Use Value, Not Exchange Value

Abstract

Community members, planners, and landscape architects have long faced the “gentrification dilemma”: neighborhood improvements can catalyze gentrification that displaces the very people the improvements are intended to serve. Just Green Enough has emerged as an effective approach to planning neighborhood improvements that do not contribute to gentrification. However, this framework has fallen short at the design scale because it does not take into account characteristics of the gentrification process, the design preferences of earlier gentrifiers, and the nuances of class and cultural differences.

To find an alternative approach that is effective at a design scale, this study first evaluates Just Green Enough and other existing frameworks. It then seeks a deeper understanding of the gentrification process from the social science literature and the experience of communities threatened by gentrification. Finally, it evaluates built projects that apply this deeper understanding to designing improvements that serve current residents without catalyzing gentrification.

This study finds that the gentrification dilemma can be addressed by designing to increase the use value of the landscape to current residents without increasing the exchange value, or market value, in the eyes of higher‐income newcomers and investors. It also finds that class and cultural differences in landscape preferences and use generate many opportunities to design to serve one group without attracting the other. Long‐term tracking and comparative research are needed to confirm or refine this new framework.