach several meanings to the high cost of their former city. Prior ownership status, which usually correlates with age, is a strong explanation for the nuance in my sample. Younger newcomers to Newburgh, in their late 20s and 30s, were less likely to own property in New York City, while people in their 40s and older were more likely to do so. This reality is reflected in how they discuss leaving.
Younger newcomers describe being tired of the struggle of living in New York City. Being a creative worker, which usually entails low and/or sporadic income and specific space needs, compounds this feeling. Stephen, a jazz drummer in his late 20s, spent several years moving from apartment to apartment and seeking out affordable rehearsal spaces while trying in vain to put down roots: I saw the writing on the wall: the financial and emotional unsustainability of being a working artist in New York City, and trying to find spaces where I could do the work that I’m interested in and feel a sense of community and all of that, and be in a place for a long-term, not for a two-year apartment, and it just got so frustrating.
For people like Stephen, the city’s unaffordability did not just make it difficult for them to imagine a future there as an independent creative worker but also to settle down and become part of a community (a point I take up later). Others also cited the “writing on the wall” and could not see how they might one day afford a home if they stayed. Newcomers usually mentioned homeownership casually, almost as an obvious “next step” that people from their backgrounds pursue. Liam, a 40-year-old graphic artist, says, “I knew that I wanted to buy a house, but I also knew that [my money] was not gonna get anything great [in New York City].” For many, living in an expensive city impeded their feelings of inclusion in the middle class.
Interestingly, even newcomers who were successful as creative professionals in New York City describe the difficulty of living and working there as a reason to leave. Richie is a furniture designer in his early 50s. Along with a business partner, he owns a commercial building in Brooklyn, where their business was located before they moved it to Newburgh in 2012. He did not own his apartment in New York City, and economic realities made it hard to consider expanding their business there. Elaborating on the emotional impact of living and having a business in New York City, he describes, The metaphor I always use is that it’s like being in an abusive relationship, where you feel like you have to be there. “I can’t leave her, I can’t leave her. [But] she’s horrible to me.” And then you finally get out and you’re like “What the fuck was I thinking for so long?” Seriously. And it wasn’t even after leaving; it was after finally making the decision, like making a commitment to get out. At that moment I achieved emotional liberty from the city.
Only one person in my sample is from New York City originally; the rest moved there for college or work. It was the “center of the universe,” as one put it, for creative industries. Many strived to live there as young adults, and struggled before they achieved success. Comparing the situation to an abusive relationship is extreme, to be sure (most did not use such terms). But the sentiment reflects an attitudinal pattern among newcomers to Newburgh: Their life in New York City, where they had wanted to be and managed to establish themselves, became strained financially and emotionally, leading them to leave.
As Stephen’s quote shows, younger newcomers to Newburgh and/or those who did not live in New York City for many years or own property there often did not get the chance to put down roots. Stephen says he could never stay in one neighborhood for long enough, for instance. Michael, a 38-year-old graphic designer, lived in many apartments throughout New York City. He describes having eventually found a community, in Bedford-Stuyvesant (“Bed-Stuy”), a mostly African American neighborhood in Brooklyn, before he and his wife felt it was time to leave: The last apartment we had before we moved up here we had for four years. It was the nicest apartment I ever lived in, it was the nicest block I was ever on. Our neighbors were all lifelong Bed-Stuy people. There was a community. We tried to make friends with people and they were welcoming to us, which they were not obligated to be. We were always extremely conscious of being in that front wave of gentrification. Our rent was a little under market, and if our landlord could assure us he was never going to like double the rent, we probably never would have moved up here; we probably would have stayed in that apartment.
They left when the rent increased. But like other newcomers, Michael’s experience as a gentrifier in New York City instilled a mind-set and set of practices for how to act in a new, low-income urban environment, as I examine in a later section.
People who lived in New York City for a long time, however, were more likely to be settled in their housing and neighborhoods, sometimes even owning their apartment or house. In their case, New York City’s increasing unaffordability did not directly lead them to leave. But they say economic realities transformed their communities, neighborhoods, and the city itself. These newcomers describe New York City today as not being what they remember it from when they were young adults, typically the 1970s through the 1990s—a time when the city was struggling and then first re-urbanizing and gentrifying. Over the years, they claim it had lost its intertwined grittiness and creative spirit (Zukin 2010). As Jane, a consultant in her mid-50s who moved to New York City in 1981, explains why she left, All the creatives, all the people who sort of made New York what it was, all those great neighborhoods like Nolita and Little Italy and Greenwich Village and the West Village and SoHo and Tribeca, those were all creatives, those were all individual shops who were doing unique and individual things, they were artists coming together, and bootstrapping gallery shows and interesting events and then that turned into the art world being really important, and the fashion world is always important, but that got bigger. But everything just got too commodified to the point where all those stores are closed. None of the stores that used to be in SoHo, or Greenwich Village, anywhere—none of them are open anymore. And now they’re all big-box stores or they’re chains. It’s just like a big shopping mall for Europeans on vacation.
This criticism of what New York City has become since it has revitalized echoes many scholarly critiques during this era (Hammett and Hammett 2007; Sorkin 1992), when the city “lost its soul” (Zukin 2010). Newcomers who recall this recent time in the city’s history—of downtown art scenes, independent shops, and street-level creativity (Ocejo 2014)—and who are in a privileged position to keep the creative spirit alive in a new city, lament its passing. Ralph, a photographer in his early 60s, moved from TriBeCa, once a gritty artists’ neighborhood that became an upscale, celebrity-populated destination, to the gentrifying Washington Heights so he and his wife could stay in Manhattan. But shortly after renovating the home they bought there during the housing crisis, he realized something was missing: You sit down and look around and go “This is not the life that I came to live.” It’s just changed, evolved. We are still in Manhattan, but this isn’t the Manhattan that’s visual. Manhattan to me, that idea, the adjectives—that’s Brooklyn now. That’s what’s cool: the restaurants, the people that I see, the things that are coming in. Washington Heights wasn’t that.
By the 2000s, Ralph was unable to recapture Manhattan’s magic by moving to a different up-and-coming neighborhood. The hip parts of Brooklyn, to him, were too young. He wanted a place with “spirit,” as he puts it, which Manhattan had lost. To these newcomers, in a real sense, they are choosing to leave a city they no longer recognize. Or, a changed city due to increasing wealth meant a discontinuity in their self-identities as urbanites (Milligan 2003) (and in this case, specifically as New Yorkers).
Finally, for some newcomers, New York City’s depressed neighborhoods gave them a closer connection to their local community and made them feel like they had a role there. Grace is a clothing designer who owned a store in the industrial waterfront neighborhood of Red Hook in Brooklyn, where she also lived, for 17 years. She felt that Red Hook’s affordability and rundown condition allowed her to have an outsize positive influence there by operating a business and providing employment. But after it started to gentrify, and more middle-class people and businesses came there, she says, “I just didn’t really feel that it was possible to make an impact any longer there. It’s not like I want to live around violence, but I also don’t wanna live in a homogeneous place where there’s nothing to fight for or no impact to make.” For these newcomers, their local role became diminished as the neighborhood improved.
Moving to Newburgh
In terms of “why Newburgh,” or the “pull factors” of migration, newcomers’ narratives embed the city’s relative affordability—a characteristic that they all mention—in explanations that are aesthetic, identity-based, and sociocultural. They liken these place characteristics to a magnetic force pulling them in. And their narratives reflect a possession of a set of tastes suited for particular urban environments. Aesthetically, most point to the city’s treasure trove of historic architecture. Some were drawn to a specific old house, like Karl, a 45-year-old African American filmmaker, who moved to Newburgh with his wife from Harlem: We found the house that we’re currently in that first weekend [we visited]. It had been abandoned. We snuck into it. Very sketchy. But we climbed up to the third floor and looked out one of the cut outs and just saw the river, and saw the view. And we were like, “Oh my God.” And in between first seeing it and actually buying it we would come up almost every weekend. We’d sit in front of the house, sit on the bluff, have a little picnic, look at the house, talk to the house.
Others were attracted to the city’s overall aesthetic. For example, Petria, a writer, and her husband, who works at an art gallery, are both in their late 30s and moved to Newburgh in 2016. She describes what attracted them to it: We were really drawn to the place, to the houses, but also I really like how unpolished it is and how it hasn’t been smartened up. With all of this architecture, these beautiful houses, they still have the mark of time on them. I like how many of them haven’t been done up and turned into show houses. I like ruins and shabby buildings. They have a lot of personality. I know that’s a privileged thing to say, but that’s something that I find beautiful.
For many newcomers, historic, interesting, and even period-specific architecture were important factors in their decision (Paccoud and Mace 2017). But visible grittiness as a symbol of urban authenticity (Zukin 2010) also played a role in drawing people to Newburgh—specifically people in a privileged social position to interpret grittiness as attractive (Lloyd 2006).
A common element of many newcomers’ narrative of moving to Newburgh is that it reminded them of some places in New York City or of the city in general at a particular point in its history. Its conditions and struggles were familiar to them; they recognized them from having already lived in another city (albeit a large one), often in neighborhoods that were gentrifying but still had visible urban problems (e.g., property abandonment, street crime, poverty). This experience also leads them to scoff at people who point to Newburgh’s problems as reasons to not move there. Newcomers use their recollection of New York City and its rundown neighborhoods as reference points. Michaela’s memory of what she first thought about Newburgh is common: My first impression of Newburgh was not that far off from my first impression of a lot of parts of Brooklyn. And I didn’t quite understand that bad rap that Newburgh had, when I was first here, because people were like, “Oh, it’s so bad, it’s so bad, it’s so bad,” and I’m like, “What are you talking about?”
Similarly, Grace learned about Newburgh’s problems from others and saw its conditions for herself before deciding to buy her house. She shrugs at the idea that its issues would deter her or other people from moving there. “Red Hook [in Brooklyn] had the same reputation when I moved there,” she says. “Some of my friends were a little worried that I would come here by myself. But I don’t think it’s any different than moving to New York, you know, 30 years ago.” These experiences and conditions, which they enjoyed living under in a large metropolis, prepared them for Newburgh, and even signaled to them that the city would eventually improve, as many neighborhoods in New York City did. Karl, the filmmaker, says, I think in my mind I rationalized the poverty and just lack of services [by saying] “Oh, this is just like Harlem.” So, I was like blind to it and didn’t want to . . . Well, not blind to it, but just wasn’t scared by it, wasn’t put off by it. I probably should’ve been more put off by it, [but] it was like “OK, I know this.” If you’re gonna get into a space with a river view that you can afford, this is kind of what it’s gotta look like for a minute. I can’t do Westchester
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[laughs], nor do I want to. [Newburgh] is what I can do, so, this is what comes with [living here].
As others have documented, by the early twenty-first century, significant areas in Harlem gentrified, which its long-time residents at one point never would have expected (Busa 2017; Zukin 2010). Karl saw it happen and, like other newcomers, can see Newburgh’s potential for going down a similar path, after a “minute.”
At a deeper level, some newcomers say they felt intimate connections between themselves (i.e., their personalities and self-identities) and Newburgh given its conditions and urban characteristics. “It’s not fancy, that’s for sure,” says Hank, 43, an artist and contractor who specializes in old houses. “It’s this very kind of messy place, kind of messy and complicated,” he says. “And I feel like that kind of maps metaphorically onto my own life.” Like Hank here and Petria earlier, many newcomers felt a personal connection with the city’s rundown look. And as a city, Newburgh is where newcomers say they could continue to feel comfortable as urbanites. When I ask Richie, the furniture designer, about whether Newburgh’s built environment, such as its architecture and density level, presented him with visual cues that reminded him of urban living, he nods and replies, Emotional cues, too. I mean it’s like you recognize yourself in a particular way via the place that you are, and when you come into something that evokes a comfort in knowing who you are and where you are in a different environment. I felt that here. I think it’s really more of an emotional or visceral sort of reaction when you want to put yourself in situations where you feel good, excited, hopeful, and engaged. And that’s not gonna happen for me in a suburban cul-de-sac somewhere.
As opposed to other environments (like suburbs), newcomers say that Newburgh made them feel normal, like they can express an integral part of their identity.
Others also contrast what they saw about Newburgh with what it was not, such as a suburb or a small town. “[My wife and I are] both from extremely wealthy suburbs,” says Michael, “and we both agreed a long time ago that that was the one place we were never going to move.” Newcomers refer to such places as being too homogeneous, and appreciated Newburgh for being demographically diverse. Originally from France, Claire, who is mixed race, moved to New York City in the 1990s to pursue a dancing career. After many years of dancing in the city and touring the world, she switched careers to become a Pilates instructor. She describes her search and attraction to Newburgh: I’m a mixed person, and I need a mixed city. Everywhere, I’ve been living in places where you have the residents—yes, I was living in the nice side of it—but then there was the ’hood, and everyone’s like, “That’s scary, don’t go!” And I’m like, “I’m not scared—they’re my friends!” Cold Spring’s [a nearby small town] cute, but it’s too white. It’s missing something. Then I went to Cornwall [another nearby small town], [and] it’s a little bit more mixed, but it’s still missing something. It’s nice to be where we’re all mixed, we’re all good, there’s no problem, and never to feel the fear. And that’s finally what I was getting here. And I’m like, “Wow, finally, I’ve got the feeling of being able to mix all cultures, the poorest, the richest.” There will be problems, there will be challenges. But I was feeling like, “Oh, OK, I’m home.”
As a woman of color, Claire feels more comfortable when living among diversity. But even white newcomers mention diversity as important to them. As Paula, a painter in her 50s, states, “I love the diversity here. I’m not comfortable in an all-white environment. I grew up in an all-white environment in a small town in Wisconsin. It becomes very single-minded. I liked living in Brooklyn, when I lived there. I was a minority, living next to the Marcy [public housing] Projects. I actually like being a minority, and seeing things from other people’s eyes.” Like other gentrifiers documented in the literature, newcomers usually cite diversity as a general idea rather than identifying with a specific group (Brown-Saracino 2009; Donnelly 2018). Moving to a small municipality in the United States from having lived in New York City often means sacrificing diversity, as Claire points out in her description of other places in the Hudson Valley. Newburgh, however, is a city with a large low-income population, and newcomers regularly intertwine its diversity with its poverty and poverty-based problems, as both Claire and Paula do, albeit in different ways. For people who were used to living among diversity, especially in New York City, Newburgh was an opportunity to keep feeling comfortable or “at home,” and to be exposed to and engage with people from different backgrounds.
In sum, the unaffordability of New York City and affordability (for them) of Newburgh are central to how newcomers make sense of their decisions in their migration narrative. They wanted to stop paying the financial and emotional toll to live in a large, expensive city, to find or rediscover and contribute to a community, and/or to leave a place that had meaningfully changed for one that still resembled a gritty industrial city. Even though, on the whole, New York City was in fact changing to accommodate the lifestyles and tastes of middle-class urbanites like them, their narratives show that it had changed to the extent that they could not see a future there for themselves, no longer recognized it, or felt it was not where they could make a difference. Newburgh was a city where they saw urban elements that match their personal tastes and preferences as well as where they could continue to perform their identities as urbanites. In their telling, New York City had become an inhospitable place for their desired lifestyle and identity, where they had become displaced and even subsumed by greater wealth. Newburgh presented a chance to continue being urban, to join a community, and to own property.
Settlement Narratives
Newcomers have another set of narratives for making sense of their time in Newburgh. These settlement narratives consist of seeing the city as both an urban environment and a small community, or a place of both anonymity and interpersonal familiarity (Morrill, Snow, and White 2005; Wirth 1938). In their narratives, they are experienced urbanites, well-suited to navigating a new city, and able to find the sense of community they had sought after. In settling in Newburgh, a place of low-income groups and a variety of problems, they are also self-aware in their role as gentrifiers, and recognize the risk of replicating gentrification’s consequences. Here, as I will show, we see a shift in terms of which of the roles that newcomers occupy shape these narratives. In their telling, residential displacement is an unlikely result from their presence, and they, as savvy urbanites with resources, can help mitigate the negative impacts of gentrification—like social and cultural displacement—by supporting the existing community and helping to equitably distribute the benefits from revitalization. But they do not reflect on their own self-described roles as people who were socially and culturally displaced from their former city due to advanced gentrification processes, or act on the potential of residential displacement.
Being Urbanites, Being Gentrifiers
In their settlement narratives, newcomers frame Newburgh as their chance to continue living the urban lifestyle they had been cultivating in other cities. They say that it “feels” like a city and is where they can maintain their daily lives and identities as urbanites. The objects of these feelings map neatly onto Louis Wirth’s (1938) famous notion of the characteristics that constitute urbanism: size, density, and diversity. Compared with New York City and other large cities, Newburgh is not nearly as big (it is smaller than many New York City neighborhoods), dense, or diverse. But more important than these measurable ecological factors for determining urbanism is how newcomers use these characteristics to conceive of Newburgh as a place that suits their urban lifestyles and identities despite its smaller scale, while also emphasizing how its small size contributes to their own sense of community.
In terms of size, newcomers mention how Newburgh is both a small and intimate community where they feel socially connected to others, and a city where they can be relatively anonymous. They often express the former in terms of daily routines. As Michelle describes it, You walk down the street and it’s the same two kind of weird, crazy homeless guys, the guy that sells incense, the guy that sort of works at the bodega that’s sort of homeless, the crazy artist that draws your portrait on cardboard, the guys that sit on the stoop down the street—it’s the same people.
Of course, even residents of large cities document routines and recognizing the same people on a daily basis (Kusenbach 2006; Lofland 1998; Morrill et al. 2005). But newcomers also document that the city is large enough and has enough action that they often feel like they can easily avoid seeing the same people, if they want, and have options for what to do. Those who have lived in Newburgh for a few years have noticed a difference in this dynamic as more newcomers have arrived. As Andrew, a writer in his late 50s, who moved to the city with his wife, says, We’ve been here five years, there’s already been significant change. There are a lot of new businesses and people on a real basic level. It’s kind of funny, when the first businesses come in, you go, and you know everyone that’s there. And now a year or two later we are going into places and we don’t know anyone.
In Newburgh, newcomers can achieve a balance of being a member of a community while also being in a city. Jacob, a photographer in his mid-40s, contrasts Newburgh to the busy-ness of New York City: It’s this sense of community really. I recognized from the get-go that there were unique people here. There were very interesting folks. And there are interesting folks obviously in other places, but what I think I found in Newburgh is an opportunity to actually meet and socialize with them, instead of just like knowing about them in a general way. These people come to my house, I sit with them at the café, our kids go to school together. As opposed to New York City, which I know is cool, but I don’t really do anything cool, or where people are understandably too busy to sit down for an hour and a half and have a talk.
As mentioned, becoming a member of an urban community—for the first time, or, in the case of older newcomers who watched their previous sense of community disappear, once again—is an important reason why they both left New York City and moved to Newburgh. The latter city is where they get that opportunity.
Small-scale urbanism and being surrounded by similar people in a similar situation (i.e., displaced creative economy workers from New York City living near each other in a new small city) provide newcomers with a sense of community. But their experience as large city urbanites who are now settling into a place like Newburgh influences how they make sense of themselves as incoming middle-class residents (and, usually, homeowners) in a majority-minority, low-income city. They recognize Newburgh’s urban problems from having lived in similar neighborhoods in large cities, and they see how these conditions can lead to gentrification. As Hank, the artist and historic home contractor, observes, “The conditions for a certain kind of gentrification that we’ve seen all around the country are present here.” Among the reasons they cite are the characteristics that attracted them to Newburgh in the first place: affordable and historic architecture; a diverse, dense, and gritty urban environment; and proximity to New York City. They see further gentrification as highly likely.
As mentioned, some gentrifiers in the literature, like social homesteaders (Brown-Saracino 2009), do not want to harm existing residents but are not necessarily conscious of their influence on them. Newburgh’s newcomers are. Recall Michael’s earlier comment about having been conscious of being in the “front wave” of gentrification in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Many newcomers feel the significance of their presence as newcomers in a place with lower-income residents more so than they did in New York City. Newburgh’s smaller size plays a role in this difference, but so does their role as property owners. As Hank says, I’m more conscious of [gentrification] here, and my role in that here, than I was [in New York City], where I knew I was a part of that trend, but I felt more anonymous. Like, I didn’t have any stake in the community there like I have in the community here. There . . . the neighborhood was just changing. I mean, it was so much more vast than I could even imagine, like the real-estate development and the demographic shifts and politics there. It was beyond my grasp. But here, I know I’m part of gentrification. I’ve basically decided to be a gentrifier [his emphases].
Here, Hank makes a point echoed by many newcomers: by putting down roots through ownership, they feel like they are a part of the community in Newburgh. No longer anonymously passing through or living as mere consumers of urban space, they are now stakeholders in a place that they know they are influencing in some way. They are aware of their presence’s impact on existing residents, such as by making them feel socially and culturally displaced (Shaw and Hagemans 2015), or like they no longer feel comfortable or represented in their own neighborhood. “I think that in general,” says Stephen, “when you see a fresh face in the neighborhood that happens to be a professional jazz drummer with a man bun, like, it says something: ‘So, this is happening here now.’ It’s a threat. [Existing residents] know what gentrification is.” These thoughts, of course, are usually their own impressions of what existing residents’ must be thinking of their presence in Newburgh.
Newcomers are also very aware that “being a gentrifier” is usually a maligned role, and they do not want to be associated with its negative aspects (Donnelly 2018; Schlichtman et al. 2017). Their narratives and actions reveal three ways that they make sense of their impact on the city. First, while they recognize the influx of newcomers settling in Newburgh, they do not think it will lead to residential displacement simply because of the sheer amount and even type of housing available. Leslie, 30, is an artist who has also worked in real estate in both New York City and Newburgh. She compares Newburgh’s situation to that of Beacon, the smaller city across the river, which had a rapid revitalization after having a lot of vacant housing: We have a huge vacancy rate here. The difference is though, it’s going to take a long time to go through our inventory [because] you’re not trying to rehab a bunch of framed houses, like in Beacon. [Here] are older, historic homes that are falling apart. You’re not going to just burn through this inventory that fast. You’re not gonna stabilize it super quick.
Vacant buildings are part of Newburgh’s landscape—it is difficult to walk a block without seeing a boarded-up house. Many newcomers point to them as reasons to not expect gentrification’s chief harm—residential displacement—to occur any time soon. Since there is so much affordable housing available, and since this housing can take a long time to rehabilitate and renovate, there are plenty opportunities for more newcomers and low-income populations alike to have housing, and a lot of time before it will run out and real-estate values will increase. In addition, they often mention the strong presence of Habitat for Humanity, the volunteer-based international housing nonprofit that renovates old houses for low-income populations, and Newburgh’s own land bank, which has a mission of community development by selling city-owned properties, as existing actors that are strengthening housing opportunities. “Affordable,” of course, is relative. Not all groups have the resources to buy and renovate an old house, let alone to upgrade their rental housing, even in a market like Newburgh with comparatively low housing costs.
Second, their narratives document and actions show how they support the existing community, such as by going to certain restaurants and businesses, volunteering at various community organizations, and making an effort to know their neighbors (Brown-Saracino 2009). The aim of such efforts is to embed themselves in their new community, and do what they can to contribute positively, thereby mitigating any negative impacts they know they may have on it. Since moving to the city in 2014, Ian, a 40-year-old web developer, has taken an interest in local community groups, offering his time and technology skills to organize events and help set up a web presence for them. After describing some of these endeavors, he says, Gentrification is always the big fear. My goal is to really amplify the people that are here, you know, and not try to turn this town into something that it’s not, or have a bunch of white people move in from Brooklyn and New York [City] and buy all the houses and raise all the rents, and, you know, open very white businesses that are not affordable, or not useful to the community. So, for instance, Calabash restaurant is a little Jamaican place. That’s exactly the kind of place that I want to support and it’s a local, African American, minority-owned business and started up on their own. So I want to sort of help them, you know, get more people in the door, so they’re a good, healthy, thriving business, so they can hire more local people and that kind of thing. So, I’m mostly interested in trying to amplify people in the community that have ideas, that might not necessarily know how to do it, I guess.
In this example, Ian specifies combating gentrification’s potential harms, particularly commercial displacement, as a motive for his actions. Other examples of such behaviors, such as artists who teach art to local youth and dancers who teach dance, reflect a desire to integrate into the community and to use their talents to help out a disadvantaged population.
These interventions, however, have limits. Such support does not mean they do not also support (and sometimes open and initiate) the new businesses and endeavors by people in their own demographic. Furthermore, as the previous consideration of their impact shows, newcomers do not make any efforts to prevent possible residential displacement. In fact, a handful of newcomers have legally evicted existing residential and commercial tenants in buildings they have purchased for the purpose of renovating their units and attracting people who can pay higher rents. While they express the emotional difficulty involved in removing people from their homes, they focus on how they are improving the city’s substandard housing stock. David bought two investment buildings with his wife, one of which was an illegal boardinghouse with subdivided units. They aim to restore them back to full apartments. He comments on their experience with this situation: One of the things that has happened to Newburgh is the splitting of apartments smaller and smaller, which makes it more affordable, but also the conditions are not ideal, it’s not ideal necessarily for the buildings. People don’t really have their own apartment; they just have a room. It’s not legal. So we cleared out that building. It’ll be really, really beautiful when it’s done. A really nice place to live.
It is unclear whether the existing tenants in this or other recently purchased and renovated buildings were displaced from the neighborhood or city (see Newman and Wyly 2006). The point, however, is that the real-estate interests of newcomers are having impacts on the housing situations of existing residents.
Finally, the “being a gentrifier” narratives of some newcomers describe the potential of Newburgh to get gentrification “right,” such as by making economic decisions and investments that equitably benefit the community, and by not making the same mistakes as gentrifiers in larger cities. The people who use such explanations tend to be business owners, owners of multiple buildings, or small-scale developers (i.e., major producers of urban space). Their descriptions, however, mention community benefits in a general sense and tend to lack details on how exactly improvements will be equitable. For example, Phil is an inventor and eco-designer who rents space in a former factory that was converted by two newcomers into a creative hub with forty studios plus gallery, events, and performance spaces. It has become a popular place for newcomers to work, hold events, and visit. Phil reflects on its impact: I think what you have is a lot of people—and I would include myself in this—who recognize that a cultural institution can bring a lot just by its presence. Even if it’s not a direct economic engine, the ripple effect which is the mere presence of something. Especially because it’s not like Disneyland came to town. It’s like this is a cool public arts institution [that’s] potentially really great for a community. And it attracts other people who are like-minded, values-aligned, whatever, who want great things for a community. We can make something happen here and be actively engaged in a process of renewal.
Here, Phil invokes Disneyland, a big corporation that invests in large-scale projects. Newcomers feel that Newburgh’s trajectory can be different from places like New York City because it does not feature major developers or development projects. These actors and their projects, they claim, had a negative impact on that city’s built and social environment. The narrative positions small-scale newcomers themselves as the chief actors in the gentrification process in Newburgh, with the view that they are better suited to consider the needs of the community since they are also residents and stakeholders. As Jane explains, People are really stepping up and wanting to participate in what [Newburgh’s] going to be . . . and not have it be just for big developers. Who are you doing this for, this revitalization? Is it for the big developers and their tax dollars? [Or] this idea of get big manufacturers in here, and you’ll get 200 jobs? I would rather see small businesses [and] a mix of smaller and mid-size developments. I would rather see many things create the whole than one big thing. Creatives are coming up here, moving here, buying homes, buying buildings and opening their businesses, which is great. And that’s more of what I think will be a better gentrification than depending on these bigger developments to bring help to town.
In sum, the settlement narratives that newcomers use to make sense of their presence in Newburgh focus on both becoming members of a community and the greater impact their presence has on the existing population. As experienced urbanites, the transition from a large city to a small one is relatively seamless, while the decrease in scale combined with their rootedness as homeowners help them achieve a sense of community within an urban context. They consider gentrification in Newburgh to be inevitable but not necessarily harmful because of a numbers game (i.e., plenty of available affordable housing) and their own actions as, essentially, “better” gentrifiers. These narratives reflect their social roles as appreciators of certain urban forms and conditions, producers of urban space as property and business owners, and as self-aware gentrifiers. Most importantly, the social role of having been displaced from their former city as economic factors made life there untenable, which plays a key role in shaping their migration narratives, does not shape how they make sense of the impacts of their settlement.
Conclusion
Newburgh’s story is a common one for old industrial cities in the twentieth century, including small ones (see Flad and Griffen 2009; Mele 2017; Norman 2013). These places are often called “legacy cities” (Ryberg-Webster and Kinahan 2017), in search of a new economic foundation to replace manufacturing. Some have mostly recovered from deindustrialization, such as Portland, Maine (Lees 2003b). Newburgh, with its collection of historic architecture, distinct and traditional “urban” features (e.g., size, density, and Wirth 1938), and proximity to both an increasingly unaffordable New York City and natural settings in the Hudson Valley, has become a destination and place of resettlement for a set of big city urbanites who wish to maintain, and build on, their urban lifestyles. While Newburgh’s transformation is intertwined to some extent with processes occurring in New York City, the phenomenon of the urban middle class leaving large cities for small ones is not unique to the country’s largest metropolitan area, as several scholars have examined in other regions of the country (Brown-Saracino 2009, 2017b; Harrison 2017; Shaw 2018).
This analysis on the narratives that urban middle-class newcomers to a small city construct about their migration decisions and settlement experiences as gentrifiers provides several implications for the literature and future research. First, this paper informs us of how members of the urban middle class make sense of their own displacement—an understudied topic in the literature. Migration studies often focus on the economic factors—specifically housing cost and employment—behind why people leave where they live and choose where to settle, with family ties being an additional factor. The newcomers in this paper did not move to Newburgh from New York City for employment or family ties, although some saw a greater opportunity to start and/or expand a personal business and start a family there. Affordability played a significant role in how they make sense of their migration choices, but it is intertwined with social and cultural conditions of both New York City and Newburgh. The former had transformed beyond recognition and become an inhospitable place for workers like them in the creative economy to afford, find a sense of community, and maintain a place identity, while the latter presented a perfect urban opportunity: an actual dense, diverse, and historic city not too far away with housing they could afford. These findings suggest the need for further research on the meanings people give for where they choose to live.
Second, this paper furthers a lot of previous gentrification literature on the importance of analyzing different types of gentrifiers and how they make sense of themselves as gentrifiers (Brown-Saracino 2009; Donnelly 2018; Ocejo 2011; Schlichtman et al. 2017). Newcomers to small cities such as those in Newburgh occupy four distinct gentrifier roles simultaneously, combining large city experience—as gentrifiers, consumers, and displaced large city residents—with the chance to become influential producers of urban space as small-scale developers in their new urban environments. With an ability and opportunity to own property, they help to shape the urban environment of their new city at a scale not possible for people from their social class status to do in large cities, while also protect against their own future displacement. Yet, their self-perceptions downplay the potential negative impacts of gentrification on existing residents. These findings push scholars to continue examining gentrification in urban contexts of different scales, and gentrifiers as they continue through the life course and even migrate to new cities.
This paper features at least two key limitations. First, since it focuses on the perceptions newcomers have of their presence in Newburgh, we do not learn what their actual influence has been on the city. While there is some evidence already of negative impacts that newcomers are having on existing residents (e.g., housing evictions), the gentrification process occurring there is still relatively recent, and its long-term trajectory is therefore uncertain. The kind of displacement that takes place and its extent in this and other small cities experiencing such gentrification are questions for future research. Second, this paper points to a possible migration pattern of the urban middle class leaving large cities for small ones due to concerns of affordability, with important implications for its impact on vulnerable communities. However, given the qualitative nature of the data, it is impossible to determine the extent of this migration, whether it is in fact a greater pattern, and how widespread it may be. While these newcomers make sense of their own migration and settlement in terms that form a connection between advanced levels of gentrification in New York City and early waves of gentrification in the small city of Newburgh, different data would be necessary to make broader claims about the actual connections that potentially exist between proximate municipalities of varying sizes.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Japonica Brown-Saracino, Leonard Nevarez, and Meghan Ashlin Rich for commenting on an earlier version of this paper, and to the three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.